CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“We understand. Yes. Thank you, Jenkins.”
Jessica hung up and rubbed her nose.
“Is he pissed?” Faith asked.
“He’s not happy,” Jessica replied. “He wishes we’d clued him into our movements. Technically, this is still a Newton PD investigation and the FBI is consulting.”
“That can be fixed.”
“Yes, but now it looks like Newton’s passing the buck. That’s what he told me, anyway.”
True to her word, Mitchell had lawyered up.
Since she wasn’t wealthy anymore, she’d hired a young, inexpensive kid three years out of law school.
Said kid was eager to prove herself and had filed a number of motions within an hour of their departure from Mitchell’s condo.
One of them was a motion to dismiss all accusations against Miss Mitchell, citing flagrant disregard of her rights and aggressive interrogation tactics on flimsy evidence.
They hadn’t accused her of anything, and their interrogation tactics were firm but not aggressive.
The evidence certainly wasn’t flimsy. This motion would crumble within a day, but it was still a bad look in the media.
The silver lining was that the CIA would see Faith in the news working on a case far away from home, without a care in the world for David. Then again, would that make them think they knew where he was?
Her blood chilled. If they thought she knew where he was and wasn’t worried, then they would realize that the kidnapping was conducted by a friend of theirs. Well, not a friend, but—
“You think she’s stalling?” Jessica asked. “She’s guilty, and she’s trying to throw up smokescreens?”
Faith shook her head, both an answer to Jessica and a way to pull herself out of her emotional spiral.
“Maybe. It’s hard to say. Both of our suspects hated our victims. We know Prowse couldn’t have committed the murder.
Mitchell could have, but we don’t have any hard evidence.
Turk didn’t seem to recognize Mithcell’s scent.
The boxcutters are suspicious, but it’s a common enough purchase. ”
“We can get a search warrant for Mitchell’s house. She’ll pitch a fit, but we have her confessing that she threatened to kill one of the victims, and we have the boxcutters. It’s enough for a closer look. If nothing else, we might find evidence that she destroyed evidence.”
Faith nodded. “Yeah, go ahead and get that done. Newton PD can handle it.”
Faith didn’t actually think they were going to find anything, but they didn’t have anything else to do.
The investigation had stalled. Unless Mitchell was their killer, they were just waiting for the killer to strike again and maybe leave more evidence.
That, obviously, wasn’t the way they wanted to solve this case.
She texted Michael again. Updates?
He responded a minute later. None yet. Might have lead on David’s location. Working on it now.
Faith tried not to get her hopes up, but on the other hand, hope was all she had right now. Please, please, please, let him find David. Alive and okay.
She texted back, thank you. Keep me posted.
While she waited for Michael to reply, Faith worked on a profile of their killer.
The violent MO was the key, in her opinion, perhaps even more so than the possible attempt at mimicking a dog or some other sort of animal.
Nearly all of the murders she investigated were violent, but the violence was rarely the defining factor.
In most cases, it was just a means to an end.
A victim would be exsanguinated so the killer could avoid leaving evidence when he staged them.
A victim would be posed naked with her legs spread but only to provide a shocking artistic statement, not because the murderer assaulted them prior to death.
A glassblower would be encased in her own work and left to suffocate to demonstrate the crime the killer felt she had committed against him.
Faith cocked her head. Actually, that might be part of it.
The killer was targeting people who flouted the laws regarding service dogs.
Their first two suspects had been attacked or threatened by a fake service dog.
If the killer was also attacked, then maybe the violent death was supposed to symbolize the pain they’d suffered or the potential for danger improperly trained dogs represented.
The violence could be a recreation of an attack the killer had suffered or a fear the killer had.
“Okay, thank you,” Jessica said. She hung up the phone and turned to Faith. “Okay, I had to sweet talk him, but he’s getting a warrant.”
“Outstanding,” Faith said. “Good work.”
“Thank you.”
She plopped onto the bed and crossed her arms. “So, what do we do now? You’re not confident Mitchell’s our girl, and to be honest, I’m having doubts too.”
Faith got to her feet and started pacing the hotel room. Turk glanced at her, and when he satisfied himself she wasn’t having a breakdown, he went back to his nap.
“I think the killer is recreating an attack,” Faith said.
“You think they were mauled by dogs?”
“Maybe. The boxcutter gloves could be mimicking a dog’s claws. Dogs kill with their teeth, but it’s hard to make something humans can use to mimic that. The claws might be the next best thing.”
“Well, they’re not going for realism, then,” Jessica said. “If the killer had been attacked that badly, they wouldn’t be able to rip people apart like this.”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t an attack on them,” Faith suggested. “It could have been an attack on a loved one. Maybe even an attack on their own dog. You saw the way Mitchell looked at Turk when Minnie approached him.”
“Well, to be fair there are gerbils bigger than Mitchell’s dog.”
“And not all dogs are as well-trained as Turk to where they’d avoid eating an animal that size.”
“So, you think the killer’s dog was eaten?”
Faith sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know. But I think the violence could be to prove a point. It could be to show people what it looks like when a dog loses control.”
“You don’t think it’s just a psychopath letting himself go?”
Faith shook her head. “A psychopath wouldn’t choose his targets based on correcting misbehavior. They have preferences, but those preferences are almost always related to sexual preferences or narcissism. This killer is definitely going after breakers of a very specific rule.”
“So, there’s something personal related to fake service dogs,” Jessica said.
“You want to start looking at recent dog attacks? See if any of them pop back to our victims?” She frowned.
“Actually, I just remembered that Thomas Webb didn’t own a dog.
According to his property manager, he never owned a dog, right? ”
“Maybe he sold a vest to the owner of a fake service dog,” Faith said. “I know it’s a bit of a grab, but since we can’t move forward with Mitchell right now, I think it’s worth looking into. This level of violence doesn’t just pop out of nowhere. Something prompted it.”
“I’m not gonna lie,” Jessica said. “I think you might be overthinking the violence angle. I don’t think it symbolizes anything but our killer being violent.
But we can look into it. It beats sitting around doing nothing.
” She thought for a moment, then added a little more hopefully.
“If we narrow the search to attacks by dogs proven to be fake service animals, then maybe we’ll come up with something. ”
“Like you said,” Faith agreed. “It beats sitting around doing nothing.”
As they got to work, Faith tried to imagine what led their killer to his breakdown. How long did that rage fester in their minds before it finally boiled over? What was the final straw? When did they finally decide they’d had enough?
And after killing Thomas Webb, had they continued because of a need to find revenge or because, as Jessica suggested, they’d simply gotten the taste of blood and wanted more?