Page 15

Café Toulouse was in Midtown Village, one of many boutique diners in that and other locales in City Center. Like those boutiques, it was a trendy, attractive place designed to appeal to influencers as much as possible to take advantage of the online community’s obsession with all things unique.

Unlike the other diners, it held the dead body of one of those influencers inside its walls. An attractive woman in her late thirties who would have been far more attractive if she hadn’t been trying to look fifteen years younger lay on the ground in the lobby of the bistro. Her eyes stared listlessly at the ceiling, and her mouth hung slightly open. A rivulet of drool extended from the corner of that mouth to the floor.

“Lila Vance,” Detective Howard said. “Thirty-eight. Online food vlogger. Mostly Instagram pictures and videos. Also, YouTube and whatever the hell Twitter is called nowadays. According to her cameraman, they were trying to break into TikTok with new short-form videos. This was going to be their first restaurant reviewed using that system."

“What’s with the drool?” Michael asked.

“Camera guy says that she started drooling after she fell unconscious. Started sweating a lot too. That’s why her hair’s damp.”

Faith looked at Lila’s hair to see it matted and tangled. Three victims, three different sets of symptoms.

“When did this happen?”

“We got the call an hour and a half ago. CSI already swept the place, but I thought it would be nice to call you since you two are supposed to be the leads on the case.”

Faith frowned. “Yeah, it would have been nice to call us the moment you were called. What happened?”

Howard sighed. “It won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t—” she sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Forget it. Cameraman saw it happening, anyone else?”

“Sure, five staff and about a dozen diners. It was the evening rush.”

“Are any of them still here?”

“The staff’s being interviewed right now. We already talked to the camera guy, but if you want to talk to him, he’s still here. He’s outside at one of the tables.” He lowered his voice and said, “Go easy on him, huh? I think they were dating. He’s been crying pretty much nonstop.”

Faith had lost count of the number of killers she’d seen crying over their victims, but sometimes it was helpful to take the gentle approach in those cases. Killers tended to reveal more when they let their guard down.

She nodded and told Michael, “I’m going to talk to the cameraman. I want you to look through the scene and then through the security footage. Turk.”

Turk barked and trotted over to her.

“I want you to sniff around for clues. You find anything, you let me know, okay?”

He barked again, then trotted to the body. A few onlookers from the other side of the police cordon called for him to stop.

“Hey! Show some respect!”

“Yeah, come on! She was a person!”

Faith rolled her eyes and ignored the crowd as she walked to the sniffling, dejected young man sitting on the patio. Behind her, she heard Howard explaining that Turk was a police dog, and if the looky-loos didn’t have anything better to do than gawk, then they could at least gawk with their mouths shut.

She took a seat opposite the cameraman and smiled empathetically. “Hey, kiddo.”

“Kiddo” was significantly younger than Lila, probably in his early twenties. Young enough that Faith could actually call him a kiddo.

His grief was just as real as anyone Faith’s age, though, and she immediately dismissed him as a suspect. He wiped his eyes and said, “I don’t know what happened. She was fine. She was being her usual beautifully bitchy self, and then…” His lip trembled, and he wiped tears from his eyes again.

“Beautifully bitchy? Can’t say I’ve heard those two words together before.”

He shrugged. “I mean, she had an attitude, but I liked that about her. She was sassy. And she had a smile you wouldn’t believe. Have you heard of Foodgurl?”

“No. Is that her vlog?”

“It’s her channel. She did short reviews of food places. None of the high-class holier-than-thou bullshit. The concept was that she was a normal person giving an honest opinion about food without trying to sound like she was better than anyone else.”

“But with an attitude?”

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “Yeah, she acted a little different in front of the camera, but whatever. That’s how you make money nowadays. She never lied about anything. She just had her online persona and then her real self.”

“I get that. What’s your name?”

“Henri.”

“Ah. French?”

“Yeah, but I don’t speak French. I grew up here. I’m named after my great-grandfather. He was part of the French Resistance during World War Two.”

“Good for him.”

“Shitty for him, actually. He lost his left arm and half of his left leg.”

“Ah. I’m sorry to hear that.”

Henri shrugged. “That’s war, right? People killing each other over stupid shit.”

“In my experience, that’s always the reason.”

“Yeah.” He sniffed and looked over Faith’s shoulder at the crowd in front of the restaurant.

“You want to go somewhere else?” she asked. “Where you don’t have to look at all that?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I would be doing the same thing right now if it wasn’t Lila in there. Hell, Lila would be standing next to me.” His lip trembled again. “Damn. I loved her, man. I fucking loved her.”

He wept silently, and Faith’s heart went out to him. This was the worst part. An old mentor of hers had told her that what made murderers so terrible wasn’t what they did to the people they killed but what they did to the loved ones they didn’t kill. Seeing Henri’s shoulders shaking with grief brought that point home for her.

“We’ll find the person who did this,” she promised him. “We’ll bring them to justice.”

“Yeah, but you won’t bring her back.”

His words cut Faith like a knife. She lowered her eyes and said softly, “No.”

He sniffed and said, “I’m sorry. I know it’s not your fault. It’s just… fuck…” He took a deep breath and said, “You want to know what happened, right?”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay. Well… we were shooting the review. The way it works is we take a few camera reels… Not actually reels, but you know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

“So we shoot video, then we splice it all together at the end and upload it to the platforms. She likes doing Instagram first usually, but we were going to try TikTok this time. That’s the trendy thing now. Anyway, we were getting the shot where she was biting into the sandwich—Oh, she ordered a croque monsieur, by the way. Do you know what that is?”

“No, but that’s fine. So she did bite the food, or she didn’t?”

“She did. She took a bite and was about to talk about how delicious it was, and then she just fell over dead.”

“Just like that?”

“Pretty much. She started sweating a lot and said she felt dizzy. Then she tried to stand, but she just dropped. Like a sack of flour. Just…" He folded his hands in front of him and began tapping the table with his fists. "I don't even know if she heard me. You know, I was trying to ask her what's wrong, then I was just calling her name, and then… when she stopped breathing, I just kept saying I love you, I love you, Lila, please don't go."

A memory flashed across Faith's mind of David lying in a hospital bed with tubes and wires coming out of him. West had beaten him to the edge of death, and for a while, Faith was preparing for the possibility that she would never see him again.

But she had beaten West. He threatened to break her, but she had broken him. She would find the person who had done this to Lila Vance and break them too.

“I hate to have to ask this,” she said, “but can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Lila? A rival vlogger, maybe?”

He chuckled through his tears. “No, the vlogging world isn't really like that. Unless you call someone out, we're all really supportive of each other. That's the awesome thing about the Internet, is you don't really have to compete. Most people subscribe to dozens of channels, even hundreds, across multiple platforms. Usually, the best way to get subscribers is to have an established channel recommend you or feature you on their channel. Lila featured a bunch of people, and she was always super nice to them."

“So the attitude was really only reserved for you?”

“Any time she was alone. And for me. That’s how I knew she really loved me was when she let that part of herself show. I always loved it because… I don’t know, it was her. It was Lila. She was a feisty, sassy milf with a food blog…” He turned beet red. “Oh God. Please don’t put down that I called her that.”

Faith smiled. “I won’t. I assume you meant it as a compliment anyway.”

“Oh yeah. She was perfect.”

“Had she been complaining about any unusual physical symptoms lately?”

He shook his head. “No. This came out of nowhere. I have no idea what could have caused it.”

Story of my life . “And emotionally, she didn’t seem off in any way? Quieter, more moody, sassier than usual?”

“No, she seemed really happy, actually. She was worried about getting older and she was worried about falling too far behind with TikTok, but other than that, she was all right. This came out of nowhere. Part of me is still hoping it’s a bad dream, and I wake up and she’s next to me, moaning because the sun’s up and she has to get out of bed.” He smiled wistfully. “Man, I’m going to miss that.”

His eyes moistened, and he buried his face in his hands and began to shake again. Faith put a hand on his shoulder and said gently but firmly. “You need to get some rest, okay? Let us handle all of this. You take the night off, and in the morning, you handle whatever you need to handle about Lila. But tonight, you just take it easy. Do you have friends or family you can stay with so you’re not alone?”

He nodded. “Yeah, uh, my brother. He knows about Lila. My parents wouldn’t approve because of the age gap, but he likes her. Liked her. Goddamn.”

“Call him,” she said. “Get out of here. We’ve got this.”

“Can I… Can I say goodbye to her?”

She thought about her answer for a moment. “I would really suggest that you not do that. You shouldn’t let your last memory of her be… this.”

He sighed and slumped forward. “Yeah. You’re right. It’s just… damn.”

“I know. You’ll be okay. Not for a while. Maybe not for a long while. But you’ll be okay. You’ll do it for yourself and for her. She’d want you to be happy, right?”

He took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, she would.”

“Then you’ll be okay.”

She squeezed his shoulder one last time, then walked back to the restaurant. Just before she got to the door, a short, dark-haired woman a few years younger than Faith rushed out of the restaurant, nearly colliding with Faith. Michael came barreling after, pointing at her and shouting, “Stop! Stop her!”

Faith didn’t have a chance to join the chase. As soon as Michael called out, Turk leapt from the door like a missile, snarling and chasing down the fleeing woman within a few seconds.

She looked over her shoulder and screamed when she saw Turk. “All right! I surrender! Please don’t let him hurt me!”

Turk, correctly guessing that the suspect was cowed into submission, stopped before attacking her and growled, teeth bared. The woman sobbed and backpedaled, her hands held in front of her in a warding gesture.

Michael jogged to her and handcuffed her. The crowd reacted with equal parts alarm and fascination, prompting Howard to once more warn them to back off or face arrest.

“Let’s get her out of here,” Faith said. “I don’t want to do this here. Especially with the boyfriend watching.”

“So camera guy was her boyfriend too, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, all right, then. Let’s take her to the precinct.”

They quickly escorted the weeping suspect to the car and pulled smoothly out into traffic. The woman whimpered and kept her eyes locked on Turk, who, as with Marcus Delaney before, stared daggers at the suspect.

“Don’t worry,” Faith assured her. She gave the woman a smile that stopped well before her eyes. “He only bites if I tell him to.”