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Then Turk hit Dr. Carpenter, planting all four paws on her chest and sending her sprawling to the ground. The needle passed harmlessly over her head and only a fraction of an inch over Turk’s nose.

The figure revealed when Dr. Carpenter was kicked out of the way stared at the investigators in shock. Faith’s eyes widened. The killer was a woman!

Slade recovered from the shock—if he had felt any shock at all—first. “Drop the syringe! Drop it now!”

He aimed his weapon at the woman and approached slowly. The killer was about five-foot-seven and a sturdy one hundred forty pounds or so. She looked to be in her early forties and had a few stray grays in her nutbrown hair.

Her eyes were wild, and her lips moved soundlessly as she muttered something under her breath. More importantly, she kept the syringe raised.

“Oh my God!” Dr. Carpenter shrieked. “Oh, God!”

She crawled backwards on her hands and knees, putting distance between herself and the killer. Turk bunched his shoulders, ready to pounce, but Faith called him off. “Turk! No! Go to the vet! Protect, Turk!”

Turk obediently ran to his place in front of Dr. Carpenter and turned around, teeth bared, ready to give his life to protect her if necessary. The killer’s eyes flicked toward the two of them, and Faith quickly ran to put herself in between them.

“Drop the syringe,” Faith said. “It’s over.”

“We know you’re trying to help,” Slade said, stopping well out of range of the syringe, “but it’s over now.”

The killer paused. Her lips stilled. She blinked, then smiled and said, “Hello. I’m Meredith Sawyer.”

Her voice was pleasant and soft. She looked at Slade and said, “You must be Officer Slade. Or no, you’re not wearing a uniform. Detective Slade, then.”

“I am.” Slade frowned. “Do you know me?”

“No. But you know me because you’re a detective. You detect. You detected that I was here. Good job. You’re a good detective. That must be why the police made you a detective.”

She inflected her words with an almost childlike innocence. Maybe they could reason with her, and this situation could end without anyone else getting hurt.

“I’m Special Agent Faith Bold,” Faith called.

The killer turned to her. “Faith Bold. Two good character traits. Faith in God. Boldness to do what is right. This is right. Rescuing people is right. Saving people is right.”

“What’s your name?” Faith asked.

“Meredith. Meredith Sawyer. Not Sawer. I don’t saw things. I’m not a carpenter. Jesus was a carpenter. Jesus was good. Jesus was a good carpenter.”

Dr. Carpenter burst out with, “What the ever-loving—”

Faith waved her hand to cut Dr. Carpenter off. The doctor clammed up, and Faith said, “Meredith, can we talk to you, please? Can you put the syringe down?”

“I can, but I won’t. So does that mean I can’t? I choose not to. I could, but it’s wrong, so I won’t.”

“Meredith, you’re not helping people,” Faith said. “This isn’t going to help Dr. Carpenter.”

“I have to help her. I have to save her. She did a bad thing, a very bad thing. Lots of bad things. Little bad things running around her soul, pointing at her and telling God, ‘Look! She’s bad! She’s bad, send her to Hell!’ But she didn’t mean to be bad. She tried to be good. She thought killing them would help them.”

“What the hell are you—”

“Dr. Carpenter, be quiet,” Faith said firmly. To Meredith, she said, “Can you put the syringe down, please? We can talk about helping her. We can talk about saving her, but I need you to put the syringe down.”

"Fifty-eight minutes to save her soul. Twenty-nine minutes to get here and twenty-nine minutes to save her soul. Fifty-eight minutes, but there's twenty-four left now. Maybe more because you won't let me save her." She frowned. "Why won't you let me save her?"

“You’re not saving her, Meredith. I know you think you are, but you’re not. You’re hurting her.”

“No, I’m not hurting her. I’m saving her. She thinks she’s helping them. She thinks she’s saving them, but she’s not. They don’t want to die. They never want to die. Ralphie didn't want to die. He tried to live. He looked up at me with his big eyes the color of chocolate drops, and he tried to tell me to help him. His paws scraped on the table that was made of aluminum mixed with chromium, and he tried to run away, but it was too late because the needle had bit him already. And he died, but he didn't want to die. He could have lived."

Her eyes began to flick rapidly back and forth. She was growing manic again. That was bad. They needed to get that syringe quickly, or she would lose control, and they’d be forced to shoot her.

“Meredith, who was Ralphie? Tell me who Ralphie was.”

“Ralphie was a good boy. He was a good dog. I loved him, and he loved me, and he trusted me, and he trusted Dr. Robertson.”

“Was Ralphie your dog, Meredith? Tell me about him.”

“Dr. Robertson was trying to help, but he was wrong, he was bad, he was wrong, wrong, wrong. I was too late to save him because he fell three hundred feet and shattered his skull on a rock in the Badlands of New Mexico. Now he’s in Hell, and he’ll never see pets again because he can’t go to Heaven because he’s in Hell, he’s in Hell, he’s in Hell, Hell, Hell !”

She shrieked and sprinted toward Faith. Faith was too startled to fire, but Turk leaped forward and caught Meredith by her wrist. The killer screamed as Turk dragged her to the ground.

Faith rushed forward and pried the syringe from Meredith’s fingers while Slade dropped onto her other arm and held her down.

“No!” Meredith screamed. “No, no, no, no! I’m helping… I’m saving… Oh God, no, don’t take her to Hell, please!”

“No one’s going to Hell, Meredith,” Faith promised her. “It’s okay.”

“No, please! He was a good dog! He was a good dog, and I’m a good dog, and I’m trying to save them because they’re good dogs too, they just don’t know! They don’t know, they don’t knooooow!”

Faith pulled the syringe away, tossing it to the floor and out of reach. Meredith went limp, weeping bitterly. Slade handcuffed her, and she offered no resistance as Turk released her other arm, allowing Slade to roll her over and finish cuffing her.

“I’m sorry,” Meredith wept. “I’m sorry, Ralphie. I’m sorry, Jesus. I’m sorry, Dr. Carpenter. I tried. I tried to save you, and I’m sorry.”

Faith glanced at Dr. Carpenter. Her face was white as a sheet, her mouth and eyes open wide with disbelief. Faith didn’t blame her. She had witnessed insanity for probably the first time in her life. Not to mention the fact that she’d narrowly avoided being killed.

“Dispatch, this is Carmel PD Badge four-two-eight. I’m at six-forty-seven Gap Road, Cumberland. Send EMS and a wagon, please. We have one suspect, female Caucasian, five-foot-seven, one-forty. She’s in severe emotional distress. We’ll need to take her to the hospital, then figure out who’s going to process her.”

A stunned dispatcher acknowledged the call and informed them that units were on the way. Faith and Slade shared a look. There was no triumph on either of their faces. This wasn’t the first time Faith had arrested a killer whose sense of reality was too warped for them to understand right and wrong. She couldn’t feel good about sending someone to jail who didn’t understand what she was doing.

She felt good about saving an innocent vet, though. She turned to Dr. Carpenter and asked, “Are you all right? Do you require medical assistance?”

Carpenter blinked. “Medical… No, no, I’m fine. Was she… was she going to kill me?”

Faith sighed. “Yes, ma’am. She thought she was… well, it doesn’t matter. It’s over now.”

“Noooo!” Meredith wailed. “I’m sorry, God!”

Turk whined mournfully, and Faith reached over and stroked his fur. “I know, boy. I know.”

***

Faith accepted the cup of coffee Slade handed her and looked at the EMS wagon. Meredith was strapped down firmly, a good precaution but a pointless one. Meredith hadn't shown any signs of violence since Faith took the syringe from her.

“So we won,” Slade said. “Yay.”

Faith chuckled softly. “Yeah. That was a rough one.”

“You know, I didn’t feel sorry for her until I saw her. I bought your whole theory about the killer trying to help people. I knew that she was doing what she thought was right, but I didn’t care. I wanted to stop her, and I wanted to enjoy watching her realize that she failed. But… after I saw that…”

His voice trailed off, and they watched in silence as the EMS moved away. The Cumberland PD officers gave the two of them a thumbs up. They’d already talked and agreed to meet in the morning to wrap up the paperwork necessary to give Cumberland PD authority in the case. Slade figured it would be better to keep Carmel out of it since they were still embarrassed over the issue with Faith.

As for Faith? Well, this would probably mean the end of her career. Soon, she would feel a whole slew of emotions about that, but right now, she was all right with it. She’d caught another bad guy. She’d saved another innocent. That’s what really mattered.

Still, she felt the same as Slade did. Meredith Sawyer wasn’t really bad. She was just a disturbed woman who had lost her dog and then her mind and tried in the only way she knew how to make sure others didn’t have to suffer the same fate she was sure she would.

Slade chuckled. “You know, my old partner, he was a long-term veteran. Fifty-one years.”

Faith’s eyes widened. “Really?”

"Yeah. He was seventy-three when he retired. He told me something when he left that I didn't really understand until now. He said, 'The ones that hurt are the ones that think you're the criminal.' I kind of put that to the whole All Cops Are Bastards thing. Like it hurts to hear people call you names because they hate the badge. Now I'm thinking he was talking about people like Meredith, people who think that they're doing the right thing and you're wrong to stop them."

Faith nodded. She was pretty sure that Slade’s partner couldn’t have predicted a killer like Meredith and probably was referring to that small but very loud minority of citizens that thought wearing a badge meant that you were an evil person. But who knows? In fifty-one years, you saw a lot. Even in quiet towns like Carmel that had never seen a killer like Meredith before.

It made sense in another way, too. Faith was right to help Slade. She was right to try to stop Meredith. More people would have died if she hadn’t, including Dr. Carpenter, who was now on her way to a different hospital from Meredith to be checked out despite her assurances that she was fine.

She was right to fight Tabitha and Smythe and everyone when they tried to stop her. She was right to do the right thing regardless of the risk.

She was right, but Tabitha still thought she was a criminal. The news still highlighted her mistakes and decided that her mistakes were all that mattered. People still commented online that she was a fascist who was worse than West.

And it did hurt. It hurt very much. But it wouldn’t stop her.

She reached for Turk, who sat loyally by her side. “Good dog. You’re a damned good dog.”

Turk looked at her and barked with a touch of confusion. Of course I am. Are you all right?

She laughed. “I’m good, boy. As long as I have you, I’m good.”

Slade smiled at the two of them. “Maybe I should get myself a dog.”

“You should,” Faith agreed. “They’re worth every second of pain you’ll feel when it’s time to let them go.”

Slade’s smile softened but didn’t disappear. “Yes. I think you’re right.” He stood. “Come on. I’ll take you back home. I hate to end our liaison by kicking you out of my fine neighborhood, but this place is going to become a media madhouse pretty soon here. It’s probably in your best interests to get out of Dodge before Dodge becomes Hell on Wheels.”

“A double Old West reference. Nice.”

The three of them headed to the car. Slade drove them much more cautiously and slowly back to Carmel. Faith watched the lights of the Restful River Animal Hospice Facility fade into the background and felt a touch of melancholy.

One day, Turk would find his restful river. She doubted he'd ever go into hospice. He was the kind of dog who would need to feel the wind in his face when he passed on. And it would hurt like hell when he kept running, and Faith needed to stay behind.

But he was here now. And the love she felt for him was worth all of the pain she would feel when it was time to let him go.

She ruffled his fur and said, “I love you, buddy.”

Turk might not be able to speak English, but there was no mistaking his meaning when he laid his head against her chest.