Faith didn’t argue further.Jessica was probably right, but that hadn’t helped them find their killer.They had wasted their time on yet another false lead, and they still had no idea who their killer could be.Or even what he looked like.Their description had led them to Daniel Pierce, who was innocent.They were right back to square one.
They stayed silent on the drive back to Quantico.Jessica was still angry.She stared moodily through the window at the Potomac River, a thick ink-black vein underneath the overcast night.Turk was listless, dejected by his continued failure to catch the bad guy.
Faith was exhausted.She was concerned for David, and she couldn’t do anything about it.She was stuck in a rut in this case, and she couldn’t find a way out of it.She’d had doubts about Steve Kent from the moment Brandon relayed his story, and she had ignored all of them because it was easier to hope she was wrong than to do good police work and…
And what?What if she had done good police work?What would she have found?She literally had no idea where to look or who to look for.The police and sheriff’s offices could place units at every public park but not enough to cover every square inch of ground.The killer, presumably, had eyes.He could see the cruisers and avoid them.They could close every public park, and…
And that was probably what they were going to have to do.Remove the victims entirely from the equation.If the killer’s hunting grounds were empty and people were forced to flee from the parks in fear, then maybe he would be satisfied.Maybe he would think people were miserable enough to leave them alone.
Sure.Except that’s bullshit.Killers don’t stop.They get stopped.
Or they got away with it.Faith was starting to wonder if this guy might be the one that got away from her.
Meyers was in the breakroom nursing a cup of coffee when they reached the station.He looked old.Faith wondered how much longer he’d stick around.Probably not long.Law enforcement was the kind of career that wore on people, and Meyers had been around for a long time.This case had been hard on him from the beginning since Iris reminded him of his mother.He’d initially wanted to refuse this case, but interagency politics had forced him to keep it.She had a feeling that no matter how things shook out, he’d be gone as soon as the case was close or shoved in a box and stacked with the other cold cases.
“DA’s gonna let Kent plead down to attempted robbery and simple assault.He’s gonna get twelve months’ probation.That’s it.”
Faith nodded.“I’m not surprised.His lawyer would have dragged us about use of force and unreasonable search and seizure.He would have made big news about the fact that we were trying to pin three murders on him on nothing more than notoriously unreliable eyewitness testimony.We would have won, but it would have ended with the same plea deal.”
“Why are you two being so calm about this?”Jessica exploded.“Steve Kent strangled a woman unconscious with her purse strap, and he getssimple assault?He gets to walk free?Okay, he’s not a murderer, but he was a few seconds from being one.I’ll bet you anything we read about him in the paper killing someone sooner or later.And we’re just cool with this?”
Faith sighed.“No, we’re not cool with it.There’s just nothing we can do about it.And we have a bigger problem to solve.”
Jessica flushed red when Faith said there was nothing they could do about it, but when Faith reminded her of the bigger problem to solve, she looked down for a moment before cursing softly and stepping out of the room.
Meyers chuckled sadly.“Poor kid.This is the first time she’s hit a wall like this, huh?”
Faith sat across from him.“Yeah.First timeI’vehit a wall like this too.At least it feels that way.”She sipped her coffee.“Usually, we have something to go off of.Some connection specific to the victims or the location.I guess we sort of have that here.The killer stalks public parks and kills people who are happy.That doesn’t narrow it down, though.There are too many other variables.
“Oh yeah, that reminds me.I think we should close down public parks for the time being.We’re not getting any closer to finding this guy, so we should assume it’s just not safe for people to be outside at all.I know we warned people not to go out alone, but I think we should just make parks off limits.Clearly Brandon Harris didn’t listen to us.”
“In his defense, he thought he caught the guy.So did I.”
“Yeah, fair enough.”
Faith sipped her coffee and swirled it around her mouth before swallowing.Michael used to do that, sipping the coffee like it was wine and comparing different tasting notes.She always used to make fun of him for it.There couldn’t possibly be that much difference between coffee at the Travel Palace motel in Idaho and coffee at the Motorhaus in Nebraska.
She understood it now.It was something to do.Something to take your mind off of the bleakness for just a moment, long enough to take a breath so you didn’t drown.Everyone needed those moments to release some of the pressure before it crushed you.
That’s what their killer was doing.Staving off darkness by lashing out against the people who shone the brightest.And yet he was drawn to their light like a moth to a flame.Closing the parks really was the best they could do.With no flame to draw him in, he wouldn’t latch onto the brightest of them and seek to quench their light.
Or…
She tilted her head.She was exhausted and running off of no sleep and over a gallon of coffee for the past several days, so she waited a full minute just in case the thought condensing in her mind turned out to be foolish.
When it remained strong after that minute, she allowed it to cement itself in her mind.She steepled her fingers together and slowly smiled.
Meyers raised an eyebrow.“Do we have an idea, Miss Bold?”
“I think we do, Mr.Meyers,” Faith replied.“Get Jessica back in here.I think we have a way to get to this guy after all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Jessica looked at Faith over crossed arms.Her expression was somewhere between skeptical and exasperated.“That seems a little…”
She let her voice trail off.Faith helped her out."I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out.We've been trying to look for a guy who’s left nothing behind that can help us find him other than his size.His signature is a small-caliber ceramic bullet, which is untraceable because it fragments past the point of identifiability.He wears the most generic pair of boots on Earth and leaves behind no fibers, no DNA, and no fingerprints.He picks victims based on the fact that they’re happy and leaves them where they fall.He operates in public parks where it’s not suspicious at all for someone to be walking alone and enjoying the day.We warn people to look for loners at parks, and he just moves his operations to nighttime.We don’t have enough boots to watch every single square inch of every park.”
“So, we tell people to stay home,” Jessica said.“We don’t invite a crowd of them back to one of the parks we know he’s been active at before.”Turk lifted an ear from the corner of the room where he was sleeping, and Jessica lowered her voice.“We’re going to put people in danger.”
