Page 37 of So Bleak

“We still don’t know that for sure. We should at least wait until they—” his phone buzzed. He read the text, and his shoulders slumped. “Okay. Now we know that for sure.”

“The pills are clean?”

“That’s not the word I would use to describe a hallucinogen, but yes, they’re clean. Pure MDMA.”

Faith sighed. “All right. Make me dinner. Might as well eat as long as I’m staring at a wall.”

“Sounds good. Is Turk on a schedule with his food, or do you just feed him anything?”

“I thawed him a steak last night. You can give him that. Just fry it on the stove for a few minutes.”

“Sure thing. You’re eating good tonight, boy.”

Turk barked enthusiastically but then turned back to Faith and whined. When Faith headed to the living room, he followed her and immediately put his head on her lap. She chuckled and began scratching him behind the ears. “I love you, boy. You’re amazing.”

Turk held her gaze with the most beautiful brown eyes she had ever seen, and Faith felt the tension ease. “I’ll tell you a secret. I think I love you even more than I love David.”

“More than you love me?” Michael called.

She kept her eyes on Turk and said, “And so, so much more than I love Michael.”

"Ah, you break my heart, Faith. You break my heart.”

Faith chuckled and cupped Turk’s face in her hands. “You’re so cute.”

“Aww, thank you,” Michael called from the kitchen.

“I’m not talking to you.” She shook her head at Turk. “He’s such a dummy, isn’t he?”

Turk barked, then began to lick her face. She laughed and pulled away. “Okay, okay. I’m good boy. Mommy’s cheered up. Thank you.”

Turk wagged his tail happily and sat in his usual spot in front of the couch with his head on Faith's feet. It had taken years to get him to stop jumping on the couch, so Faith decided it wasn't worth the fight to convince him to leave her feet. Besides, it felt good to have him there right now. She wasn't really cheered up, just a little less tense. That was the best she could expect right now.

“What are we missing?” she called to Michael. “We know it’s someone with a vendetta against food critics. We know the vector is poison. But the killer isn’t any of the chefs who would have a reason to kill them, and the poison doesn’t show up anywhere on the food.”

“We haven’t confirmed those two things in Lila Vance’s case,” he reminded her.

“But we will. We know that we will.”

Michael sighed. “Yeah. Almost certainly.”

“So what are we missing? Someone had a reason to do this.”

“Yeah, they hate critics.”

“Yes, but they had a reason for these three victims specifically. There was a reason why Eleanor Crestwood, Harold Grimes and Lila Vance were killed. What is that reason?”

Michael brought out Faith's food and set it on the night table next to her, along with a freshly opened bottle of beer. "I'll scour Lila Vance's social media presence and see if I can find any connections between the victims. Maybe you can look into Tanya's supplier and the other employees at the Café Toulouse and see if there's anything that jumps out at you. We'll get this guy, Faith. We always do."

“Yeah, but people always die before we can stop them.”

“Fewer people than would die if we weren’t hunting them. Don’t think about the people we don’t save. Think about the people we save.”

Faith understood Michael’s point, but the image of Henri sobbing and crying out for his dead girlfriend was burned into her brain. Other images of other relatives floated through her head: a brother whose sister was bludgeoned to death, a mother whose son was dragged into a cave never to be seen again, a husband whose wife was stabbed to death in their own home.

So many she couldn’t save. So many who had lost forever everything they might have been.

“Remember that woman we pulled out of the well in Missouri?”

---