CHAPTER ELEVEN
Faith’s dreams that night were disturbing.
In one, she and David were making love while a shadowy figure wearing reflective glasses watched from outside their window.
In another, the shadowy figure called Turk, and he came to him, ignoring her shouted commands to stay away.
In a third, David was chasing the figure.
Faith tried to go after him, but she kept falling, and each time, he would get further and further away.
She was roused from that sleep by a rough shake from Jessica. She flinched awake and blinked at her partner’s serious expression. “We have another body,” she said.
Faith sighed and fell back onto the bed. “God damn it.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? It’s not your fault.”
“I’m still sorry.”
Faith nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”
She rolled to her feet and dressed quickly.
Turk watched her, concern etched in his soft brown eyes.
The details of Faith’s dreams faded as she grabbed her vest and her shoulder holster.
She could only just remember the shadowy figure and couldn’t remember the rest of what had happened. That was probably a good thing.
“Where’s the body?” she asked Jessica.
“Tarrant County Animal Shelter in Fort Worth. One of the morning shift workers found her.”
“Got it. Do we have a name yet?”
“Linda Hale. She was the volunteer coordinator.”
Faith nodded again and cinched her vest. “All right. Let’s go check it out.”
Jessica’s brow furrowed. “Faith, are you okay?”
“Fine,” Faith said, heading for the door.
“I ask because you were really distant last night, and now that I’ve woken you up and told you about the third body… Well, usually you’re really pissed off about stuff like that, but now you’re just kind of…”
She didn’t offer an adjective to finish that sentence. Faith sighed and replied, “I’m definitely not happy about a third innocent victim in forty-eight hours, Jess. But acting pissy about it isn’t going to change anything. I’m just going to do my job and find this killer as fast as I can.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m talking about. You’re not exactly present this time. Is this because of David?”
Faith rolled her eyes. Jessica wasn’t wrong, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk about it right now.
“We’re handling the David thing. And thank you so much for your help with that.
We’re handling this case too, and yeah, I’m really upset about the third dead body, but like I said, the way we make sure there aren’t any more dead bodies is to put our emotions aside and do our jobs. ”
She stepped into the driver’s seat of the rental before Jessica could say anything else. When Jessica opened the back door, Turk hopped in and gave Faith an injured look. She was always the one who opened the door for him.
She sighed and reached back to scratch him under the chin while Jessica got into the front passenger seat. Jessica didn’t press Faith any more, but her silence was heavy as the three of them headed to their latest crime scene.
***
The Tarrant County Animal Shelter was a zoo when they arrived.
In addition to being a fully functioning animal shelter, the building also served as headquarters for both Forth Worth and Tarrant County Animal Control.
There were no fewer than eight police cruisers in front of the building when they arrived, and dozens of officers crowded the porch and the lobby within.
Turk barked to clear a path for them as they headed inside.
The first person they encountered was Sergeant Hansen, who they hadn’t seen since Sarah Garrett’s crime scene the night they arrived.
He was talking to a pale, trembling man in his mid-thirties who wore gray coveralls with a sewed-on name badge that read Martinez.
Faith walked up to them while Jessica and Turk headed into the room beyond to see the body. Martinez was trembling like a leaf and staring through Hansen with wide, shell-shocked eyes. “I can’t stop seeing it,” he moaned. “It’s like it’s burned onto my eyes.”
“Can’t stop seeing what?” Faith asked.
Martinez blinked at her. “Who are you?”
“Special Agent Faith Bold, FBI,” Faith said. “I’m here investigating these murders.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
Faith felt a flash of irritation, then remembered that this man had just walked into an incredibly brutal crime scene.
Maybe a bit of sympathy was in order. “Mr. Martinex, you have my word that I will do everything in my power to find the person responsible for this and bring them to justice. I understand you’re in shock right now, but if you can help me out at all—"
“Her eye, man!” he blurted. “It was her fucking eye.”
“What happened to her eye?”
Martinez’s lower lip started to tremble, and Hansen put a hand on his shoulder. Martinez sniffed and said, “He poked it out with a screwdriver.”
“He?”
Martinez shrugged. “I mean, I assume it’s a guy. I can’t imagine a woman doing something like that.”
Lillian Martin’s crazed grin flashed across Faith’s mind. I can. “Do you have any idea who might have done this?”
He shook his head. “No. Whoever it was really didn’t like her, though. They left a note that said ‘bitch’ on her face.”
“Did anyone have a problem with Linda?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know her that well.” He lifted a shaking hand to his face, wincing when his fingertips brushed the skin under his eye.
“Can you recall anyone angry with anyone here? A prospective adopter maybe who was angry about being denied a dog?”
Hansen frowned slightly, and it occurred to Faith that she’d just asked a leading question, a big no-no in investigatory work, and a rookie mistake, especially for an agent with her experience.
Faith’s head felt furry, like she was still shaking off the fog of her dreams. That wasn’t good.
If she couldn’t be a hundred percent, it would seriously impede her ability to investigate.
Her mistake didn’t seem to matter this time since Martinez shook his head.
“No, we don’t really have trouble with that here.
Sometimes people are upset when animal control picks up their dogs, but they’re always calmed down by the end.
The officers are really good about helping them through the process.
” His face fell. “I’m usually out of here by eleven-thirty, though.
I start early and work through my breaks so I can leave.
I wouldn’t know if anything happened later in the day. ”
Faith nodded. She probably wasn’t going to get anything else from him, especially with her head this furry. She handed him a business card and said, “If you think of something, let me know.”
Hansen clapped him on the shoulder again. “Come on. I’ll get you a ride. You probably shouldn’t be driving anywhere right now.”
He led the shaking Martinez out of the building and Faith stepped into the animal containment center.
Unlike the previous two shelters, this place was a cacophony of noise.
The animals here were going crazy, howling, barking, growling, scratching, whining, and even squawking, hissing, and meowing.
Most of the animals were dogs, but there was a notable number of other animals too.
The dog in the cage immediately in front of Faith, a beautiful female collie, was pressed against the back of her cage, shaking and whining, staring in horror at the body lying in front of the cage.
Faith frowned and called to one of the animal control officers clustered together a few cages down.
“Can we move her? She shouldn’t be here looking at this. ”
The officer shook her head. “That door’s the only way in or out. We can’t take her out without screwing up the crime scene.”
“Well, maybe sedate her or something. She’s going to give herself a heart attack.”
The officer nodded and said something to one of his fellows, who left the room, presumably to get a sedative. Faith walked to Jessica, who was kneeling in front of the body. Turk was sniffing around the blood pooled beneath the victim.
Linda Hale looked to be about forty years old, of average height and build, with medium-length nutbrown hair and hazel eyes obscured behind a pair of thin glasses.
Well, one hazel eye behind a half-pair of glasses.
The other eye was burst and had melted around a standard screwdriver with an enamel handle covering the orbit and extending four inches beyond her head.
A small scrap of paper with the now familiar handwriting dangled from the handle, secured with twine like a macabre Christmas ornament.
SLAYER. Small bits of glass from the shattered lens were scattered around her cheek.
“I assume the killer wasn’t expressing his love of thrash metal,” Jessica said, gesturing at the note.
“My guess would be no,” Faith said.
“Screwdriver this time,” Jessica remarked. “Think he’s just closing his eyes and grabbing something random out of a toolbox?”
Faith stood and crossed her arms. It bothered her that the killer chose a different weapon for each murder.
It wasn’t unheard of for there to be minor variations in a killer’s MO depending on circumstances but a railroad spike in the mouth, electric shock, and then a screwdriver in the eye?
The only consistent part of the MO were the notes.
And the fact that the victims worked in animal shelters.
Maybe the weapons didn’t matter. Maybe it really was just whatever the killer felt was convenient at the time.
If so, then what did that say about their killer?
Was he organized or disorganized? Was he killing people on purpose or just showing up early to shelters and offing the first people he saw?
“Could be something to do with the body parts,” Jessica suggested. “Sarah Garrett’s mouth, Linda Hale’s eye.”
“And Matthew Brooks’ entire body?”
“His skin, maybe. Could be a race thing.”
“But only in his case?” Faith shook her head. “I don’t want to fit a square peg into a round hole. We’ve got three bodies and three different weapons. I think it’s time to accept that we’re not going to learn anything trying to find meaning in the murder weapon.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s too bad the dog can’t talk,” Jessica remarked. “Poor girl must have seen the whole thing.”
Faith looked up at the poor collie. An animal control officer was in with her now, gently brushing her fur and preparing to insert a syringe into her neck. As soon as the dose was administered, she lay her head against the officer, sighed, and waited for sleep.
Faith looked at Turk, who watched the whole process mournfully. “Anything, boy?”
He dipped his head and snorted, then approached the note dangling from the screwdriver. He sniffed it gingerly, then snorted again.
“I think he’s right,” Jessica said. “The note is the key. Have we gotten a handwriting analysis from Fort Worth yet?”
“Not yet,” Faith replied.
She frowned, realizing they hadn’t taken a handwriting sample from Trevor Walsh. They needed to do that from now on. Damn it, she really was off her game.
“I think we need to compare handwriting from all of our suspects going forward,” Jessica said. “It might be worth getting one from Walsh too.”
“I’ll talk to Hansen about getting him to sign some bullshit document,” Faith replied.
“Or we can just get his adoption application from the Plano shelter,” Jessica suggested.
Faith’s lips thinned. “Right. That would be easier.”
Jessica looked at Faith, and before she could ask, are you okay?
Faith got to her feet. “I want to know more about Linda Hale. And Matthew Brooks. We know that Sarah was involved with adoptions. I want to know if the other two were as well. If not, then maybe they all interacted with the same dog in the past, and the connection is with that dog’s owner.
Whatever’s happening here is about judgment.
Wild MO or not, this killer is executing them.
Killer, murderer, slayer… this is their punishment for taking lives.
They all have reputations for being very adamantly against killing animals, so I think this is about a specific animal that they couldn’t or wouldn’t save. ”
“I’ll start gathering some info,” Jessica said. “Maybe you and Turk can go grab us breakfast and coffee.”
What she was really saying was, You need coffee. I’ll handle this. Faith didn’t feel wonderful about being pushed aside, even for a few minutes, but she just so happened to agree with Jessica this time.
“I’ll leave Turk here,” she replied.
Turk whined, hurt that Faith didn’t want him with her. “Keep looking for clues, Turk. Just because we don’t have any good leads now doesn’t mean there aren’t any to find.”
Turk whined again, but he trotted off and put his nose to the ground anyway. Faith headed out of the shelter. The air outside was warming now, and the gray haze of dawn had receded in favor of the brilliant blue of morning.
The fog in Faith’s mind remained.
She looked up a breakfast café and found one three blocks from the shelter. She decided to walk rather than drive. Maybe some time in fresh air would clear her head.
Her phone buzzed as she left the shelter’s parking lot. David. Morning, Faith. Miss you.
The short message was followed by a heart emoji. Emotion flooded Faith, love, frustration, anger, fear. She marked the message as read and didn’t text back. She needed to get her thoughts in order before she talked to David again.
And she needed to set her worries aside and focus on this case before more innocent people were brutally murdered by this vindictive killer.