CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You don’t think this is the guy?” Jessica asked.
Faith sighed and crossed her arms. “I don’t know.”
They were back at the station, watching the news bulletin with the sketch based on Brandon’s description airing to the residents of Stafford County and Prince William County.
Their lunch sat untouched on the table and would likely join their uneaten breakfast in the garbage can before too long.
Already, the burgers and fries were stone cold.
“I mean, he attacked a woman alone in a park with a gun,” Jessica said.
"He strangled her with a purse strap and then threatened her with what looked like a gun but might have just been his finger," Faith said. "He tried to rob her, and when Brandon showed up, he ran off almost immediately despite supposedly being armed."
“Maybe his gun only fires one bullet.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Jessica frowned, a little petulantly, and turned back to the TV.
Faith understood her irritation. Only a few hours ago, they were sure they were closing in on the real killer, and now that was being called into question.
She didn't want to admit that they might have the wrong guy once again.
Heaven knew Faith didn't want to admit it.
But it just didn’t feel right. Why would the killer transition from being brutally efficient to being clumsy? Why would he rob Fatima but leave Iris’s much fatter wallet and jewelry alone? Why would he strangle her instead of shooting her point-blank through the head?
She sighed and reached for her burger. She wasn’t hungry, but eating would give her something to do other than think about everything that could go wrong.
“I mean, we don’t know what happened with the other killings,” Jessica said. “He might have wanted to rob them and been forced to kill them because of the dogs.”
“Rebecca Hartley didn’t have a dog.”
“And he kicked her into a ditch and then fled. Maybe he heard someone coming.”
“Yeah,” Faith said. “Maybe.”
Jessica folded her arms over her chest and jutted her lower lip out. “Well, shit.”
“I could be overthinking it,” Faith said. “Honestly, I…” She hesitated, trying to think about how much she should share. Well, she had started, so she might as well finish. “I had an unusual phone call with David right before the call came in about the attack in Stafford.”
Jessica looked at Faith. “Oh yeah? Everything okay?”
“I don’t know. He called out sick from work today.”
“Uh oh.”
Faith shook her head. “No, it’s not that. He said it was just a cold, and he didn’t sound sick on the phone.”
A look flashed across Jessica’s face. She tried to hide it, but Faith caught it. “I don’t think he’s cheating on me either,” she said. “I know it sounds dumb, but he really isn’t that kind of guy.”
“I didn’t say he was cheating on you,” Jessica replied. “But he’s definitely hiding something from you. Which is a horrifically inappropriate thing for me to say but is nevertheless true.”
“Yeah, I know,” Faith said. “And I’m afraid you’re right. I just have no idea what it could be.”
“Is he the type to plan big surprises for special occasions?”
Faith laughed. “No, he’s the type to leave his laptop open to the checkout screen on so I see exactly what he’s buying me.”
“Got it. So what do you think it is?”
Faith chewed her lip. “I don’t know. He had an issue with a patient a couple of months ago, but he seemed fine after a couple of days. Once we got back from Miami, I asked him about it, and he said it was nothing. He looked at the dog again, and she was fine.”
Jessica’s full attention was now turned to Faith. “Do you think he was lying?”
She shook her head. “I mean, I didn’t, but when we got back from Italy, he got all weird and distant.
He said it was because he had a busy work schedule, but he’s never been that way about work before.
The more I think about it, he’s always been more likely to get excited about a lot of patients. He really loves his job.”
“Well, he’s also almost forty. Not to bring age into it, but people start slowing down around that age, especially men. You said your partner started slowing down around then, right?”
Faith nodded. “Yeah, but that was different. He wasn’t hiding things from me.”
“Were you paying the same kind of attention, though?”
Faith shook her head again. “No. I guess not. I mean, I wasn’t in love with him.” Not anymore, at least.
“Exactly. You’re attuned to all of David’s moods. You can pick up on little things more. I know I said he was definitely hiding something from you, but after talking to you, he might just be getting older.”
Faith pursed her lips. “It’s possible, but…”
She hesitated, unsure if she should share anymore.
She wasn’t in the habit of talking about her relationship with other people.
Then again, she didn’t have anyone to talk to about things like this.
She wanted to make sure she wasn’t just freaking out for no reason, and Jessica was her friend.
Besides, it wasn’t like she was going to snoop on David or say something accusatory to him.
“He’s been tuning me out,” Faith said. “When we found Iris Caldwell’s body, I told him about how much it sucked for me.
” She left out the details. She wasn’t ready to talk about Trammell with Jessica.
“And he just tuned me out. And on this phone call, he… It’s like he wandered.
I don’t know. He just usually pays close attention to me.
I’m not used to being ignored like that. ”
She looked at Jessica. Her partner was now wearing a very different sort of knowing look.
Faith sighed. “I sound like a crazy wife, huh?”
“You sound like a very lucky wife,” Jessica replied. “Is this the first time your man has tuned you out?”
Faith reddened a little. “Yeah.”
Jessica rolled her eyes. “Jesus, the sun always shines on you, huh? I can’t keep a guy interested for more than ten minutes without taking my shirt off.”
Faith laughed. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“I’m pretty sure it is. That’s the problem with only dating surfers with washboard abs and brand-new convertibles.
They’re only eye candy, and the only thing they look for is eye candy.
I hate to break it to you, Faith, but men don’t think like women.
They communicate with each other in monosyllabic grunts.
Any conversation that lasts longer than five minutes or requires actual thought gets automatically downgraded to background noise.
If you train them well enough, they can work through that tendency, but it takes consistent reminders and a lot of patience.
“I’m exaggerating, of course,” she said, giving Faith a conspiratorial smile.
“But not much. I think David is a wonderful man, but he is, unfortunately, a man. If I were you, I would lift your shirt up until he’s focused on you, then pull it down and gently explain that you’d appreciate it if he paid a little bit more attention when you were talking to him. ”
Faith laughed. “I’ll try that. Thank you.”
After talking to Jessica, she felt a little better. She hadn’t considered that David could have been tuning her out for innocent reasons, but it was possible that he really had just spaced out. She was probably reading too much into it.
Then again, he had spaced out minutes after they’d investigated the scene of a murder. That couldn’t be normal, could it? Was he really calling in sick because he was actually sick, or was something else going on?
The door opened, and Meyers poked his head in. “We have a tip from the description.”
Faith put thoughts of David away for the moment. “Go ahead.”
Meyers walked inside and sat across from the women. “The manager of a restaurant in Brooke claims that the man in the sketch was arrested for harassing her customers in the parking lot last year. Says he was asking for money and getting belligerent when people refused.”
Faith frowned. That also didn’t sound like their killer. “Okay?”
“I did some digging, and Stafford County arrested a man by the name of Steve Kent for disorderly conduct on that property thirteen months ago. He matches the sketch.”
Meyers showed them an image of a dirty-looking, slightly overweight man with a messy mop of medium-length brown hair, hazel eyes, and a craggy face with a mean expression.
“Hair’s a little longer than the man who attacked Fatima Bedouin,” Jessica said, “but other than that, it looks like the same guy.”
Faith looked at Steve Kent’s mugshot. Those eyes were hard and devoid of guilt or compassion.
It looked like the face of someone who could kill.
They didn’t look particularly insane either, so it was possible that it was the face of someone who could kill with the kind of precision and control their killer exhibited.
It was still odd that he had tried to rob Fatima while Iris’s jewelry and money were left with her body, but it was worth at least looking into.
Hell, everything was worth looking into right now. Their only lead was what citizens were reporting. With nothing else to go off of, they had to follow up on every clue they were given.
“Does Mr. Kent have an address?” Faith asked, “or is he still homeless?”
"Actually, he's never been homeless," Meyers replied. "Or at least he's had a residential address for his entire life. Whether he's actually lived there or not is, I suppose, something we'll find out now."
Faith got to her feet. “All right then. Let’s go talk to him.”
“You might as well bring your food,” Meyers said. “He lives in Arlington.”
Faith frowned. Arlington was a forty-five-minute drive north of Quantico and a full hour away from Stafford.
Then again, it was only fifteen minutes from Woodbridge, less depending on where exactly in Arlington he lived.
Still, with no public transportation, how would someone so desperate for money make it to three different cities to kill three different people and rob a fourth? “Does Steve own a car?”
“I assume he does,” Meyers said, “but he wouldn’t need to. With Uber, anyone can get just about anywhere these days.”
That was a good point. “Fair enough. Come on, boy.”
Turk barked with his usual enthusiasm, and the group headed to Meyers’s cruiser.
This time, they took only one car, but Meyers called ahead to Arlington PD to let them know what they were doing.
Arlington agreed to have units on standby near the neighborhood in case the trio of law enforcement officers and their K9 ran into trouble.
Meyers was in good spirits on the drive up.
He clearly believed that they were on the trail of their actual killer.
Jessica was more reserved but choosing to be optimistic.
Faith was on the fence but also leaning towards optimism, mostly because there was nothing to be gained from pessimism right now.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing something big. She just didn’t know if it was something related to the case or to her suddenly distracted and possibly deceptive husband.
I can’t deal with this right now, she thought with an irritable sigh. I can only handle one mystery at a time.
Of course, events would happen as they willed regardless of whether Faith could handle it or not. It was up to her to find a way to the summit, no matter how difficult a hill she had to climb.
And if she reached the summit and found another hill, she would climb that one too. She was Faith Bold, and if the three most feared serial killers in modern American history couldn’t break her, then this case wouldn’t either, and neither would whatever was bothering David.
She was almost completely certain of that.