Page 24 of So Deadly
“Oh yeah.Arms flailing, slashing, stabbing… Yeah, apeshit is the right word.This was a crime of passion.”
Faith wouldn’t have used the word passion, but it was oddly appropriate.“Anything on the victim that might give us a clue who our killer is?”
“Well, I can tell you the attacker was short, probably not very strong, but definitely very fast.The absence of defensive wounds suggests the victims were out within seconds.In order for boxcutters—even a lot of them—to cause that much damage, you have to be going to town with them.”
Faith jotted downshort, weak, fast.“Anything else?”
“Yeah, the poncho you gave me actually had two samples of blood.Same with the wounds on Margaret Hayes.”
Faith leaned forward in the car.“Yeah?Have you matched the other blood?”
"Yep.A guy named Thomas Webb.If he sounds familiar, that's because his body was just rolled into my office looking like Hayes if you fermented her for a little bit."
“Jesus,” Jessica whispered.
“No one else?”Faith asked, almost desperately.
“Nothing yet.We still have to look through everything, but so far, we have two victims connected by the same murder weapon.”
Faith nodded.“If a third name pops up, let me know, okay?”
“Will do.Be careful with this one, agent.Berserking is a well-documented medical phenomenon, and if drugs are involved, they might not feel pain.People have walked right through barrages of gunfire before.”
That wasn’t exactly true, but Faith didn’t want to have a long conversation about that, so she only said, “Thank you.I’ll be careful.”
Faith pondered the medical examiner’s findings as they drove to Amanda Prowse’s house.Ten blades, one on each finger.Like claws.Apeshit wasn’t the right word, but the killer was definitely behaving like an animal when they attacked the victims.
Perhaps like a dog?Dogs killed with their teeth, not their claws, but humans had flat faces, and making some sort of implement that could mimic a dog's bite would be very difficult and ungainly, not to mention hard to use and conceal.Maybe this was the closest the killer could come.
But why would the killer dress up as a dog?The dogs weren’t the victims here; the people were.A symbol, maybe, of the fact that their own dogs were out of control?
Jessica pulled into a cul-de-sac and parked in front of a three-story house with a gabled roof and a stone fountain, currently dry, as the centerpiece of a yard that also sported sculpted hedges.Faith pushed her speculation away for the moment, but her brow furrowed as they walked up the steps to the front door.“Is that a guy in a wheelchair?”
“Looks like it,” Jessica said.“And that one’s a woman leaning against a crutch.”
Faith shivered.“Well, that’s not extremely disturbing.”
“Not the most disturbing thing I’ve seen today,” Jessica said.
She knocked on the door, and a moment later, a cheerful voice called, “Coming!”
A moment after that, the door opened, and Amanda Prowse stood in the foyer and blinked at the agents.After a moment, she said, “You’re not pizza.”
“Nope,” Faith said.“Sorry to disappoint.”
“No, it’s fine.It’s just, um… Why are you here?”
She followed that up with a nervous laugh.She looked genuinely confused, but when she saw Turk, her eyes brightened.“Oh!You’re here about the service dog campaign.”
Faith raised an eyebrow.“No, but tell me about that.”
"Oh."Amanda blinked."It's my online campaign to require stricter enforcement for therapy dogs, service animals, working dogs, and K9S.Basically, there needs to be more accountability around all of those programs.Right now, anyone can slap a fake vest on a dog and say it's a service animal, and business owners aren't even allowed to question them to verify that they're telling the truth."
“Interesting that you bring that up,” Faith said, “because we’re actually here on something related to that.”
Amanda frowned quizzically.“Oh?”
“We’re investigating the murder of Margaret Hayes,” Jessica said.
