Page 7 of So Lethal

“Eleven last night, right before we called you. Rigor had set in already, so time of death was before nine.”

“Who reported the death?” Michael asked.

“Homeless guy who peered over the fence. Said he was looking for a place to sleep. Saw her and knew she was dead because her tongue and eyes were bugged out, and her face was all purple.”

Faith grimaced at that image. “Were you the responding officer?”

“No, that was Cooper. He called me after he did the initial report.”

“Did he notice any sign of a break-in?” Faith asked. “Doors forced, windows broken, latches pulled off, anything like that?”

“No, nothing. There are scuff marks on top of the fence, though, right over here.”

He led them to the fence a few yards from the gate and pointed at the top of the wood. “I can get you a stool if you want. Rubber soles, slip resistant material. Size is a men’s nine through eleven.”

“So a male killer?” Michael asked.

“We believe so. The only reason I don’t say yes for sure was because of the Bitch of the Bay.”

Faith frowned. “Who?”

"The Bitch of the Bay. This was about nine years ago. Killer would kidnap college boys from San Jose State and torture them over a period of twenty-four hours before breaking their necks and tossing them into the bay. We all thought it was a pervert like Dahmer. A guy, right? Turns out it was a woman. Professional weightlifter named Caroline Galton. Six-two, two-thirty-five, arms like Ahhnold."

He chuckled at his own joke. “Yeah, we never got a good motive from her. The boys weren’t sexually abused, and Caroline was a confirmed lesbian. We asked her why, and she would just shrug and say, ‘Just felt like it.’ She’s down in the Chowhouse. That’s the Central California Women’s Facility.”

Faith looked back to the studio. “Were the lights on when Cooper arrived?”

"Yeah, they were. The door was unlocked too, but there's no sign that the killer entered the studio."

“What about the homeless guy who called it in?” Michael asked. “He didn’t take anything?”

Ferris chuckled. “No, he saw the body and ran the other way. Found a donut shop a mile down the road, sat there and refused to move until we got there. Spent most of the time insisting that it wasn’t him.”

“Was it him?”

“No, we have him on security camera out by the strip mall on West and Fifth. He was there up until a half-hour before he called it in. With rigor already set, he couldn’t have been here when Monica was killed.”

Faith walked up the porch steps and opened the door. Turk trotted ahead of her, nose to the ground.

The studio was a fairly decent size for an art studio. This room contained a few canvases with half-finished oil paintings. Through one door, Faith could see clay statues—also in varying degrees of completion. Monica clearly took her side gig seriously.

She walked through a door at the opposite end of the room. This door was slightly ajar. Faith opened it to see the actual working part of the studio. Two brand-new Mac Pros hummed quietly on opposite corners of a desk. Four monitors stretched across the desk, and when Faith tapped the mouse, all four of them opened to logos of Monica’s Design Studio.

“Haven’t had cybercrimes out to crack the password,” Ferris mentioned. “They usually start at nine. This being the San Francisco Bay Area, tech guys are revered like gods.”

There was a touch of sarcasm to his voice, but Faith wasn’t concerned with his genial animosity toward Cybercrimes. “Let me know what they find,” Faith said. “On the off chance any of them are afraid of the FBI, feel free to tell them that I will follow up personally if they drag their feet.”

Ferris chuckled. “It will be my pleasure to tell them that.”

“So what do you think, Faith?” Michael asked.

Faith looked at the desk chair. “Was this moved?” She asked Ferris.

“Nope. Cooper’s an old hat. He didn’t touch anything.”

Faith nodded. “So Monica Smith is sitting in front of her computer working on something. She hears a noise, gets up—”

“Oh,” Ferris interrupted. “Actually, she didn’t hear a noise.”

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