Page 48 of So Savage

He started his truck and pulled smoothly onto the road.He didn’t look back.Martinez would be there when he was ready for her.He’d get his revenge again.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

“We’re going to have a problem with James in a little bit,” Marcus told Faith.“We can hold him on vagrancy charges for twenty-four hours, but then we have to let him go.The DA isn’t too keen on prosecuting people for being poor, and we don’t have nearly enough to charge him with the murders yet.”

Faith steepled her fingers and brought her hands in front of her face.“Have your officers found any sign of darts or tranquilizers at the property?”

“None.They still have rubble to dig through, but between you and me, I don’t think it’s likely that he has dart guns and sedatives buried under the rubble.”

“Actually, that’s exactly where I’d hide the murder weapon if I were him, but I agree with you.I don’t think he’s the murderer.”

Marcus sighed and took the seat next to Faith.“Well, I didn’t want to say it, but I think you’re right.We’re barking up the wrong tree here.”He glanced at Turk.“No offense.”

Turk cocked his head, and Faith reached down to scratch behind his ears.Turk’s eyes half-closed and he made a sound that reminded Faith a lot of a cat’s purr.She half-smiled at that, but she was too distracted to fully appreciate the irony.

“We’re missing something,” she said.“We’ve been operating on the assumption that this killer hates K-9 handlers.”

“You don’t think he does?”

She shook her head.“I don’t know anymore.We’ve talked to three people who’ve had good reason to hate our victims, but they turned out not to be our killers.”

“Well, one of them is a stage four cancer patient who can barely leave his own bed, and one of them is a homeless person who probably can’t afford the murder weapons used and doesn’t have a way to transport himself to the crime scenes.”

“And one of them is a violent gangster with dart guns and enough tranquilizer to sedate every dog in Duluth,” Faith countered, “but the most he did was harass people on the phone.”

“So we’re looking for someone brave enough or unhinged enough to act,” Marcus said.“You have to be pretty stupid or pretty desperate to think you can get away with murder.”

“Or you have to have nothing left to lose,” Faith added.“That’s why we suspected James in the first place.”

That thought stuck in her head.Nothing left to lose.That seemed very important to her, but she wasn’t sure why.

She got to her feet and started pacing.“The consistency in all of these crime scenes is that the dogs are sedated first and left unharmed.There’s a practical reason for sedating the dogs, but not for leaving them unharmed.”

“It could just be that he didn’t need to kill the dogs.He’s murdering people, not animals, and if he has darts that make very little noise, why use bullets that make a lot of noise?”

“That’s a good point,” Faith said, “but I don’t think it’s the whole story.Dr.Parker said that the dose of anesthetic was enough that it saved the dogs’ lives because their metabolism was slowed so much that they didn’t freeze to death.The line between essentially hibernating a dog and killing it can’t be very thick.”

“So you think the killer intentionally calculated the dose to keep the dogs alive.”

She nodded.“I do.I mentioned that earlier, but I was distracted by the other factors in the case.I think I should have paid more attention to that.”

“Where are you going with this?”Marcus asked.“Not trying to be rude, just trying to follow.”

“Yeah, I understand.”She crossed her arms and bit her lip softly.“I think the killer lost his dog.I think he was a former handler himself, and he’s angry because his dog died, and the victims’ dogs survived.”

“That’s the hypothesis that led us to Eric Davidson, and that was a dead end,” Marcus reminded her.

“Eric Davidson was a dead end.I don’t think the hypothesis was a dead end.I think we need to look for other former handlers who could have a vendetta against current handlers.”

“That’s casting an awfully wide net,” Marcus cautioned.

“Yes, but I think our biggest mistake has been trying to fish with a rod and a hook when we need to be casting a net.That’s another thought I had earlier that I forgot about the moment we found a lead.”

She felt a touch of irritation with herself.She really wasn’t on her A-game right now.She needed Michael here to bounce ideas off of her or at least bounce her own ideas back at her in a different way so she could see the problem from all sides.

So what would Michael say?If you told him that you needed to find a handler with a vendetta against current handlers, what would he tell you?

“He’d probably just say to look through military databases for every handler who’d lost a dog within the past year and narrow those down to anyone who’d reacted badly to the loss or expressed vitriol toward survivors.”

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