Page 13 of So Lethal (Faith Bold #22)

Faith stared at the woman in the front seat of the late model Lexus sedan and tried not to lose her self-control. She was tall and athletic with chocolate colored skin and eyes the color of black coffee. She had noble features and full lips that no doubt made the heartbeats of many quicken.

An hour ago, this woman had been alive. While she put handcuffs on an innocent man, the real killer had been lying in wait for her. While she and Michael were browbeating Dr. Crane for information he didn’t have, this woman had lain in her sedan, the life choked out of her.

This was the worst part of the job, and twelve-plus years later, it hadn’t gotten any easier. Turk trotted around the corner and stopped in front of the rear passenger seat. He looked at Faith and barked once.

“Victim is Sarah Martinez, thirty-eight,” Ferris informed them. “She lost her hearing a year and a half ago when she caught strep and it went to her ears. Doctors were able to save her life, but she lost her hearing.”

“What was she doing here?” Michael asked.

“Support group for those with hearing loss,” Ferris said. “It’s a charity function of St. Teresa’s Hospital. That’s where Miss Martinez was treated.”

“I don’t suppose Dr. Crane was involved in her treatment,” Faith asked.

Dr. Crane wasn’t a suspect anymore, but if Sarah was also treated by him, then he would still be a connection between the victims, and it would be worth continuing to follow up on that lead.

“We’ll pull her medical records to confirm, but St. Teresa’s did tell us that Dr. Crane isn’t affiliated with their hospital.”

Faith sighed. "Check anyway, just in case she got a second opinion or something from him."

“Yeah, we’ll do that.” Ferris looked around and scratched his head. “I can’t figure out how the killer stayed out of sight. There are three different entrances to the garage.”

“He crouched behind the rear driver’s side door,” Faith said, pointing to the spot where Turk sat. “He wouldn’t be visible to the entrances from here. We’re on the tenth floor of the structure on a Tuesday night, so I don’t think there would be a lot of people up here. Maybe no one else.”

“Why would she park up here by herself?” Ferris asked.

“So no one would talk to her,” Michael speculated. “She wasn’t born deaf like our first two victims. She lost her hearing in an accident. It would be painful for her to interact with people when she couldn’t hear or speak to them anymore.”

Ferris sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“So he waits behind the car,” Faith said, “Kills her, then puts her in the front seat. Then he gets out of Dodge.” She looked around. “Do those security cameras work?”

“I’ll find out,” Ferris said. “Last time the killer wore a ski mask, though.”

“We can still get some basic identifying data,” Faith said. “Height, build, clothing. We can probably determine if it’s a male or a female too. Anything helps at this stage of the game.”

“Good point. I’ll see what I can do.”

Ferris left, and Faith looked back at Sarah. She had come here looking for help coping with her affliction. Instead, someone had killed her for it.

“We’ll look for a connection between the three obviously,” Michael said.

“But let’s say we don’t find a connection.

Why these three victims? We have a woman in her late twenties, a woman in her late thirties, and a man in his late forties.

Are we looking at a man in his late fifties next? Or a teenager?”

Faith frowned. “That’s not funny, Michael.”

“I’m not joking,” he replied. “That’s the sad part. I really don’t know where to go from here.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “She lived in Fremont. She passed five other hospitals to get treated here in St. Teresa where no one would know her.”

“So she was ashamed of her deafness, you think?”

“I don’t think shame is the right word. I do think we should talk to the woman who runs the support group. She was one of the last people to see Sarah alive. She might be able to shed some light on the case.”

Faith nodded and turned to the medical examiner's crew, who stood five yards to the side, waiting patiently for the investigators to finish. "Go ahead and take her. Turk! Come on, boy."

Turk dutifully joined Faith as she and Michael walked over to Ferris. Ferris was on the phone with someone, and whatever he was hearing, it wasn’t good news.

“All right,” he said into his phone. “Thank you.” He hung up and swore softly.

“What is it?” Michael asked.

“Cameras don’t work. The system’s eight years old.”

“Is that old?”

“In this day and age of digital marvels and cloud-based storage, yes. It was in the process of being replaced. They’ve gotten to floors one through nine. They haven’t gotten to ten.”

“Check the footage anyway,” Faith replied. “We could still see someone going upstairs or taking the elevator and not getting off on floors one through nine.”

“Sure,” Ferris replied. “He’s sending me what they have. We’ll do our best.” His phone beeped, and he chuckled bitterly. “Look at that. More good news.”

“What now?”

“Confirmation that Dr. Crane never saw Sarah Martinez. That puts the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae of Dr. Crane is innocent and we were wasting our time with him.”

Faith nodded. She’d already dealt with these realizations and couldn’t feel anything more than numbness hearing it again. “I want to talk to the person who leads Sarah’s support group.”

“Sure thing. She’s downstairs. I’m going to stay up here and coordinate everything. This is starting to become a grade A clusterfuck, and my bosses are getting antsy.”

The FBI agents took the elevator down to the first floor of the parking structure. The machine hummed as it slowly lowered them to the ground. It reminded Faith of the rumble Cliff Kowalski described.

The door opened to reveal a much busier floor.

Vehicles moved in and out, carefully navigating around the two police cruisers parked perpendicular to each other to block off a section of the floor where two officers spoke with a middle-aged woman with an average figure and a beehive hairstyle.

The woman looked to have been crying but remained in control as she spoke with them.

Faith flashed her IDs at the policemen. “We’ll take it from here, boys. Any reason to keep this garage blocked off any longer?”

The older of the policemen shook his head. “If we’re done talking to her, we can open it up.”

“Go ahead and do it then. I don’t want this to go viral and prompt a media frenzy.”

The officers shared a sober look. Few things annoyed law enforcement more than nosy reporters. “We’ll get out of the way, ma’am,” the younger one said.

Faith turned to the woman. “I’m Special Agent Faith Bold. This is Special Agent Michael Prince and our K9, Turk.”

The woman took a shaky breath. “I’m Beth. Beth Rosenberg.”

Faith nodded. “Let’s go take a seat inside.”

The four of them entered the building. The lobby contained glass display cases with artifacts from San Jose’s history and large murals depicting the same thing.

There were far more people here than Faith would have expected for this late on a Tuesday night, but then San Jose was a big city.

There were plenty of people on different schedules.

“We can talk in here,” Beth offered. “This is the room we reserve for our group meetings. The next group doesn’t arrive for thirty minutes.”

“There’s an eleven o’clock Tuesday meeting here?” Michael asked incredulously.

“I believe they’re a Dungeons and Dragons group,” Beth explained.

“Ah.”

They filed into the room. As soon as the door closed behind them, Beth burst into tears.

Faith put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and Beth stiffened and pulled away.

She seemed to realize her rudeness a moment later, because she quickly apologized.

“I’m sorry. I’m just… I can’t believe this.

Poor Sarah. She’s very close with her sister, and I just hate thinking about what will happen when they tell her. ”

That prompted fresh tears. Turk pressed his head gently to her legs and looked up at her until she calmed. She smiled down at him and stroked his fur. “Good boy.”

The four of them sat—Turk still close to Beth—and Faith began. “How long did you know Sarah?”

“Eight weeks,” Beth replied. “She joined us on the recommendation of her primary care doctor when she refused to see a therapist. We were her compromise, I guess.”

“How did she seem to you?”

Beth frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Was she generally happy, sad, friendly, aloof… I’m just trying to get a sense of who she was.”

“Oh. Well… she tried very hard to look happy, but she wasn’t. It wasn’t hard to see under the surface. She was very angry.”

“Angry at anyone in particular?” Michael asked.

“No, just at life. She thought it was unfair of her to lose her hearing. She didn’t think she deserved to suffer like that.”

“She told you this?”

“Yes. During our first session, I asked everyone to tell me how they felt about their hearing loss. There were two others who said the same thing Sarah did. That’s very common among hearing people when they lose their hearing.”

“Not fear?” Faith asked.

“Not usually at this stage,” Beth replied.

“Fear happens when someone is in the process of losing their hearing and shortly after. People wonder if they’ll be able to take care of themselves or if they’ll ever live a normal life again.

Sarah had lived with hearing loss for over a year.

She was functioning very well. She wouldn’t have had those concerns anymore. ”

“Was she friendly with other members of the group?” Faith asked.

Beth considered for a moment. “She was polite. I wouldn’t say particularly friendly. She would go through the motions of talking to people, but she never made friends.”

“Do people usually make friends in groups like this?”

“Not always,” Beth admitted. “But there’s a bond people feel when they’re going through the same journey, especially a difficult one. Sarah did all of the right things, but I always felt as if she was… resentful, I guess.”

“Resentful of what exactly? Her hearing loss?”

“Her hearing loss and the fact that we expected her to be happy with her life anyway. She seemed offended by my claims that it was possible to live a normal, fulfilling life with hearing loss.”

“She told you this?”

“No. It’s just an impression I got. Her shoulders would stiffen, and she’d fold her hands tightly in her lap like she was fighting the urge to shout at me.”

“Did anyone try to make friends with her?” Michael asked.

"I did. I noticed that she was keeping herself at arm's length from everyone. In week five, I asked if she would join me for coffee sometime so we could talk one on one. She gave me a look of pure rage. Not at me," she added quickly. "Grief that expressed itself as rage."

“So no one showed a special interest in her besides you?” Faith asked.

Beth sighed. “No. No one disliked her, but everyone could tell, I think, that she preferred to be left alone.”

Faith nodded. “One last question. Do you know a Monica Smith or a James Porter?”

She watched Beth closely as she replied. Beth’s brow furrowed. “No, I don’t. Should I?”

No sign of recognition. No sign of fear or guilt. No sign from Turk that he detected any of those emotions either.

Well, Faith hadn’t expected anything. It was just a shot in the dark. Like every shot in this entire damned case. “No,” she replied. “I was just curious.”

“Do you think they had something to do with this?”

“No,” Faith replied. She got to her feet to head off further curiosity. “Thank you for talking to us, Beth. If you think of anything else, please give us a call.”

She pulled a card out and handed it to Beth.

Then, she and her two companions left her and returned to their car.

As they approached the parking garage, Faith saw the medical examiner's van pull onto the street and accelerate away, carrying the body of Sarah Martinez.

She wondered what Sarah felt in her last moments.

Was she relieved to have been freed from a life she despised, or did she realize in that moment how precious life was, even a life without sound?

Either way, Faith would see to it that she received justice.