Page 50 of So Bleak

“More like put out to pasture. Headquarters is concerned about bad press, and the Boss thinks it’s worse that the case is here in Philly.”

“What does that have to do with you, though?”

“He was very clear that it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Or at least that it’s not my fault. But this is out of his hands. This is a political thing now, and the powers that be are concerned about the impact this can have on the Bureau at large.”

“Fuck the Bureau at large. They can’t use you as a sacrificial lamb to save their own skins. That isn’t right.”

“I’m not defending them,” Faith replied. “But they’re not thinking like detectives. They’re thinking like politicians. The only way we can turn this around is to solve this case as quickly as possible and then I lay low until West’s trial is over. Once the media circus dies down, they’ll stop looking my way. Then I can get back to doing my job.”

Michael pressed his lips together and didn’t answer. Faith was touched by his anger on her behalf, but she didn’t have time or energy to spare being angry at the situation. It was hard enough to handle the stress of this case, and she had come dangerously close to losing control several times already. She needed to keep herself focused.

“We need another lead,” she said. “Who would have had the opportunity to hurt all of our victims?”

Michael lifted his hands and let them drop. “Hell if I know. I feel like we got lucky with our last two suspects. We don’t have a lucky tip this time.”

“We didn’t get lucky with Alex Ferris,” Faith countered. “You looked through the victims’ professional connections and found him.”

“Yeah, and he was a dead end.”

“That doesn’t mean everyone will be.”

They had reached Faith’s apartment now, and Michael shut off the engine. “Okay, so now we’re adding Samuel Klein to the mix and looking for someone who might know all four of them.”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “All right. We’ll give it a shot.”

They got to work immediately upon stepping inside her apartment. Turk paced restlessly, sensing the tension his two partners felt but unsure how to fix it. From time to time, Faith ruffled his fur or scratched behind his ears to assure him that everything was okay, but he was smart enough to know that everything was not okay, and her comfort didn’t do much to calm him.

Lunchtime came and went, but the two agents didn’t eat. They scoured social media, online blogs, food magazines and journals and even newspapers for any sign of someone who could be connected to all four clients. At one point, Faith called Paul Revere Vineyards and Café Toulouse to see if either place had worked with Samuel Klein. Neither had.

As the afternoon wore on, Faith’s anxiety reached a breaking point. She sighed and began to pace the room with Turk. Michael noticed her frantic behavior and shook his head. “This is bullshit. Who the hell is this guy? How is he sneaking into every restaurant and poisoning all of these people at different times, and we can’t find him?”

“Maybe he’s one of the diners?” Faith suggested. “Or a visitor.”

“What do you mean a visitor?”

“Like a health inspector or something.”

Michael’s eyes widened. “A health inspector actually makes sense. They have access to every restaurant in the state. They don’t need an appointment either. They can show up whenever they want to and look at a restaurant.”

“How would they poison a specific victim, though?”

“Maybe they aren’t. Maybe it’s only luck that these are the people who end up poisoned.”

Faith shook her head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. There would be some trace of something on the food or the dishes if it was a health inspector.”

“Not necessarily. They inspect everything. Bathrooms and dining rooms included. We didn’t check soap dispensers, towel dispensers or anything like that for poison.”

“You think that the killer’s poisoning the soap and only killing one person?”

Michael sighed. "I don't know. Not the soap, then. I'm just saying that health inspectors have access to everything. I know it's a stretch, but it's possible that the health inspector could be the killer, and the fact that it's possible means it's the best lead we have right now."

Faith sighed. She hated this seat-of-the-pants style of detective work, but they weren’t getting anywhere trying things her way. She sighed again, then said, “All right. Let’s call the health department.”

Michael called them, and after a few minutes, he found a name.

“Clive Benson,” he told Faith. “Not only did he inspect all of the restaurants where our victims died, but he did so the very days those victims died. You have to admit that it’s a hell of a coincidence.”

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