Page 22 of So Silent

“We need you guys at 6675 Peachtree Lane,” Detective Wanda Simonich said. “There’s been another murder.”

Chapter Eleven

“Kinda sucks, doesn’t it?” Michael asked.

Faith looked down the well-maintained suburban street. She didn’t see a single car driving. It was like something out of a movie, one of those surreal films where all of the fathers leave at the exact time and the women wear plastic, fashion-doll smiles on their faces as they wave goodbye. The lawns were manicured. The gutters were clean. The grass was green. Every house was a shade of pink, grey, or slate. This was the kind of suburb real estate agents put on brochures. Photographers snapped stock images from a place like this.

And murder had been done here. Out in the open where anyone could see.

And no one had seen it. Two hours of interrogating onlookers had given them a dozen variations on the same answer. “The dogs were all barking, and when I finally came outside to check, she was lying on the ground. No, I didn’t see anyone else. No, I have no idea what happened.”

“She” was Emily Chen. She was twenty-six years old and a recently graduated PhD in linguistics from Yale University. She had never attended the University of Washington, had never participated in any kind of study—hearing related or otherwise—and had lived in Delaware up until six months ago.

So she couldn’t have known Maria Gonzalez and almost certainly didn’t know Rebecca Wells. She did, according to her bio at Yale, have something called accelerated hearing, which basically meant the same thing as perfect pitch and hyperacusis for the purposes of the case. So that part of their pattern was still valid.

But the idea of the killer targeting former students at UW or members of Tate’s study was out the window. Maybe they’d learn something when the CSI report came back, but as it stood now, they actually knew less than they did before this murder.

And she had broken her promise to Hector. This bastard had killed someone else, and she had done nothing to stop it. The fact that there was nothing she could have done didn’t make that fact any easier to accept.

“Faith? Are you listening?”

She sighed. “Yes. Sorry. What sucks?”

“You get some kind of superpower and it only gets you killed.”

Michael could just be wisecracking, but sometimes his wisecracks were his way of thinking through a problem. “You think this guy thinks of himself as a supervillain?”

Michael said, “I guess we’ve dealt with a few bad guys who are trying to prove how bad they are, but I think most villains convince themselves they’re the good guys.”

“So he’s not trying to wipe out superheroes. What, then? Trying to be one? Maybe the killer has super hearing himself, and he wants to be the only one?”

“Maybe,” Michael said. “Or maybe he thinks he’s doing some sort of good for the world. A killer is either going to think of the victim as insignificant, nothing more than a pawn in the plan or otherwise as very significant. They’re killing a threat and saving the world in the process.”

Faith didn’t know that she believed that. “There are plenty of killers who believe they’re blessing the victim, not blessing the world by killing the victim. Some killers even believe they’re offering them immortality. Sometimes it stems from a pathological depression-like state. They’re saving people from the misery of life.”

“So, you think that the killer is rescuing the poor, unfortunate folks cursed with excellent hearing?”

“It’s not excellent hearing,” Faith clarified, “it’s extraordinary hearing.”

“And the difference is?”

“When we walked into Tate’s lab, those kids had their hands over their ears. They were in pain. Imagine walking around all day long seven days a week that sensitive to noise. Imagine you never miss any mean comment said under someone’s breath. Imagine the honk of a horn feeling like an air raid siren pressed to your ear.”

“So these are mercy killings?”

“It’s worth considering,” Faith said, “but I don't want…" A dog barked in a yard nearby, and Faith let the words hang in the air.

“You don’t want to what?”

“Hush,” she said. She tried to take hold of the thought in her mind. Another dog barked in response to the first. “Did you hear that?”

“The dog? Yeah.”

“And one barked before this last one.”

“Yeah. Why? Dogs were barking during the murder or leading up to it, too. Is that why?”

“That’s not just this one,” Faith said. “Check your notes. Didn’t…” She thought for a second but couldn’t remember the names. “…some of the witnesses say the animals were going crazy?”

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