Page 36 of So Alone

“What did he do?” Faith asked.

Elizabeth’s mouth twisted into a frown that showed far more hate than Faith would have thought possible in a woman with so much self-control. “He stepped on him,” she said, each word a curse. “Sharky was walking to his food bowl and that fat asshole stepped on him.”

She met Faith’s eyes and said, “Then he left him there. He stepped on Sharky and literally crushed him to death, then he just left him there for me to ‘clean up’ when I got home. I won’t lie to you, Special Agent, I spent a while seriously considering stabbing him to death while he slept. In the end, I just left, though. It wouldn’t bring Sharky back to put myself in danger.”

Faith hadn’t considered Elizabeth a suspect, but after the hate in her eyes and voice and the admission she’d just made, she decided she had to at least confirm her whereabouts for the nights of the murders. She brought it up and Elizabeth said, “Oh! Of course. I should have thought of that.”

She fished in her purse and pulled out a receipt. “This is for my hotel at the marketing conference in Pittsburgh. Not sure why the hell they held it in Pittsburgh this year, but anyway, that shows I rented a room from last Thursday up until this Thursday. As far as last night, I was home. I left my lights on and my car was in the driveway, so maybe my neighbors could confirm I was here.”

“I’ll follow up with them,” Faith replied. “Thank you.”

***

“So they’re all jerks,” Tom said when they reconvened at his office, “but other than that, they don’t seem to be connected in any way.”

“They’re connected,” Faith said, “and that is how they’re connected. We just need to find out who would have interacted with all three of them.”

“Maybe a marriage counselor?” Michael suggested. “Elizabeth Merrill was divorced and Jeanie and Gerald Conway didn’t get along.”

“True, but Gigi Demtrious’s husband died years ago.”

“But maybe they saw a marriage counselor while hubby was still alive,” Michael offered.

“Maybe,” Faith said, “but why wait for years before acting on it?”

“Maybe he didn’t,” Michael said. “Maybe he’s responsible for Mr. Demetrious’s death too. Maybe he’s one of those killers who kills once and tries to stay away but ends up drawn back in.”

“Maybe,” Faith said, “but that’s a lot of maybes.”

“Well, the whole damned case is a lot of maybes,” Michael protested, miffed. “That’s what cases are until one of the maybes turns out to be a definitely.”

“I know that, but I don’t want to end up deciding something is true just because it sounds convenient and then find ourselves picking on a coyote again.”

Tom's lips thinned at that reminder, but he kept his voice professional. "These clients were all well-off," he said, "could it be some kind of class hatred? Maybe a landscaper or a utility worker who spent his whole life watching how the other half lived, knowing he'd never come close to that level of wealth. Maybe he finally gets pissed off about it, and what sets him off is the fact that these rich assholes are so selfish they don't even realize how horrible they are."

"That's oddly specific," Michael quipped. "Are you sure you're not projecting your own feelings?"

“I have my differences with the upper class,” Tom answered seriously, “but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Plenty of people get murdered out of envy.”

“True,” Faith allowed, “but if that was the motive, it wouldn’t be out of the blue. There would have been someone who visited all three people regularly enough to know that they were jerks and to plan a time and place to take them and kill them.”

“Maybe there was someone like that,” Tom said. “ Some wealthy people think of service workers as servants, not humans. They wouldn’t think about them as potential killers any more than I would be afraid of my toaster stabbing me to death.”

“But who?” Michael asked. “They lived in three different neighborhoods that were too far away from each other for me to believe the same landscaping crew or meter reader visited all of them.”

A lightbulb went off in Faith’s head. “Did Gigi Demetrious have a dog?”

Michael frowned. “Yeah, Olivia mentioned she had a dog, but she lost it a while ago. Do you think that’s the connection?”

“It could be,” Faith said, “Elizabeth Merrill had a dog, a little teacup poodle. George stepped on it and killed it, then left the body for Elizabeth to clean up when she got home.”

Tom made a face and turned away. Turk growled nauseatingly. Michael clenched his teeth and said, “Fucking prick. Lends a kind of poetic justice to how he died.”

His and Tom’s eyes widened when Michael said that. Tom had said earlier that maybe the killer considered his victims’ deaths to be poetic justice. Maybe the justice was that they had been cruel to dogs and then killed by dogs.

“So we have one man who killed a dog callously and a woman who lost her dog and presumably made no attempt to find it. Now we just need to know if Gerald Conway had a dog.”

“Did Jeanie mention anything to you?”

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