TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)
A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)
A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)
A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)
PROLOGUE
Professor Ralph Henderson sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and fished around in the pocket of his coat for his car keys. It had been a long evening of marking English papers, and either his students were getting more stupid or he was getting more tired of the job. He was more than ready to prop himself up in bed for the night with a small glass of whiskey and one of the classics.
The Georgetown parking garage was almost empty, most of the other faculty members having had enough sense to go home long ago. It was chilly and gloomy, the electric strip lights flickering overhead as moths bumped into them with suicidal intent. Henderson cut across the empty spaces, taking a shortcut to his car. He briefly trifled with the idea of stopping off somewhere for a takeout coffee on the way back. Or would it be better just to get home as soon as possible, to the safety and warmth of one’s own domain?
His footsteps echoed with an eerie resonance through the garage, the concrete ceiling and the concrete floor throwing the sounds back and forth. It was on nights like these that the garage transformed into a different kind of beast. A place where unsavory types might lurk in the shadows, ready to pounce. The kind of thinking that you couldn’t shake, even when you repeatedly told yourself you were an adult and shouldn’t be afraid of the dark anymore.
Mind you, there was a good reason to be nervous tonight. The campus had been buzzing with news of a murder that had taken place right there, under their own noses. A student that Henderson had known. Maybe that was the reason the hairs stood up on the back of his neck as he crossed the garage, and why he couldn’t help but dart furtive and wide-eyed glances into the shadows, trying to see if there was someone hiding within.
He tried to distract himself. There was more to think about. There was a kid he’d had to throw out of the class for failing yet another paper. It was so frustrating to teach—to see these kids with so much potential getting caught up in parties and not taking their studies seriously. It was with regret that Henderson had had to flunk him, but he felt more than justified now after getting an email from the student.
Full of vitriol, the email was borderline threatening. Apparently, the kid didn’t appreciate being kicked out and wanted to make sure that Henderson knew it. As if such a gesture was somehow going to get him reinstated to the course. Ha! The kid had a lot to learn about life, and about how people reacted to the way you treated them.
Henderson reached the car and fumbled with his keys, his fingers thick and slow from having written out so many comments while grading the students. He cursed himself, a shaking taking over his hands, driven by the isolation of the parking garage at night. He was being silly. He was a grown man, for god’s sake, and he walked through this garage in the light of day without ever a second thought.
Anyway, he thought to himself darkly, if anyone was going to be after him, it would be that angry student. And he wasn’t smart enough to stalk a professor in the dark of a parking garage. He was the kind of kid who sent angry emails and left a trail. Nothing to worry about, really. Henderson would report it to the dean tomorrow, and that would be that.
What was that noise? A footstep? Something was wrong here. He had been dismissing his fears all this time, but now he was less sure. The prickling feeling on the back of Henderson’s neck increased, something like a premonition, but before he could turn, his head was hitting the car window with a sharp crash.
Henderson barely had time to register this fact and the flooding pain coming from his nose before the hand on the back of his head smashed it into the side of the car again. He was slipping lower, taken down by the shock and the injury, his body going limp. He tried to twist away a little, his briefcase flying forgotten to the floor, but he couldn’t fight the next blow, or the next. Over and over his head hit the red chassis, his temple, the top of an eye socket, his jaw just below the ear.
He felt the damage with a kind of detached shock. The crack of a bone breaking. The thought of bruises blossoming across his face, then of cuts and abrasions, then of something more serious. All he could think, stupidly, was that his face was going to be ruined. All he had time to think before it was seemingly over.
The gripping hand released him, and Henderson sank unceremoniously to the floor, hitting a shoulder on the way down. He barely felt it, against all the rest. He was twisted enough now to groggily turn his head and look, though his vision was blurred. Maybe from the blows. Maybe from blood falling into his eyes. Maybe because his eye socket had to be broken, at the very least.
Who was that? A vague shape, a whisper only, as if it were a ghost that stood over him and not a man. But it was a man. It had to be a man. If only he could make out just who—but Henderson’s consciousness was slipping out of him like sand through his fingers, and he could no longer hold on. Something was flowing out of him, leaving him cold and empty. He knew it was almost over. The world was going black around him, the watery shape above watching in silence.
The shadow stretched above him and lifted his head one last time and slammed it down into the concrete, an impact that Henderson barely even sensed before he tumbled down headfirst into that blackness.
The job was done.
He would not wake up again.
CHAPTER ONE
Zoe traced cracks across the arm of the leather chair, seeing how their pattern revealed a tale of aging, of so many different hands and arms lying on this exact spot. She couldn’t decide whether that was a comfort, an indication of experience, or just gross. Who knew what kind of germs lurked within this fabric?
“Zoe?” Dr. Lauren Monk prompted her, from a similarly comfortable chair placed opposite her.
Zoe looked up guiltily. “Sorry, was I supposed to answer that?”
Dr. Monk sighed, tapping her pen against a pad of paper in her hand. Despite the recorder sitting on the desk which archived all of their sessions, it seemed that Dr. Monk was still a fan of traditional methods. “Let’s change tack for a moment,” she said. “We’ve had a few sessions together now, haven’t we, Zoe? I’m noticing that you sometimes have trouble with social cues.”
Ah. That. Zoe shrugged, trying to give off an air of indifference. “I do not always understand the ways in which people seem to react.”
“Or the ways in which they expect you to react?”
Zoe shrugged again, her gaze traveling toward the window. Then she mentally slapped herself; she was supposed to be taking an active part in these sessions, not acting like a moody teenager. “My logic is different from their logic.”
“Why do you think that is?”
Zoe knew why she was the way she was, or at least thought she did. The numbers. The numbers that were everywhere she looked, every moment of the day. They told her even now what prescription Dr. Monk wore in her glasses (barely strong enough to require any kind of aid), that there was half a millimeter of dust on the certificate frames on the wall but only a quarter of a millimeter on the psychology degree (indicating a stronger sense of pride in this than her other achievements), and that Dr. Monk had written down exactly seven words during their conversation so far.
She wanted to say it, or at least some parts of her did. She still had not admitted to Dr. Monk that she had an ability that no one else seemed to. No one except for the occasional serial killer,
