Page 27 of So Lethal

“I’m not joking,” he replied. “That’s the sad part. I really don’t know where to go from here.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “She lived in Fremont. She passed five other hospitals to get treated here in St. Teresa where no one would know her.”

“So she was ashamed of her deafness, you think?”

“I don’t think shame is the right word. I do think we should talk to the woman who runs the support group. She was one of the last people to see Sarah alive. She might be able to shed some light on the case.”

Faith nodded and turned to the medical examiner's crew, who stood five yards to the side, waiting patiently for the investigators to finish. "Go ahead and take her. Turk! Come on, boy."

Turk dutifully joined Faith as she and Michael walked over to Ferris. Ferris was on the phone with someone, and whatever he was hearing, it wasn’t good news.

“All right,” he said into his phone. “Thank you.” He hung up and swore softly.

“What is it?” Michael asked.

“Cameras don’t work. The system’s eight years old.”

“Is that old?”

“In this day and age of digital marvels and cloud-based storage, yes. It was in the process of being replaced. They’ve gotten to floors one through nine. They haven’t gotten to ten.”

“Check the footage anyway,” Faith replied. “We could still see someone going upstairs or taking the elevator and not getting off on floors one through nine.”

“Sure,” Ferris replied. “He’s sending me what they have. We’ll do our best.” His phone beeped, and he chuckled bitterly. “Look at that. More good news.”

“What now?”

“Confirmation that Dr. Crane never saw Sarah Martinez. That puts the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae of Dr. Crane is innocent and we were wasting our time with him.”

Faith nodded. She’d already dealt with these realizations and couldn’t feel anything more than numbness hearing it again. “I want to talk to the person who leads Sarah’s support group.”

“Sure thing. She’s downstairs. I’m going to stay up here and coordinate everything. This is starting to become a grade A clusterfuck, and my bosses are getting antsy.”

The FBI agents took the elevator down to the first floor of the parking structure. The machine hummed as it slowly lowered them to the ground. It reminded Faith of the rumble Cliff Kowalski described.

The door opened to reveal a much busier floor. Vehicles moved in and out, carefully navigating around the two police cruisers parked perpendicular to each other to block off a section of the floor where two officers spoke with a middle-aged woman with an average figure and a beehive hairstyle. The woman looked to have been crying but remained in control as she spoke with them.

Faith flashed her IDs at the policemen. “We’ll take it from here, boys. Any reason to keep this garage blocked off any longer?”

The older of the policemen shook his head. “If we’re done talking to her, we can open it up.”

“Go ahead and do it then. I don’t want this to go viral and prompt a media frenzy.”

The officers shared a sober look. Few things annoyed law enforcement more than nosy reporters. “We’ll get out of the way, ma’am,” the younger one said.

Faith turned to the woman. “I’m Special Agent Faith Bold. This is Special Agent Michael Prince and our K9, Turk.”

The woman took a shaky breath. “I’m Beth. Beth Rosenberg.”

Faith nodded. “Let’s go take a seat inside.”

The four of them entered the building. The lobby contained glass display cases with artifacts from San Jose’s history and large murals depicting the same thing. There were far more people here than Faith would have expected for this late on a Tuesday night, but then San Jose was a big city. There were plenty of people on different schedules.

“We can talk in here,” Beth offered. “This is the room we reserve for our group meetings. The next group doesn’t arrive for thirty minutes.”

“There’s an eleven o’clock Tuesday meeting here?” Michael asked incredulously.

“I believe they’re a Dungeons and Dragons group,” Beth explained.

“Ah.”

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