Meyers walked inside and sat across from the women.“The manager of a restaurant in Brooke claims that the man in the sketch was arrested for harassing her customers in the parking lot last year.Says he was asking for money and getting belligerent when people refused.”
Faith frowned.That also didn’t sound like their killer.“Okay?”
“I did some digging, and Stafford County arrested a man by the name of Steve Kent for disorderly conduct on that property thirteen months ago.He matches the sketch.”
Meyers showed them an image of a dirty-looking, slightly overweight man with a messy mop of medium-length brown hair, hazel eyes, and a craggy face with a mean expression.
“Hair’s a little longer than the man who attacked Fatima Bedouin,” Jessica said, “but other than that, it looks like the same guy.”
Faith looked at Steve Kent’s mugshot.Those eyes were hard and devoid of guilt or compassion.It looked like the face of someone who could kill.They didn’t look particularly insane either, so it was possible that it was the face of someone who could kill with the kind of precision and control their killer exhibited.It was still odd that he had tried to rob Fatima while Iris’s jewelry and money were left with her body, but it was worth at least looking into.
Hell, everything was worth looking into right now.Their only lead was what citizens were reporting.With nothing else to go off of, they had to follow up on every clue they were given.
“Does Mr.Kent have an address?”Faith asked, “or is he still homeless?”
"Actually, he's never been homeless," Meyers replied."Or at least he's had a residential address for his entire life.Whether he's actually lived there or not is, I suppose, something we'll find out now."
Faith got to her feet.“All right then.Let’s go talk to him.”
“You might as well bring your food,” Meyers said.“He lives in Arlington.”
Faith frowned.Arlington was a forty-five-minute drive north of Quantico and a full hour away from Stafford.Then again, it was only fifteen minutes from Woodbridge, less depending on where exactly in Arlington he lived.Still, with no public transportation, how would someone so desperate for money make it to three different cities to kill three different people and rob a fourth?“Does Steve own a car?”
“I assume he does,” Meyers said, “but he wouldn’t need to.With Uber, anyone can get just about anywhere these days.”
That was a good point.“Fair enough.Come on, boy.”
Turk barked with his usual enthusiasm, and the group headed to Meyers’s cruiser.This time, they took only one car, but Meyers called ahead to Arlington PD to let them know what they were doing.Arlington agreed to have units on standby near the neighborhood in case the trio of law enforcement officers and their K9 ran into trouble.
Meyers was in good spirits on the drive up.He clearly believed that they were on the trail of their actual killer.Jessica was more reserved but choosing to be optimistic.Faith was on the fence but also leaning towards optimism, mostly because there was nothing to be gained from pessimism right now.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing something big.She just didn’t know if it was something related to the case or to her suddenly distracted and possibly deceptive husband.
I can’t deal with this right now,she thought with an irritable sigh.I can only handle one mystery at a time.
Of course, events would happen as they willed regardless of whether Faith could handle it or not.It was up to her to find a way to the summit, no matter how difficult a hill she had to climb.
And if she reached the summit and found another hill, she would climb that one too.She was Faith Bold, and if the three most feared serial killers in modern American history couldn’t break her, then this case wouldn’t either, and neither would whatever was bothering David.
She was almost completely certain of that.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Steve Kent lived in a ratty apartment complex in Green Valley, a low-income neighborhood in the southeastern part of Arlington just north of the city of Alexandria.Arlington was a generally affluent community like most of the Virginian suburbs of D.C., but a few pockets of low-income and high-crime areas still existed.
Green Valley was one of those places.While violent crime was low compared to other neighborhoods in similar income brackets, property crime was a significant problem, and the graffiti that covered half of the buildings and the broken glass that littered the streets demonstrated the vandalism the neighborhood struggled with as well.
The streets were empty, and every window was closed and shuttered.It was still an hour before sunset, but with police cruisers visible on every street corner, the residents would save their business for another day.Like all people in such neighborhoods, everyone knew that when the five-oh arrived, it was time to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass.
Steve’s apartment complex consisted of four buildings with eight units each in two stories.The black iron gate was covered in stickers and rusted badly.When Meyers called the leasing office for entry, it opened with a rough squealing sound and a puff of gray smoke from the motor to the right.As with the rest of the neighborhood, the residents here chose to stay in their homes with curtains drawn.
“He’s in unit 4G,” Meyers informed them.“That’s a second-floor unit in the building to the back left.”
He stopped at the very end of the short, square, dead-end parking lot and checked his handgun before getting out.He looked at Faith and Jessica seriously."We're going in with weapons drawn.Trust me on this.I have a friend in Arlington, PD, and things will go south without a moment's notice if you're not careful."
Faith doubted like hell that was necessary, and she’d spent most of her FBI career in Philadelphia, a city that made the most dangerous parts of Arlington seem as safe as a kindergarten.She didn’t consider this point worth arguing though, and in any case, if Kentwastheir murderer, then they knew he had at least one gun.
Turk trotted ahead of the group as they made their way to Steve’s unit.Faith heard the faint sound of a television inside of one of the first-floor apartments.It was a movie about a rookie narcotics officer going on a ride-along with a veteran officer who turned out to be a corrupt cop running an extortion ring within the Los Angeles Police Department.It was one of David’s favorite movies, but Faith found it laughably inaccurate and only mildly entertaining.David would probably find a movie about veterinary work just as laughable.Normal people only wanted the exciting bits, not the tedious parts.
