Page 2 of So Dark

Several months ago, Faith had been attacked in her apartment by a ruthless serial killer named Franklin West, the infamous Copycat Killer who had obsessed over Faith for years. West was now in prison, where he would remain for the rest of his life, but Faith had made it a habit ever since to never leave home without her weapon, even when she wasn't on duty.

As it happened, Faith had just returned from a case, so she would have had her weapon anyway. She also hadn't been in her apartment in over a week. She had a state-of-the-art security system that was supposed to send an email to her if there were any disturbances, but West had gotten in without triggering it somehow, so she wasn't going to put her life in its hands.

She turned the final corner down her cul-de-sac. That’s when she saw the lights. There were a dozen law enforcement vehicles in front of the building: police cruisers, SWAT vans, a K9 truck and the coroner’s wagon.

She pulled to the curb and got out, Turk at her side. “Hey,” she called to the officer nearest her. “What’s going on?”

She holstered her weapon and pulled her FBI ID out as she asked. No need to scare anyone.

The officer looked at her ID and his eyes widen. “Oh shit.” He turned around and called to another officer. “Hey! This is her!”

Faith rolled her eyes. Since her work bringing West to justice, she had become mildly famous to the citizens of Philadelphia and very famous to the law enforcement of Philadelphia. She didn’t care for the attention.

The other officer approached, and Faith saw the stripes of a sergeant. “Sergeant, what’s going on here? Did something happen in my apartment?”

“Notinyour apartment,” the sergeant replied, “but it’s better you don’t go upstairs right now.”

“What’s going on?” Faith repeated.

“We have it under control, ma’am. Just let us handle it.”

Faith’s eyes narrowed. She nearly snapped at the officer, but it would be terrible publicity for the Bureau if she got caught haranguing a police sergeant. Still, she needed to know what had happened.

“Sergeant, I appreciate that you have a job to do.Youneed to appreciate that this isn’t the first time something serious has occurred in my home, and I’m not going to sit around and wait for someone to get around to telling me a sterilized version of the truth. Now, do you tell me what happened, or do I walk upstairs and see it for myself?”

The sergeant appeared to wrestle with his decision, but after a moment, he shrugged. “Be my guest.”

He led the two agents into the building. Turk caught the scent of the other dogs and whined at Faith.

“It’s all right, boy. They’re here to help.”

He whined again. Faith reached down to ruffle his fur. Then she smelled it.

It wasn’t dogs. There were K9s there, three of them, but the rancid, coppery odor Faith smelled wasn’t German Shepherd.

The door to her apartment was cordoned off and surrounded by the K9s, their three handlers, and a detective in plainclothes. The detective was squatting down, examining the body propped in a sitting position against Faith's door.

Faith gasped when she got a good view of the body. “Oh God.”

The body was that of Faith’s neighbor, Eleanor Fields. Eleanor was a sweet, seventy-eight-year-old grandmother who baked the most delicious snicker doodle cookies Faith had ever eaten. She always had a dog treat waiting for Turk whenever the two of them returned from their morning runs.

She had been badly treated. Her face was brown and purple with bruises. Her nose had been broken and her throat had been cut so deeply, that her head was nearly severed.

The worst part was the hands, or rather what was in the hands. Eleanor’s eyes had been gouged out and placed in her open palms. Written in blood on her blouse was the message ARE YOU LOOKING NOW, FAITH?

“You’re Faith Bold?” the detective asked.

Faith turned to him, and he answered his own question. “Yep. That’s you. I recognize you from the news.” He pulled out a notepad and a pen and gestured with them toward the body. “Sorry about her. Were you two close?”

“We, um… I suppose so. She would bake cookies and give Turk treats every now and then. When did this happen?”

“About five hours ago.”

Or about an hour after her plane home from Chicago took off. “Jesus. No one heard her?”

“Not according to the other neighbors. They only found her because the neighbor down the hall was gonna run to the liquor store for smokes. Stepped outside and boom, there she was.”

Faith stared at the body of her neighbor and said nothing. The night before she left for Chicago to solve a string of murders, an electronics store clerk had been murdered and a note left for Faith on the screen of a portable tv resting in his carved-out torso. This new murder was at least as gruesome.

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