CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jessica’s shoulders slumped. “Got it. Okay. Thank you.”
She slammed the phone down, collapsed into the chair and dropped her head into her hands. Turk took a tentative step toward her, and she looked up and shouted, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Turk glanced at Faith, who chose to remain safely on the couch while she asked, “Another dead end, huh?”
“Yep. Mr. Barton apparently moved to an ashram in Punjab three months ago. The woman I talked to is his sister. She’s sending me a link to his webpage which posts daily updates on his spiritual journey.
Apparently, he is actually grateful for his trauma because it taught him to let go of Earthly connections. ”
“Huh. Good for him, I guess.”
“Yeah, good for him, shitty for us. I haven’t even had breakfast, and all three of my leads have evaporated.”
She tapped her finger on the table and frowned.
The petulant pout of her lips and the angry flush to her cheeks made her look adorable, but Faith figured now wasn’t a good time to mention that.
She got to her feet. “I’ll get us some breakfast. Can you handle making coffee, or will I come back upstairs to find glass decorating the carpet?
” Jessica glared at her, and she lifted her hands. “All right. Breakfast coming up.”
Like Jessica said, that morning had been very unproductive for them.
Jessica had identified three men who had lost dogs to fake service animals.
All three had histories of violence prior to the incidents, and two of them—Barton included—had made threats to the owners of those animals.
None of those owners were one of their victims, but it was at least as much evidence as they had against Jennifer Suleiman.
Only none of them could have been the killer.
The only one who lived in the area had suffered a work accident and was now quadriplegic and living with a caregiver.
Another had received a lucrative settlement from the owner of the fake service dog responsible for his attack—some city official—and used that money to buy a house in Portland.
Portland, Maine was only a couple hours north, but when Jessica followed up, she discovered the guy lived in Portland, Oregon.
And then there was Barton at his ashram. Three up, three down.
Faith got them each a hearty breakfast from the hotel’s dining room: scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns for Faith and biscuits and gravy for Jessica.
She headed back upstairs to see Jessica in a calmer mood if not exactly a better one.
She gestured to a coffee cup sitting on the opposite end of the desk and accepted the plate Faith set in front of her.
Faith sipped the coffee, which, as far as hotel coffee went, was all right.
“I just don’t see how it can be a woman,” Jessica said. “I don’t mean to be sexist, but the violence, the rage. Statistically, that’s a male killer.”
“It’s not sexist if the data supports it,” Faith said. “In our line of work, we have to be right, not politically correct. Are there no more male suspects?”
Jessica shook her head. “The victims of attacks from fake service dogs are overwhelmingly female. At least the ones that end in tragedy.”
“Men are probably more likely to successfully fight a dog off,” Faith guessed. She smiled wryly. “Not trying to be sexist.”
“But…” Jessica tapped the desk.
“It sucks to have a lead dry up,” Faith said. “I get it.”
Jessica pursed her lips. She got it too, but she wasn’t about to be okay with it. “So, if it’s a woman, then we should just move on with the other names we got when we searched for victims.”
“Jenkins has probably gone through those already,” Faith said. “Call him and ask if he’s come up with anything.”
“If he had, he would have called us,” Jessica grumbled.
She called anyway. And sure enough, Jenkins had nothing.
“Most of them have alibis,” he informed the agents. “The ones who don’t either don’t live here anymore or they have debilitating injuries that make it impossible for them to perpetrate the crimes. The only one who could have done it is Jennifer Suleiman, and we already know it’s not her.”
Faith frowned. Jessica caught the frown and sighed. “Can you put a watch on Jennifer’s place?” she asked.
“I mean… After we already cleared her, it might be tough to get justification for it. Let me think something up. I might be able to send a patrol car to drive through the neighborhood. Finding a reason to stop is gonna be more difficult, but maybe we’ll get lucky and catch the local pot peddler prowling around. ”
That sounded a good deal less than promising. “Do your best,” Jessica said. “Thank you.”
“Sure. In the meantime, maybe we look at other angles? Maybe this is a competitor. Maybe he offed Webb because Webb was intruding on his business. Maybe Hayes and Crawford stiffed him on payment. Or her. I guess it could be a woman, but I gotta say, I’m leaning toward a guy wearing woman’s shoes.”
Jessica nodded, somewhat encouraged to hear Jenkins agree with her. “We’ll look into that. Thank you.”
“You bet.”
Jessica hung up and looked at Faith. “Still carrying a torch for Suleiman, huh?”
Faith crossed her arms and bit her lip. “I just don’t like how many coincidences we’re looking at.
It’s hard to believe that Jennifer checks so many boxes but somehow isn’t the killer.
It’s like Conan Doyle said. ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
“Like who said?”
“Arthur Conan Doyle. The guy who wrote Sherlock Holmes.”
“The fictional detective series.”
Faith’s lips thinned. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
“Okay, fair enough, but where’s the evidence? Where are the fingerprints, hair samples, or skin cells matching Jennifer?”
“We haven’t found any of those at the scenes.”
“Okay, but where are the bloody clothes? The evidence of cleaning the place before we got there. Yes, the house was spotless, but it looked more like it had never been dirty than that it had been recently cleaned.”
“Exactly, though. That’s the point. She said she’d been living there fourteen years. You’re telling me in fourteen years, she’s never spilled a glass of wine? Never dropped a meatball on the ground?
“She probably leaps immediately to her feet and cleans the spill. You saw her. She’s terrified of everything. I’m sure stains are included in that list.”
“Yeah, but no decoration? No cute pictures of dogs? No pictures of Princess? No plants, no freaking color in the rug or the drapes?”
Jessica sighed, resigning herself to having this argument again. “What’s your point, Faith?”
“My point is that Jennifer’s like… half a person. Like she shows one side of a full personality. She couldn’t even answer half of our questions without stopping and thinking, like she was listening to someone…”
Faith’s voice trailed off as a spark flared in her mind. Jessica frowned. “Are you saying that she has some sort of split personality disorder?”
“They call it dissociative identity disorder now,” Faith said, “and I’m not sure.
I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t know how it works.
But maybe there’s a Jennifer Suleiman who has lived in that house for fourteen years.
Maybe she’s timid and unsure and… well, a little slow.
She can go through the motions of surviving, and she does them to excess because that’s all she really knows.
But maybe there’s another side of her, and that’s the side where all her violence and grief and cunning go.
I think we saw it for a second when we asked her about Princess.
Her eyes narrowed and her jaw clenched. She started getting angry.
Then it was like a switch flipped, and it all disappeared. ”
“And this other identity what? Has another house where she keeps the murder weapons?”
“Yes.”
Jessica tapped the desk again, not in frustration this time.
She looked away from Faith for a moment, then looked back.
Her face had a patient look that Faith had last seen on the faces of her old psychologist, not West but the one who had come after him.
The look said, I know this is delusional, but I have to be careful how I address it because I don’t want to make the patient upset.
“That’s a very large leap, Faith. If we’d talked to Suleiman the day after Crawford was attacked, I’d buy it, but we got to her what, two hours after he was almost killed?
How does the other personality have time to clean up, ditch the evidence, and get back to Jennifer’s house to turn the reins over to her by the time we get there? ”
“I know it’s unlikely, but that’s the ‘however improbable’ part. It can’t be anyone else, so it has to be her.”
“That’s a…” Jessica took a deep breath and tried again in another tone. “That’s a fictional quote, Faith.” She tapped her finger again. “Is this about David? Are you trying to wrap this up quickly so you can go help him?”
Faith swallowed. She absolutely did want to get to David. Michael had yet to update her on his location or condition or even if he’d confirmed that he’d found the CIA records facility. Was she subconsciously fixating on Jennifer because she wanted to get this over with?
But what could she do now? At best, she could arrive in time to get in Michael’s way. At worst, her action would alert the CIA to David’s location and endanger him.
The best thing she could do for David was let Michael do the job she’d asked him to do and focus on the job she’d agreed to do.
“I want you to trust me,” she told Jessica.
“I know I’m fixating on her, but it’s not because I’m worried about David.
I am worried about him, but I’m fixating on Jennifer Suleiman because some part of me knows that she’s our killer.
I can’t articulate why yet, but I’m certain of it.
My hunches have always turned up right. So please, trust me, and help me figure out how to prove it.
Or how to prove that she couldn’t be the killer, and I really am wrong. ”
Jessica looked at her for a long moment. Finally, she sighed and said, “All right. If you’re this sure, then I trust you.”
Faith slumped with relief. “Thank you. I really appreciate it. It means a lot.” She took a sip of her coffee, allowing its warmth to soothe her stressed muscles.
“Okay, I think we should start by looking at everyone else involved in the death of her dog. She’s targeting owners of fake service dogs, but she also killed Webb, and he didn’t even have a dog. ”
“He just sent service dog vests to fake owners,” Jessica said.
“Exactly. Pull up the records of that case again. See if you can find out who gave Alisa O’Hara her dog’s vest.”
“Fingers crossed it isn’t Webb,” Jessica said.
Faith waited, sipping more of her coffee, too high-strung to eat the breakfast she’d brought upstairs.
If they came up with a new name, then they might know who the next victim was going to be.
Faith didn’t want to use the potential victim as bait, but if they brought that potential target into protective custody and left a police officer as bait in the target’s home, then maybe they could catch Jennifer in the act.
It was a pretty hair-brained scheme, but that didn’t make it a bad idea.
“I’ve got one,” Jessica said, surprise and excitement in her voice.
“Kevin Marshall. He didn’t make the vest, but he forged a service dog certificate for Alisa O’Hara’s Rottweiler.
It was good enough that the court actually believed it at first until prosecutors dug deeper and found no history of training and no record of the school named on the certificate. ”
Faith leaped from her chair and pumped her fist. Turk got to his feet, tail wagging, anticipating the command. “And he still lives in the area?”
“Still lives here,” Jessica said. “Somerville, just north of Boston.”
“Call Jenkins,” Faith said. “Tell him we need officers on the scene ASAP. We need to place Marshall into protective custody and get someone to take his place. We’re going to wait for Jennifer to come looking for him.”
“We should still have eyes on her,” Jessica said, pulling her phone out. “In case she has other targets.”
She started to dial, but her phone buzzed first. Jenkins. She looked at Faith, then answered. “Jenkins. We were just about to call you.”
“Well, you’ll want to hear what I have to say first. Jennifer Suleiman isn’t home. We put an APB out on her Nissan Leaf, and it looks like she’s in Somerville.”
Faith and Jessica shared a look. Faith’s earlier excitement was gone, replaced by sharp, powerful fear.
Their killer was still one step ahead of them.