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Slade met Faith in the lobby. His lips were thin, and his eyes narrowed in a scowl. He grabbed her arm when she walked inside and gently turned her around. “We need to talk away from the station,” he said quietly. “We’re very unpopular here right now.”

“We can go to Jacob’s place,” Faith suggested. “He’ll be at work for a few more hours, so he won’t interrupt us.”

“I’m not worried about Jacob interrupting us,” Slade replied. “And I have a lead.”

“You have a lead?”

“Shh. I’ll tell you about it in the car.”

When they left the lobby, he took his hand off of her arm and led them to his car. He didn’t speak again until they left the parking lot.

“So that was fun.”

“Your boss rip you a new one too?” Faith asked.

“Oh yeah. He was under the impression that I had formally requested the FBI’s help and gotten permission to work with you. He was less than pleased to learn that I had just asked you for help at a crime scene.”

“I see. Sorry about that.”

“I’m not. Between you and me, I really don’t give a shit if the brass gets their feathers ruffled. My job is to catch killers. If they want a politician, they can hire a politician.”

Faith perked up a little. “I agree. What do they want us to do? Just let people die so the right I’s are dotted and the right t’s are crossed?”

“They want to win reelections and earn promotions,” Slade agreed. “That’s all it is. They disguise it as ‘the greater good,’ but that’s bullshit. It’s just the greater looking good.”

“Exactly,” Faith said, perking up even further. The sting of Tabitha’s rebuke was fading. “I’m not going to fold my hands and curtsy just because it makes people look better.”

“Me either. Glad we’re on the same page.”

Turk barked his own agreement.

“And he makes three,” Faith said, reaching back to scratch Turk under his chin. “And you said you had a lead?”

“I do. A customer of Dr. Foster’s. Kid named Alex Winters.”

“An actual kid or just a younger adult?”

“Everyone under thirty is a kid to me,” Slade replied. “He’s twenty-five.”

“You’re over thirty?”

Slade grinned. “I’ll be forty next week.”

“Wow. You look good.”

“Thank you, but we can flirt later. This kid Alex is a lot more attractive to me right now.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s one of Foster’s pentobarbital customers. Most recent sale was a week ago, for thirty days’ supply of pills. That’s enough to kill our three victims. I looked through the security footage for the sites of our murders. I didn’t place him at the exact scenes of the crimes—those aren’t covered by cameras—but I confirmed that he was at the pet cemetery where Dr. Patel was murdered on the night of her death.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep. Camera caught him walking right through the graveyard wearing a black hoodie and black gloves. Thankfully no ski mask, so we have a nice look at his face.”

“Wonderful! And your department doesn’t know about this?”

“Nope. They might figure it out eventually, but I’m hoping that the delay caused by transferring the case to another detective will give us time to close it. I’m sure you know that the positive press of closing a case successfully always outweighs the negative internal press of not following rules.”

Faith wasn’t sure that was the case for her any longer, but she could deal with those consequences later. “I’m in. Let’s go get him.”

“And what a coincidence. Here we are at the pet store where he works.”

Slade parked the vehicle, and the three investigators jumped out and walked inside.

Squeaks and Giggles was a small family-owned shop, and the three of them, plus the three shocked employees and three equally shocked customers, made for a tight fit. The birds, lizards and rodents that comprised most of the store's animals didn't take well to the presence of a large predator, and the cacophony of fearful and indignant calls added to the chaos.

One of the employees—a tall, gangly young man with a shock of messy dark hair and eyes that Faith could generously call vacuous—tried to take advantage of that chaos to run through the back door. Turk caught him at the end of the hallway, jumping up and landing onto the young man with all fours and slamming him into the back door. He sank to the ground and cowered, competing with a particularly insistent cockatiel to see who could shriek the loudest in the store.

Faith and Slade walked over to him. “Okay, Turk,” Faith said.

Turk backed away but remained ready to pounce at a moment’s notice should the suspect try to flee again.

“Alex Winters?” Slade asked.

“I’m clean, man!” Alex cried. “I swear to God!”

“The anthem of dirty people everywhere,” the detective replied drily. “Come on. Let’s go have a nice talk.”

Faith hauled Alex to his feet and opened the back door. The other people in the store were too shocked to do anything but stare as the four of them left.

“Man, you guys are trippin’” Alex complained. “I’m clean, bro, I promise.”

“Doubt it,” Faith said, “but that’s not what we’re here for.”

Alex’s brow furrowed. “What? You’re not shaking me down?”

“Not for drugs.”

She led them to a stone retaining wall at the back of the strip mall and made Alex sit on the wall.

“Okay, Alex,” Slade said. “Let’s make this short and sweet. You were seen on camera at Deer Ridge Pet Cemetery on the night of Dr. Lisa Patel’s murder.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Lisa Patel. She was killed by a pentobarbital injection and posed in a ring of stones in the cemetery.”

“What? What the hell?”

“Yeah, that’s what we said,” Slade agreed. “Pretty messed up stuff. You want to tell us about it?”

“I didn’t see anything, man. Come on, I was just walking home.”

“That’s a pretty long walk from here,” Faith said. “What is that, eleven miles?”

“I didn’t walk from here. I walked from my night job.”

“Your night job?”

“Yeah. I work at a liquor store on one-thirty-first street.”

“What time did you work Tuesday night?”

“I work seven to eleven every night. It’s only a two-mile walk back home if I cut through the cemetery, so I leave my car at home to save on gas.”

“You walk for forty-five minutes in the cold every night to save two dollars in gas?” Slade challenged.

“Hey, you want to pay my bills for me?” Alex retorted. “Go ahead. Otherwise, I need to save every bit I can.”

“Yeah, those fines and restitutions must be tough,” Slade replied. “How much do you owe for your theft conviction?”

“Like four k still.”

“Ouch. Looks like crime doesn’t pay.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Yeah, thanks for the lecture, dude. Super helpful.”

“Well, I’ll bet my badge you have drugs on you now, so if getting a lecture doesn’t help, how about I search you.”

Alex blanched. “Come on, man, I wasn’t doing anything.”

“What were you doing on Tuesday night?” Faith asked.

“Walking home! I told you.”

“So you don’t know anything about the murders of Dr. Rachel Summers, Dr. Lisa Patel and Dr. Mark Chen?”

"No! You can call my Boss. I was at the liquor store until eleven, then I went straight home."

“Was there anyone at your house who can confirm that you went straight home?” Faith asked.

Alex swallowed. “No. But you have me on camera, right? You can see what time I walked through the cemetery, right?”

“We can see what time you showed up,” Slade agreed, “but not how long you stayed or when you left. You would have had more than enough time to kill Dr. Patel and stage her body.”

“Okay, so I happened to be there at that cemetery. What about the other two? Were they killed in the same place?”

Slade’s lips thinned slightly. “No.”

“And do you have evidence of me being at the other place? Or places?”

His lips thinned even further. No, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t there.”

“Man, when do I have time to murder people? Monday and Saturday are my only days off, and I have a diversion program I have to go to on Monday and community service on Saturday. The other days, I work twelve hours. I wake up, eat breakfast, go to the pet store, eat dinner at the taco place, go to the liquor store, go home, shower, and then sleep and wake up to do it all over again. If someone beat me up and stole my car, I wouldn’t have time to flip them off.”

“You poor boy,” Faith said sarcastically.

She was beginning to worry, though. She was excited to hear about Slade’s lead at first, but if they verified Alex’s employment history, then it would be a serious challenge for him to have committed the murders. And he didn’t seem to know any of the victims at all. She had a bad feeling that the two of them had grabbed at a straw that turned out to be a coincidence.

“How did you know Dr. Rachel Summer?” Faith asked, watching his face closely.

He showed no sign of recognition. Only annoyance tinged with fear and desperation. “I didn’t know the bitch! Or the other two!”

“Yeah, she’s not a bitch, Alex,” Slade interjected. “She’s a person with loved ones who was murdered and left like a damned sculpture so some whack job could get his ego stroked. So how about a little more respect?”

“Also,” Faith said. “You did know her. She sold you drugs.”

Alex blinked, but he kept his bravado when he replied. “Man, you dragged me out of my job, threatened to have me eaten by a dog and accused me of killing three people just because I walk home from work. Y’all are trippin’. But seriously, I didn’t know them, okay? My drug dealer called herself Candy. Maybe that was one of them. I don’t know. I make it a point not to be— made it a point not to be nosy about my dealers. Call my Boss. Talk to my manager here. I'm trying to get clean, bruh. Like seriously. I just work and go home and go to my community service and my diversion program. That’s it. Ain’t nothing worth catching a murder charge.”

“You’re trying to stay clean, but you were caught making a drug purchase from Dr. Foster the week before?”

Alex stiffened and looked back at the liquor store. “I ain’t never murdered anybody. That’s what you’re here for, right? You don’t care about the drugs. I didn’t kill anyone. I do drugs— did drugs sometimes—but that doesn’t make me a murderer.”

Faith and Slade shared a look. Slade sighed. "Okay, stay here. Give Special Agent Bold your Boss's number at the liquor store. I'll go talk to your manager inside."

He turned around, but his phone began to ring before he could take a step. He pulled it from his pocket, and Faith watched his face fall. “All right,” he said after a moment. “Thank you for calling me. I’ll be right there.”

He hung up and sighed. “That was the chief,” he told Faith. “It’s going to be a day or two before Rory can take over, so he needs me to handle the scene.”

“The scene?” Faith asked. “What scene?”

Then Slade lifted his eyes to hers, and she knew. She lifted her hands to her head and looked up at the afternoon sky. “Shit.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

Faith turned to Alex. “You’re still not off the hook,” she said. “Where were you last night?”

"Home, man. I told you, that's all…" His eyes popped open. "Wait. No! I was at my Boss's house last night!"

“From here or the liquor store?”

“The liquor store. Yeah, she invited me over.”

“To do what?”

Alex blushed a little. “I mean… you know.”

Faith rolled her eyes. “All right. You’re free to go.”

Alex slumped with relief. “Thank you, man, thank you. Hey, I’m sorry I said y’all were trippin’.”

“Quit the drugs, Alex,” Faith suggested. “They’re bad for you.”

“Yeah, for sure. I’ll try, man.”

On their way back to the car, Slade asked, “You don’t want to call the boss just to make sure?”

“I’ll call her on the way to the crime scene,” Faith replied. “But I think we both know this one was a dud.”

Slade sighed. “Yeah, I know. Damn it.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Faith said. “It happens.”

Slade didn’t look comforted by that. That was perfectly fine because Faith wasn’t comforted by it either.

They got in the car without another word and left to look at the latest dead body their killer had left behind for them.