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This scene was no different from any of the others. Faith had to hand it to their killer. He was nothing if not consistent. “Are you sure I’m okay to be here?” she asked Slade.

“For now, yes. If someone says something, I might have to send you away, but I’m firmly entrenched in the philosophy of ask for forgiveness not permission, at least as it pertains to this case.”

His words were bold, but his tone was lifeless. Faith didn't blame him. All of the work they had done, all of the risks they had taken, and yet here they were staring at another dead body. Another victim was taken regardless of every effort they'd made to prevent it.

“Victim is Dr. Jessica Lee, forty-four. She is a licensed veterinarian, but she didn’t have a clinic or general practice. She wasn’t an animal surgeon either. She ran an animal hospice in Sheridan.”

Lee was a petite, attractive woman who looked far younger than her years. Faith was grateful that this killer took his victims without mutilating them. At the very least, their families could identify them without being scarred even further.

Then again, this was pretty scarring. The more Faith looked at the stoneware jars of honey and wine and the bright yellow flowers placed carefully over the victim’s eyes, the more it seemed somehow worse than if she’d been shot or bludgeoned to death. The respect the killer showed the victim was an affront, a mockery of the respect they should have been shown.

Turk carefully sniffed around the body, picking up clues that could later be used to identify their killer. The problem was that in order for Turk’s clues to work, they had to have a lead. Turk couldn’t find a needle in a haystack the size of the Greater Indianapolis area. That was up to Faith and Slade.

She wished Michael was here. His perspective on things always helped Faith know which direction to look. Faith might get the credit for solving most of their cases, but without Michael to bounce ideas off of, she was adrift. She needed him. No offense to Slade who was doing a damned good job for a suburban cop who’d probably never had anything more challenging than a garden variety murder of a spouse to deal with before now, but he didn’t have the instincts that Michael had.

Her stomach turned. Garden variety murder? She shook her head and looked away from the body. This job was desensitizing her too much.

“Did Dr. Lee attend the veterinary panel with the other victims last year?” she asked Slade.

He shook his head. “No. I checked the list when we got here. She wasn’t invited.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“None provided, but she wasn’t unique. A lot of other vets weren’t invited. At first glance, it looks like the vets at the panel were primarily clinicians and surgeons. I don’t know much about veterinary medicine, but maybe animal hospice care is still an outlier industry. In any case, our other three victims were at the conference, so I don’t know if it tells us anything that Lee wasn’t.”

Turk snorted and looked mournfully at Faith. He hadn’t found anything new here.

“That’s okay, boy,” Faith said. “Mommy’s not doing a very good job either.”

“I don’t get what we’re missing,” Slade said. “I feel like this should be obvious. They were all vets. Three of them were female vets in their forties, too.” His eyes widened. “Do you think that might have something to do with it? Like, maybe this guy hates female vets?”

Faith shook her head. “No. Chen was male. Serial killers don’t step outside of their boxes. There’s no such thing as a ‘one-off’ kill. If he hated female vets, Chen would still be alive.”

Slade sighed. “Yeah. I guess that should have been obvious.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “God, I just feel like I’m in so far over my head.”

“That’s normal,” Faith replied. “I wish I could tell you it gets better.”

“Hey, thanks for the encouragement,” Slade said. “Makes me feel a whole lot better.”

“I’m in the same boat you are.”

He crossed his arms and shook his head, staring intently down at Lee’s body as though looking at her long enough might tell him everything he needed to know. “I just feel like we’re so close. I feel like the answer is right there if we can only reach down and grab it.”

Faith smiled slightly. “My partner and I sometimes describe cases like this as puzzles. Each crime scene and each lead gives us a few more pieces of the puzzle but always edge pieces, parts that don’t tell us what the picture is. The more pieces we get without that final piece, the more frustrating it is not to have that whole picture.”

“The more answers you get, the more questions bother you,” Slade summarized. “Yeah, my old mentor talked about that. He said you have to learn to be patient and follow the evidence, even if that means taking the scenic route to the answer and not the direct route.” He shook his head. “It’s just hard to do that when your killer is dropping people at a rate of more than one per night. You realize he killed two people last night?”

He sighed and rubbed his face again. “What am I saying? Of course you do. Damn, I hate this.”

“Let’s focus on Lee,” Faith said. “Did she have any complaints of malpractice? Any complaints of any kind?”

“I don’t know yet. Let me look.”

He pulled his phone out and sat on a gravestone. The stone informed Faith that Brutus was the best dog ever, and that Zoey and Mikey couldn’t wait to see him in Heaven. She looked at Turk and a powerful image came to her of laying him to rest and kneeling in front of his gravestone.

Dogs had such short lifespans. Almost all pets did. They lived for a decade or two, but they left memories that lasted a lifetime. They were all the best qualities of humanity distilled into bright, perfect stars that blazed brilliantly and never truly faded.

Many of Faith’s cases involved crimes against animals or vengeance taken against those who harmed animals. She hated that. It suggested that animals could sometimes pull the worst out of people and not just the best.

Except that wasn’t true. The bitter, brutal truth was that some people were just the worst. Some people had a warped and twisted sense of love and justice. Some people didn’t have a sense of either.

But why vets? Why people who helped animals? This was the first time Faith could recall where people who helped animals were targeted. Dr. Patel had made a mistake and harmed an animal, but she was the only one. It made sense to kill her. Well, not really, but from the perspective of a vengeful killer, it did. But the others? Why?

“No complaints,” Slade said. “She had a clean record. Her animal hospice was ranked number fourteen in the country and number two in the state of Indiana. She was divorced once, no kids, but according to records, the divorce was amicable, and the ex-husband moved to South Korea.”

“And there’s no connection at all with the other three?”

“No. She went to school in Washington State and had a practice in Wyoming until the divorce seven years ago. Moved here and as far as I can tell so far, she wasn’t affiliated with any of the major animal hospitals or medical centers.”

“What about patients? Animals that might have been seen by all of our victims at one point or another?”

“That’s going to be a project to uncover, but I’ll get my team started on it. Not like we have anything better to do.

Faith should try to encourage him and tell him that they'd find an answer eventually, but she wasn't any more confident than he was. Or rather, she was confident that they'd find an answer eventually, but not that they'd find it in time. Indianapolis could only run interference for her for so long before her location was leaked. Then, she would be a liability to Slade and not an asset. Slade's time on the case was numbered too. The other detective would be able to take over soon, and then they'd both be on the outside.

Then, God knew how long it would take them to find answers. It could be like the West case where keeping Faith away meant years before he was caught but he would be forced to lay low. Or it could be like so many other cases where the killer kept killing, and no one managed to stop him until he got old and tired and decided to stop.

Slade sighed and stood. "Well, that's all we can learn so far. We know that the killer hates vets. That's about it. That's true, and he's a freak who likes Celtic mythology. We know that if we don't figure out an answer soon, we're both going to be put on timeout, where we'll get to sit on the sideline and watch more people die without being able to do anything about it. We know… not enough. That’s what we know. Not enough.”

Faith didn’t reply. She didn’t have anything helpful to say. Slade was right. That’s what it all boiled down to. They didn’t know enough.

The three of them turned the scene over to CSI. With nothing more for them to learn unless they were handed a miracle, Slade drove Faith to Jacob’s house.

The sky was nearly dark when they reached her home. Another day spent learning nothing. Two more vets dead and another night approaching. Slade dropped her off with nothing more than a simple good night, but Faith was sure that he was thinking the same thing she was.

How many more would die tonight?