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Jeanie offered another bitter smile. “Many people aren’t sorry to see him gone,” she replied, “but no one hated him enough to have him torn apart by dogs. Well, maybe the dogs. Gerald was never a dog person. We had a dog and fought constantly over it. Still, as much of an asshole as he could be, he didn’t deserve such a brutal end.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Faith said.
Jeanie sighed. “People lose things every day, agent. The world goes on.”
CHAPTER SIX
Faith crouched down to examine the footprints. There were only a few remaining, but they were left in mud that hardened the next day, preserving the outline clearly.
Coyotes.
“Well, those are for sure coyote prints,” Tom confirmed, standing over her. “Bite marks might show that dogs were a part of it, but there were coyotes involved for sure.”
Faith stood and looked down the trail where Turk looked for a scent to follow under Michael’s supervision. “It’s possible that the coyotes arrived after the dogs left,” she said, “if there were large dogs involved, they would have waited for the dogs to leave before they ate the scraps.”
“That could be true, Special Agent,” Tom replied, “but when you hear hoofbeats, you don’t think water buffalo.”
“Fair point,” Faith conceded.
Very little remained of the crime scene five days after Gerald's death. The blood itself had been licked clean by animals. Nature was cold and cruel, and there was no sanctity in death. Aside from the footprints and a bit of disturbed ground where Gerald had tried to flee his attackers, there was nothing to indicate that a man had died here less than a week ago.
“So both of our victims were assholes,” Tom thought aloud. “I guess in a way their end is poetic justice.”
“Murder isn’t justice, Sheriff,” Faith said curtly.
Tom shrugged. “Maybe not to you or I, but our killer might see things differently.”
Faith was taken aback slightly at his response. He was right. She had been focusing on her judgment of Tom’s cavalier attitude and had completely missed the wisdom of his statement. “Good point,” she said. “So we’re looking for someone taking justice into their own hands.”
He shrugged again. “I still think we have a fair chance of looking at a wild animal, but if it is a human-engineered death, then I imagine whoever did this felt perfectly justified in killing his victims. One thing I don’t understand is why he killed them so far apart.”
“Maybe they were killings of opportunity,” Faith said. “Gerald liked to hike in this park.”
“Gigi Demetrious almost certainly didn’t enjoy nighttime excursions to an abandoned industrial lot,” Tom countered.
“It’s possible that he killed Gerald spur of the moment,” Faith said. “First victims usually differ slightly from later victims. The killer hasn’t perfected his or her M.O. That’s why the first victim is usually the most important to an investigation.
“Too bad our first victim left us almost nothing to go on.”
Faith nodded agreement. “Yeah. Our killer might have been better off keeping his murders out of town.”
Michael and Turk returned then. “Nothing,” Michael said. “Not that I expected anything. Turk did his best, but there are animals all over the place out here. I can’t imagine he’d have any luck finding the exact coyotes who killed Gerald.”
“We should ask local residents and see if they’ve seen anything,” Tom replied.
“The nearest residents are miles away,” Faith reminded him.
“There’s a neighborhood two miles from where we’re standing,” Tom said, pointing at a collection of houses on a hillside to the west. “They could have seen something. And the night watchmen in the industrial park might have seen something. It’s a long shot, but it’s better than no shot. And if itiswild animals, then we need to start thinking about a more coordinated response.”
Faith had to admit he was right. She was not a believer in the efficacy of canvassing, but she had no leads to work on. The sheriff’s department hadn’t come up with anything from Gigi’s employees and Gerald’s business partners were more concerned with who would buy out Gerald’s share than the fact he was dead or who might have caused it. They all had alibis for the nights of the murders too.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s ask around.”
They started in the subdivision overlooking the park. No one had seen Gerald the night of his death, but several reported seeing coyotes approach uncomfortably close to the neighborhood. One resident expressed her concern—or rather insisted—that the sheriff’s department wasn’t doing enough to protect people from the coyotes and wondered aloud why they hadn’t yet been exterminated.
The situation was the same in the industrial park. Coyotes were occasionally seen around the park, particularly in the abandoned lots where they liked to hunt rodents that sheltered in the piles of raw materials and abandoned machinery, but recent weeks had seen an uptick in activity. One guard shared that he had to brandish his nightstick to scare off a particularly bold animal.
Faith hated to admit it, but the possibility that it was coyotes, after all, was starting to seem more likely.
