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The Boss called Faith as they drove back home. Turk had once more found nothing at the scene, and the security cameras likewise proved useless, so they were heading back to Faith’s apartment in the absence of any more leads.

And the Boss, evidently, had finally caught word of Klein’s demise. “Bold, what the hell happened?”

Faith sighed. “It looks like he was already dead when you and I talked this morning.”

“What? He was killed at a steakhouse in the morning?”

“No,” she replied. “He was killed last night. PD was afraid of a media circus, so they convinced everyone to stay quiet and waited until the morning to call us.”

The Boss sighed. “Jesus. That looks really bad, Bold.”

“I know. Michael’s going to make an official complaint to PD leadership.”

“That looks really bad for us , Bold. For you. ”

Faith pressed her lips together. “Well, I don’t know what you want me to do about that, Boss. It wasn’t my choice for PD to fuck up like this.”

“I’m not blaming you, but the fact is that this looks really bad. Washington’s already watching you closely, and now a case has been impacted by the fact that you’re the person on that case.”

“How does this impact the case? It’s only a few hours.”

“It’s fourteen hours, Bold. And you’re smart enough to know that even a fourteen-minute delay can mean the difference between life and death.” He sighed. “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have put you on this case. It’s too close to home. I should have had Desroulaux and Chavez handle it.”

Faith’s lips thinned further. “Sir, I assure you, I am perfectly capable of doing my job wherever I’m assigned.”

“That’s not the point, Bold. Yes, I know you’re capable of doing your job. Your skill set is not in question right now. But the fact that it's here in the city West hails from, the city you hail from, where West attacked you multiple times, where he was finally arrested attacking you again, where he's about to be placed on the most visible trial of the past thirty years means that there's extra scrutiny, and I've put you right at the center of it. I should have kept you strictly for the out-of-state cases."

Faith could see where this was going, and she didn’t like it. “Boss, I want this case. I have a profile now. We’re making good progress.”

“Bold—”

“No. I know what you’re going to say, and the answer is no. I can handle this, Boss.”

“Bold, it’s not about what you can or can’t handle. It’s about what’s right for the Bureau.”

“What’s right for the Bureau is for its most capable two field agents to run the case. This killer is not slowing down. If anything, he’s escalating. We have four deaths within two weeks, three of them within the last of those weeks. Each person he kills is not only a tragedy in and of itself, but it makes PD and the FBI look incompetent. We’re making progress, and we are your best chance of solving this case.”

There was silence on the other end. Michael glanced nervously at Faith, and Turk whined softly. Faith waited with bated breath for the Boss's response.

Please make the right call, Boss. Please.

The Boss finally sighed. “You can finish this case, Bold. After that, I’m sorry, but I’m going to follow Washington’s recommendation and put you on desk duty for the time being. It’s the best chance we have of making sure you aren’t permanently removed from the field.”

Faith sighed with relief. It wasn’t good that she was going to be pulled from the field, but she could handle that problem later. Right now, she needed to find her killer, and she needed to find him fast.

“Thank you, sir. You won’t regret it.”

“I really wish you hadn’t said that,” the Boss muttered just before hanging up.

Faith sighed and ran her hands through her hair. “Okay. So you heard all that.”

“Yep. They want you hung out to dry, right?”

“More like put out to pasture. Headquarters is concerned about bad press, and the Boss thinks it’s worse that the case is here in Philly.”

“What does that have to do with you, though?”

“He was very clear that it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Or at least that it’s not my fault. But this is out of his hands. This is a political thing now, and the powers that be are concerned about the impact this can have on the Bureau at large.”

“Fuck the Bureau at large. They can’t use you as a sacrificial lamb to save their own skins. That isn’t right.”

“I’m not defending them,” Faith replied. “But they’re not thinking like detectives. They’re thinking like politicians. The only way we can turn this around is to solve this case as quickly as possible and then I lay low until West’s trial is over. Once the media circus dies down, they’ll stop looking my way. Then I can get back to doing my job.”

Michael pressed his lips together and didn’t answer. Faith was touched by his anger on her behalf, but she didn’t have time or energy to spare being angry at the situation. It was hard enough to handle the stress of this case, and she had come dangerously close to losing control several times already. She needed to keep herself focused.

“We need another lead,” she said. “Who would have had the opportunity to hurt all of our victims?”

Michael lifted his hands and let them drop. “Hell if I know. I feel like we got lucky with our last two suspects. We don’t have a lucky tip this time.”

“We didn’t get lucky with Alex Ferris,” Faith countered. “You looked through the victims’ professional connections and found him.”

“Yeah, and he was a dead end.”

“That doesn’t mean everyone will be.”

They had reached Faith’s apartment now, and Michael shut off the engine. “Okay, so now we’re adding Samuel Klein to the mix and looking for someone who might know all four of them.”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “All right. We’ll give it a shot.”

They got to work immediately upon stepping inside her apartment. Turk paced restlessly, sensing the tension his two partners felt but unsure how to fix it. From time to time, Faith ruffled his fur or scratched behind his ears to assure him that everything was okay, but he was smart enough to know that everything was not okay, and her comfort didn’t do much to calm him.

Lunchtime came and went, but the two agents didn’t eat. They scoured social media, online blogs, food magazines and journals and even newspapers for any sign of someone who could be connected to all four clients. At one point, Faith called Paul Revere Vineyards and Café Toulouse to see if either place had worked with Samuel Klein. Neither had.

As the afternoon wore on, Faith’s anxiety reached a breaking point. She sighed and began to pace the room with Turk. Michael noticed her frantic behavior and shook his head. “This is bullshit. Who the hell is this guy? How is he sneaking into every restaurant and poisoning all of these people at different times, and we can’t find him?”

“Maybe he’s one of the diners?” Faith suggested. “Or a visitor.”

“What do you mean a visitor?”

“Like a health inspector or something.”

Michael’s eyes widened. “A health inspector actually makes sense. They have access to every restaurant in the state. They don’t need an appointment either. They can show up whenever they want to and look at a restaurant.”

“How would they poison a specific victim, though?”

“Maybe they aren’t. Maybe it’s only luck that these are the people who end up poisoned.”

Faith shook her head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. There would be some trace of something on the food or the dishes if it was a health inspector.”

“Not necessarily. They inspect everything. Bathrooms and dining rooms included. We didn’t check soap dispensers, towel dispensers or anything like that for poison.”

“You think that the killer’s poisoning the soap and only killing one person?”

Michael sighed. "I don't know. Not the soap, then. I'm just saying that health inspectors have access to everything. I know it's a stretch, but it's possible that the health inspector could be the killer, and the fact that it's possible means it's the best lead we have right now."

Faith sighed. She hated this seat-of-the-pants style of detective work, but they weren’t getting anywhere trying things her way. She sighed again, then said, “All right. Let’s call the health department.”

Michael called them, and after a few minutes, he found a name.

“Clive Benson,” he told Faith. “Not only did he inspect all of the restaurants where our victims died, but he did so the very days those victims died. You have to admit that it’s a hell of a coincidence.”

“Yes,” Faith agreed. “It is. All right. Let’s go talk to Clive.”

The three of them headed back to the car. Faith wasn't very confident about this lead, but it was, as Michael said, the best lead they had. Mostly because it was the only lead they had, and hey, maybe they would get lucky.

Faith could really use some good luck right about now. Each passing moment was another moment their killer could be poisoning another victim, another moment someone innocent would breathe their last.

Another moment to prove that she was a failure.