Page 12 of So Deadly
“Right,” Faith said.“Torn apart.”
“That’s verbatim from the police report.It’s about the only real piece of information we have.She was brutalized so badly she was unrecognizable.”
Faith had seen similar things before.In a past case, a former animal behaviorist had drugged dogs into a highly suggestible state and used them to essentially hunt and eat his victims.She wondered if some of that research had made its way to the 93rd.
That conjured up an image of David attacked by the 93rd’s dogs and left like those victims.Torn apart.
She shivered and pushed the image from her mind, but the fear lingered in the background.
A dog barked as they approached the house.Turk barked in answer, announcing his presence.Possibly communicating something else, but Faith couldn’t tell.Whatever he said, the softchuffof claws tearing through dirt approached, and a moment later, the head of an unusually large German Shepherd poked above the fence.It saw Turk and barked again, clearly terrified.
Turk barked back and looked soberly at Faith.
“Hang in there, buddy,” Faith said, not sure if she was talking to Turk, the new dog, or herself.Hell, make it all three.
They entered the house to find the interior similarly posh.Expensive leather couches and some sort of odd, flowy aesthetic to the wooden coffee table, and a few decorative pieces hanging on the wall.Driftwood came to mind, but Faith wasn't sure if that was right.
Turk’s nose wrinkled, but Faith didn’t need to observe her dog’s reaction to recognize the smell of blood.The detective standing in the entryway to the kitchen noticed her expression and said in a sharp Boston twang, “Doesn’t smell like a rose, does it?”
“Not any rose I’ve ever encountered,” Faith agreed, extending her hand.“Special Agent Faith Bold.”The detective took the hand, and Faith said, “This is my partner, Special Agent Jessica Torres.The German Shepherd waiting patiently for you to let him through is my K9 unit, Turk.”
“Oh,” the detective said, sidestepping.“Sorry about that, sir.”
Turk barked politely, took two steps past him, then stopped and stared.Faith had rarely seen her dog stunned.She shared a look with Jessica, then stepped past her into the kitchen.
And mirrored Turk’s reaction.
“Had to look for her driver’s license in her purse to make the ID,” the detective said.“I’m Detective Riley Jenkins, by the way.Forgot to tell you.”
“I don’t blame you,” Faith said.
Jessica looked over her shoulder and made a wethurknoise before jogging back out the front door.More retching noises reached Faith’s ears as she examined the remains.
Remains was the appropriate word.What was lying on the ground was barely a body.Tatters of flesh lay in a pool of blood.They formed the vague shape of a woman, but that was the closest Faith could come to identifying features.The victim’s face had been almost completely torn off.One ear was severed in half, the lower half sagging a full three inches south of the upper half.Both eyes were gone, and the nose was stripped to the bone.Thicker squares of flesh might once have joined to form lips.
Below the face, the picture wasn’t any more pleasing.The woman had been wearing a button-down shirt and a pair of slacks.Both were ripped to shreds, and the skin beneath was a cluster of wide, suppurating lips parting to reveal the mangled fat and muscle below.A thick rope of something pushed through one of the tears in her abdomen.The victim morphed into the shape of David, shredded into unrecognizability, and that was when Faith decided she’d also had enough and turned around.
Jenkins gave her a sympathetic smile.He was also a little green around the ears."Yeah, I had to take a minute too.A few years back, when I was a beat cop, I responded to a scene where a tweaker fell into a wood chipper, and that's the only reason this isn't the goriest thing I've ever seen."
Faith nodded, not quite able to speak yet.Her stomach wasn’t ready to release its contents, but it was thinking about it.
Turk sniffed around the body, more shocked than nauseous.His footsteps padded softly around the tile as he tried to avoid the blood.
“Name?”Faith finally managed to ask.
“Margaret Hayes.Forty on the dot.Market analyst for Goldman Sachs.She’s got a pretty nice computer setup in her bedroom, so I think she works from home, but we’ll confirm that.In any case, she had the day off because we have her phone in custody, and no one’s calling to ask why she’s not sending them some report or another.”
“Who called it in?”
"Neighbor.Gave us an earful about her fake service dog barking up a storm, and she wasn't answering the door when he came over to tell her to shut the dog up."He hooked a thumb at the two uniformed officers in the living room."They stopped by to talk to her about the noise.One of 'em felt off about it when she still didn't answer the door.Got permission from the watch commander to force entry, walked inside, and found this."
Faith turned to the uniforms, both of whom were shaky and glistening with sweat.Nausea was going to be a problem for everyone who looked at Hayes’s body unless the ME had a cast-iron stomach, which, to be fair, most of them did.
“Did you interview the neighbor?”Faith asked.
“We talked to him,” the taller of the two men replied.“Kept ranting about the fake service dog until we told him Margaret Hayes was dead.Then he fell all over himself proving that it wasn’t him because he’d been in his house all day, and his security camera would prove it.”
Faith nodded.The fake service dog was still barking, voice hoarse from its constant cries.“Animal control’s coming for the dog, I’m guessing?”
