So Simple, page 11
Then he opened the door, and they stepped inside.
Kenneth Langeveldt looked much the same as he had when they had last seen him just before his arraignment. His wavy blonde hair had been cut short, and the prison diet had trimmed the slight layer of fat from his form, but his eyes still shone with the cold hatred revealed when the veneer of normalcy he wore had been stripped away.
Turk growled when he saw Kenneth, and the murderer smiled. It reminded Faith disturbingly of Trammell’s and West’s smiles as they tortured her.
“Well, well,” he said. “I have to say, I didn’t expect to see you three again.”
“Consider it an early Christmas present,” Michael said, taking one of the two seats opposite Kenneth.
“Is it Christmas already? I lose track of time so easily when I can only see a four-inch slice of sky. Tell me, is it snowing outside?”
“It’s a very early Christmas present,” Michael replied.
“Ah. Well, you’ll have to forgive me if I wonder what exactly I get from this exchange.”
“Yard time,” Faith said.
“Yard time?”
“Yes. If you give us information that helps us in our case, we’ll talk to the warden and get you one hour of yard time every day. You’ll be alone, shackled and under guard, but you’ll see more than just a four-inch sliver of sky, and you’ll get to feel the snow under your feet again.”
“I see,” Kenneth replied. “I help you find another killer, and you treat me just a little more like a human.”
“And far better than you treated your victims,” Faith added.
"Of course, of course," Kenneth agreed. "I don't claim to deserve anything better. I just wanted to make sure I understood exactly why I should allow you two to talk to me." Turk growled again, and Kenneth smiled. "I mean you three."
“We’re hoping you can shed some light on the motivations of a killer we’re investigating,” Michael said.
“You want me to do your jobs for you?” Kenneth asked, lifting an eyebrow. “How amusing.”
“I’m not laughing,” Faith replied.
“No. I imagine you’re seething.” Kenneth pointed at Michael. “You’ll be fine. You’ll probably brag to your colleagues how you convinced one serial killer to help you catch another, but you,” he pointed at Faith. “You’ll never live down the knowledge that you had to ask for help. After all, you’re Faith Bold, the greatest detective who’s ever lived. How dare you need to seek assistance from others?”
At another time, his words might have galled Faith, but she had suffered far worse from far more dangerous men than Kenneth, and his goading failed to pierce her defenses. “One hour of yard time per day,” she said, “Do you want it or not?”
“Sure, I want it,” Kenneth replied. “What boy doesn’t want to hear the crunch of snow under his chains? I just couldn’t resist a chance to gloat a little after everything the two of you have put me through. All right.” He leaned back as far as his shackles would allow. “Tell me what I need to know, and I’ll tell you what you need to hear.”
They relayed the details of the case, withholding the names and addresses of the victims. When they finished, Kenneth said, “Wow. I have to say, I’m a little disappointed. I mean, my work was artistic. It was layered, deep, complex. You had to really understand me to figure it out. This guy’s just beating people over the head with a baseball bat. Or a baseball bat adjacent object.” He shook his head. “So unoriginal.”
“Thank you for your critique,” Faith said drily. “What we’d like to know is what might motivate him to do this.”
Kenneth looked surprised. “Isn’t it obvious? He hates them. You don’t shatter a person’s skull unless you really, sincerely don’t like them.”
“But why? The people who know all three victims have alibis.”
“Oh no,” Kenneth corrected, shaking his finger. “No, the people you know know them all have alibis. I guarantee you, your killer knows them. Intimately. Not in the sexual sense, but in the knowledge sense. I’ll bet you he knows them better than their families do. He can probably tell you everything about them: what they like to wear, what they like to eat, what time they go to bed, the first thing they do when they wake up—I’ll bet he could even give you some good reasons why they chose their particular dogs.”
“Exactly,” Faith said, her zeal for the case temporarily overriding her contempt for Kenneth. “Why women who own dogs? Why them in particular?”
“That’s not obvious too? My God, how the hell did you guys catch me?”
“If you’re not going to help us, I’ll be happy to leave you alone in your concrete box for the rest of your life,” Michael snapped.
“Relax,” Kenneth said with a chuckle. “Don’t take it personally. I’m just surprised, is all. You guys are making this harder than it needs to be. Tell me, Special Agent. Why do people buy dogs?”
Faith lifted her hands. “I don’t know. Companionship? Protection? Work?”
“They buy dogs because they love dogs, Special Agent.”
It clicked then. “Our killer is envious of the love his victims have for their dogs.”
“Yes,” Kenneth replied. “Those women shouldn’t love dogs. They should love him. Why don’t they love him? How dare they not love him? He’s going to punish them for not loving him. He’s going to hurt them for not loving him. Are you following?”
“Close enough,” Michael said drily.
“Good,” Kenneth said. “Anything else I can help you with?”
“Why dogs? Why not married women or workaholics? Why is he focusing on people who ‘misplace’ their affection with dogs?”
“Who knows?” Kenneth replied. “Maybe a dog bit him when he was a kid. You said he’s not killing the dogs?”
“No. Not harming them at all.”
“Well, maybe a dog didn’t love him back in the day. Maybe he wants to see the dogs lose what matters most to them.”
“Then why not kill them too?”
“This is the part when I remind you that I’m not a detective. I would kill the dogs. I would make the owners watch while I killed the dogs. Then I would kill them. Well, if love was the issue, I might make them do other things first, but eventually, I would kill them. I definitely wouldn’t leave the dogs alive, though. I’m afraid my hopes for sunlight will have to rest on what I’ve already told you.”
Faith nodded and stood. She couldn’t wait to get out of there. Every moment with Kenneth galled her. Maybe it bothered her more than she wanted to admit that they had been reduced to asking for help from a criminal.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Langeveldt,” she said curtly.
“Oh, it was my pleasure,” Kenneth replied. “Drop by again if you’d like some more of it. Time is the only thing I have in any quantity anymore.”
They left the room without another word. As they made their way back through the eerily silent corridors, Faith’s skin crawled, and a sour taste filled her mouth. If they solved this case, part of the credit would now go to a psychopathic killer.
God, she hated that.
But if it saved them from having to see another person beaten the way Trisha Sinclair was beaten, then it would be worth it.
Her phone rang.
Faith wasn’t religious, but there were times where she thought certain events too closely related to be coincidences. At times like that, she believed it possible that maybe there was a God out there somewhere pulling the strings of fate like a showman lending life to a marionette. If that God did exist, she imagined He viewed humanity with the same twisted cruelty as Kenneth Langeveldt and Franklin West.
This view was supported by the fact that she knew even as she answered what the subject of this phone call would be.
“Special Agent Bold,” Sergeant Trent said. “I’m sorry to call you this early.”
“That’s all right,” she said, “I was already up. What is it?”
For a split second, she allowed herself to hope that maybe she’d been mistaken and there was another reason for this call than what she knew the reason to be.
Once more, Faith’s hope was dashed when Sergeant Trent said, “There’s been another murder.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hannah Peterson was the second youngest of the victims. A card on her coffee table congratulated her for turning twenty-four years old. The handwriting in the card wrenched Faith’s heart. The barely legible scrawls were written mostly in crayon and signed with crudely drawn print of the first names of her young students.
“Who kills a kindergarten teacher?” Michael said, shaking her head.
“Psychopaths,” Faith replied, probably not all the helpfully.
“Jesus,” Michael whispered. “What the fuck is wrong with the world?”
“If we knew the answer to that question, we could solve it and put ourselves out of a job.”
“Fine with me.”
Hannah’s body lay in her living room. The cause of death was as obvious as the previous three victims and even more gruesome. Faith avoided looking at the body any more than she had to, choosing to allow CSI to handle the job of collecting evidence. Their sweep of Trisha Sinclair’s house had revealed nothing of import, but they could always hope that one of these times, their killer would make a mistake.
They heard a mournful whine, and Faith looked up to see a beautiful German shepherd standing in the kitchen. Its legs shook uncontrollably, and its eyes were wide and bloodshot. The expression was so human that Faith's heart broke anew. It didn't help that the dog looked so much like Turk.
Turk immediately rushed to the other dogs side, but when he pressed his head and shoulder to the other shepherd’s body, the trembling didn’t stop and the dog’s eyes remained riveted on its owner.
What was left of her, that is.
“You should take the dog to the backyard,” Faith said to Sergeant Trent, who stood next to Michael, his face ashen.
“You go ahead and try,” Trent replied. “I nearly got my hand bitten off when I tried.”
“Have you called animal control?”
“Of course I called them!" Trent snapped. Faith lifted her eyebrow, and Trent sighed. "Sorry. I'm just all bent out of shape. This shit is insane, you know?”
“Yes,” Faith agreed. “I know.”
Hannah Peterson had died by a blow to the head, but the killer hadn’t stopped there. Judging by the look of her, the killer had struck her close to twenty times, shattering her… well, just about everything. Her chest looked like it had been stepped on by an elephant.
“He really didn’t like this one,” Michael observed quietly.
“Yes,” Faith said, “but why her in particular? Why not the other women? What’s different about her?”
Michael sighed. “Well. We’ll look around and see if we can find the answer to that question, I guess.”
They got started looking through the crime scene. Turk remained at the other Shepherd’s side. The dog kept staring at Hannah’s body, still shaking like a leaf. Faith knelt low and put a hand on the dog’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, boy,” she said.
She noticed a bit of fraying on his collar and saw that his tag had been ripped off. It occurred to her that neither of the other dogs had tags either. Their killer must be taking them along with the bits of leash fabric. That didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know—he preferred young women with newly adopted shelter dogs as his victims—but knowing the killer had been close enough to the dog to tear his tags off sent a wave of compassion through her.
“It’s not your fault, boy,” she said, hugging his waist. She met Turk’s eyes over his body and saw the same grief and compassion in his eyes. “It’s not your fault.”
“Found the Cerberus charm,” Michael said.
Faith stood and walked to the other side of the living room. Michael pointed at the charm, which rested on the arm of the couch. The couch was dark leather, nearly the same color as the charm, which was why they hadn’t noticed it right away.
“Guess he decided there wasn’t enough of Hannah Peterson’s hand left to hide this under,” Michael said.
Faith could hear the tension in his voice. She had seen him like this only once before. In Atlanta, they had investigated a dog fighting ring on the hunt for a killer taking revenge on the dog fighters. Michael had gone undercover and witnessed things that no one should have to.
They had seen plenty of dead bodies, but something about the innocence of dogs made watching them suffer… maybe not more impactful but impactful in a different way. There was an outrage people felt towards those who attacked the defenseless that made such crimes particularly heinous. It was why people felt such hatred toward people who hurt children and…
Children!
“That’s it!” Faith said.
Michael jumped, startled by the sudden cry. “What’s it?”
“Children.”
He blinked. “Children?”
“That’s what’s different about Hannah Peterson. She had children.”
“Children? No, she didn't."
“Not of her own, no,” Faith said, “but she had children. She was a kindergarten teacher. She had a class full of children. The others didn’t. That’s why he beat Hannah Peterson worse than he beat them.”
“So he hates children?” Michael asked. “Why not go after children?”
“He doesn’t hate children,” Faith said, “but children or childhood is related to this somehow.”
“How?”
She sighed in frustration. “Goddammit, I don’t know. I don’t…” she sighed again. "It's like I'm trying to put together a puzzle, but all I can manage to do is build the edges. I know things about the killer, but I don't know how they connect. The victims clearly follow a certain pattern, but I can't tell why the killer chose that pattern. The dogs are important, but I don’t know why. I don’t buy that the killer was bit by a dog when he was a kid. If he wanted to get revenge on the dogs, he would kill the dogs. The children matter, but I don’t know why. I just know that something about Hannah teaching small children sparked a special kind of rage in him.”
She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. A sobering realization came to her, and her lips curled into a frown. This was only the fourth time in her career that a killer had managed to kill three or more additional victims while Faith was on their trail. The first had been Trammell. The second West, the third Langeveldt, who killed three of his fake family members and nearly a fourth before she, Michael and Turk had caught up to him.
And now this killer.
And she still knew nothing about him. A crazy part of her almost wondered if West was responsible for these murders, killing based on a random profile just to mess with her head. Hell, she almost wished that was the case because then, at least, she would have answers.
“Let’s keep looking,” Faith said. “Maybe we’ll find something else.”
The sky lightened to gray as the dawn approached. CSI came and investigated the scene. Hannah’s dog—Trooper, according to a picture framed on the desk in Hannah’s bedroom—whined in panic when the coroner took the body, but Turk soothed him, and eventually Trooper allowed the coroner to take Hannah away.
Animal control arrived shortly after, and Trooper went with them. Turk watched until the van left the driveway, then lifted his head and released a single mournful howl.
“I know,” Faith said. “It sucks. This whole thing fucking sucks.”
Turk howled again, and Faith spend a moment with him while Michael and the CSIs continued to examine the scene.
By dawn, they had still found nothing. Nothing useful anyway. Just more of the edge pieces that revealed nothing of the core of the puzzle. They found the same leash that the other dogs had with a piece of fabric torn off—by hand, the CSI pointed out with a look bordering on admiration at the strength necessary to do that. The door had been broken down just like the last time, the hinge shattered and the wood splintered. The neighbors—somewhat miraculously—hadn’t heard or seen anything suspicious and assumed the noise was a car backfiring. Most claimed to be asleep and hadn’t heard anything.
Finally, they had to admit defeat. They told the CSIs and Sergeant Trent to call them with any further information, then left the house. With no lead to follow up on and all three of them operating on almost no sleep, the agents headed back to the hotel to catch a quick nap and eat some coffee and breakfast before continuing. Faith wanted to keep working, but she knew that her mind was too exhausted to do anything but dance in circles around the edges of the puzzle she still couldn’t solved.
So, she allowed Michael to drive her back to the hotel, and when they arrived, all three agents went silently to their beds and hoped that things would seem clearer in an hour or two.
***
Faith opened her eyes and found herself once more in the chair in Trammell’s barn. She tested the ropes that bound her, and though she didn’t have enough control to stop that reflex, she had enough self-awareness to realize from the outset that this was a dream. She looked up, as always, at the sliver of light that filtered through the window near the top of the barn, but this time it was a crack in the roof and not a window that allowed the light through. She realized with some surprise that she couldn’t recall which detail was accurate.
“She’s waking up,” Trammell said.
“She’s always been awake,” West replied. “She’s just finally beginning to open her eyes.”
“Her eyes are open,” a third voice said, “but she still doesn’t see.”
She turned her head toward the third voice, and her eyes came to rest on Kenneth Langeveldt. He wore a tight t-shirt, khakis and leather jacket instead of his prison jumpsuit, and his hair was shoulder-length and wavy. He smiled at Faith and said, “Hey there. Long time no see.”
Trammell stepped into the light. “Hey there, little girl. I’ll bet you bleed real nice.”
Faith frowned. That wasn’t right. That’s not what he said to her. He said, “Let’s see how you bleed,” and he said it right before he cut her, not standing ten feet away with his hands in his pockets.
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