Page 31 of So Bleak

It hit her with some alarm that she had treated her relationship more like an activity than a future. That was why she was so nervous to move in with David. She loved him, and she wanted to be with him, but going from dating to living together was a massive and hugely impactful step that would change them forever. And if it didn’t work out, then there wouldn’t be a forever.

Her phone buzzed. Michael, asking for an assortment of junk food more appropriate for a twelve-year-old than a forty-one-year-old.

All the things Ellie doesn’t let him eat, she thought. Maybe I should do her a solid and grab a salad box from the fridge instead.

She got him the items off of his list, of course. She wasn’t his mom, and she wasn’t his wife. The What If continued to float around the background of her mind, but it was a what-if she had long since learned to ignore.

Shopping for dinner pulled her mind away from her worries about David, at least, so she was able to walk back home in a somewhat better mood. She still wasn’t happy with their lack of progress on the case, but that was typical at this stage. They’d figure it out. They always did.

She walked into the apartment and said, “Here you go, Mikey-Mike, here’s your snacks. You owe me for not telling Ellie that you eat like a…”

Her voice trailed off when she saw Michael on the phone, his lips pressed together in a thin line. He met Faith’s eyes and said, “Actually, she just got here. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

He hung up and said what Faith already knew he was going to say. “There’s been another murder.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Café Toulouse was in Midtown Village, one of many boutique diners in that and other locales in City Center. Like those boutiques, it was a trendy, attractive place designed to appeal to influencers as much as possible to take advantage of the online community’s obsession with all things unique.

Unlike the other diners, it held the dead body of one of those influencers inside its walls. An attractive woman in her late thirties who would have been far more attractive if she hadn’t been trying to look fifteen years younger lay on the ground in the lobby of the bistro. Her eyes stared listlessly at the ceiling, and her mouth hung slightly open. A rivulet of drool extended from the corner of that mouth to the floor.

“Lila Vance,” Detective Howard said. “Thirty-eight. Online food vlogger. Mostly Instagram pictures and videos. Also, YouTube and whatever the hell Twitter is called nowadays. According to her cameraman, they were trying to break into TikTok with new short-form videos. This was going to be their first restaurant reviewed using that system."

“What’s with the drool?” Michael asked.

“Camera guy says that she started drooling after she fell unconscious. Started sweating a lot too. That’s why her hair’s damp.”

Faith looked at Lila’s hair to see it matted and tangled. Three victims, three different sets of symptoms.

“When did this happen?”

“We got the call an hour and a half ago. CSI already swept the place, but I thought it would be nice to call you since you two are supposed to be the leads on the case.”

Faith frowned. “Yeah, it would have been nice to call us the moment you were called. What happened?”

Howard sighed. “It won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t—” she sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Forget it. Cameraman saw it happening, anyone else?”

“Sure, five staff and about a dozen diners. It was the evening rush.”

“Are any of them still here?”

“The staff’s being interviewed right now. We already talked to the camera guy, but if you want to talk to him, he’s still here. He’s outside at one of the tables.” He lowered his voice and said, “Go easy on him, huh? I think they were dating. He’s been crying pretty much nonstop.”

Faith had lost count of the number of killers she’d seen crying over their victims, but sometimes it was helpful to take the gentle approach in those cases. Killers tended to reveal more when they let their guard down.

She nodded and told Michael, “I’m going to talk to the cameraman. I want you to look through the scene and then through the security footage. Turk.”

Turk barked and trotted over to her.

“I want you to sniff around for clues. You find anything, you let me know, okay?”

He barked again, then trotted to the body. A few onlookers from the other side of the police cordon called for him to stop.

“Hey! Show some respect!”

“Yeah, come on! She was a person!”

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