CHAPTER ELEVEN
Director Angelique Belfort of the Langley Art Academy was a short, thin woman with long straight copper-colored hair, enormous round wire-rimmed glasses, and a mouth permanently formed in moue.
She listened to Faith explain their purpose for attending, then blinked eyelashes so long they scraped the lenses of her glasses.
“I’m afraid I can’t cooperate with your request, Special Agent.
The veterans who attend my class are all beautiful souls who seek guidance and purpose through artistic expression.
They all harbor bitterness and anger from their experiences.
It’s not right to judge them for this when they are seeking a healthy avenue to release those emotions. ”
“Well, one of them is releasing those emotions by strangling people, injecting them with epoxy, hanging dozens of dog tags around their necks, and staging their dead bodies in a mockery of prayer,” Faith said.
“You’re not a licensed psychologist or a lawyer, nor are you a religious authority of any kind.
So, you will cooperate, or we will have grounds to charge you with obstruction of justice. ”
The moue rippled. “I don’t see any reason for aggression.”
“Are you serious?” Jessica snapped. “People are dying, lady. You’re really going to—”
Faith lifted a hand to stop Jessica. She kept her voice calm. “That’s fine, Miss Belfort. Here’s what happens next. I obtain a subpoena that orders you to release any and all information you have on potential threats to public safety.”
“You can’t—”
"I also called my friend with the Channel Six news and told her that we have a lead in our case, but Miss Angelique Belfort of the Langley Art Academy in McLean, Virginia, is refusing to cooperate with the investigation. We're currently seeking a legal injunction to force compliance."
The moue rippled again. Belfort took a deep breath and said, “Very well. If you must know, there is no one in my class who fits that description.”
Faith stared daggers at Angelique. The moue moved into something that was probably her best attempt at a smug look.
“If that was the case, then why wouldn’t you just tell us that?” Jessica asked.
“I believe it’s the duty of all citizens to resist authoritarian overreach,” Angelique said, and there was no doubt about the smugness this time.
“I want a list of every student in your class along with their contact information,” Faith said.
“That will not happen.”
“Then I call the news and tell them why we’re not making progress.”
“If you wish.”
Faith took a deep breath and nodded. She smiled at Angelique and said, “Very well. We’ll see each other soon.”
She left the office, Jessica following. Turk growled at Angelique, causing her to jump, before following the human agents out of the studio.
“I can’t believe that bitch,” Jessica grumbled as they walked to the car.
Faith was seething, but she didn’t let it show. “She’s just passionate about her beliefs. You and I are in law enforcement. We know how easily vermin take advantage of those principles. Ordinary people don’t. They worry about people like us going too far.”
“She wasn’t worried about shit. She just wanted to be obstinate.”
“Probably true,” Faith said, opening the car door for Turk.
When they were all in the car, Jessica asked, “So are we calling the news?”
“Not yet. There might be a way to get the answers we want without Angelique’s help.”
“How?”
"The Langley Art Academy is associated with the Arlington, VA office. They might have a list of people attending the class."
“You think so?”
“It’s a bit of a long shot, but I don’t think we have enough to get a warrant.” She glanced into the rearview mirror at the academy receding behind them. “I’m afraid if we get a warrant, she might be willing to fight us on this in the media.”
“Who’s going to side with her, though?”
"As I said, ordinary people don't have the same perspective on life we do."
They stayed silent for the rest of the drive to the VA office.
Jessica’s lips were pushed into a slight pout.
Faith was frustrated at having her bluff called and even more frustrated at realizing there was little she could do about it.
Turk was quiet because he could sense the frustration from both of them and couldn’t help.
He rested his head in his hands and looked despondently out the passenger side window of the rear seat.
Faith thought about their profile on the drive.
She’d encountered “artists” before during her career.
One notable individual used his victims’ preferred media to murder them, crushing a sculptor with a statue, encasing a glass blower in glass, and drowning a painter in paint.
Another man posed individuals like abused dogs to illustrate the pain dogs suffered at the hands of trainers he considered abusive.
And of course, the Messenger mutilated her victims in spectacular fashion in an attempt to disturb Faith.
The core of all of these killings was sending a message.
In the first example, the killer was an artist who believed his victims were unfairly praised and wanted them punished by the art medium they “butchered.” The dog trainer killer wanted to drive home how horrific the treatment of dogs by unscrupulous trainers was.
The Messenger, of course, just wanted Faith’s attention and used shock value to get it.
So what message was this killer sending? A mockery of religion, certainly. Punishment? Probably, but why the random dog tags? Perhaps he was using the victims as a larger statement against religion in general, claiming that religious lies hurt all service members.
If so, then finding the killer could be difficult.
Solving spree killings like this generally requires identifying some sort of connection between the victims and the killer.
If these chaplains were just "canvases" the killer was using to make a general point, then their suspect pool could be impossibly large.
And this might not even be about art. Some killers just developed a ritual and followed it without regard for aesthetics. In fact, most highly organized killers did.
Faith was troubled as Jessica pulled into the parking lot of the VA office again.
Each lead they were following was hard to come by, and after all of the work digging for an answer, that answer turned out to be unhelpful.
Maybe they were looking in the wrong places.
The art angle was only a hunch after all.
Maybe it would be better for them to pull back and focus on the victims like they usually did.
Except that’s how they came up with their first lead, and Welling turned out to be a dead end.
She sighed and put her thoughts aside as they approached the Records desk. The man behind the desk was an older, mustachioed, heavyset man with a gravelly baritone voice and a stern face with surprisingly kind gray eyes.
Faith explained the situation, and the man heaved a heavy sigh.
"Well, I hate to be another burr in your backside, but Miss Belfort has a point.
That art class is affiliated with our therapy program.
I can contact Dr. Paulson and let her know, but unless one of her patients has met the threshold for legal reporting requirements, it's gonna fall under doctor-patient confidentiality. "
“So, it doesn’t matter to people that chaplains are getting murdered?” Jessica said, exasperated.
“‘Course it does,” the desk agent replied, “but like I said, there’s not much we can do. We promise our veterans confidentiality when they sign up for our programs.” He chuckled. “We sort of have to. It’s the law.”
“Call Dr. Paulson anyway,” Faith said. “Let her know that we believe our killer may be using these killings as a form of artistic expression. Tell her to share whatever information she can, even if it’s not much.”
“Surely.”
Faith thanked him and led Turk and Jessica away. “We’re not going to get anything,” she told Jessica. “This is going to be a war we don’t have time to fight.”
“It just pisses me off. What’s so bad about a five-minute conversation with a few people just to make sure we get a killer off the street?”
The answer to that fell under the different perspectives between civilians and law enforcement that Faith had talked about earlier, but she didn’t repeat herself. They had done all they could with this lead for now, so it was time to try something else.
“Let’s see if we can find a connection between the victims in the meantime. Cruz and Hayes served in different branches, but they might have been related in another way.”
Jessica nodded. Her brow was furrowed, and her shoulders were tense. Faith squeezed her arm and said, "It's not the end of the world. We'll find this guy."
“It’s going to be the end of the world to someone if we don’t find him soon.”
Faith nodded. “Yeah. I know. Don’t lose hope.”
Her comfort sounded weak in her own ears.
They looked up Cruz’s and Hayes’s service records while enjoying lunch in the VA office’s cafeteria. Jessica glanced around nervously at the clusters of veterans staring at them. “Are you sure I’m allowed to be here? I feel like I’m trespassing.”
“You’re fine,” Faith said. “We’re helping two of their own. They’re probably just staring because you’re pretty.”
“I know what those stares look like, and this isn’t that.” She sighed. “Sorry. I’m just jumpy. I feel like this is a lot more difficult than it should be.”
“It’s definitely not as easy as it could be,” Faith agreed, “but I think I found a connection.”
Jessica’s eyes instantly lit up. “Yeah? What is it?”
Faith showed Jessica her phone. “Hayes and Cruz both served in the Battle of Tarinkot. That was a campaign about eleven years ago that resulted in the deaths of over two hundred allied soldiers, most of them American. Aside from the death, it was known to be one of the most grueling campaigns of the war. Constant Taliban attacks on supply lines resulted in shortages of just about every important resource. People were miserable. It looks like Hayes was the Corps’ Chaplain-in-Chief for the theater at the time, and Cruz was chaplain for an Army company occupying an outpost near Towri, a town on the Tirin River that was a major front in the campaign.
The whole US force got torn apart in that battle.
Cruz’s unit in particular suffered heavy losses. ”
“Okay. So, we’re looking probably for a killer who was involved in that campaign.”
“Probably,” Faith said, “In the meantime, I think we should bring this information to the head of the VA office and the three Chaplain Corps.
Any chaplain in the Washington area who served during this campaign should be considered a target and warned to take precautions.
We should let military police and local law enforcement know, too.
They should be watching war memorials and offering protective services to the chaplains. "
“That’s a big ask,” Jessica said. “I’m not arguing, I’m just worried. We tried the blanket approach when Kenneth Still was killing people in dog parks, and it didn’t work.”
“I know,” Faith said. “We do the best we can and hope it’s enough.”
Jessica scoffed. "Did that sound as lame to you as it did to me?"
“Yes,” Faith said softly. “Yes, it did.”
The two human agents looked away. Turk whined next to them, watching the sun as it crested in the sky and the day began its slow but inexorable journey back to darkness.