by the flat surface of an air mattress, the sun beaming down ahead. Gentle calls of tropical birds rang out overhead. She was there.
The sand looked so soft and wonderful. Zoe could imagine standing on it, how it would feel when her feet sank a little, the sand between her toes. Her own footprints preserved clearly in the part of the shore lapped by the gentle waves. And what was important was that she could feel it, and she had no compulsion to count every grain of sand, and when she looked down at her feet she only saw the joy of it and not the calculations of the volume of sand she had displaced.
She left the numbers there.
Zoe opened her eyes—her real eyes—and part of her stayed there, on the island. Part of the numbers came back with her, and that was fine, because she didn’t need them gone entirely. She just needed them to clear her vision enough to let her see, and to be there when she needed to call on their help.
She just had to think. If she could think clearly, without the numbers getting in the way now, she knew she would find it. There had to be something that all of the victims had in common.
They were all local. Zoe searched their addresses, and their home records; looking back through the census information, she could see that all of them had lived in the Syracuse area for a long time. Not all of them for their whole lives—while Shacora and Olive had been born there, Elara had been an immigrant some thirty years ago. The newest victim, too—Sheriff Petrovski had identified her as Lara Brownlee—she had only lived in Syracuse for a little over a decade, having been raised at the other side of the state.
Something about those comparative ages sparked in Zoe’s mind. Lara had been in her late teens—around eighteen years old—when she came to Syracuse. So, why?
Because she wanted to study?
Spurred on by this thought, Zoe looked up the local college. There were a number of faculties included within Syracuse University, and a wide range of fields of study.
And there were a few alumni lists online—nothing comprehensive, but enough that Zoe had a flash of hope.
She started going through the list, checking them one by one: a search for the victim’s name, plus the college, to see what came up.
Elara Vega was the first hit. Not as a student; she had not even been in the local area when she was in her early twenties, which was why Zoe had started with her—thinking it would be easier to disprove the theory. But there she was, listed on an old document about staff. She had taught there as a professor for some years, gaining teaching experience in the science department, leading students on explorations of astrology. She had stopped teaching some time ago to work at the planetarium full-time, but the link was there.
Zoe moved on to Olive Hanson. As the next oldest victim, it was likely there would be less evidence of her academic record. But there she was, quoted in an article about the alumni association, telling the reporter how much she had enjoyed a get-together to mark a decade since her graduation.
Shacora Maxwell was easy; Zoe had already seen in the report gathered by Sheriff Petrovski’s men that the part-time security guard had also been a part-time student. She was taking classes until the very day she died. And that just left their newest find, Lara Brownlee.
Who had graduated from Syracuse University seven years ago, at the top of her class, according to an online article which featured a photograph of her, younger and with a less flattering haircut, grinning with a certificate framed in her hands.
She had it.
“Flynn?”
“Hm?”
“Syracuse University.”
He looked up at her, a flash of understanding in his eyes. Perhaps he was a little sharper than she had so far given him credit for. “All of them?”
“Three students and a professor.”
“Is the information all available online?”
Zoe shook her head, smiling a little more as she realized the implications. “Three of them are a matter of public record. Not Shacora Maxwell. She was still studying. No graduation list, no alumni report, nothing. She would only be known as a student to someone with access to the university infrastructure itself.”
“Someone at the school.” Flynn snapped his fingers in the air. “Staff and faculty members.”
“We cannot rule out students,” Zoe said. “This killer is a mathematician. If not in major,