CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Faith stared at the body of Brandon Harris and forced herself to control her breathing.
He was covered with a sheet now, but when they arrived, they had found him staring sightlessly up at the moonlight filtering through the clouds, just as Iris Caldwell had stared silently up at the daylight streaming through the trees.
A single red hole was placed exactly where the other holes had been placed, directly between his eyes.
Well, Mark Patterson had been shot in the back of the head.
He had been lucky enough not to see what was coming for him.
Not so Brandon. His lips were pulled back in a grimace of fear, and scuff marks on the concrete near his body told Faith he had skidded to a halt when he saw whatever, or rather whoever, had jumped out from behind the trees to kill him.
His fiancée, Carly, was weeping outside of the police cordon, struggling weakly to escape Jessica’s grasp.
She had called in the murder, having become concerned when Brandon didn’t answer his phone an hour after leaving the apartment they shared to go on a quick run.
He didn’t usually run this late, so she was worried when he didn’t come home.
The agents had arrived to see her collapsed by the body, brushing Brandon’s hair back softly and pleading with him to wake up.
“He was so happy,” she told them. “He… He said… it was the best day of his life.”
And of course, the killer couldn’t have that. No one could be happy when he wasn’t happy. So hours after believing he had saved the world from a vicious killer, he had lost his life to the real killer.
Faith looked back down at his body and fought to felt her hands close into fists. Why had he come back here? Why the hell did he have to go out again? Did he absolutely need to relive his moment? He couldn’t have just enjoyed it at home where he was safe?
The trees behind Faith where the killer had almost certainly lurked while he waited for his quarry to arrive rustled. Turk trotted up onto the path, dipping his head and snorting irritably. He hadn’t found anything helpful.
Faith took a deep breath and released it slowly.
She looked over at Jessica and saw her depositing Carly into the arms of a Stafford County Sheriff’s Deputy.
The deputy looked over her shoulder at Faith with an expression that all law enforcement officers knew well.
Dealing with the loved ones who survived their murdered family or friends was the worst part of the job.
It was made all the worse knowing that Brandon had met his fate at the hands of the real killer only a few hours after accosting the false one.
“He’s mocking us,” Jessica said. “He picked Brandon specifically. The others might have been just because they were happy, but he killed Brandon to show off. He wanted to show us that he could get away with it.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” Faith said. “It’s possible, but it doesn’t have to be that. He was all over the news talking about how glad he was to stop the killer and how happy he was that everyone was safe now.”
“So this is revenge? Getting Brandon back for thinking he caught him?”
“Or just killing him because his happiness was being broadcast to everyone meanwhile our killer is a pathetic goddamned loser who has to take his anger out on innocent people because he can’t handle his own emotional problems.”
Turk nudged Faith. She looked down and saw him gazing up at her with compassion. She crouched down and pulled him close, breathing deeply until her heart rate slowed. When her anger had faded to a dull ache in the back of her head, she stood again.
“He couldn’t have known Brandon was going to come back here at this exact time in this exact spot.
It’s possible he planned to lie in wait until he saw Brandon again, but I don’t think so.
Iris Caldwell always took her walk in the morning.
Mark Patterson opened the gates and checked the toys at Stafford Courthouse Dog Park every morning before the gate opened.
Rebecca Hartley ran in the late afternoon.
Brandon ran during the middle of the day.
If the killer was targeting him specifically, he would have shown up tomorrow at lunchtime. “
She sighed. “I think Brandon was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think the killer was out looking for anyone happy, and Brandon happened to be here.”
“He wasn’t out looking for anyone,” Jessica insisted.
“He kills people who are happy. Iris was retired and had a loving family who she saw all the time and great friends who cared deeply for her. Mark Patterson had a career he valued and a dog that meant the world to him. Every picture on his social media shows him smiling. Brandon was the happiest person in Stafford County today. Maybe he didn’t think Brandon would be there tonight, but he was definitely going after Brandon. ”
Faith didn’t argue further. Jessica was probably right, but that hadn’t helped them find their killer.
They had wasted their time on yet another false lead, and they still had no idea who their killer could be.
Or even what he looked like. Their description had led them to Daniel Pierce, who was innocent. They were right back to square one.
They stayed silent on the drive back to Quantico. Jessica was still angry. She stared moodily through the window at the Potomac River, a thick ink-black vein underneath the overcast night. Turk was listless, dejected by his continued failure to catch the bad guy.
Faith was exhausted. She was concerned for David, and she couldn’t do anything about it.
She was stuck in a rut in this case, and she couldn’t find a way out of it.
She’d had doubts about Steve Kent from the moment Brandon relayed his story, and she had ignored all of them because it was easier to hope she was wrong than to do good police work and…
And what? What if she had done good police work?
What would she have found? She literally had no idea where to look or who to look for.
The police and sheriff’s offices could place units at every public park but not enough to cover every square inch of ground.
The killer, presumably, had eyes. He could see the cruisers and avoid them.
They could close every public park, and…
And that was probably what they were going to have to do.
Remove the victims entirely from the equation.
If the killer’s hunting grounds were empty and people were forced to flee from the parks in fear, then maybe he would be satisfied.
Maybe he would think people were miserable enough to leave them alone.
Sure. Except that’s bullshit. Killers don’t stop. They get stopped.
Or they got away with it. Faith was starting to wonder if this guy might be the one that got away from her.
Meyers was in the breakroom nursing a cup of coffee when they reached the station.
He looked old. Faith wondered how much longer he’d stick around.
Probably not long. Law enforcement was the kind of career that wore on people, and Meyers had been around for a long time.
This case had been hard on him from the beginning since Iris reminded him of his mother.
He’d initially wanted to refuse this case, but interagency politics had forced him to keep it.
She had a feeling that no matter how things shook out, he’d be gone as soon as the case was close or shoved in a box and stacked with the other cold cases.
“DA’s gonna let Kent plead down to attempted robbery and simple assault. He’s gonna get twelve months’ probation. That’s it.”
Faith nodded. “I’m not surprised. His lawyer would have dragged us about use of force and unreasonable search and seizure.
He would have made big news about the fact that we were trying to pin three murders on him on nothing more than notoriously unreliable eyewitness testimony.
We would have won, but it would have ended with the same plea deal. ”
“Why are you two being so calm about this?” Jessica exploded.
“Steve Kent strangled a woman unconscious with her purse strap, and he gets simple assault? He gets to walk free? Okay, he’s not a murderer, but he was a few seconds from being one.
I’ll bet you anything we read about him in the paper killing someone sooner or later. And we’re just cool with this?”
Faith sighed. “No, we’re not cool with it. There’s just nothing we can do about it. And we have a bigger problem to solve.”
Jessica flushed red when Faith said there was nothing they could do about it, but when Faith reminded her of the bigger problem to solve, she looked down for a moment before cursing softly and stepping out of the room.
Meyers chuckled sadly. “Poor kid. This is the first time she’s hit a wall like this, huh?”
Faith sat across from him. “Yeah. First time I’ve hit a wall like this too.
At least it feels that way.” She sipped her coffee.
“Usually, we have something to go off of. Some connection specific to the victims or the location. I guess we sort of have that here. The killer stalks public parks and kills people who are happy. That doesn’t narrow it down, though. There are too many other variables.
“Oh yeah, that reminds me. I think we should close down public parks for the time being. We’re not getting any closer to finding this guy, so we should assume it’s just not safe for people to be outside at all.
I know we warned people not to go out alone, but I think we should just make parks off limits.
Clearly Brandon Harris didn’t listen to us. ”
“In his defense, he thought he caught the guy. So did I.”
“Yeah, fair enough.”
Faith sipped her coffee and swirled it around her mouth before swallowing.
Michael used to do that, sipping the coffee like it was wine and comparing different tasting notes.
She always used to make fun of him for it.
There couldn’t possibly be that much difference between coffee at the Travel Palace motel in Idaho and coffee at the Motorhaus in Nebraska.
She understood it now. It was something to do. Something to take your mind off of the bleakness for just a moment, long enough to take a breath so you didn’t drown. Everyone needed those moments to release some of the pressure before it crushed you.
That’s what their killer was doing. Staving off darkness by lashing out against the people who shone the brightest. And yet he was drawn to their light like a moth to a flame.
Closing the parks really was the best they could do.
With no flame to draw him in, he wouldn’t latch onto the brightest of them and seek to quench their light.
Or…
She tilted her head. She was exhausted and running off of no sleep and over a gallon of coffee for the past several days, so she waited a full minute just in case the thought condensing in her mind turned out to be foolish.
When it remained strong after that minute, she allowed it to cement itself in her mind. She steepled her fingers together and slowly smiled.
Meyers raised an eyebrow. “Do we have an idea, Miss Bold?”
“I think we do, Mr. Meyers,” Faith replied. “Get Jessica back in here. I think we have a way to get to this guy after all.”