CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"How do you handle it?" Faith asked. "How do you accept that you can try your hardest, do everything right, push yourself past your limits and still fail to stop killers?"

Supervisory Special Agent Gordon Clark shrugged. "Depends on the day." He sipped his coffee and explained. "Some days, it's enough for me to know that fewer people die because I did my job than would have died if I hadn't. Some days, I have to satisfy myself with seeing the looks on the killers' faces when they know they're caught. Some days—and keep this between you and me—I go home, put on an old John Wayne movie, and get gloriously drunk."

Faith chuckled. "I could never get into John Wayne. He's got a couple good movies, I guess, but usually, he's just unbelievably good at what he does. Where's the struggle? Where's the pain? I can't watch a movie about a guy who waltzes into town and effortlessly beats everyone, then rides off into the sunset. No offense."

"None taken, but you are watching the wrong movies. I'm going to send you a list of movies you should watch. But before we get sidetracked, the most important answer to your question is that some days, I don't handle it. I don't accept it. Some days, I'm just angry and moody and sad, and I want to tear the world apart or give up and curl up into a ball."

"But you still do your job," she pressed. "How do you do that without letting it affect you?"

Less than a week ago, Faith had been dragged over the coals and placed on probation by the Boss for her aggressive takedown of a person of interest in the Vampire of Twin Cities Terminal case. She was angry, but as angry as she was, she knew the decision was fair, even lenient. Most other agents would have been fired had they pulled that kind of stunt.

"That's the thing. It does affect me. But I do my job anyway."

She pursed her lips, not satisfied with his answer. He set his coffee cup down and folded his hands in front of him. "Can I be frank with you?"

She smiled wryly. "If I say no, will you listen?"

"No."

She chuckled and said, "Well, you can be frank with me, but fair warning, if I don't like it, I'll pout about it."

He laughed. "That's okay. You can pout. It's not the worst thing you've done."

Her smile faded. "Gee, thanks for that reminder."

He shrugged. "I never promised that I'd always be nice. But what I was going to say is that you are a great agent, but you have a really hard time dealing with setbacks."

She sighed and leaned back in her chair. Gordon wasn't the first person to tell her this. "The problem is that when setbacks occur in our line of work, innocent people die."

"Yes."

She waited for him to expand on that point. When he didn't, she said, "But that's not acceptable."

"True. It's also unavoidable."

"But… we have to be better than that!"

"Yes. But we can't be."

His tone was calm, almost flippant. "I can't accept that answer," she said, her growing irritation reflected in her voice.

"I know. That's my point. You need to figure that out, or you're going to collapse. Either you'll finally push the Boss too far, and he'll stop covering for you—"

"Covering for me?"

"Yes. The brass wants you fired. He's the reason you aren't. We can talk about that later if you want, but let me finish this point. Either you'll push too far and get fired, or you'll go too far and get killed before Prince can save you"—she flinched at that, but Gordon kept going—"or you'll burn out and fall into despair. I've seen those three things happen to lots of officers when I was with LAPD. I'm sure you've seen it happen to agents here."

"But how? How do I become okay with this?"

"You don't. You accept that sometimes you won't be okay. You'll make mistakes. You'll miss opportunities. You'll fail to solve cases in time. Sometimes, people will die because of that."

She looked away, her lower lip trembling and threatening to push out. Apparently, her body had taken the threat to pout literally.

"It sucks, Faith. But believe me, not accepting sucks worse and gets more people killed." He lifted his coffee and sipped. His eyes got a faraway look, and Faith wondered what memories were flitting through his mind right now. "It's not easy. It never will be. But you have to do it. It's the only way to keep your head above water."

***

"Faith? We're here."

Faith stirred and turned to Michael. "Right. Sorry. I was remembering a conversation Gordon and I had once."

"Oh yeah? What about?"

She smiled softly. "Letting go."

Michael nodded. Then he solemnly lifted the cup of coffee he'd taken from the hotel and poured a little bit on the ground next to the cruiser. "That's for you, Gordon."

Faith burst into laughter. The laughter shocked her as much as it shocked Michael, but it felt good to laugh, even if it didn't dispel the bleakness of what they were about to do.

"What's that for?" Michael asked.

"Because you're cute," she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

He chuckled, then quipped, "Thanks, but I'm married."

You have a romantic history with him, correct?

Turk barked impatiently, and Faith pushed those thoughts from her mind. "All right. Time to go do the worst part of our job."

"Second worst," Michael corrected. "The worst is interviewing loved ones." He looked sideways at her. "Which is something I could have kept to myself."

"It's okay," she said.

"Are you okay?"

"No." She got out of the car and opened the door for Turk. "Let's go do our job anyway."

Michael nodded approvingly, and the three of them walked to the scene. Detective Hilary was already there, directing plainclothes officers to put a cordon up around the strip of path where the crime occurred. When he saw the agents, he lifted a hand in greeting, then looked down at the body on the ground.

This woman was in the same age range as the other two victims. She was also attractive, but once more of a different body type. In her case, she was of medium build with a mop of curly red hair over a round face.

She was also naked. Her legs were spread the same way Samantha Reynard's were, but her arms were pointed straight above her head with the fingertips touching. Yellow mica powder was scattered haphazardly over her body.

"Lorraine Hayes," Hilary informed them. "Thirty. Worked at the library. I sent officers to her house, and it looks like her car's there. She only lives a mile from the library, so I'm thinking she walks to and from work. Did, anyway."

"Alone?" Michael asked incredulously. "At night?"

"We'll call her coworkers in the morning," Hilary said, "but that's our best guess. This is a relatively safe part of the city. I wouldn't recommend anyone walk alone anywhere at night, but I also wouldn't expect this to happen on a public path here."

"You've cleared the guy who called in her body?" Faith asked.

"He's submitted fingerprints and a DNA sample," Hilary replied. "Strictly speaking, he'll remain a person of interest until those samples clear, but he's definitely not our guy."

"We haven't found DNA or fingerprints on the other two victims," Faith said. "Did we find any on Miss Hayes?"

"No," Hilary said. "It's just a formality. He's not our guy because his neighbors already confirmed that he left his house at nine to walk his dog. I guess the neighbors had a problem with the dog barking all the time, so sometimes he walks her at night to help her sleep. It's ten o'clock now, and rigor's already set in, so that means she was killed no later than eight o'clock. He couldn't have been here. The only reason we're doing DNA and fingerprints is that my captain's a pain in the ass."

He sighed. "Sorry. I'm just pissed at the situation. I shouldn't be bitching like this."

"No need to apologize," Faith said. "I'm not having the best of days myself."

Hilary shook his head. "You guys have been working on a profile for this guy, right? Can you tell me what the posing and the powder means?"

"We're pretty sure this guy is trying to obtain immortality," Michael explained. "He's trying to complete an alchemical process called the Magnum Opus. This is step three of four."

Hilary sighed. "Well, at least we know we're only waiting for one more victim."

That didn't reassure Faith. To be fair, Hilary didn't look very reassured either.

The detective sighed irritably. "Who the hell is this guy? How do you kill three people—two of them in broad daylight—and leave no footprints, no fingerprints, no DNA, no witnesses, nothing. It's just insane. There's not even a connection to the victims. He's like the invisible fucking man."

The agents didn't say anything. Both felt the same frustrations, and neither felt it would be helpful to lecture him the way Michael had lectured Faith.

Turk whined softly, and Faith said. "Go hunting, boy. See if you can pick anything up."

Turk trotted away dutifully, nose to the ground. Faith looked down at the body of Lorraine Hayes and wondered what the poor woman's last thoughts might have been. Was she caught unawares the way Cassidy and Samantha were, or did she have time to see the danger coming for her?

Michael answered that question a moment later. "Hey, Faith? We have footprints."

Faith and Hilary both lifted their heads in excitement. "We do?" Faith asked.

Michael waved them over. They jogged to where he was standing, and he pointed at the ground. "This is Lorraine Hayes," he said, pointing at the daintier of the prints. He pointed at a larger but less well-defined print. "And this is our killer. If we follow the prints…" he walked further from the body. "We see that the killer entered the path here." He turned around and started back toward the body. "He walked at a fairly swift pace. So did Lorraine. Right here, he stopped, and began to sprint. You can see that because of the lengthening strides."

He walked ahead ten yards and said, "This is where Lorraine started running. So they were about ten yards apart when Lorraine saw him. Within another ten yards, he'd closed the distance and killed her. Her body was positioned close to where she died, not exactly the same place, but close enough that we can deduce that he stripped her, positioned her and poured powder over her in the same place. He didn't move the body at all."

"He caught her quick," Hilary observed.

"My guess is she was frozen in terror for a second or two before she started moving," Faith said. "She didn't have time to get away or call for help."

Turk barked, and the three of them turned toward him. He stood at the edge of the trees bordering the path. "What is it, boy?" Faith asked as the three of them approached. "What do you smell?"

Turk took a hesitant step into the trees, then put his nose to the ground. Faith held her breath, but a moment later, he lifted his head, shook it and growled irritably.

Faith sighed. "That's all right, boy," she said. "You did your best."

"I'll get officers to look here and see if we can find our guy. Judging by the footprints, I'm thinking he cut the tread off of his soles so we couldn't identify the shoe, but we can get a shoe size at least and extrapolate height and weight from there. This is good evidence."

Faith wasn't sure if he was trying to convince himself or the two of them. She looked back at the body of Lorraine Hayes and fought the urge to give into despair. She was determined to follow Gordon's advice and accept that she couldn't save everyone. She was determined to follow Michael's advice and see the positive in the evidence that they had found at this crime scene.

But it was hard to do that while she was staring at the body of yet another innocent woman whose life had been taken while they chased their tails looking for the killer.