Page 17 of So Lethal (Faith Bold #22)

Marcus Wolfe lived in Campbell, a town just southwest of San Jose, in one of the few low-income neighborhoods in the area.

Relatively low-income, anyway. Compared to some of the places Faith had seen, the neighborhood here was solidly middle-class.

The houses were older but looked decently well-built.

The grass was mostly green, suggesting that people here could afford their water bills.

Most telling was the lack of illegal activity.

In truly poor urban neighborhoods, minor vices like drug use, dealing, and in some places even vandalism and prostitution were tolerated so long as nothing rose to the level of violence or became so blatant that cops had no choice but to stop looking the other way.

This was just a quiet, ordinary neighborhood.

Still, that didn't mean Marcus Wolfe wasn't struggling.

Faith had looked up the cost of a cochlear implant on the way.

Without insurance, the lower end of the spectrum was thirty thousand dollars, with some people spending up to one hundred thousand dollars depending on the specific device and their individual cases.

That was simply inaccessible for a lot of people.

That didn’t excuse murder, though. Like many Americans, Faith disliked a lot of health insurance realities, but killing people never made anything better, and there was no reason to target these victims anyway.

Marcus’s house was a little dirtier than the others, and the grass was a little more overgrown, but those seemed like recent problems. The truck parked in the driveway was an old Toyota, but at a glance it appeared to be in good running shape.

It was one of those vehicles that no one would think twice about seeing, even in wealthy neighborhoods.

The landscapers that Faith had seen at the burger place yesterday drove a similar truck.

So witnesses could have easily overlooked the vehicle at the mixed-use neighborhood where Monica Smith was killed and the wealthy enclave where James Porter was murdered.

It would be a little trickier to manage Sarah Martinez’s murder since people there would recognize him and presumably his vehicle too, but the community center was busy, and he could have easily parked somewhere else and waited until everyone was in the meeting to head to the parking garage and lie in wait for her.

Turk didn’t growl or bark as they approached the house, but he kept his eyes open and his ears lifted, alert for any sign of danger. Faith unclipped her shoulder holster in case she needed to draw quickly, then knocked on the door.

There was no answer.

She knocked again. Still no answer.

“Hello?” she called. “FBI. Is anyone inside?”

No response. Either the house was empty, or Marcus was the only one inside and just couldn’t hear them.

She looked at Michael. “What do we do if he doesn’t answer?”

Michael took a deep breath. “Well, we need to talk to him. We can walk around the house and see if we can see him through a window or something to get his attention.”

“They can feel things through the ground, right?” Faith asked. “Would he hear it if we stomped on the porch?”

Michael stared at her, and heat climbed her cheeks. “I was just trying to think of an option.”

“Let’s try knocking one last time,” he said. “Then we’ll walk around the property and see if we can get his attention.”

He knocked firmly, his “cop-knock” that worked wonders for startling suspects into either opening the door or trying to flee. Either would be fine with Faith at this point. With Turk here, there was almost no chance of Marcus successfully fleeing.

“He ain’t gonna hear you!” a voice to their right called. “He’s deaf! Lost his hearing in a gas explosion last year.”

The voice belonged to a middle-aged man in a dirty wifebeater who leaned out of his window and squinted at them. “You’ll have to call him. He’s got a machine that types whatever you say on a piece of paper.”

“Thank you,” Faith said. “What’s your name?”

“Name’s Casper. Like the ghost.”

“Thank you, Casper. Are you going to be here for a while?”

Casper chuckled. “Rest of my life probably. I’m retired.”

“Good for you. We might come over and talk in a few minutes.”

Casper scratched his nearly bald head. “All right. Marcus in trouble?”

“We’re not sure yet.”

The door opened, startling Faith. She spun around, hand flying to her shoulder holster.

She found herself staring at a tall, muscular man with a week-old stubble, a mop of unruly hair, and rheumy blue eyes that blazed with grief, irritation, contempt, and despair all at once.

The pungent odor of sweat and alcohol washed over her, almost enough to make her eyes water.

This specimen—Marcus Wolfe, surely—held a note in front of her face. On the note, scribbled in jerky handwriting, was the message, g et off my property.

Faith took her hand off of her gun and raised it and its companion, palms outward. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Wolfe,” she said slowly and clearly. “I’m Special Agent Faith Bold. This is my partner—”

Marcus pointed to his ears and chopped his hand across his throat in an exaggerated gesture.

“I understand,” Faith continued, slowing her speech further. “I’m with the FBI.” She pointed at her vest. “F… B… I. I need to talk to you about—”

Marcus slammed the door into her face. Faith turned to Michael. Turk growled this time, softly but enough to let Faith know he was annoyed by their suspect’s reaction.

“He can’t hear you!” Casper called again.

Faith rolled her eyes. “We got it. Thank you, sir. Go on inside, and we’ll talk to you in a moment.”

“All right,” Casper replied in a slightly injured tone. “Just trying to be helpful.”

Faith waited until she heard the window shut, then said, “We’ll try your idea and go around the house to try to get his attention. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to—”

The door flew open again. Faith jumped backwards and cried, “Jesus!”

Marcus shoved another note into her face. This one read, are you stupid? I can’t hear you, dumbass!

“We need to talk to you,” Faith said. She pointed at herself, then at Marcus. “I need to talk to you.”

Marcus stared at her like she’d just announced her candidacy for President of Jupiter. He lifted his hands into the air, shoved the note into her face again, then stormed inside and shut the door.

Faith looked at the porch and sighed. “Okay, this was a bad idea.”

“We can call Beth and see if we can get her to interpret for us.”

“Do that,” Faith said, “but first, call Ferris and see if he can put two officers on Marcus. I don’t want another incident like we had with Dr. Crane."

The three investigators crossed the yard to Casper’s house while Michael made the phone calls. “I got Beth’s voicemail,” he told Faith. “Ferris said he can have officers in the area in ten minutes.”

“That’s good enough. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. What are we talking to the neighbor for?”

“I want to know if he saw Marcus leave his house on the nights of the murders. If the timeline matches up, then we might have enough evidence to bring him in for questioning.”

Michael looked doubtful, but he didn’t question her. Faith knocked on the door, and this time, it opened immediately. Casper was a full head shorter than Faith thought he would be. He grinned up at Faith with his squinty eyes and said, “Couldn’t get nowhere with Marcus, huh?”

Faith left that unanswered and asked, “Are you two close?”

Casper scratched his belly button and said, “Well, I don’t know about that. We get on all right, I guess, but we don’t talk or anything.”

“How about the rest of the neighborhood?” Faith asked. “Does he have any problems with anyone?”

“Not that I know of,” Casper replied. “He’s not the friendliest type, but before the gas explosion, he was all right.”

“And now?”

“Now he keeps to himself. When you do talk to him, it goes kind of like your conversation did. He gets real upset on account of the fact he can’t hear you.”

“Has he ever been aggressive toward you or anyone else that you know about?”

Casper blinked a couple of times. “You mean like violent?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “No, not really. Say, do you two want to come inside? I just made some soup if you’re interested.”

“We’ll pass on the soup,” Michael replied, “but we’ll have a seat on your sofa if that’s okay.”

“Sure.”

He turned around and shuffled deeper into his house.

The interior here reminded Faith a lot of Cliff Kowalski’s apartment except that instead of faded vinyl laminate, the floor was faded and threadbare carpet.

The two agents took a seat on a sofa that has absolutely no support after decades of abuse from Casper’s compact but prodigiously overweight body.

Turk sat in front of them and watched Casper carefully lower himself into an easy chair.

Casper sighed with relief and said, “It’s a real sad thing what happened.

He used to work for Pacific Gas and Electric.

He was working on a gas line for Western Telecom’s building when the line blew.

Fortunately for him, he was outside when the explosion hit, so he survived, but the noise blew out both of his eardrums.”

“Did he tell you all of that?”

“No, I heard it on the news. They didn’t give his name, but when he was gone for two days and came home with bandages around his head, I knew it must be him.”

“And he’s been in a bad mood ever since?” Michael asked.

Casper chuckled. “Well, I’d be pretty upset if I lost my hearing in an explosion too.”

“Has he gone out at night recently?” Faith asked.

Casper scratched a thin layer of stubble on the wattles of his neck. “Well… he used to go out Tuesday nights, but I haven’t seen him do that in a while.”

“Within the past week, has he gone out?”

“He heads out to stop by the liquor store sometimes. Poor feller’s figurin’ to drink himself to death, I think. I’m usually in bed by eight, though, so I don’t know if he’s gone out any later than that.”

“Would the other neighbors have seen anything?” Faith asked.

Casper shrugged. “You can ask them, but I doubt it. Folks here don’t pay much attention to other people.

It’s kind of sad if you ask me. No one cares about their neighbors anymore.

Used to be if folks were in trouble, there’d be a community around to help them out.

Even if you weren’t friends, you took care of each other.

Now everyone just goes through life alone. ”

He tilted his head. “Maybe I’ll go see Marcus. I’ll bring him some donuts, just to let him know someone’s thinking about him.”

“Give that a few days,” Faith said. “We need time to figure out what the deal is with him.”

“Yeah, that reminds me. You ain’t told me what he’s in trouble for.”

“I’m not at liberty to talk about the case to unrelated individuals,” Faith replied. “But I would suggest leaving him be for now.”

Casper nodded. “Sure. All right. I hope he’s not in any serious trouble. I don’t think he’s a bad man. He’s just suffering.”

The three agents left Casper’s house and headed back to their car.

They caught sight of a police cruiser approaching the house just as they pulled away.

A part of Faith hoped that Marcus would do something stupid and get himself arrested to make their lives easier.

Another part of Faith hoped that if he was innocent, they would figure it out quickly and stop making a difficult time for him even more difficult.

Either way, they needed to find an interpreter—Beth or someone else—and talk to him ASAP.