Page 36 of So Smitten

Faith and Michael headed to the breakroom. The coffee was of the sort that Michael would derisively call “hotel coffee,” but when Faith handed him a cup, he drank it down in three big gulps, undeterred by the heat or the flavor.

Faith poured him another cup and sat across from him. He stared ahead, his eyes spacy. “Hey,” she said softly, placing a hand over his. “You okay?”

He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I figured out why they wanted Macy.”

“Bait dog?”

He nodded. “I don’t get people sometimes, man.” He chuckled. “I don’t even get myself. I mean, I’ve hunted plenty of people who killed other people, but I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hated Gaucho and Roman. Everyone there, really. I don’t know why, but something about watching the dogfights just seemed worse than anything I’ve ever witnessed.”

Faith nodded. “It’s the same reason why people who hurt children are worse to us than people who hurt adults. We see dogs as defenseless.” She looked at Turk, who had taken the opportunity to nap for a moment. “Even when they’re not, they’re just so dependent on us that when people take advantage of that, it just enrages us. There’s an unwritten rule we have that you don’t attack people who can’t defend themselves.”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “Well, bottom line, I can’t wait to get home, and next time, organized crime can handle this. Give me my garden variety homicidal psychopaths over this crap any day.”

Faith smiled sadly and squeezed his hand.

The door flew open, and Garvey leaned in, her face deadly serious.

“He talked?” Faith asked hopefully.

Garvey shook her head. “No, but he’s not the murderer.”

“How do you…” then Faith understood.

***

“Robert Evans,” Garvey said. “Forty-three, divorced, lived alone. Looks like a home invasion. The killer forced his way inside, overpowered Evans, slipped the collar on, and… well, you can see the rest.”

Evans was in even worse shape than the previous two victims. His body was contorted, his limbs pulled into a fetal position, hands claws and face a rictus of pain. His eyes were glassy and shrunken, an effect of the electricity burning the fluid off. He looked like a horror movie.

“This guy’s escalating,” Michael said, “the next one’s going to look like a burnt hot dog.”

Faith couldn’t think of anything to say to that. She asked Garvey, “What’s the time of death?”

“Coroner says between two and four hours ago.”

In other words, when they raided the warehouse. Roman Kerry couldn’t possibly be their killer.

Faith sighed. “Did the neighbors see anything?”

Garvey shook her head. “This is one of those neighborhoods where people go to bed at ten o’clock and don’t turn their lights on until seven. Everyone minds their own business because everyone assumes no one else has any business to mind. I’m pretty sure this is the first murder this neighborhood has ever seen.”

“Then who placed the call?”

“Security patrol. He noticed the front door ajar, and when he went in to check, he found Robert. His supervisor confirms he left dispatch twenty minutes before arriving, so no chance he’s the killer.”

“Dis Evans own a dog?”

“No. Never has. No connection to the dogfighting ring or the Syndicate in any way.”

Faith shook her head. “So why?”

They fell silent. Turk started sniffing around the body, looking for anything that would connect this victim to the previous ones. Other than bootprints that matched the one at the second crime scene, he found nothing.

“So no one saw or heard any vehicles?” Faith asked, “no lights? Nothing?”

“If they did, then they didn’t consider it out of the ordinary or important enough to mention,” Garvey said.

“So why him?” Faith asked again. “Why any of them? I get the gang connection between Harris and Mariano, but why Evans? The man lives fifteen miles from anywhere the gang operates.”

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