CHAPTER SEVEN
Faith nearly collided with Jessica when she stormed out of the TSA security chief’s office. Judging by her partner’s irritable frown, the conversation with Chief Rosenberg hadn’t been very rosy.
“So she really is a prick, huh?”
“I might even use a stronger word,” Jessica said. “But she gave us Craig Daniels’ address, so I guess it’s all right. Anything useful from Michael?”
“No, not really. We have footage of the guy who sent the email, but not enough to identify him. He sent it from a library computer.”
“Bummer. Well, we can still work something out. Maybe I’ll have Rogers and Hammerton case the library out. I assume it’s local?”
“Yeah, Stafford Courthouse.”
Jessica nodded. “We had a case there recently, huh?”
“Yeah, Kenneth Still, the guy killing happy people.”
Jessica scoffed. “To this day the worst motive I’ve ever encountered for murder.”
A trace memory flitted across Faith’s mind. Franklin West, eyes empty as the abyss, explaining to Faith why he murdered people. Because I can. Because I want to.
West was gone, though, long gone. Faith didn’t need to think about him anymore. “You know, our first case together was here in Baltimore.”
Jessica smiled. “Yeah, the woman killing dog breeders for genetic crimes.” Her smile faded. “That might have been the most understandable motive I’ve ever encountered.”
That killer, Victoria Lang, had a daughter who suffered from advanced Huntington’s Disease, a genetic condition that had left her severely disabled and only months from death by the time Lang, a geneticist, lost her mind and began lashing out against dog breeders for the increased prevalence of genetic abnormalities in purebred dogs.
The grief, Faith supposed, was understandable, but she wasn’t sure about using it as an excuse for murder.
Her head was starting to hurt. She looked at the line for the airport coffee bar and frowned when she saw it was predictably enormous.
“We’ll stop by a Dunkin’ on the way over,” Jessica said. “I could use a coffee too.”
“Is Craig Daniels close by?”
“Yeah, he’s twenty minutes from the airport. Lives in a condo in Canton.”
“Sounds good. Hopefully we’ll catch him before he begins his day. Employed?”
“I’ll check on the way.”
“Perfect.”
Faith’s phone buzzed. Her eyes widened. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Already?”
Jessica whipped toward her. “Baltimore PD?”
“Yeah. God damn it.” Faith answered the phone and tried to be professional. “Bold.”
“Special Agent Bold, it’s Suresh,” the police lieutenant replied. “I’m afraid it’s bad news.”
Faith sighed and rubbed her temples. Turk whined softly and nuzzled her leg. “Yeah, I figured. Hit me.”
“We have another bomb. And another body.”
***
The street was crowded with terrified residents evacuated from the Park Palace Apartments in the urban neighborhood of Riverside.
Many of the residents were still in their pajamas and slippers, having been roused from sleep by the early morning bomb threat.
Since the bomb was in an apartment and not a single-family home, there was a real threat to other lives this time.
Suresh met them in front of the property. He was in a white shirt and dress pants with his badge clipped to his belt this time. No gun, like most lieutenants Faith interacted with. He was a manager, not a foot soldier.
“Wow,” Jessica said. “We beat the media here.”
Faith looked up the road at four vans speeding their way. “Not for long.”
They approached Suresh, who was right now a pissed-off manager. He kept frowning through the gate at the open door of a second-floor apartment crowded with bomb techs. “Motherfucker put the bomb in between her legs this time.”
Jessica paled. “Was she assaulted?”
“No, she’s still fully dressed. It just seems more disrespectful somehow. I don’t know.” He ran his hand through his hair, not nearly so kempt as it was the night before. “Maybe I’m just pissed.”
“I don’t blame you,” Faith said. “When you say in between her legs, was it sexually suggestive in any way?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it matters. I’m just upset.”
“Hey,” Faith snapped. “Focus. I get that you’re upset, but snap out of it. You have a job to do, and in about two minutes, you’re going to have a half-dozen reporters hounding you. You can’t be frazzled like this. You need to project strength and control even when you don’t feel it.”
Suresh nodded. He took a deep breath and said, “I only got a brief glimpse before bomb squad pushed me out. It didn’t appear suggestive. Her feet were crossed, and the bomb was in between them. She was bowing over it like she was praying to it. So no, not sexual. Just fucked up.”
“It always is,” Jessica said.
Faith crossed her arms over her chest and bit her lip. Praying to the bomb. That was interesting. The victims’ jobs were to detect and disarm bombs. Was this some oblique way of saying they worshipped their jobs? But if so, then where was the personal connection?
Or maybe the killer was taunting them, saying, Look at how much stronger and more capable I am than you are. You might as well bow down and worship me.
That could explain the dud bomb at Entwhistle’s house. I could have blown all of you up. I chose not to.
That was assuming this bomb was also a dud. “Any idea how difficult this one is to disarm?”
“Well, they’re still in there, and there’s no media circus dictating that they dot their i’s and cross their t’s.”
“Faith! Jessica!”
Suresh sighed. “Here come the clowns.”
Faith rolled her eyes and lifted a hand to stop Bridgette.
Bridgette, of course, ignored the warning and ran full tilt into the officers maintaining the cordon around the complex.
She weighed probably a hundred pounds even with her microphone and whatever she was using in her hair to make herself seem five inches taller than her natural five-one, so she didn’t get very far.
She stuck the microphone out as far as she could and said, “Special Agent Bold, can you comment on the suddenness of this second murder.”
“You know I can’t, Bridgette,” Faith replied. “This is a developing situation.”
“Should the public be worried about a serial bomber?”
“If this bomb is as pathetic as the last one, definitely not,” Jessica said.
Faith flashed her a warning glance, then glared at Bridgette. “We are not able to comment at this time. We’re in the middle of an active crime scene. You need to back off and let us do our jobs.”
Bridgette flashed Faith a hard-eyed, toothy grin and turned toward her camera. “Clearly a very tense situation here in the Riverside neighborhood of Baltimore as federal and local agents grapple with—”
Faith let her jaw at the camera and walked away, pulling Suresh with her.
When they were out of earshot, she said, “I want them to let us inside. I don’t think the bomb’s still active.
I think this killer is taunting people by making fake bombs.
I think he wants to show us that he doesn’t need to make a real bomb to ‘beat’ his victims and us.
I think he gets off knowing he can make so many people freak out over nothing. ”
“I mean, he murdered two people,” Jessica reminded her. “So not nothing.”
“I can’t let you guys inside,” Suresh said. “It’s against department policy.”
“Then I’m officially taking control of this case on behalf of the FBI. I’m certain our superiors will hash out the official details when time allows.”
Suresh looked relieved. “Understood, Special Agent.”
Faith led Jessica and Turk into the building. Behind them, Bridgette called out, “Special Agents, is the bomb defused? Is the public safe?”
“I’m going to kill that woman,” Jessica muttered under her breath.
“Before or after you feed her critical information about the case?”
Jessica winced. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”
“I appreciate that, but you still need to be careful. If the press starts ridiculing this killer for planting dud bombs, he might plant a real one just to show he’s tough.”
“I get it. I’m sorry.”
Faith sighed. “Yeah, me too. I’m just upset. It’s not your fault.”
They entered the apartment and found Givens standing in front of the couch with his helmet off. In front of him was the body of their victim.
Sure enough, the bomb was in between her legs.
They were folded in a lotus position with the feet crossed and resting on the opposite thigh.
Her hands were laid palms up on top of the knees and the bomb rested in the nest made by her feet and abdomen.
This one appeared to be a brick of plastic explosive about the size of a deck of cards with an egg timer stuck into the top.
Compact but assuming it was designed correctly, more than enough to take out this entire apartment and portions of the ones on either side and the unit below.
"I'm guessing since you're helmetless, the bomb is defused," Faith said.
“The bomb isn’t a bomb,” Givens replied. “It’s another dud.”
Faith nodded. “Yeah, I figured.”
“Yep. What you have there is a brick of dioctyl adipate, polyisobutylene, and a sprinkling of Pennzoil Platinum 0W20. The short version of all of that is everything in plastic explosive but the explosive.”
Turk approached the not-bomb and sniffed carefully, barking to let Faith know he could smell the killer on the weapon.
He whined when he sniffed the dead woman, who, like Jackson Entwhistle, sat with her head dropped to her chest, although that could just have been the way her head fell naturally rather than an intentional staging by the killer.
The rest of it: the lotus position, the dud bomb, all of it was intentional. And if Faith was correct…
“Was this threat called in anonymously too?”
"Yep. Distorted voice once more. Apparently, this one sounded more like Donald Duck, and the first one sounded like Darth Vader, but same idea."
Faith nodded. “Okay. Go ahead and let everyone know the bomb’s inactive. Do not tell them it was a dud. Just tell them it’s inert and there’s no risk. Don’t let residents back into the building until we and CSI are done here, though.”
“Technically, that’s not my call, but I’ll tell the lieutenant.” He looked at the body and sighed. “Poor girl. What a shit way to die.”
“Same cause of death?” Faith asked.
“Again, technically not my call, but I see a similar looking hole in the neck.”
“Right. Okay. Thank you, Givens.”
“You betcha,” Givens replied, but without his previous cheer.
He and the other bomb squad members cleared out of the room. Faith shared a look with Jessica, who was pulling latex gloves on and preparing to examine the body. “Guy’s got a consistent MO, at least,” Jessica replied. “I guess they all do.”
“Most of them,” Faith said.
She knelt in front of the body and carefully lifted the head.
This woman was younger than Entwhistle, maybe in her early forties.
Her skin had a grayish pallor, but before losing her blood, she would have had a light brown complexion, hair dyed a dark auburn, and brown eyes that had gone milky in death.
Her features were pretty though slightly careworn.
And now she was gone. Why, Faith still didn’t know.
A shadow darkened the doorway, and Faith turned to see Suresh.
“I threw Givens to the vultures,” he told them.
“I’ll go rescue him in a minute, but it occurs to me I never gave you her name.
” He nodded at the dead woman. “Raelynn Hayes, ATF senior supervisor. She managed a team of K9 explosives detection dogs responsible for the Port of Baltimore.”
“So this killer’s going after people who oversee bomb detection dogs,” Jessica said. “Might be worth checking if Craig Daniels had anything to do with her. I’ll see if I can get an employment history for him.”
Faith nodded, and Jessica stepped away to make the call. Turk was now sniffing at the corner of the entertainment center. He barked and looked at Turk, then pointed to a spot on the ground and barked again.
“There was a firearm there,” Suresh explained. “Hayes’s ATF service weapon. Glock 19, not sure if it matters.”
“Fired?”
“No, no shots discharged. Best guess is she pulled the gun on her attacker, but he disarmed her before she could use it.”
“Any defensive wounds?”
“Not sure.”
Faith pulled on a pair of gloves and checked the body. She lifted Raelynn’s head and looked closely. “Bruising around the mouth, possibly from a hand covering it so she wouldn’t scream. You’ll want to dust that for prints.”
“Yeah, I’m sure CSI will,” Suresh replied. “They’re pretty good here.”
He didn’t sound defensive. More like lost. Baltimore was a big city, so Faith couldn’t imagine this was his first murder.
Maybe it was the spectacle of the bodies posed with dud bombs that threw him off.
Faith wouldn’t blame him. There was a reason local cops called the FBI for cases like this.
Some killers were special in the worst ways.
She checked Raelynn’s hands next. “Her fingernails are abraded, and there’s minor bruising of the fingertips and nail beds. I don’t see any fibers or skin cells, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there, so make sure CSI checks that too. Either way, she definitely fought.”
Faith saved the worst for last. “The cause of death is going to end up being the same as for Entwhistle. Single thick sharp spike or similar object, smooth-tipped, inserted into the neck puncturing the jugular veins and causing catastrophic damage to the trachea and esophagus. She bled out, probably within seconds.”
“Yeah, figured,” Suresh said. “Why the bombs? That’s the part I don’t get. I mean, other than that these two are bomb detection experts. Is that it? The guy’s just mocking them?”
“Could be,” Faith said. “I have a hunch it’s more specific than that.” She stood. “I’ll talk to my partner and see what we come up with. We might have a suspect already, so maybe we’ll get lucky and have the killer before we find all the answers.”
“We can always hope, right?”
“Sure. It’s all we have.”
Suresh frowned at Raelynn. “More than she has now.”
Faith sighed. “Yeah. More than she has.”
Turk whined mournfully.
Suresh inhaled sharply and said, “Well, I should go be a lieutenant again and rescue Givens from the assholes. Shall I send CSI up?”
“Yes, do that,” Faith said. “We’re done here.”
Suresh left the apartment. Faith stared at Raelynn's milky eyes and wondered what point the killer was making. Swift, brutal murders. Fake bombs placed on the victims' bodies. Calls to the police to make sure the victim and the bomb were discovered right away. No delays.
This was more than just murder for this killer. This was retribution. And a warning. Wrong me, and you’ll end up like them.
But how had these two wronged the killer? And who else was in their sights?