Page 33 of So Lethal

The killer sighed and switched off the tv. People took so much for granted. The killer would guarantee that if any of those people lost their hearing, they would understand exactly how horrible life was for the “victims.”

"No one should have to live like this," the killer said. Or at least I intended to say. For all the killer knew, the words came out as unintelligible grunts and moans.

The killer stood and headed to the kitchen to prepare dinner. As the killer mixed flour and spices to bread the chicken breasts that would be served with mashed potatoes and steamed asparagus, thoughts of the next killing came to the forefront.

The public was too focused on the violence of the act. That was the problem. Honestly, the killer would rather allow people to become comfortable and liberate them with an injection of some powerful barbiturate so they could ease into freedom. The issue with that was the fact that the people the killer liberated didn't seem to understand their deaths as liberation. The killer didn't blame them for that. This was the only life they knew, even if it was a poor one. They didn't understand that beyond the threshold of physical death was something greater: freedom from the struggles of this life.

The killer needed to show that something greater. But how to show something that couldn’t be experienced with the senses? How to convince people to have faith that there was a life waiting for them free of ailments like the ones the deaf suffered?

The killer would need to think on that for a while.

As the killer finished dinner, his body reacted as it always did when it was hungry. Anticipation of the meal ahead drove away grief at the life the killer lived. The taste of the chicken costoletta and the pinot noir served with it could for a moment make the killer forget about deafness. The body was deceptive, and the mind—desperate for any relief from this hell—clung to every lie like a drowning person to a life raft.

But it was only temporary. The meal would end soon, and the killer would have nothing but remnants. Sight remained, but what was sight without sound? Reading words off of the television screen wasn’t the same as hearing them spoken aloud. Gazing upon someone beautiful was empty when their physical appearance was left unenhanced by an equally beautiful voice.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

The killer’s fingers tightened around the wineglass. The killer set the glass down to avoid shattering it. The killer’s hands bore scars from the time a glass shattered due to the killer’s emotions.

The killer thought of the safe in the basement. That safe contained weapons the killer eschewed for the mission of liberation.

But they worked. They would liberate the killer. Punch in the code, grab one of the weapons, probably the forty-five, press the barrel to the temple and squeeze the trigger.

Freedom. Liberation. Rest.

But that wasn’t the killer’s lot. Not yet. Not until more were freed.

So although the killer wished desperately to be rid of this life, it would have to wait. After dinner, the killer sat in the living room and thought about how to make the message clearer next time.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Marcus Wolfe lived in Campbell, a town just southwest of San Jose, in one of the few low-income neighborhoods in the area. Relatively low-income, anyway. Compared to some of the places Faith had seen, the neighborhood here was solidly middle-class. The houses were older but looked decently well-built. The grass was mostly green, suggesting that people here could afford their water bills. Most telling was the lack of illegal activity. In truly poor urban neighborhoods, minor vices like drug use, dealing, and in some places even vandalism and prostitution were tolerated so long as nothing rose to the level of violence or became so blatant that cops had no choice but to stop looking the other way.

This was just a quiet, ordinary neighborhood. Still, that didn't mean Marcus Wolfe wasn't struggling. Faith had looked up the cost of a cochlear implant on the way. Without insurance, the lower end of the spectrum was thirty thousand dollars, with some people spending up to one hundred thousand dollars depending on the specific device and their individual cases. That was simply inaccessible for a lot of people.

That didn’t excuse murder, though. Like many Americans, Faith disliked a lot of health insurance realities, but killing people never made anything better, and there was no reason to target these victims anyway.

Marcus’s house was a little dirtier than the others, and the grass was a little more overgrown, but those seemed like recent problems. The truck parked in the driveway was an old Toyota, but at a glance it appeared to be in good running shape. It was one of those vehicles that no one would think twice about seeing, even in wealthy neighborhoods. The landscapers that Faith had seen at the burger place yesterday drove a similar truck.

So witnesses could have easily overlooked the vehicle at the mixed-use neighborhood where Monica Smith was killed and the wealthy enclave where James Porter was murdered. It would be a little trickier to manage Sarah Martinez’s murder since people there would recognize him and presumably his vehicle too, but the community center was busy, and he could have easily parked somewhere else and waited until everyone was in the meeting to head to the parking garage and lie in wait for her.

Turk didn’t growl or bark as they approached the house, but he kept his eyes open and his ears lifted, alert for any sign of danger. Faith unclipped her shoulder holster in case she needed to draw quickly, then knocked on the door.

There was no answer.

She knocked again. Still no answer.

“Hello?” she called. “FBI. Is anyone inside?”

No response. Either the house was empty, or Marcus was the only one inside and just couldn’t hear them.

She looked at Michael. “What do we do if he doesn’t answer?”

Michael took a deep breath. “Well, we need to talk to him. We can walk around the house and see if we can see him through a window or something to get his attention.”

“They can feel things through the ground, right?” Faith asked. “Would he hear it if we stomped on the porch?”

Michael stared at her, and heat climbed her cheeks. “I was just trying to think of an option.”

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