CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Jessica looked at Faith over crossed arms. Her expression was somewhere between skeptical and exasperated. “That seems a little…”
She let her voice trail off. Faith helped her out.
"I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. We've been trying to look for a guy who’s left nothing behind that can help us find him other than his size. His signature is a small-caliber ceramic bullet, which is untraceable because it fragments past the point of identifiability. He wears the most generic pair of boots on Earth and leaves behind no fibers, no DNA, and no fingerprints. He picks victims based on the fact that they’re happy and leaves them where they fall.
He operates in public parks where it’s not suspicious at all for someone to be walking alone and enjoying the day.
We warn people to look for loners at parks, and he just moves his operations to nighttime.
We don’t have enough boots to watch every single square inch of every park. ”
“So, we tell people to stay home,” Jessica said. “We don’t invite a crowd of them back to one of the parks we know he’s been active at before.” Turk lifted an ear from the corner of the room where he was sleeping, and Jessica lowered her voice. “We’re going to put people in danger.”
“We’re not going to find him,” Faith insisted. “We just aren’t. We don’t have enough. He didn’t know any of the victims personally, and he didn’t leave enough evidence behind for us to follow.”
“What about the bullets?” Jessica said. “Have we found any records of ceramic bullets being sold nearby?”
“Plenty of records of ceramic-tipped bullets,” Meyers replied. “Mostly for the Marines on the base for use as training rounds or armor-piercing rounds. No records of fully ceramic bullets.”
“Could he just melt the bullets down, separate the ceramic and make his own bullets?” Jessica asked.
“He could,” Meyers agreed. “But we’re still looking at a suspect pool in the thousands.”
“How many six-three two-hundred-thirty-pound Marines are there?”
“Thousands.”
Jessica sighed. “The problem is we’re trying to lure him in with a lot of real people.”
“No, just me,” Faith replied. “I’m the bait.”
“Yeah, you’re also going to be surrounded by officers protecting you, otherwise, the whole charade falls apart, right? So he’s not going to go after you. He’s going to go after the vulnerable people who aren’t going to have police escorts back to their cars.”
“We can account for that,” Faith said. “We can have the police form a cordon and direct people straight to their vehicles, like security keeping people in line at Disneyworld.”
Jessica raised an eyebrow. “When was the last time you went to Disneyworld?”
“You’re missing the point,” Faith said. “This guy’s taking his depression out on happy people. Successful people. People who have what he’s never had. He’s like a moth attracted to a flame. He’ll gravitate to the brightest lights he can see.”
“Yes, you used that example when you explained it to me the first time,” Jessica said.
“I understand that point. I’m making another point.
There are going to be dozens of civilians, maybe hundreds, all of them presumably smiling and cheering and enjoying life.
You might be the brightest star in the sky, but the brightest star in the sky is the sun, and moths don’t fly toward the sun.
It’s too hot. You’re going to be too hot because men and women with guns will be protecting you.
And if we don’t have that protection, then it’s not going to work because he’s not going to fall for the trick of a ceremony to award you something with no security around after four people have been murdered in parks in as many days.
“We’re grasping at a straw here, but we’re doing it with innocent lives on the line. At best, he just doesn’t show up at all. At worst, he shows up, ignores the sun, and looks for the moon or a star, then waits until he can kill that moon or star without law enforcement watching him like a hawk.”
Meyers glance at Faith, and she saw the doubt in his eyes.
“I know it’s a long shot,” Faith said, “but I still think it’s a good shot.
I’m not going to be protected by cops at all times.
After the event, I’ll slip away. I’ll walk away from the crowds and enjoy a moment of calm and quiet. I’ll leave myself open.”
“And what, you’re going to be too irresistible for him to pass up?”
“I think so.”
Jessica sighed irritably, “And if you’re not? If this falls through?”
“Then it falls through.”
“And someone else is in danger!”
“Someone else is already in danger, Jessica. A lot of people are already in danger. Do you think he’ll stop just because people aren’t going to parks?”
“That was your idea!”
“And it was the best idea I had. It was a way to slow him down, but not to stop him. It was a way to give us time to think of something else, but killers like this don’t stop.
They don’t decide they’ve had enough. They get a taste for it, and they keep going until they’re caught.
Either this guy will find a new way to hunt his victims, or he’ll move to another location and pick people off at parks somewhere else. ”
Jessica rubbed her eyes. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, but this is still a shitty idea. It’s desperate, it’s clumsy, it’s got too many moving parts, and it requires our killer to fixate on one specific moving part just because we’re waving a red flag and begging him to focus on that part.”
“Yes,” Faith agreed. “It’s all of those things. But it’s doing something. It’s being proactive.”
“We’ve been proactive the entire case, Faith. That hasn’t helped us.”
“Then we keep trying!” Faith shouted. “We don’t just give up!”
Turk lifted his head, looking at Faith in surprise.
Meyers shifted in his chair, keeping his eyes averted.
Jessica’s face hardened. She took a deep breath and kept her voice even.
“I’m not giving up. I’m telling you that I think your idea is dangerous and won’t work.
I know you’re not happy to hear that, but it’s my honest opinion. ”
Faith took a deep breath of her own. This conversation wasn’t going nearly the way she’d hoped. She was so excited when she thought up this plan that she hadn’t considered the holes it contained.
And there were holes. Jessica wasn’t wrong. It’s just that they really didn’t have a better idea, and Faith didn’t accept that closing parks and twiddling their thumbs was the preferable option.
“I’m moving forward with this,” she told Jessica. “I’m going to contact the Potomac News Network and convince them to set this up. Meyers, I’d like you to coordinate with Prince William County Sheriff’s Office to arrange protection for attendees.”
Meyers glanced at Jessica, who continued to glare at Faith. “Sure. I can do that.”
Jessica chuckled. Then she took another deep breath. Her expression became pitying, and Faith had to bite back an angry jab.
“I’ll play along,” Jessica said. “I don’t think this is gonna work, but I can’t argue with the fact that people are already in danger. We do this one event, and if it doesn’t work, we close all public parks in the area until further notice. Deal?”
“Deal. Thank you, Jessica.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Jessica replied. “God knows I’m not thanking you.”
Meyers shifted in his chair again. Faith stayed quiet for several seconds, then got to her feet. “I’m going to take a nap. We can’t do anything with this until the PNN office opens tomorrow morning. I suggest the two of you get some rest as well.”
They separated without another word. Faith grabbed a cot and set it next to Turk. He lifted his head again, and Faith smiled and ruffled his fur. “I’m good, boy. Get some sleep.”
Turk lowered his head, but he kept his eyes open until Faith closed hers. Then he licked her hand once and went back to sleep.
Jessica took her cot to an empty office.
That was fine with Faith. The two of them hadn’t disagreed this strongly before, and it was better for them and the case if they took some time apart to cool down.
Meyers headed back to his office, and when the door to the breakroom closed, Faith heaved another sigh and stared out the window at the night sky.
This really was the most desperate game she’d ever played to catch a killer. But it had to work. It was her last hand. If she played it and lost, then they would be left with no option but to wait until he killed again.
She had spent too much of her life at the mercy of killers. She would be damned if she remained at the mercy of this one.
She closed her eyes, and when Jethro Trammell’s taunting smile tried to invade her dreams, she pushed it firmly away and replaced it with Turk’s grim determination.
We will find you. We will stop you.