Faith shared a look with Jessica.Marcus—and that’s definitely who this was—seemed a little too… cheerful.
“Come on in,” he repeated.“Your K9 will kill me if I try anything, right?”
“We’d like to avoid a physical confrontation,” Faith replied, stepping warily through the door.
Turk definitely wouldn’t kill Marcus.If he became a threat, Turk was trained to subdue him and hold him until Faith could place him under arrest.K9s weren’t used to kill people.
“Oh sure, sure.Yeah, I’m not going to do anything.Don’t worry.I’m probably the only Texan who doesn’t own a single gun.”
He laughed again, stumbling through a living room strewn with food wrappers, mail, napkins, and other things that made Faith wary of stepping through it, even in her boots.
Marcus dropped onto a couch behind a coffee table piled high with empty alcohol bottles.Alcohol and manic depression went very poorly together.Faith was having an easier and easier time imagining Marcus acting impulsively and rage-killing the people he blamed for putting him in this position.
She chose to stand in the relatively tidy foyer while Turk gingerly moved through the trash, sniffing for anything that might connect Marcus to the crime scenes.
“Okay,” Marcus said.“Ask away.”
“Well,” Jessica said.“Since you brought it up, why don’t you just tell us.Did you kill the victims?”
“Nope.”
“Figured you’d say that,” Jessica said drily.“Why don’t you tell me about your relationship with the three?”
“I didn’t have one.I interacted with all three very briefly—a little less briefly with Sarah Garrett—and that was it.”
“Let’s talk about that,” Faith said.“According to Sarah, you threatened her.”
Marcus giggled, briefly this time.He rubbed his eyes again.“Yeah, she would say that.”
“What wouldyousay?”
“I told her that I was going to push for legislation that would require everyone involved in healthcare decisions for dogs to receive veterinary training.I pointed out that would disqualify her and others like her, and she took that very poorly.”
“Her and others like her?”
“Selfish bleeding hearts,” Marcus explained.“People who can’t stand the thought of a dog in pain and so force them to continue living in pain.”
“So, you don’t believe dogs can be rehabilitated?”Faith asked.
“Some can.Younger dogs or dogs that have experienced only mild abuse.Dogs that weren’t abused but perhaps weren’t socialized or exercised well.Older dogs that have experienced severe trauma can’t ever be truly rehabilitated.Canine minds don’t work the way human minds do.Humans can overcome post-traumatic stress to a large degree, but we can do that because we have very advanced minds that can separate a problem from our emotions.Not easily, of course, but we can do it.With help, we can identify which of our emotions are valid and which are trauma responses that serve no useful purpose.That allows us to control our behavior and live normal lives despite PTSD.It even provides us a path toward overcoming that disease.
“Not so dogs.Much as we like to imagine that dogs are highly intelligent beings, the reality is that they’re just animals.They can’t understand why they feel a certain way.They just feel that way.Effective behavioral conditioning is just designed to help them feel differently.It won’t implant some abstract understanding of where their feelings come from and why.When a dog is damaged badly enough, they are, I’m sorry, damaged too badly to recover.In those cases, euthanasiaishumane.”
He lifted his hands and let them drop.“But no one wants to hear that.They just get angry, call you names, insist that you’re an asshole, and then campaign to get you blacklisted.”
“Do you believe the victims campaigned to blacklist you?”Faith asked.
“Sarah Garrett did.She reported me for my ‘harassment’, and the veterinary board took her at her word for it.Then they framed me as a violent dog-killer and shut down my practice.”
“You must have been very angry.”
“I didn’t kill them,” he replied.
“Can you prove that?”
He laughed again, but there was an edge to it this time.“Am I not innocent until proven guilty?”
“Of course,” Faith replied.“But someone’s guilty, and right now, we have evidence of conflict between you and the victims.We have a motive, we have someone who—forgive me—is showing signs of instability, and we have three people dead in two days.If you have a way to clear your name, then we’ll stop wasting our time talking to you, but short of that, I am frankly looking at a growing body of evidence to suggest that you’re our guy.”
