CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By the time they reached the small two-story house in Brookline, the place was surrounded by emergency vehicles.
Four police cruisers were parked between a pair of paramedic vans, and four more police cruisers were parked across the street.
An animal control van had pulled directly onto the lawn, its rear cage open.
Faith pulled to a stop behind the cruisers across the street and hopped out just in time to see the paramedics wheeling a gurney out of the house.
The body of a large man lay on the gurney, a respirator placed over his mouth.
She cursed and sprinted across the lawn. “Can he talk?” she asked, remaining well out of the paramedics’ way.
The one at the front of the gurney frowned at her. “Are you serious? We’re taking him to the hospital.”
“I just need a description,” Faith said. “This attack just happened. We might be able to catch the person who did this to him.”
The paramedic’s angry expression softened, but only a little. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. This guy’s not conscious, and even if he was, he’s not saying anything to anyone. His throat’s been torn open.”
They had reached the paramedic van then.
Faith caught a glimpse of the victim as the paramedics loaded him into the back of the van.
He was in much better shape than the previous ones, but that was relative.
His throat, as the paramedic indicated, was mangled, as was his face.
His chest and limbs weren’t visible, but the amount of blood staining the sheet over him suggested they had been ravaged as well.
Maybe it was too early to say he looked better actually.
The garage door began to open. Faith turned toward the noise, and Turk barked in alarm as two animal control officers carried the unconscious form of a Rottweiler out of the garage toward the animal control van.
Faith could see the interior door of the garage leading into the house.
It was broken nearly in half and bowed inward.
She jogged toward the dog, Turk following. Jessica headed into the house to examine the scene.
Up close, paint and drywall dust covered the Rottweiler’s snout and front flanks. Faith looked as closely as she could over the animal control officers’ shoulders for blood and saw none.
“He didn’t get the guy, if that’s what you’re looking for,” one of the animal control officers said, loading the tranquilized pup into the cage.
“He’s got blood on his paws, but none in his mouth.
The blood in his paws is gonna match the victim.
” He checked himself, realizing it wasn’t his place to say that.
“Well, probably. Anyway, you guys will look at that. We’ve got to get this guy back to the kennel before he wakes up.
Damn near tore my arm off. If I hadn’t been wearing the bite jacket… ”
Turk whined softly as he closed the cage. The animal control officer gave him a sad smile. “We’ll take good care of him, buddy. Don’t worry.”
Turk dipped his head, but his eyes remained downcast. Faith wondered if he was remembering the time his own handler had been killed by a serial murderer. He couldn’t protect Jack Preston from the Donkey Killer. He understood what this dog would be going through when he woke up.
Faith sighed heavily and headed for the house. Turk trotted next to her, head held low. When they entered the garage, he perked up and started sniffing.
“We need to know where they went, boy,” Faith said. “We need to know how they got in and how they got out.”
Turk dipped his head again, then trotted ahead to see if he could track the killer’s movements. Faith stepped through the remains of the garage door into the house.
The blood was everywhere. Splatter marked the floor and the walls of the small hallway leading from the garage, staining the whitewash like a Jackson Pollock painting. Through the hallway, Faith could see Jessica talking to Jenkins on either side of a larger pool of blood.
She joined them and noted, “Bit more of a struggle this time than the previous victims.”
“Looks that way,” Jenkins agreed. “Crawford’s a big guy. Goes about two-thirty, maybe six-four or -five. The killer might have had trouble reaching something vital. He’s ex-Army too, so he might have fought back where the others just tried to run.”
“Have CSI check the blood,” Jessica said, “just in case any of it comes back to the killer.”
“Yeah, will do.”
“You said the victim’s name is Crawford?” Faith asked.
“Yeah, Robert Crawford. Ex-Army. Got kicked out for aggravated assault on an officer. No criminal record, but we have one complaint from earlier today, actually.”
Faith raised an eyebrow. “Today?”
“Yeah, he got into an altercation with a security guard at a farmer’s market.
Apparently, he threatened to assault the kid or have his dog assault him or both.
I’m not sure of the details, but before you ask, I can tell you it’s not the guard.
He was still at the farmer’s market when we got there, and I left straight from there when we got the call about the murder. ”
“The killer might have been at the farmer’s market,” Faith pointed out. “I want witnesses interviewed. We need descriptions of everyone possible.”
“Everyone? That could be like a thousand people.”
“So, everyone possible. Focus on anyone behaving suspiciously and everyone who interacted with the victim. Anyone who left soon after he left.”
Faith was amped up, and it was making her snappish. They were only a few minutes behind this attempted murder, and the killer was sloppy this time. If they were quick about analyzing this attack, they might catch up to the killer before they had time to go to ground.
“Faith.”
Faith turned to Jessica, who pointed at the ground.
Faith’s eyes fell on footprints leading through the living room toward the back door.
One set, a men’s size fourteen, obviously belonged to Crawford.
Only a few of those prints could be seen, and they were smudged and stretched, suggesting Crawford had only managed to stumble a bit once he reached the living room before collapsing from his wounds.
It was the other two that interested Faith. One set of paws from a large dog—obviously the Rottweiler animal control had sedated, and a pair of small, slender footprints.
Very small footprints. Short, slender, and narrow. They could belong to a small man, but Faith guessed not. They fit a women’s size six shoe or maybe even smaller.
Faith glanced at Jessica and saw her lips pressed into a thin line. She also realized the killer was likely a woman.
“Looks like the killer was interrupted,” Faith said.
“The Rotty broke the door and came after her. She fled…” Faith followed the prints and saw them leading to an open back door.
“That way. The dog chased her…” she followed a few more steps.
“To the back porch, remained until he was sure she was leaving, then returned to Crawford. Jenkins, who called this in?”
“Neighbors. Dog was barking.”
Faith nodded. “Yeah, that’s what happened.”
“Looks like we got lucky on this one,” Jessica said. “The killer was prevented from finishing the murder and might have left more evidence behind for us.”
“Let’s hope so,” Faith said, stepping out the back door and following the killer’s escaping footprints.
The blood was gone after about nine strides, rubbed off by the dirt and grass, but the footprints were easily discernible to the back fence where scuffs and clods of dirt in the chainlink indicated where she had vaulted the fence and fled.
Faith climbed the fence and saw Turk about a hundred feet in front of her, trotting fast, nose to the ground.
He stopped and buried it in a clump of bushes, then barked and loped back.
Faith picked up her pace and jogged toward her dog. After a few strides, he saw her and reversed direction, jogging back to the bushes and stopping, head fixed on whatever he’d discovered.
A few yards away, Faith saw a streak of red buried in the green of the bushes. The green and brown from the plant and dirt behind it almost tricked Faith’s eyes into seeing another body and believing the Rotty had claimed his victim as well.
Up close, she could see it was only another plastic poncho, stained, torn, and bloody. The killer had cast it off as she fled just like she had at the other two scenes.
Faith jogged past the bushes, looking for any sign of the killer’s trail, but the dirt was hard packed here, and she couldn’t see any footprints. “Turk, go get her,” Faith said. “Find her.”
Turk trotted to Faith but then put his nose to the ground and sniffed. He snorted with disappointment after a few seconds. The scent of blood overpowered the killer’s scent, and he couldn’t track her past the poncho.
Faith sighed, trying to hide her disappointment. She pressed forward another hundred feet or so, but when she reached another residential street and saw no evidence of the killer, she gave up and headed back to the house.
Jessica and Jenkins met her halfway. “There’s a poncho in those bushes back there,” she said. “It matches the previous two scenes.”
“I’ll have CSI pick it up,” Jenkins said. “Trail goes cold after that?”
“So far,” Faith admitted reluctantly. “See if you can piece together what happened at the farmer’s market. It’s likely our killer was there.”
“I think they might have been waiting for Robert at home,” Jessica suggested. “We should still interview the farmer’s market guests who interacted with him, but I have a feeling she knew his habits. She probably slipped in while he was out and waited.”
“Maybe,” Faith relented. “She didn’t count on the Rottweiler, though.”
“He’s a good boy,” Jenkins agreed. “He saved his human’s life.”
“He did,” Faith agreed. “In the meantime, we should have a talk with Jennifer Suleiman.”
Jessica’s brow furrowed. Faith waited for the argument, but she didn’t offer one, instead only nodding and telling Jenkins, “Call us with any updates.”
“Yeah, you two. Hey, why the long faces? This is a good outcome. The victim’s alive, the dog chased them off, and you guys have a suspect. If this Suleiman girl is our killer, then she probably hasn’t had time to clean up. We could have this wrapped up without any more loss of life.”
“Yes,” Jessica agreed. “If.”
That “if” hung over their heads as they left Crawford’s house and drove to Suleiman’s house a few miles away.
Faith was grasping at a straw right now.
Suleiman was connected to these victims by the thinnest of threads, and if Faith’s hunch didn’t work out, then the real killer would have time to escape and scrub the evidence before the investigators found them.
But they were so close. If Faith was right, then like Jenkins said, this could end before Suleiman had a chance to kill anyone else.
If.