Page 27 of So Savage (Faith Bold #21)

"A reign of terror came to a swift and brutal end last night when Duluth Police rescued Sergeant Jennifer Martinez from the clutches of a crazed murderer. Peter Kane, a former Marine K9 officer who was dishonorably discharged for assaulting his commanding officer, was killed in a tense standoff with police in the hangar of the defunct Birding General Aviation Airport. According to the lead officer on the case, Detective Marcus Waring, Kane was responsible for the murders of Master Sergeant Thomas Reeves and Army Staff Sergeant Kevin Walsh along with the savage beating of Air Force Technical Sergeant Maria Delgado."

Faith smiled at Marcus and lifted her coffee while the news report detailed how they’d found Jennifer and Kane. Marcus chuckled and lifted his own. “To an end to this bullshit.”

“To the bullshit to follow.”

Marcus laughed again. “Yeah, you know how it goes. That’s what we do, right?”

“If not us, then who?” Faith quipped. “Honestly, though, good work back there.”

“Me? You’re the one who figured it all out.”

“You found the airport sticker. You made sure the right pieces were in the right places so we could respond to the situation. Don’t sell yourself short. I might have been the silent partner, but that doesn’t mean you’re just a mouthpiece.”

“Well… thank you. I admit, it feels nice to save a life instead of just figure out who took one.”

“It’s a good feeling,” Faith agreed.

“Channel Seven spoke with doctors at the hospital this morning, and they say that Maria Delgado is expected to make a full recovery.”

The news feed cut to an image of a serious-looking doctor standing in front of the hospital. “I’m not at liberty to share details for patient privacy reasons, but I can say with confidence that Miss Delgado will leave this hospital walking under her own power within a few weeks. She has a tough road ahead of her, but she’s in good spirits, and I and the rest of her care team believe she’ll be back to one hundred percent eventually.”

“That feels good too,” Marcus said.

“Yes,” Faith agreed. “Thank God for that.” She grinned. “You know this is the first case I’ve worked in years where I caught the serial killer before he killed another victim?”

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? I guess I should be honored.”

“Yeah. We always get them, but they just move so fast nowadays. I mean, Delgado surviving was because Kane didn’t know he hadn’t finished the job, but it still feels good.”

Marcus smiled, but it was a brief smile this time and replaced with a pensive look. “They do move fast these days, don’t they? Back in the day, you had guys like Bundy, Rader, Gacy, Dahmer… They killed a lot of people, but they did it over the course of months and years. Now you have a lot of people dropping three, four, five people in as many weeks. Sometimes in as many days.”

He shook his head and took another sip of his coffee. “My brother’s a criminal justice professor. I talked to him about this a few months ago, and he said that it’s likely things like this have been going on forever, it’s just that we know about it more now because the internet has made all of this information accessible and police departments tend to share information and seek help rather than conceal information.”

“He might be right,” Faith said. I like it a lot more than my hypothesis.

Her hypothesis was that the sensationalism surrounding Jethro Trammell had led to a rise in “emulators.” Most of those emulators were disturbed people like Kane who had their own petty vendettas to air out, but a few, like Franklin West and Kenneth Langeveldt—known as the Family Man for his penchant for paralyzing groups of three people at a time to stand in for his parents and his sister—saw Trammell as an artist and aspired to reach that level as murderers themselves.

Then again, did she really want killing sprees to be a longtime historical trait of humanity? At least with the emulator hypothesis, you could argue that it was an anomaly that could be corrected. If it was instead—as Marcus suggested—something people had always been doing, then it meant humanity was fated to repeat this cycle for the rest of its existence.

She finished the rest of her coffee and stood. “Marcus, it was a pleasure to work with you. Feel free to call me anytime you need help.”

He stood and took her outstretched hand. “I’d like to call you from time to time, but if you don’t mind me saying, I’d prefer to do so as a friend rather than a colleague. I’d just as soon not have to deal with any more serial killers in Duluth. It’s bad enough that it’s colder than Jack Frost’s ass out here.”

Faith laughed and pulled Marcus into an embrace. “I’d like that too.”

***

Back at the hotel, Faith found herself dwelling on the emulator hypothesis. It wasn’t a perfect theory by any means, but it made too much sense for her to dismiss it out of hand.

Jethro Trammell wasn't the first "celebrity" serial killer by any means, but he was the first in a long time to be treated almost as a hero. He was a seven-foot-tall farmer who had dropped out of high school, but despite this, he'd successfully evaded the FBI for months. He'd killed at least seven and possibly as many as eleven people in horrifying fashion, and the theatricality of his method rivaled the most appalling of murders. Faith should know. He'd been in the middle of that method when Michael rescued her.

And that was perhaps the most damning thing Trammell had done. His seven murders included a senior FBI field agent who was at the time the best agent in the Bureau and the severe injury of another FBI field agent who became the most celebrated agent in the Bureau.

He’d made them look like fools. That’s what made him famous.

And then came Franklin West. In many ways, he was the opposite of Jethro Trammell. He was of average height and slight build. He had a gentle voice and thinning hair, and by the time he became known to the world, he was in his mid-forties. He looked utterly non-threatening, but the truth was that, in any objective sense, he was far more dangerous than Trammell. Trammell had considerable low cunning, but West was actually intelligent. Brutally so. It was a wonderful coincidence that he was also insane, or he might never have made the mistakes that eventually led to his capture.

But now, he had become more famous than Trammell. He was known to have killed thirty-two people, although he claimed to Faith to have killed almost twice that many. He had also murdered a senior FBI agent and tormented another. His M.O., at least during the period which the authorities knew about, was very similar to Trammell's because he worshipped Trammell like a Messiah.

And now there was the Messenger. She had already killed a senior FBI agent and was actively taunting another. The same agent that Trammell had tortured, and West had psychologically tormented.

Faith flinched as it hit her for the first time that she was the link between all three. Three t dangerous serial killers had all been obsessed with her. How long would it be before the wider public fixated on that narrative?

Her phone buzzed, causing her to flinch again and cry out loudly enough that Turk jumped to his feet and scanned the room for threats. Unfortunately, this was a threat that Turk couldn’t help her with.

“Easy, boy. It’s just my boss.”

Not the Boss. That was a title that would always be reserved for Grant Monroe.

She answered. “Hello, ma’am.”

“Special Agent Bold,” ASAC Tabitha Gardner replied. “Congratulations on solving this case.”

“Thank you.”

Tabitha took a deep breath and released it slowly. Faith wondered if she had to exaggerate that so Faith could hear it over the phone.

“I’ve spoken with your partner, Special Agent Prince.”

Faith’s brow furrowed. “Michael talked to you?”

“He did. He and Special Agent Desrouleaux elected to interrupt a meeting between me and Deputy Director Smythe.” Her tone told Faith that she wasn’t at all happy about that interruption. “They told me they had worked with you on a new hypothesis about the Messenger Killer.”

“Oh?” Faith replied neutrally. She wasn’t sure exactly where Tabitha was going with this yet.

“Yes. They are of the opinion that the Messenger Killer is not obsessed with you so much as she’s obsessed with Franklin West. It seems that some evidence”—she said it like a curse word—“has come to light that suggests the Messenger Killer has been in correspondence with Mr. West. The content of some of those letters is… shall we say, intriguing.”

“I see,” Faith said, still noncommittal.

There was a brief pause. Then Tabitha dropped the professional act. “Okay, let’s cut the bullshit. Your partner snooped around on a case that wasn’t his and got extremely lucky. He found evidence that has turned a case we were trying to keep quiet into yet another media clusterfuck, only this time, we’re going to do it to ourselves because his royal highness Smythe has decided that we should publish the communications between one serial killer and another to root out the currently active killer.”

“I’m sorry if I made trouble for you, ma’am, but I’d like to clarify something. My partner didn’t get extremely lucky. He used his high-level deductive skills to postulate a hypothetical motivation for a known serial killer’s actions, then gathered evidence that ended up supporting that hypothesis. The short version of what I just said is that he’s a good detective. He detected the answer and brought the Bureau much closer to finding this killer.”

“Ex cuse me?”

“Ma’am, I don’t mean to be rude, but you walked into one of the most active field offices in the United States and tried to run it by the book. There’s a reason why your agents aren’t following your instructions. We’ve achieved great success in the past because we were allowed to operate in a manner that’s comfortable to us, not simply follow the letter of the law.”

Faith didn’t know how wise it was to speak to her superior—even an acting superior—like this, but Tabitha had a particular skill at getting Faith’s blood up.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that your predecessor thought it was all right to let you act like a bunch of little sailboats making your own merry way throughout the world, but that’s not how I’m going to run my field office. It’s just not acceptable . Why should you all be allowed to break rules when no one else is?”

“Because we’re very good at catching bad guys, ma’am.”

Tabitha was quiet for so long that Faith thought she might have hung up. Before she asked if Tabitha was still on, though, the ASAC said tonelessly, “At Director Smythe’s request, you will return to Philadelphia and resume your duties as a field agent at this office. I’m emailing your flight information now.”

She hung up, and Faith smiled with excitement. Tabitha hadn’t directly said that Faith was being given the Messenger case, but there was no other reason why she would be brought back to Philadelphia. If not immediately, then soon, Faith would finally be able to directly address the killer who was taunting her.

She smiled at Turk. “Change of plans, Turk. Cousin Eddie’s party will have to wait a little longer. We’re going back home.

“And when we get there, we’re going to catch another bad guy.”