So Alone, page 7
“So you and Gerald fought the morning you left. Did he seem particularly upset or out of sorts to you? Argument aside.”
Jeanie chuckled. “No, he was his usual pompous self. I didn’t notice any change in behavior at all. Not in thirty-five years together.” She sipped her tea and continued. “When I met him, I was knocked head over heels by that arrogance. I suppose many girls are foolish that way. But no, I noticed nothing that would have suggested to me that my last words to him would have been spiteful.”
Her lower lip trembled for a brief moment when she said that, and Faith felt a flash of sympathy for her. She recalled something she read once, that familiarity was a stronger bond even than love. Gigi Demetrious may have been a horrible mother and Jeanie and Gerald Conway may have suffered a terrible marriage, but both had lost a main pillar of their lives.
“Did your husband have any enemies who might have wanted him dead?” Faith asked gently.
Jeanie offered another bitter smile. “Many people aren’t sorry to see him gone,” she replied, “but no one hated him enough to have him torn apart by dogs. Well, maybe the dogs. Gerald was never a dog person. We had a dog and fought constantly over it. Still, as much of an asshole as he could be, he didn’t deserve such a brutal end.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Faith said.
Jeanie sighed. “People lose things every day, agent. The world goes on.”
CHAPTER SIX
Faith crouched down to examine the footprints. There were only a few remaining, but they were left in mud that hardened the next day, preserving the outline clearly.
Coyotes.
“Well, those are for sure coyote prints,” Tom confirmed, standing over her. “Bite marks might show that dogs were a part of it, but there were coyotes involved for sure.”
Faith stood and looked down the trail where Turk looked for a scent to follow under Michael’s supervision. “It’s possible that the coyotes arrived after the dogs left,” she said, “if there were large dogs involved, they would have waited for the dogs to leave before they ate the scraps.”
“That could be true, Special Agent,” Tom replied, “but when you hear hoofbeats, you don’t think water buffalo.”
“Fair point,” Faith conceded.
Very little remained of the crime scene five days after Gerald's death. The blood itself had been licked clean by animals. Nature was cold and cruel, and there was no sanctity in death. Aside from the footprints and a bit of disturbed ground where Gerald had tried to flee his attackers, there was nothing to indicate that a man had died here less than a week ago.
“So both of our victims were assholes,” Tom thought aloud. “I guess in a way their end is poetic justice.”
“Murder isn’t justice, Sheriff,” Faith said curtly.
Tom shrugged. “Maybe not to you or I, but our killer might see things differently.”
Faith was taken aback slightly at his response. He was right. She had been focusing on her judgment of Tom’s cavalier attitude and had completely missed the wisdom of his statement. “Good point,” she said. “So we’re looking for someone taking justice into their own hands.”
He shrugged again. “I still think we have a fair chance of looking at a wild animal, but if it is a human-engineered death, then I imagine whoever did this felt perfectly justified in killing his victims. One thing I don’t understand is why he killed them so far apart.”
“Maybe they were killings of opportunity,” Faith said. “Gerald liked to hike in this park.”
“Gigi Demetrious almost certainly didn’t enjoy nighttime excursions to an abandoned industrial lot,” Tom countered.
“It’s possible that he killed Gerald spur of the moment,” Faith said. “First victims usually differ slightly from later victims. The killer hasn’t perfected his or her M.O. That’s why the first victim is usually the most important to an investigation.
“Too bad our first victim left us almost nothing to go on.”
Faith nodded agreement. “Yeah. Our killer might have been better off keeping his murders out of town.”
Michael and Turk returned then. “Nothing,” Michael said. “Not that I expected anything. Turk did his best, but there are animals all over the place out here. I can’t imagine he’d have any luck finding the exact coyotes who killed Gerald.”
“We should ask local residents and see if they’ve seen anything,” Tom replied.
“The nearest residents are miles away,” Faith reminded him.
“There’s a neighborhood two miles from where we’re standing,” Tom said, pointing at a collection of houses on a hillside to the west. “They could have seen something. And the night watchmen in the industrial park might have seen something. It’s a long shot, but it’s better than no shot. And if it is wild animals, then we need to start thinking about a more coordinated response.”
Faith had to admit he was right. She was not a believer in the efficacy of canvassing, but she had no leads to work on. The sheriff’s department hadn’t come up with anything from Gigi’s employees and Gerald’s business partners were more concerned with who would buy out Gerald’s share than the fact he was dead or who might have caused it. They all had alibis for the nights of the murders too.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s ask around.”
They started in the subdivision overlooking the park. No one had seen Gerald the night of his death, but several reported seeing coyotes approach uncomfortably close to the neighborhood. One resident expressed her concern—or rather insisted—that the sheriff’s department wasn’t doing enough to protect people from the coyotes and wondered aloud why they hadn’t yet been exterminated.
The situation was the same in the industrial park. Coyotes were occasionally seen around the park, particularly in the abandoned lots where they liked to hunt rodents that sheltered in the piles of raw materials and abandoned machinery, but recent weeks had seen an uptick in activity. One guard shared that he had to brandish his nightstick to scare off a particularly bold animal.
Faith hated to admit it, but the possibility that it was coyotes, after all, was starting to seem more likely.
“Not possible,” Michael said, shaking his head. “The bite marks were all the wrong size for coyotes. Unless Dr. Jensen is horrifically incompetent, a pack of different-sized dogs killed our victims.”
“Or a pack of different-sized coyotes,” Faith pointed out.
“Not the same,” Michael replied. “The dentition is different.”
“The what?”
“The bite patterns. I looked it up over lunch.”
Faith sighed. “Noted,” she said. “What do we do then?”
“Well, I’m not saying we don’t look into the coyote angle,” Michael replied. “I’m not an expert, after all. I’m just saying we don’t abandon the idea that dogs were involved too. Whether or not the dogs were operating under the influence of a human shot-caller is another question.”
They fell silent a moment, each considering where to proceed.
“We could stake out likely hotspots,” Tom suggested. “The industrial park, the nature preserve, the sports complex; anywhere on the outskirts of town with low population concentrations and plenty of cover near wide open spaces.”
Faith sighed and shook her head. She felt like she was in a bad procedural show. Grid-searches and now stakeouts. Next, she would be in a high-speed car chase while Michael shot through the passenger window.
But she didn’t have any better ideas. “All right,” she said. “Michael, Turk and I will take the industrial park. I want you to stake out the nature park. You can assign your deputies wherever you’d like, but I want us on the two known crime scenes. Carnivores tend to frequent the same hunting grounds, so if there really is a pack of coyotes or wild dogs killing people, they’ll return to where they were successful before.”
“Works for me,” Tom responded. “I’ll let you know if we find anything.”
“Same here.”
He left, and Faith and Michael shared a look. "This is bullshit," Faith said.
“Yes,” Michael agreed. “Makes me long for the days when our killer would use a good, old-fashioned murder weapon like an exotic cocktail of poisons or a syringe of industrial strength detergent.”
***
Faith and Michael waited on top of the warehouse in the middle of the construction lot where two days prior, Gigi Demetrious had been eaten alive. They wore night-vision goggles to keep light pollution to a minimum. Turk saw clearly without the visual enhancement and lay next to Faith, ears turned to pick up any sound from the park.
Silence. Faith sighed and turned to Michael, who gazed stoically ahead. She risked a whisper. "I think we should try to see if there's a connection between the two victims."
“We already interviewed their employees and coworkers,” Michael replied, “and their families. No one in either circle knew the other.”
“Maybe Gerald was sleeping with her,” Faith offered. “It’s a stretch, but everything right now is.”
Michael shook his head. “I feel like someone would have known something about that.”
“Then something else,” Faith insisted. “They have to be related somehow.”
“That’s not true, and you know it,” Michael countered. “None of Kenneth Langeveldt’s victims were related. The only thing that connected them was that they bore a very superficial resemblance to the family he murdered when he was a teenager. The fact that Gerald and Gigi were both assholes may be all of the connection we get, and anyone we know of who might have a reason to act on that assholishness has an alibi.”
Turk stood suddenly, ears cocked forward. Michael and Faith tensed and turned to watch the central courtyard where Turk gazed.
A rat trundled into the courtyard, its body engorged with a recent feast. It made it halfway across the courtyard before an owl swooped silently down and grasped it, its talons crushing the life out of the rodent before it could cry out.
Faith and Michael looked at each other. “Well, that was creepy as hell,” Michael said.
“Not helpful to us, though,” Faith said.
“Still creepy.”
They resumed their silent vigil. Faith’s thoughts began to turn after a while to the Copycat Killer case. She begin to wonder who could know her well enough to have such intimate details of her life. She didn’t like the implication. Faith was a private person. She had no friends outside of the Bureau other than David. That left a very short and very disturbing list of people who might know enough about her to threaten the people she loved by name.
Months ago, she had suspected Gordon Clark of being the Copycat killer, basing her suspicion on Gordon’s seemingly preternatural ability to end up wherever Faith was when she was investigating the murders and on Turk’s violent reaction when he first met Gordon. She had verified that Gordon couldn’t possibly have been the killer long before his death at the hands of the real killer, but that didn’t mean that no one at the Bureau was responsible.
Who, though? And if not the Bureau, who else? The only people who knew enough about her to threaten her like that were David and Doctor West. Doctor West had a busy schedule—too busy for him to moonlight as a serial killer—and she knew David wasn’t capable of that kind of violence.
She hated not knowing, especially when she didn’t have even the slightest idea which direction to go.
Another rat caught Turk's attention. This one managed to safely cross the yard. Faith wondered if the rat realized how lucky it was. A few minutes earlier, and it would have ended up dinner. Sometimes there wasn't a reason. Sometimes, animals were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Or the right place if you were a predator.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He looked down at the portly man in the wheelbarrow and wondered how someone could let himself go that far. He understood a little bit of softening due to age, maybe even some love handles due to a fondness for greasy foods, but to allow oneself to grow into this? It was obscene. How did someone like that look at themselves in the mirror and not swallow a bullet?
Well, then again, when you were the kind of individual this man was, maybe it didn’t matter to you if you were grotesque. Or maybe you just took your self-hate out on the innocent.
He didn’t particularly care what this man’s reasons were. He just wanted to watch him suffer for his crimes.
He leaned forward and tapped the man on the bridge of his nose, then drew back swiftly. The man woke with a start and tried to sit up. He watched in disgust as the man flopped around like a beached whale for a few seconds before finally rolling over onto his stomach and laboriously dragging both knees underneath him.
The man got to his feet and swayed drunkenly, looking around him with a bewildered expression. His eyes passed right over his soon-to-be killer without stopping.
Maybe he had overcompensated for the man’s size and overdosed him a little. Oh well, he was awake now.
He lifted his hand and said, “Hello there.”
The man jumped. He wouldn’t have thought it possible that a man that size could jump, but there was no doubt that both feet left the ground when he called to him.
“Who’s there?” the man cried. “Who—”
Finally, he saw the killer. His eyes widened. “Hey… what is this? Where am I?”
The killer smiled. “This is justice,” he said softly. “You’re going to pay for what you did.”
The victim—no, the criminal—took a step back. “What the hell are you talking about? You’re insane!”
“And you’re a murderer,” the killer replied, unfazed by his target’s accusation. “And now you’ll suffer the consequences.”
The portly man stepped back again. Then, he seemed to remember that he was much bigger than the man threatening him. His eyes narrowed into what the killer was sure he thought was a menacing expression. He took a step forward and said, "You better get the hell out of here before I beat your ass!"
The killer nearly laughed. The idea of that tub of lard beating anything other than a large pizza was absurd. Well, he would make a nice meal for the dogs.
He whistled, and the animals came to him. He saw the criminal's eyes widen, saw his skin blanch in the soft light of the streetlamps. The fat man began backing away, and the killer imagined what he must be seeing right now. A row of eyes gleaming yellow in the dark and emerging from the shadows with bared fangs and snarling throats.
This truly was justice.
“Hey,” the fat man said, “What did I do? Why are you doing this? Hey, I never killed anybody!”
“Yes, you did," the killer insisted, "and the fact that you don't know it only shows how horrible and evil you are. The world will be better off without you."
“Look,” the fat man said. “I have money. I can pay you, okay? Just let me go, and I can give you a hundred thousand dollars.”
He would never understand why they all offered him money. Were they so obsessed with wealth that they assumed everyone would sacrifice their morals for cash?
Evil never came alone. A rotten apple was rotten to the core.
“This is the part where you run,” he said.
The fat man whined, a pathetic keening sound like the lowing of a cow giving birth. Then again, perhaps that was an appropriate comparison.
The killer whistled.
The dogs rushed.
The criminal shrieked, a sound more reminiscent of a dying wildcat than a pregnant cow, and spun on his heel, another demonstration of truly shocking agility.
Alas, his luck ran out rather swiftly. He could jump, and he could twirl, but he couldn’t run. He managed a half-dozen waddling shuffles before he tripped and fell heavily. He landed on his massive belly and rolled over just in time for the first of the dogs—a lean and powerful Doberman—tore into him.
The killer watched as the dogs: the Doberman, a Rottweiler, an Alsatian—he had never liked the name German Shepherd—a Bull Terrier, a Whippet and a King Charles Spaniel, all ripped the fat man to pieces. This one lasted longer than the others. The dogs focused on the fatty midsection, and it was a few minutes before it occurred to the Rottweiler that their prey might make less noise if its throat was torn out.
After the dogs had eaten their fill, the killer called them back.
“Good dogs,” he said with a grin. “Good dogs, all of you. I’m so proud of you.”
He took a moment to thank and praise each dog before leading them back to his waiting truck. In the distance, he could hear the growling coughs of the coyotes. They would descend upon the remains before too long. It was very possible that there would be nothing left for the sheriffs to find by the time the city park opened in the morning.
That was too bad. He would have preferred to leave a message for those who might feel an urge to commit the same crimes. Perhaps with his next one, he would arrange to preserve the remains long enough for the world to get a good look at them.
He started his truck and drove away, his dogs resting obediently in the bed. He looked out the window at the moon, full and bright in the sky. He smiled. He had never seen anything so peaceful.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Faith’s radio buzzed, startling her back to wakefulness. She cursed inwardly for being caught napping. She couldn’t recall that ever happening before. Since joining the Marine Corps out of high school, she had never slept on the job.
She answered her phone. “Bold.”
“Got something,” Tom’s voice replied, tense with excitement. “Coyote, heading your way.”
“How many?” Faith asked, getting to her feet.
“Just one,” he said, “but he’s got blood on his muzzle.”
Faith’s excitement faded. “Sheriff, that blood could be from anything, and if there’s only one, he wouldn’t be attacking humans.”
“He could have split from his pack after the kill,” Tom protested.
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