Page 4 of So Lethal (Faith Bold #22)

Faith, Turk, and Michael arrived at Monica Smith’s studio in San Jose at six in the morning. Two officers were still at the scene, a uniformed sergeant and a plainclothes detective. The detective glanced at their FBI IDs and offered them a half-wave for a greeting.

“Detective Ferris,” he said, sticking out a hand with the most impressively thick fingers Faith had ever seen.

Turk barked formally. Ferris nodded at him, then gestured for the three of them to follow him through the gate. “Cooper, watch the door, yeah? Make sure no looky-loos come inside.”

The street was completely empty, but Cooper nodded and said, “You got it, Ferris.”

Just inside the gate was a small yard that looked like it was used for storage.

Canvases were stacked under the eaves, and cans of paint were lined up on either side of the steps that led into the unit.

Other materials—clay, marble and half-finished bronze statues—stood at odd places along the poured concrete panels that formed the yard.

“I thought she was a graphic designer,” Michael asked.

“She was,” Ferris replied. “She did creative art on the side.”

“Got it.”

Faith and Turk moved immediately to the most conspicuous object in the yard, a chalk outline where a few hours ago the San Jose Police Department had found Monica’s body. Turk put his nose to the ground and began sniffing for clues. Faith had already picked up a few of her own.

“No blood?” she asked.

"No. The cause of death was asphyxiation by strangulation. The killer wore gloves and used a latex rubber ligature. ME thinks a tourniquet."

“Any sign of a struggle?”

"No defensive wounds," Ferris replied. Looks like she scratched at his face, but he wore a ski mask.

Fibers come back as bargain-basement polyester, the type you can grab for five bucks out of a bin at your local Wal-Mart.

I said it was quick, though. Unconscious in five seconds. The ligature was pulled very tight."

Faith’s eyes traveled over the outline. “He laid her down carefully. Arms and legs don’t fall straight like that.”

“Yeah, we figured he was trying to avoid noise?”

Faith shook her head. “Maybe, but that’s not all of it. Laying her down like that suggests care.”

“You think it was a boyfriend or something?”

“Let’s get a little more info before we decide on an avenue of investigation,” Faith replied. “What time was the body discovered?”

“Eleven last night, right before we called you. Rigor had set in already, so time of death was before nine.”

“Who reported the death?” Michael asked.

“Homeless guy who peered over the fence. Said he was looking for a place to sleep. Saw her and knew she was dead because her tongue and eyes were bugged out, and her face was all purple.”

Faith grimaced at that image. “Were you the responding officer?”

“No, that was Cooper. He called me after he did the initial report.”

“Did he notice any sign of a break-in?” Faith asked. “Doors forced, windows broken, latches pulled off, anything like that?”

“No, nothing. There are scuff marks on top of the fence, though, right over here.”

He led them to the fence a few yards from the gate and pointed at the top of the wood. “I can get you a stool if you want. Rubber soles, slip resistant material. Size is a men’s nine through eleven.”

“So a male killer?” Michael asked.

“We believe so. The only reason I don’t say yes for sure was because of the Bitch of the Bay.”

Faith frowned. “Who?”

"The Bitch of the Bay. This was about nine years ago.

Killer would kidnap college boys from San Jose State and torture them over a period of twenty-four hours before breaking their necks and tossing them into the bay.

We all thought it was a pervert like Dahmer.

A guy, right? Turns out it was a woman. Professional weightlifter named Caroline Galton.

Six-two, two-thirty-five, arms like Ahhnold. "

He chuckled at his own joke. “Yeah, we never got a good motive from her. The boys weren’t sexually abused, and Caroline was a confirmed lesbian. We asked her why, and she would just shrug and say, ‘Just felt like it.’ She’s down in the Chowhouse. That’s the Central California Women’s Facility.”

Faith looked back to the studio. “Were the lights on when Cooper arrived?”

"Yeah, they were. The door was unlocked too, but there's no sign that the killer entered the studio."

“What about the homeless guy who called it in?” Michael asked. “He didn’t take anything?”

Ferris chuckled. “No, he saw the body and ran the other way. Found a donut shop a mile down the road, sat there and refused to move until we got there. Spent most of the time insisting that it wasn’t him.”

“Was it him?”

“No, we have him on security camera out by the strip mall on West and Fifth. He was there up until a half-hour before he called it in. With rigor already set, he couldn’t have been here when Monica was killed.”

Faith walked up the porch steps and opened the door. Turk trotted ahead of her, nose to the ground.

The studio was a fairly decent size for an art studio. This room contained a few canvases with half-finished oil paintings. Through one door, Faith could see clay statues—also in varying degrees of completion. Monica clearly took her side gig seriously.

She walked through a door at the opposite end of the room.

This door was slightly ajar. Faith opened it to see the actual working part of the studio.

Two brand-new Mac Pros hummed quietly on opposite corners of a desk.

Four monitors stretched across the desk, and when Faith tapped the mouse, all four of them opened to logos of Monica’s Design Studio.

“Haven’t had cybercrimes out to crack the password,” Ferris mentioned. “They usually start at nine. This being the San Francisco Bay Area, tech guys are revered like gods.”

There was a touch of sarcasm to his voice, but Faith wasn’t concerned with his genial animosity toward Cybercrimes. “Let me know what they find,” Faith said. “On the off chance any of them are afraid of the FBI, feel free to tell them that I will follow up personally if they drag their feet.”

Ferris chuckled. “It will be my pleasure to tell them that.”

“So what do you think, Faith?” Michael asked.

Faith looked at the desk chair. “Was this moved?” She asked Ferris.

“Nope. Cooper’s an old hat. He didn’t touch anything.”

Faith nodded. “So Monica Smith is sitting in front of her computer working on something. She hears a noise, gets up—”

“Oh,” Ferris interrupted. “Actually, she didn’t hear a noise.”

Faith lifted an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

“She was deaf.”

“Ah. So she didn’t hear a noise. Maybe she saw something and got up to check it out. She walks through her studio and enters the backyard. Then the killer sneaks up behind her, and that’s all she wrote.”

“That’s pretty much what we think happened,” Ferris said.

“Hmm. What about this other victim?”

"James Porter. He lived in San Francisco. Found dead two nights before last, strangled in his backyard, just like Monica. Also, just like Monica, he was deaf."

Faith tilted her head. “Did they know each other?”

“We’re looking into it, but Porter’s wife says no. He worked from home, and they had security cameras, so she doesn’t think he was stepping out on her and no one came into the house.”

“No one showed up on the security cameras?” Michael asked.

Ferris sighed. “Unfortunately, none of those cameras show the backyard. We can see Porter walking through the back door, but that’s it.”

“We’ll want to talk to the wife,” Faith said, “but we’ll finish up here, first.”

Ferris nodded. “Well, that’s pretty much all we have. I mean, the basics on the victim, I guess. She was twenty-seven, five-two, one-twenty, brown curly hair, hazel eyes. Nice smile going off her website.”

“Any sign of sexual assault?” Faith asked.

“No. No marks on her at all except for her throat. Not that sex isn’t a motive. Killers sometimes substitute the act of death for the act of orgasm. That’s especially true of stranglers. But you probably know that already.”

Ferris had watched too many TV shows, but Faith didn't say that out loud.

She returned to the studio, entering the sculpture room.

Most of the clay statues were of featureless male figures with lithe bodies and narrow jaws twisted into poses that were suggestive of pain, sexuality, anguish, and animal energy all at once.

Despite not having any features, the faces seemed to stare intensely at something in the distance.

She was good.

“Did she ever try to sell any of these?” Faith asked.

“You thinking the jealousy angle?” Ferris asked. “Disgruntled artistic competitor kills her in a fit of rage?”

Faith lifted an eyebrow. “I wasn’t, but that’s not a bad angle. We’ve seen jealous artists do similar things before.”

“I’ll look into it,” Ferris replied.

“Have you talked to the neighbors yet?” Michael asked.

Ferris shook his head. “The only folks who were open were the liquor store down the street. They didn’t notice anyone headed this way, but they admitted that they wouldn’t have paid attention if anyone did.

They face the cross street. I asked them about suspicious people, and the owner said, and I quote, ‘We’re a liquor store, man.

’” He grinned, but seeing the agents’ faces, he coughed and added, “But seriously, they said they didn’t notice anyone out of the ordinary. ”

“They busy on Monday nights?” Faith asked.

“They’re always busy.”

“What about the unit above the studio?” Michael asked. “Is that Monica’s?”

“No, that’s another guy. He’s not home, though.”

“Figure out who it is,” Faith told Ferris. “And track him down. He might know something.”

“I’ll do that,” Ferris replied. “In the meantime, if you guys are interested, I know a great breakfast place a mile from here. I could really use a ham and cheese croissant and a latte.”

“Same for me, but with a cappuccino instead,” Michael replied.

“Breakfast sounds good,” Faith added without volunteering her meal preference.

The group left the studio and took Ferris’s cruiser to the breakfast place, leaving Faith and Michael’s rental at the studio. Ferris invited Cooper to come with, but the uniformed officer declined and went home to have breakfast with his kids before school instead.

Turk looked subdued as they drove, and Faith reached over to scratch him behind the ear. “Never gets any easier, does it buddy?”

“What’s that?” Ferris asked.

“Oh, I’m talking to my K9,” Faith replied. “He gets a little down sometimes after looking at a crime scene.”

“I get that,” Ferris replied. “Dogs are empathetic creatures. My sister had a golden retriever once that used to cry during sad movies.”

Ferris was apparently one of those cops who needed to talk all the time. Faith didn’t mind that as long as they didn’t expect her to keep up with them. When she was on a case, she only talked when she was working through a problem.

She wondered who might have wanted to murder Monica. The connection between her and James Porter was their mutual deafness, but why would someone want to murder deaf people? It seemed an odd group to fixate on.

But then, she had seen many killers fixate on people for reasons that made no sense to a healthy brain.

It was even possible that their deaths had nothing to do with their hearing but were due to some as yet unknown commonality.

Or nothing at all. The worst killers were those like West, who picked their victims at random, not caring who they kill but just reveling in the vicious joy of murder.

And somewhere in the back of her mind and the streets of her city, another vicious killer lurked, perhaps waiting for the chance to send Faith another message.