CHAPTER ELEVEN
Faith texted Michael as soon as she got to the hotel. He replied an hour later while Faith swallowed the last bite of the ham and Swiss croissant she’d purchased from the coffee shop they’d visited on the way back to the hotel.
In OK City. Have some leads to follow up on. Not many, but all promising. Will update later.
She texted back a thumbs up, then finished the last sip of her coffee and tossed the trash into the room’s wastebasket.
Michael didn’t have any real progress to report, but knowing he was hard at work looking for David helped ease her mind a little.
She would rather have been there herself, but she understood Smythe’s point.
With the CIA this jumpy, it was better not to give them any reason to be jumpier.
“I think I might have something,” Jessica said.
Faith's ears perked up. She then walked to her partner, who was working through the list of names of those who had ordered fake service dog vests. "Whatcha got?"
“Well, we figured this killer had probably suffered something serious from a dog, right?”
“We did.”
Jessica turned the screen toward Faith. “Feast your eyes on Amanda Prowse.”
Faith looked at an image of a rather pretty woman in her early thirties with round cheeks, a button nose, and soft green eyes hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses. Tight red curls sat on top of her head, and she appeared to have a build that leaned more to curvy than slender.
“Tell me about Miss Prowse,” Faith said.
"Well, she was one of six who ordered a fake service vest from Thomas Webb," Jessica replied. "And she sued Margaret Hayes two years ago when she was bitten by her German Shepherd."
Faith’s eyes widened. “Ah. How interesting.”
"Very interesting. It looks like the two women were shopping at a mall in Chestnut Hill when the dog suddenly lunged and bit Miss Prowse on her left arm."
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, she had to get sixteen stitches.”
“Double ouch.”
“She also attacked Margaret Hayes and the dog, striking the dog twice with a steam iron she was planning to purchase and scratching Margaret’s face before security intervened and separated the two women.”
Faith whistled. “That sounds promising.”
“Sure does. The criminal case and civil case both ended up being a wash when they agreed to settle. Probably both of them knew they’d go down for their part to play.”
"I could see how Prowse might hold a grudge for that, though," Faith said. "After all, it was Hayes's dog that started it. I'm surprised they didn't make her take the service vest off her dog."
"I'm sure they did, but that's a rule that's very difficult to enforce. Most likely, she put the vest right back on once the court case was settled."
“Wonder how Amanda felt about that.”
Jessica grinned. “Not so wonderful. It seems Miss Prowse has a YouTube channel with some very choice words for our pooch owners.”
Faith raised an eyebrow. “Does she? Do tell.”
Jessica pulled up a short video with the tagline THEY SHOULD BE F***ING SHOT. As it turns out, that was most of the content of the video. In it, Amanda advocated the shooting of everyone who abused service dog policies.
“Now that’s intriguing,” Faith said. “Anything about Hayes in particular?”
“Nothing I could find, but a lot of videos were removed after the case was settled. I’m guessing they were taken down as part of the settlement deal.”
“Which no doubt also infuriated Miss Prowse,” Faith observed.
“Yeah,” Jessica agreed. “I looked her address up. Want to go give it a shot?”
“I’m game. Turk!” Turk looked up from the empty plate that a few minutes ago had contained a large strip steak. “Time to go, boy.”
Turk barked and jumped to his feet, then followed his humans out the door.
On the way to Prowse's address, Faith got a call from the medical examiner's office. The medical examiner was a cheery man with a slight Wisconsin accent who seemed delighted to have something to look at other than your run-of-the-mill shooting and stabbing.
“Okay, Special Agent,” he said. “You ready for this one?”
“Gee, I sure hope so,” Faith said, putting the phone on speaker so Jessica could hear. “Go ahead.”
“Boxcutter blades.”
Faith blinked. “Boxcutter blades?”
“Yep. You know those rhomboidal blades that you pop in and out of box cutters?”
“Yeah, I know what boxcutter blades are. I just don’t know how a boxcutter blade could have torn the victims apart like that.”
“That’s the thing. Not a boxcutter blade. Ten boxcutter blades. One for each finger.”
Faith blinked. “So, our killer attached ten boxcutter blades to his ginger and used them to cut our victims into strips?”
"Yep. I'm banking on gloves with specialized fittings at the fingertips.
I am confident about the ten different blades after examining the wounds.
There are differences between the cuts left by each blade, and since each finger is different from another in terms of strength, the glove idea could explain why some cuts are shallow, and others have partially eviscerated Miss Hayes. "
Faith’s stomach turned at that reminder. “Right. Okay, so the killer put these gloves on and then just went apeshit on our victims?”
“Oh yeah. Arms flailing, slashing, stabbing… Yeah, apeshit is the right word. This was a crime of passion.”
Faith wouldn’t have used the word passion, but it was oddly appropriate. “Anything on the victim that might give us a clue who our killer is?”
“Well, I can tell you the attacker was short, probably not very strong, but definitely very fast. The absence of defensive wounds suggests the victims were out within seconds. In order for boxcutters—even a lot of them—to cause that much damage, you have to be going to town with them.”
Faith jotted down short, weak, fast. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, the poncho you gave me actually had two samples of blood. Same with the wounds on Margaret Hayes.”
Faith leaned forward in the car. “Yeah? Have you matched the other blood?”
"Yep. A guy named Thomas Webb. If he sounds familiar, that's because his body was just rolled into my office looking like Hayes if you fermented her for a little bit."
“Jesus,” Jessica whispered.
“No one else?” Faith asked, almost desperately.
“Nothing yet. We still have to look through everything, but so far, we have two victims connected by the same murder weapon.”
Faith nodded. “If a third name pops up, let me know, okay?”
“Will do. Be careful with this one, agent. Berserking is a well-documented medical phenomenon, and if drugs are involved, they might not feel pain. People have walked right through barrages of gunfire before.”
That wasn’t exactly true, but Faith didn’t want to have a long conversation about that, so she only said, “Thank you. I’ll be careful.”
Faith pondered the medical examiner’s findings as they drove to Amanda Prowse’s house. Ten blades, one on each finger. Like claws. Apeshit wasn’t the right word, but the killer was definitely behaving like an animal when they attacked the victims.
Perhaps like a dog? Dogs killed with their teeth, not their claws, but humans had flat faces, and making some sort of implement that could mimic a dog's bite would be very difficult and ungainly, not to mention hard to use and conceal. Maybe this was the closest the killer could come.
But why would the killer dress up as a dog? The dogs weren’t the victims here; the people were. A symbol, maybe, of the fact that their own dogs were out of control?
Jessica pulled into a cul-de-sac and parked in front of a three-story house with a gabled roof and a stone fountain, currently dry, as the centerpiece of a yard that also sported sculpted hedges.
Faith pushed her speculation away for the moment, but her brow furrowed as they walked up the steps to the front door. “Is that a guy in a wheelchair?”
“Looks like it,” Jessica said. “And that one’s a woman leaning against a crutch.”
Faith shivered. “Well, that’s not extremely disturbing.”
“Not the most disturbing thing I’ve seen today,” Jessica said.
She knocked on the door, and a moment later, a cheerful voice called, “Coming!”
A moment after that, the door opened, and Amanda Prowse stood in the foyer and blinked at the agents. After a moment, she said, “You’re not pizza.”
“Nope,” Faith said. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s just, um… Why are you here?”
She followed that up with a nervous laugh. She looked genuinely confused, but when she saw Turk, her eyes brightened. “Oh! You’re here about the service dog campaign.”
Faith raised an eyebrow. “No, but tell me about that.”
"Oh." Amanda blinked. "It's my online campaign to require stricter enforcement for therapy dogs, service animals, working dogs, and K9S.
Basically, there needs to be more accountability around all of those programs. Right now, anyone can slap a fake vest on a dog and say it's a service animal, and business owners aren't even allowed to question them to verify that they're telling the truth. "
“Interesting that you bring that up,” Faith said, “because we’re actually here on something related to that.”
Amanda frowned quizzically. “Oh?”
“We’re investigating the murder of Margaret Hayes,” Jessica said.
“Oh.” Amanda’s eyes widened. “Oh! That Margaret Hayes. She’s dead?”
“That Margaret Hayes,” Jessica confirmed. “The one you assaulted in a shopping mall two years ago. And yes, she’s dead.”
“Two years ago was self-defense,” Amanda said. “Her dog bit me. He was wearing a service dog vest, and I called her out on it. Told her he obviously wasn’t a service animal, and she should be ashamed of herself. The damned dog bit me, and she gave me this smug smile and said, ‘Serves you right.’”
“Must have made you really mad,” Faith said.
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even know she was dead. And come on, two years later? Why wouldn’t I have just murdered her two years ago?”