CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Michael was on the phone when Faith reached him. He frowned at her and continued to talk to whoever was on the other end. “If he leaves his house, I want him tailed.” A brief pause. “No, for some reason, Faith thinks he’s innocent.” He sighed. “I don’t know for sure, but I like him more than the others so far. His face got ugly when he talked about people who abuse animals, and he made it very clear that he thinks the victims deserve to die and the killer’s a hero.” A final pause, then, “All right. Thank you, detective.”
He hung up and walked to the car. Faith kept quiet until they were on the road, then said, “I know you’re upset with me, Michael, but I really don’t think Reed is our man.”
“Why?”
“Because Turk doesn’t behave that way around killers.”
“Turk almost bit Ellie because he thought she was a killer. You’re telling me the reverse is impossible?”
Faith's shoulders tensed. "That was over a year ago. And yes, I'm telling you, the reverse doesn't happen."
“You mean it hasn’t happened. Not it won’t happen.”
“So you don’t trust Turk?”
Michael’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “That’s not the question you should be asking.”
“I’m more concerned with why you’re not answering.”
“Yeah, and that’s a problem,” Michael snapped. “You’re sensitive about Turk’s age when you should be focused on solving the damned case.”
“Turk’s age? We dealt with that question. The FBI cleared him to continue working.”
“And then he failed the sensory test.”
“That test isn’t over. He’s going to retake it in a couple weeks.”
“Because he failed the first time.”
“No, he didn’t! There has to be some other reason why he didn’t score well.”
“No, Faith, there doesn’t. You want there to be another reason. You believe there’s another reason. But there doesn’t have to be another reason. It’s perfectly possible that Turk failed his sensory test because his senses aren’t effective anymore.”
Faith’s blood boiled, but she knew Michael was right.
But he wasn’t right. Damn it, she didn’t have an objective reason, but she didn’t need one. She just knew. Why couldn’t Michael just support her on this?
Deep down, though, she knew it was fear that motivated her reaction. She didn’t want to confront the possibility that Turk might finally be getting too old to do his job.
That didn’t matter in this case, though. It wasn’t Turk’s smell that affected his behavior around Reed.
“Turk’s sense of smell has nothing to do with his behavior around Reed today. He was like that with him because he trusts him. His intuition is that Nathan Reed is a good person.”
“And the evidence is that Nathan Reed likes dogs and is willing to beat a mentally ill woman for mistreating them.”
“We don’t know that Alison Chen was mentally ill.”
“We don’t know that Nathan Reed is innocent, either, but if you can trust the way Turk’s tail wags, I can trust the mountain of evidence that suggests that Nathan Reed is quite fine brutally murdering people who mistreat animals. Including his repeated, proud admission that he is.”
“But he wouldn’t leave his dogs. You believe that, surely.”
“I believe that he’s the sort of person who will see something, get pissed off, and act without thinking.”
“Well, it takes thought to build the weapons our killer built. These are planned killings, not heat-of-the-moment killings.”
Michael was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his tone was quieter, but he was still irritated. “We have him in a convenience store minutes after Dr. Vasquez’s murder wearing bloody clothing. Come on, Faith. Look at the evidence. We have a connection with all three victims, bad blood with two of them, violence against one of them, and Reed in a bloody outfit a mile away from the third one ten minutes after she was killed. All of that versus, ‘Well, my dog likes him, so he must be innocent.’ Think. Use your head.”
Faith took a deep breath to control her anger. They’d been through this so many times before. Michael would be convinced that the evidence was ironclad and immovable and would only point to one conclusion. Faith would get a hunch that suggested a different conclusion. Invariably, Faith was right. Well, not invariably, but far more often than not. But he still didn’t trust her.
And the worst part was that, in this case, he had a valid point. She really didn't have anything other than Turk's behavior to justify her position.
“Okay,” she said. “Fine. We have the police watching Reed now, so they’ll let us know if they get anything. In the meantime, we should explore other possibilities. We have a chance to look into Reeves’ personal life now, like you wanted to earlier. When we get to the hotel, we can—”
“We’re not going to the hotel.”
Faith frowned. “We aren’t?”
“No. I’ll send your stuff home after you.”
Faith stiffened. “Send it home?”
“We’re going to the airport,” Michael said. “I’m putting you on a flight home, and I’m waiting for Ralston.”
Faith was too shocked to react at first. She just stared at Michael in disbelief.
Then the hurt settled on her. “You’re sending me home?”
“Yes. That’s what the Boss ordered us to do.”
“But… you backed me up. When I was talking to the Boss, you backed me up.”
Michael sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. That was a mistake.”
“A mistake ? And the answer is to replace me with Ralston ?”
“The Boss is replacing you with Ralston because your presence here could be a liability to the Bureau.”
“Don’t you dare hide behind them,” Faith hissed. “You agree with him now.”
“I never disagreed with him. I was just willing to overlook things because I valued your input, but… Look, you have some things to come to terms with regarding Turk, and right now, it’s affecting your ability to do your job objectively.”
An angry lump formed in Faith’s throat. “So you’re sending me home.”
Michael lifted his hand and let it drop. “It’s the right thing to do. Turk’s sense of smell is unreliable, and your mental state is unreliable. You two need some time to process.”
Faith sat ramrod straight in her seat. At the moment, the only thing she could process was that her partner was sending her away from the case they were working on because she trusted her K9s opinion and disagreed with his assessment of a suspect. It was a kind of betrayal she never would have expected from Michael.
“What’s wrong, Michael?” she asked softly. “We’ve disagreed before. You’ve never done anything like this.”
Michael sighed again. “I told you from the beginning that I understood the Bureau’s position when it came to you and Turk. In the past, keeping you in the field has proven to be the correct thing to do. But it’s dangerous for you to decide that a suspect is innocent based on Turk’s reaction to him. That concerns me, Faith. Honestly, it does. When I heard they were pulling you out of the field, I thought it would be a good chance for you to decompress. You’ve never taken a vacation before. You’ve never shut down the crime-solving part of your brain. You’ve suffered immense stress along with actual psychological and physical torture in the meantime. You’re in the middle of a confusing time in your personal life, and you’re struggling with Turk’s mortality. And you have this new killer chasing you. It’s a lot to handle. I think you need some time to handle it.”
“I can still do my job.”
“It’s affecting you,” Michael insisted. “During our last case, you were so convinced that you’d never be able to talk to anyone else your whole life that you confessed to still having feelings for me because I was the only person who understood you. And now… Look, if it wasn’t directly affecting the case right now, I’d just deal with it, but it is, and I can’t.”
Faith’s head hurt. She was rarely shocked so deeply but hearing her best friend and partner saying all of these things had thrown her for a loop. Michael didn’t trust her anymore? The only time he’d ever questioned her like this was when she was trying to learn the Copycat Killer’s identity while balancing her job. That time, she’d nearly gotten herself fired, and she had made mistakes.
But she’d never screwed up a case. Not once. Not even when she was at her worst.
“I think this is affecting you,” Faith said. “I think you were shocked by the conversation about my feelings, and that’s perfectly understandable. But you can’t tell me that you honestly think I’m not capable of doing my job right now. Can you?”
Michael didn’t answer right away. When he did, he sounded tired. “The one thing I’ve worried about since West was caught was how you would handle Turk’s retirement. It’s the last area in your work life where you can’t be objective. The rest doesn’t matter, I’ll admit that. I’m sorry for bringing it up. I do think that the new killer and the West trial and moving in with David and everything is affecting you, but I don’t think it’s affecting you to the point where you can’t do your job. But you can’t be objective about Turk. His sense of smell is compromised. It’s clear that it is. But you can’t even face the possibility that he might be too old to work with you, so you shut down anytime it’s brought up that he might be near the end of his working life.”
Faith swallowed the lump in her throat. “I told you. He’s going to be retested in a couple of weeks. If that test comes back bad, then I’ll retire him. It will hurt like a fucking bitch, but I’ll do it. What really hurts like a fucking bitch right now is that my best friend has already assumed that the worst is true and is now deciding that he would rather be rid of me than give me the benefit of the doubt, even after over eleven years of working together.”
Faith’s phone rang before Michael could reply. “It’s Cuthbert. I’ll put it on speaker. Go ahead, Detective.”
“Well, Bold,” Cuthbert said, sounding just as tired as Michael. “You were right. Reed isn’t our man.”
Michael flinched. “What? How do you know?”
"Because he's still in his house. Watching Old Yeller, according to Officer Chandragupta. That means he's not the person who less than an hour ago killed Dr. Sarah Clement in her own home."
Faith’s heart sank. A part of her wanted to feel some sort of triumph at this validation, but she wished it could have come any other way than by hearing that while they were chasing their tails, their wolf had taken yet another victim.
“Understood,” Michael said. “Send us the address. We’ll meet you there.”
Faith hung up, and Michael sighed. “Damn it. This sucks.”
“You can say that again.”
“I sure could. But I’m pretty damned sick of saying it at all.”
“We’ll get this guy,” Faith said. “This is just another setback. We’ll find our killer. He’s on borrowed time, and he knows it.”
“Yes, but how many other victims are on borrowed time because of him?”
Faith’s lips thinned. That was a question she didn’t want to answer, but one she feared would be answered for her whether she liked it or not.
Meanwhile, their killer was somewhere out there, blood dripping from his fangs, full from another meal taken at the expense of an innocent.