CHAPTER TWENTY
An hour later, Faith and Jessica sat in their rental car watching the last rays of sunlight wink out on the western horizon. Jenkins was wrapping up an uneventful search of Jennifer Suleiman’s house. Jennifer had retained her oddly disconnected personality during the search.
Faith had led Turk through the house for the first part of the search, but he’d come up with nothing, and neither had Faith.
There wasn’t so much as a speck of incriminating evidence in the entire place, nor in the Nissan Leaf parked in Jennifer’s garage.
Faith hated to be wrong, but it was beginning to look like she’d missed the mark on this one.
So why couldn’t she shake her suspicion?
Her radio crackled, and Jenkins’ voice huffed and said, “Well, that’s that. We’ve got nothing. A for effort, agents, but it looks like she’s clean.”
Jessica sighed irritably and leaned back in her chair until her head smacked the rest. Faith’s lips thinned, but she controlled her reaction. “Very well. Thank you, Detective.”
“How is Crawford?” Jessica asked. “Can he talk yet? Maybe we can get a description from him.”
“Afraid not,” Jenkins said. “I stopped by the hospital after we finished at his house. He’s in a coma. Doctors don’t think he’ll stay that way forever, but they’re keeping him that way for the next few days at least to give themselves time to finish all of the reconstructive surgeries he needs.”
Faith nodded. “All right. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Hey, we had to check, right? It doesn’t always pan out.”
“Right. Thank you, Detective.”
“Yep.”
The transmission ended, and Faith looked through the windshield to see the forensics team leaving the house.
Through the open front door, she could see Jenkins talking to Jennifer.
The suspect—and Faith still saw her that way—had her arms crossed, and she was nodding at something Jenkins was saying.
She looked through the door, saw Faith, and lifted a tentative hand.
Faith didn’t return the wave. She put the car in gear and drove toward the city, away from their hotel.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Jessica said. “We can cross her name off the list now.”
Faith tapped the steering wheel, but she didn’t say anything. Jessica looked over at her. “You don’t think we can?”
“I don’t know what I think,” Faith said. “Something just seemed off about her.”
“Off how?”
Faith shook her head. “She just didn’t seem real?” Jessica raised an eyebrow, and Faith said, “Let me get some food in me and try to gather my thoughts. Hopefully I’ll have a better idea of what I’m trying to say when I’m done.”
“Fine with me.”
***
Thirty minutes later, Faith surprised herself by making good progress on a fajita bowl at a fast casual Mexican place near downtown called Taqueria Jalisco. She didn’t feel hungry, but apparently her body’s need for fuel overruled her mind’s fixation on the case.
Jessica had polished off four street tacos in ten minutes, and Turk had enjoyed a sixteen-ounce slab of beef in about half the time. He was currently a few tables away entertaining a small crowd of children who had, with Faith’s permission, surrounded him for pets and hugs.
“She felt disconnected,” Faith explained to Jessica. “Like she wasn’t entirely there.”
“That’s still vague, Faith,” Jessica replied, almost managing to hide her irritation. “What do you mean by that?”
Faith sighed. “She felt like she wasn’t comfortable in her own skin.”
“Still vague.”
“Well, that’s kind of the point,” Faith said, irritated herself that she couldn’t figure out how to explain this.
“It all felt almost right, but none of it felt right right. The house and yard were perfectly clean, but there was nothing there. No flowers, no houseplants, no pictures, no decoration of any kind. The curtains were primer gray, and the rug in the living room was the same color as the floor. She said she’d lived there for fourteen years, but it looked like she’d lived there for ten days. ”
“Yeah,” Jessica said, nodding a little reluctantly. “That was odd.”
“And the only time she showed real emotion was when she talked about losing Princess. Even when she was talking about wanting to kill the woman responsible for killing her, it seemed almost rehearsed. Like she was an AI reading the sentences. And the way she paused and furrowed her brow? It was like she had an earpiece in, and someone was feeding her the answers. It just didn’t make any sense. She wasn’t behaving right.”
“I don’t know that I agree,” Jessica said. “She smiled, frowned, sniffled, wiped tears from her eyes.”
“Yeah, but the pauses. The furrowed brow. It was…”
Faith couldn’t find the word, so Jessica found another. “It was timid. Scared. Awkward. Probably caught off guard by the fact that the freaking FBI was in her living room with a K9 asking her about two murders and an attempted murder.”
“Did she give Jenkins an alibi for the first two attacks?” Faith asked.
Jessica sighed. “No, I don’t believe so, but not everyone has alibis for every second of every day. That’s the problem with alibis. Most people don’t have security cameras, and plenty of them live alone where no one could verify where they are for half their days.”
“Yeah, I get that. I just… Call it a hunch.”
Jessica sighed again. “I respect your hunches most times, Faith, but this one’s hard for me to come around to.
She had an undecorated house and yard, a timid demeanor and a breathy voice.
She hesitated before answering very alarming questions and only showed strong emotion when she talked about her brutally killed dog.
None of that screams killer to me. In fact, the timidity…
I mean, that seemed real. Didn’t it seem real to you? ”
“Plenty of serial killers seemed timid when they weren’t killing people. Plenty of them were timid.”
“Yeah, but not the same way she was timid.”
Faith frowned and poked at the remainder of her bowl. She wasn’t hungry anymore.
“Answer me honestly, Faith. Does Jennifer Suleiman strike you as someone who could attack a big dangerous man like Robert Crawford in such a vicious manner?”
Faith shook her head slowly. “No.”
“Me either. And we searched her house. I doubt like hell she had time to clean things so well that Turk couldn’t pick it up with his nose and a full team of forensic investigators couldn’t find anything anywhere that connects her to the murder.”
“Probably not,” Faith admitted. “But she could have ditched everything somewhere else. Aside from the poncho, that would only be a pair of boots, maybe socks, pants.”
“So, she slinked back to her house in her underwear?”
Faith’s frown deepened, and she poked at her food again.
“It sucks, Faith,” Jessica said sympathetically. “It really does. But she’s not the killer.”
Jessica was right. At least, everything she said was right. So why couldn’t Faith shake the sense that she was wrong, that Jennifer Suleiman was now sitting in her home laughing at the foolish FBI agents and their dumb dog that she had just fooled?
“Turk didn’t seem suspicious, did he?”
Faith looked over at her dog, who was currently being hugged by four different children at once. Rather than seem bothered by their attention, Turk looked like he was having the time of his life. He looked at Faith and dropped his tongue in an excited pant.
Faith smiled at him. “No,” she told Jessica. “He didn’t.”
Jessica smiled and squeezed Faith’s shoulder. “I really think we’re looking for a male suspect.”
Faith started so suddenly that Turk leaped to his feet, eliciting cries of alarm from the children and their parents. “The shoes!” she said, loudly enough that Jessica looked anxiously around the restaurant and signaled for Faith to lower her voice.
“The shoes,” Faith repeated, lowering herself to her chair but keeping an intense look on Jessica. “I forgot to ask her shoe size.”
Jessica sighed. “Six,” she said resignedly. “I checked when we were searching the house.”
“The killer wore a woman’s size six.”
“Plenty of people wear a woman’s size six.”
“Plenty of women,” Faith said.
“Men can wear women’s sizes too. I’ve seen plenty of men in women’s clothing.”
“I know that, but how likely is it? Men’s feet are usually wider, especially at the toes and pads. A man’s foot long enough to fit a woman’s size six would almost always be far too wide to fit a woman’s size six, even a wide size six.”
“It’s probably a lot more common than you think,” Jessica countered.
“Foot size and shape varies wildly between individuals. It’s entirely possible that there are many men who can fit women’s shoes and prefer them.
Women’s shoes are usually softer-bodied than men’s shoes. Some men find them more comfortable.”
“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt with that,” Faith said, “But that’s still a lot of coincidence. How likely is it that Jennifer can fit our profile so well and also wear a size six?”
“Probably a lot more likely than you think,” Jessica said gently. “Six is a very common shoe size.”
Faith frowned and looked through the window at the darkening night. “If you can give me a good justifiable reason to go talk to Jennifer again, I will,” Jessica said. “In fact, if you want to talk to her while I follow up on other leads, we can do that too.”
Faith shook her head. “No. I think you’re right.
I have absolutely zero empirical evidence to suggest that Jennifer’s the killer.
I’m basing it on a sense of disquiet I felt, but like you said, that’s not enough to go on.
We’ll explore other leads. I just can’t understand why she rubbed me the wrong way. ”
Jessica shrugged. “She’s a timid, submissive woman.
You are very much the opposite of that.” Faith gave her a dry look, and she said, “What? It’s true.
I think you don’t like timid and submissive people.
Everyone has a personality type that rubs them the wrong way.
For me, it’s cocky, arrogant people. For you, it’s walk-on-eggshells types.
It’s not a bad thing. Just be aware of it. ”
Faith’s head was starting to hurt. She grudgingly admitted to herself that Jessica was at least within shouting distance of the truth, but she didn’t want to dwell on it anymore. “Well, let’s get back to the hotel and see who else might be involved.”
“For sure,” Jessica said. “I’ll drive, though. You look beat.”
Faith really was tired, but not physically. She had wracked her brain hard trying to find an answer she was certain floated just outside of her reach, and it eluded her still.
She was fine with Jessica driving though.
She ordered a cup of coffee to go, and after a long and reluctant goodbye, Turk left his new friends and allowed Faith to lead him to their rental vehicle, though he gave her a reproachful look when she opened the side door and ushered him into the backseat.
The coffee was drinkable, but Faith was pretty sure the dead taste buds left behind in the wake of the spice dulled the flavor of the coffee enough to make it palatable.
What wasn’t palatable was the fact that they’d found nothing connecting Jennifer Suleiman to the murders. She’d wrestled with the problem several times now, and each time, the answer came back no. Yet she couldn’t accept it.
As they reached the hotel, she made a commitment not to think about it anymore.
The lead was dry, and no amount of wishing for rain would make it wet again.
It was rare that one of her hunches didn’t work out, but they’d wasted enough time on this one.
The killer was still out there, still choosing their next victim, still sliding on their claws and imagining the feel of those claws slicing through flesh.
It was up to them to find this predator before their fantasies came to life yet again.