Page 23 of So Lethal (Faith Bold #22)

Michael handed Faith a bag and set a cup of coffee next to her. “In that bag is your very own individual pepperoni pizza, a bag of Cheetos, and a pack of Hostess powdered donuts. If you eat all of your good food, there’s Reese’s peanut butter cups to share.”

She chuckled. “Good food?”

“I didn’t say healthy food. Just good.”

She laughed again. “Fair enough.” Her smile faded, and she looked away.

“Hey. Stop beating yourself up because some dipshit reporter revealed herself to be a dipshit.”

“That’s not it,” she said. “I just… I can’t stop thinking that if I hadn’t lost my cool over the ringing in my ears, then we would have been at the house ten minutes sooner, and we might have saved Marcus.”

“We wouldn’t have saved him. CSI report just came back. Marcus was dead for thirty minutes before we got there. The killer took a while to get him set up in the woodshed.”

“Well, we might have been able to catch the killer, though.”

“Maybe. Or maybe Turk would still have been affected, and he still would have gotten away from you.”

He sat on the other chair and rested his forearms on his thighs.

“Look, I’ve worked with you for a long time, Faith.

I understand the urge all law enforcement officers have to blame themselves when things go wrong, and I understand that urge is a thousand times stronger in your case, but it’s misplaced and not helpful. ”

Faith didn’t want to get into an argument with Michael now, so she said, “You’re right. I know. I’m just upset.”

“Hence the junk food. Eat it, it’ll make you feel good.”

“Or it’ll make me groggy and slow.”

He rolled his eyes. “Which is why you have coffee. For God’s sake, when you’re moody, you are determined to stay that way.”

She couldn’t quite resist a chuckle. “Thank you, Michael. This was really nice of you.”

“See? Was that so hard?”

“Quit while you’re ahead.”

She reached into the bag and pulled out the pizza.

It bore a picture of a cartoon man with an impossibly wide mouth and eyes that pegged him as a heavy meth user in the middle of his best high.

He held a slice of pizza up like a ceremonial goblet and proclaimed—according to the speech bubble over his head—that the pizza was hot and fresh.

It was neither hot nor fresh, but it was salty and savory and greasy, just like pizza should be. Against all odds, the tension in Faith’s shoulders relaxed somewhat, and she was able to think rationally again.

“We need to roll this back to basics,” she said. “We’ve been chasing the flavor of the moment when it comes to our suspects. We need to figure out what the connection is between all of them, not just the most recent connection to the most recent victim.”

“I agree,” Michael said, “with the additional criterion that the connection has to be more than just the fact that they’re all deaf or hearing impaired. We believe that’s what motivates the killer to ‘liberate’ them, but we still need to know why them specifically.”

“Well, Monica and James were both at the same clinical trial,” Faith suggested. “They were also at the same career day at the community center. Marcus and Sarah were both attending a support group at the community center.”

“True,” Michael said, leaning back and crossing his arms, “but Sarah and Marcus never saw Dr. Crane.”

“Maybe the killer was in both places, though. Maybe he attended the trial and the support group.”

“We know he didn’t attend the support group, though. No one there matches your description of the killer.”

Faith frowned. “Right. Maybe he was at the career day and Dr. Crane’s trial.”

“That’s a lot of people,” Michael said.

“At the career day, yes, but not at the clinical trial. We can start with the trial, filter out anyone who doesn’t match the description, and then see if anyone remaining was at the career day. It’s probably not going to be a large number. There aren’t a lot of people six-four plus in the world.”

Faith nodded. “Okay, good. We’ll start there.”

“How do we get the info on the people in the clinical trial, though? The Auditory Research Center is shut down, and I don’t think Dr. Crane is going to be very excited to talk to us.”

“He’s not going to have a choice unless he wants to catch another obstruction charge.”

“He can cry HIPAA and make us go through the process,” Michael countered. He pulled open his laptop. “Let me see if I can get the records from the Board of Audiology.”

While Michael did that, Faith looked at Turk.

The big dog was sleeping now that his meal was finished.

His muzzle was a little grayer, but he was still sleek and strong.

He was nearly ten years old now, almost a year older than the mandatory retirement age for FBI K9 units.

She had fought hard to get permission to keep him on active duty, but there was no hiding from the fact that he would be too old eventually.

The two of them had been working together for over three years. She hoped they could work together for another three years, but still, how did the time go so fast?

Her heart ached. Dogs didn’t live long enough. Ten to thirteen years on average for German Shepherds, and if they made fifteen, that was considered exceptional.

It wasn't long enough. They were such perfect, pure, beautiful creatures. If anything, they should be the ones with long lifespans, and people should be the ones granted a decade and change.

She chuckled at that. The noise made Turk’s ear prick up but when no potentially threatening sound reached his ears, he lowered it again. Listen to me. Acting like a crazy cat lady.

Still, she wasn’t looking forward to the day when she would have to say goodbye to her best friend. Whether it was three years from now or five years from now or ten years from now, it would be too soon.

“Got it,” Michael said. “See? The Board’s not going to jerk us around.”

She turned back to the laptop and looked at the information Michael had. All but one of the subjects were under six feet and could be immediately dismissed, but one, Carl Sampson, was six-foot-four and a sleek two hundred ten pounds with ten percent body fat.

She smiled and said, “Wonderful. Now we call the community center.”

“Are they going to have someone there this late?”

She shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. They don’t close for another twenty minutes.”

He shook his head. “It’s crazy that they’re open so late. When I was a kid, we had the old community center, and that place was locked by six o’clock.”

“Times change, old man.”

He smiled sweetly and lifted a finger. She chuckled and dialed the number.

A moment later, a bored-sounding woman who was probably barely old enough to qualify as an adult replied, “Thank you for calling the South Bay Community Center, this is Rose, how may I help you?”

“Rose, this is Special Agent Faith Bold with the FBI. I need your help with a case.”

Rose sighed. “Jenna, I swear to God, if you’re prank-calling me at work again—”

“Not a prank call,” Faith interrupted. “Look up the FBI ID check database. When you’re ready, I’ll read you mine, and you can verify that I am who I say I am.”

After a brief pause, Rose said warily, “All right.” A slightly longer pause, then. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Faith read her the ID number. A third brief pause followed, then Rose gasped. “Oh my God! Oh, this is about that woman who was killed the other day, right?”

“Yes. I need your help verifying something for me.”

“Oh, that was so horrible. My friend Hector works the desk during the day, and he told me—”

“Rose, I need you to focus for me. Four months ago, the center hosted a career day for the hearing impaired. I need to know if a particular individual attended that event.”

“Oh, there’s no way I can verify that. It was an open event. Anyone could have walked in. I can tell you who presented or ran a booth.”

“I’ll take it. The man’s name is Carl Sampson.”

“Carl… Sampson… Yeah, here he is. He ran a booth talking about auto repair. I guess he owned a shop in Fremont.”

Faith pumped her fist. “Thank you, Rose. You’ve been a big help.”

She hung up and said, “Carl was at the trial and at the career day.”

“Hell yeah,” Michael said. “Let’s give him a call.”

Faith dialed the number and put the phone on speaker. A moment later, a slightly groggy and more than slightly irritated female voice replied, “Hello?”

“Good evening. This is Special Agent Faith Bold with the FBI.”

“So you really are the FBI? Why is the FBI calling me at ten-forty in the evening?”

"I apologize for the inconvenience, ma'am," Faith replied. "I need to speak to Carl Sampson. Is he available?"

The phone was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was laced with venom. “Is this a joke?”

Faith’s brow furrowed. “No, it’s no joke, ma’am. In fact, it’s a very serious matter. I need to speak to him as soon as possible.”

“Carl died two months ago.”

Michael cursed softly. Faith could only manage a weak, “I see.”

“Why are you looking for him now? Was he involved in something?”

Faith sighed. "I guess not. I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am."

She hung up and folded her hands on the desk, resting her forearms on her closed fists. “Well, shit. There goes our lead.”

Michael stood. “I’m going to bed. We’re not getting anywhere grabbing at straws. Let’s get some rest, and we’ll reapproach the problem in the morning.”

“I really, really, really hate that,” Faith said.

“If you have an idea where to look next, I’m all ears,” Michael replied.

“Otherwise, I think our best bet is to get some shuteye and hit it with fresh minds tomorrow. He’s already killed someone tonight, and he came within a hair's breadth of getting caught.

I doubt seriously he's going to try anything stupid again before morning. "

Faith nodded. Michael was right. They’d pulled all-nighters before, but they had nowhere to go right now, and driving themselves to exhaustion chasing their tails wasn’t going to help them catch their murderer.

She sighed again. “Yeah, all right. Damn it.”

Michael laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get this guy. We’re closing in on him, I can feel it. We just need to find the last missing piece.”

She managed a half-smile that did nothing to hide her frustration, then went to the bathroom to change.

This was the hardest part of every case.

Coming within literal feet of catching their suspect only for him to flee galled her.

Maybe Michael was right, and it wasn't really her fault, but it was hard not to think of everything she could have done differently that might have changed that outcome.

And to find a promising lead only to lose it in a few minutes didn't help her mood.

By the time she left the bathroom, Michael was fast asleep. She envied him that ability. She’d had it once herself, back when she was a Marine and life was simple. Dangerous and terrifying, but simple. Since Trammell, though, she hadn’t been able to find sleep nearly as easily.

She lay in bed and spent a while staring at the ceiling and trying to put a picture of their killer together in her head. Try as she might, his image remained vague and featureless.

Eventually, exhaustion overwhelmed her impatience. Her eyes closed, and she fell asleep, the apparition of their killer still haunting her.