Page 12 of So Lethal (Faith Bold #22)

Dr. Crane looked from Faith to Michael to Turk and back to Faith. He saw no sign of forgiveness on any of their faces. He swallowed and waited for one of them to speak.

Faith opened the interrogation. “Why’d you run, Doctor?”

He rolled his eyes. “Why do you think?”

“Honestly? I think you killed Monica Smith and James Porter, figured out that we’re onto you, and tried to flee rather than face justice. How close am I?”

“Not close at all. I didn’t kill them.”

“Then why did you run?”

“Because I knew that you thought I killed them. I knew that you’d find out about… I mean, I already knew that you knew about the complaint against me.”

“Find out about what?” Faith asked.

“The complaint. The whole thing about the board suspending my certification.”

Faith leaned forward, boring into him with her eyes. “That’s not what you were going to say.”

His left eye twitched, but he didn’t say anything else. Faith helped him out. “Lauren Poitier. That name ring a bell?”

He sighed and dropped his head, then lifted it and began to fidget. “She signed the waiver.”

“Boy, you’d be an awful poker player,” Michael remarked. “Fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, shaky voice, the whole nine yards.”

“She signed the waiver!” Dr. Crane snapped.

“What the hell do you want me to do, all right? I mean, for God’s sake.

I’m not God. I’m trying to do some good in the world, and I have to follow all of these bullshit rules to even start, and then anytime the smallest thing goes wrong, I get looked at like a pariah!

But I’m still out here, still trying to help people.

Then you guys show up, and all of a sudden I’m a murderer again. ”

“The smallest thing, huh? The death of Lauren Poitier is a small thing?”

Dr. Crane fell silent and stared in between the two of them. “It’s a tragedy, obviously, but it happens. It’s impossible to control every variable. And hey, have I mentioned recently that it was a trial? You know, like a test?”

“Your empathy for your dead patient is admirable,” Faith said drily.

“Oh, for…” He sighed and fidgeted some more.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I am. I didn’t want anyone to die.

There’s evidence to show that neurons can be retrained, especially in young brains.

I really thought that I could train Lauren’s brain to hear again.

Not just hers, but everyone suffering from hearing loss.

“Think about it. Think about how important hearing is to you. Think about what life would be like without it. It’s horrible. It’s like having a leg cut off. So much of the human experience is foreign to you. I try to help those people achieve normalcy again.”

Michael scoffed. “Oh yeah. You’re a compassionate person. An angel, some might say.”

Dr. Crane rolled his eyes again. “I tried. I tried really hard. I thought that a targeted pulse of infrasound followed by a targeted pulse of ultrasound repeated hundreds of times would sensitize the auditory nerve so it could hear even without the structure of the inner ear. The preliminary research was promising. I thought…” His voice trailed off.

“Hell, I don’t know. I did my best. I really didn’t try to kill anyone. ”

Faith let him stew for a moment. He was slumped forward, his eyes downcast. It was difficult to tell if this was due to remorse, exhaustion, fear, or some combination thereof.

But one thing she couldn’t get past was the fact that he’d run instead of talking to them. “So how do Monica Smith and James Porter fit into this?”

“They don’t!” he insisted. “This was what I was worried about. I knew you’d make the connection between Lauren and these guys and think you had me dead to rights.”

“So you stay and talk to us,” Michael retorted. “You work with us and demonstrate your innocence.”

“I thought it was the other way around,” Dr. Crane said, glaring at Michael.

“We’re not going to debate semantics right now,” Faith said. “Start talking.”

He lifted his hands and let them drop. “I don’t know what you want me to say.

The trial with Monica Smith and James Porter was a chemical treatment designed to eliminate scar tissue and repair the eardrums. A lot of deaf people are born deaf because of damage to the inner ear during fetal development.

Like I told you earlier, it worked for some people but not for all.

Monica and James were two of the not all.

But like I also told you, it didn’t work for a lot of people.

That’s not something you kill people for. ”

Faith nodded. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out the sound pistol Dr. Crane used to disable Faith. “Can you tell me about this?”

Dr. Crane sighed. “It’s a sound pistol.”

“Why were you carrying one when we arrested you?”

“Self-defense.”

“From dogs?”

“Looks like it came in handy,” Dr. Crane retorted.

Turk bared his teeth, and the doctor paled a shade.

“Oh, sure,” Faith said. “You picked up assault on a peace officer. Add that to aggravated battery on a peace officer for hitting Special Agent Prince with a flashlight, fleeing and eluding, resisting arrest, and maybe a trespassing charge for boarding the Amtrak train without permission.”

“Okay, fine. That doesn’t mean I killed anyone.”

Faith sighed and leaned forward, folding her hands over the table.

“You have to look at this from our perspective, Doctor. We talked to you earlier today. You were clearly nervous when you talked to us. Then we leave for a couple of hours, and you close a highly successful clinic with dozens of employees for no reason, pack a bag, flee your home, and try to flee the area.”

“Yeah, what was the plan?” Michael asked. “Mexico?”

Dr. Crane nodded. He looked miserable.

“What were you going to do in Mexico? Do you speak Spanish?”

Dr. Crane shifted in his seat and didn’t reply.

“Where were you last night, Doctor Crane?”

“Home,” he insisted.

“And Saturday night?”

“Home.”

“And you’ve had no contact with Monica Smith and James Porter since the end of the trial.”

Dr. Crane rolled his eyes. “I don’t know how many times I have to say it.

I didn’t kill them. I didn’t see them. I didn’t even hear their complaints.

I read about them on the patient feedback report.

” His face hardened. “You know what? You guys don’t have anything on me.

That’s why you keep asking me the same questions over and over.

You’re hoping I’ll say something that will get me convicted. ”

"So, just so we're clear on your story," Michael said.

"You fired dozens of medical doctors, nurses, orderlies, PAs, receptionists, and janitors because you were afraid that we'd connect you to Lauren Poitier and assume that her death—accidental according to you—was related to the deaths of Monica Smith and James Porter. "

He shrugged. “Well, you did.”

“Yes, we did,” Faith agreed, “and if you were innocent, you would have stayed and talked to us. You would have gone through the process instead of trying to throw your life away and flee to Mexico.”

Dr. Crane tapped his fingers on the table. “I panicked. I don’t really have a life here. I have a job here. I wanted to try one last time to make a difference.”

“Bullshit,” Michael scoffed. “This had nothing to do with helping people. You were just trying to establish your legacy.”

Dr. Crane rolled his eyes. “Okay, I wanted to try one last time to do something that mattered, something that people would remember. Then it all blew up. Again. I don’t want to be looked at as a murderer anymore, so I panicked.

I figured I have enough money. I can get a small house in Cancun or something and just live out my days on the beach. Not a bad way to fail.”

“I’ll give you that,” Michael said. “Too bad I don’t believe you.”

“Well, go to hell,” Dr. Crane retorted. “What you believe doesn’t determine the truth.”

Faith and Michael shared a look. Faith stood, and Michael followed suit.

“We’ll give you some time to think about this,” she told him.

“But I’m telling you right now, Dr. Crane.

It doesn’t look good for you. I would seriously consider coming clean if I were you.

California still has the death penalty. Your case checks all the boxes prosecutors and judges look for.

You want us to be on your side while you still have time to change that outcome. ”

The three agents left the room. Turk offered Dr. Crane a final growl as he followed the human investigators to the room on the other side of the two-way mirror. When the door closed behind them, Faith asked Michael, “What do you think?”

“I think he’s clamming up,” he replied. “I think he’s going to stay that way until we finally slip the oyster knife into his shell. Then he’s going to say lawyer and clam up again. That’s a problem because we still don’t have any hard evidence.”

“They didn’t find anything in his belongings?” Faith asked.

“Nothing. They found our victims’ files at the clinic, but there’s nothing there that we can use to establish motive.”

“What about the sound pistol? We have a witness who heard a noise at the Monica Smith crime scene.”

“And no such witness at the James Porter crime scene,” he reminded her.

“The only clear connection we have between our victims and Dr. Crane is that they both participated in a clinical trial four months prior. If we can’t get something out of him, we’re back to square one.

Well, maybe not square one but a soft square two. ”

Faith pressed her lips together and looked through the two-way mirror at Dr. Crane. The doctor was staring at his hands and tapping the table, looking miserable and terrified. “How long can we hold him?”

“We can ask for no bond because of the fleeing and eluding,” Michael asked. “But once he gets a lawyer involved, it’s game over. Two days, maybe? No chance he spends the weekend here.”

“Two days it is then,” she said. “We need to go through every single thing in his home and his office. Somewhere in all of that is proof that Dr. Crane is our killer or a complete lack of proof that he is. If it’s the latter, then…

” she sighed. “Well, then maybe we were wrong. But we need to be damned sure of that before we let this guy back out on the street.”

Michael nodded. “Do you want to keep talking to him, or should I have the COs put him back in his cell?”

She shook her head. “Send him back. He’s just going to stick to his guns. While we’re at it, let’s have Ferris get people to interrogate every member of his staff. Prioritize anyone who worked on the clinical trial.”

“Will do.”

The door opened, and Ferris walked inside looking grim. Faith had seen that look on the faces of many law enforcement officers in the past. She knew what Ferris was going to say before he said it.

"We've got another body, guys. Parking garage of the South Bay Community Center. Victim was last seen alive forty-five minutes ago."

“Which means it couldn’t have been Dr. Crane because he was in custody forty-five minutes ago,” Michael said. “Damn it.”

Faith’s shoulders slumped. All of that effort wasted. Turk and Michael injured for nothing. They had chased a rabbit up a tree only for the branch to snap underneath them.

And once more, Faith’s fixation on a lead had allowed the real killer to take another life.