AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Michael sighed and said, “All right.”
They walked back to the interrogation room. Karl was staring at Turk, who watched him with a bored expression. Faith sat next to Turk while Michael stood behind them, arms crossed.
“Karl, my K9 unit is very well-trained. He used to be an explosives dog in Iraq.”
Karl nodded but said nothing.
“He’s actually caught serial killers before because of smell.”
Karl didn’t react.
“So the fact that he’s been in the same room with you for hours and hasn’t acted suspicious around you tells me that you might not be our guy after all.”
Karl’s gaze snapped to Faith. Faith saw first hope, then suspicion on his face. “Why are you keeping me here, then?”
“Because I think you know who the killer is. I think that someone else has been to your house looking for the pheromone. I think you gave him some or sold him some, and now you’re afraid of the world falling down around you.
"Look, I don't blame you. The reality is that you're in a lot of trouble right now. But if you help us, we can make things easier. The DEA doesn't need to know about the lab. You can deny that you sold anyone anything. You can claim that they broke in and stole from you. You might get some time, but only a few years at most. More likely just a big fine like my partner said."
“You’ll do all of that?” Karl asked warily.
“We’ll do what we can,” Faith replied.
Karl clammed up again, and Michael took over. "Karl, you messed around with things you should have left alone. You didn't like when people stopped paying attention to you. You saw your chance to be famous, and when that fame disappeared, you got angry and, let's be honest, obsessive. You haven't worked in close to seven years. You've been spending all of your time at your home lab trying to perfect a pheromone that no one wants anymore. And somehow, some way, a killer got his hands on your pheromone and used it to murder three people.”
“That we know of so far,” Faith amended.
Michael nodded. “So you’re screwed. I’m not going to tell you that you’re going to walk out of here today. You won’t. But Iwilltell you that if you make it harder for us to find the person who did kill these people, we’re going to make sure this hurts. We’re going to make sure you get accessory for every single person killed, every single dog stolen, every single gram of pheromone that your lab synthesized. You’ll be in jail for the rest of your life. We’ll make sure of it. So you’re between a rock and a hard place, but the rock is a lot smaller than the hard place. A few years for possession and you’re back on your feet.”
“With what?” Karl said dejectedly. “I will never have a career again.”
“You already don’t have a career,” Faith pointed out. “But you can spend the rest of your life in your own home, or you can spend the rest of it sharing a cell with a violent murderer. What's it gonna be?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He always took three vials with him. One was a sedative used to knock out the person to be punished. The second was the pheromone. This he would insert into an aerosol can and mist over the victim when he was ready for the dogs. The third was a failsafe, two hundred milligrams of potassium cyanide. He could use it to kill the target if something went wrong. Or, if something went really wrong, he could use it on himself.
His vials, along with the refillable aerosol can for later, rested in a foam-lined container he built himself using stolen material from his old office. The container, a small briefcase, sat on the passenger seat of his pickup as he drove back to the victim’s house. His dogs waited at home. He would pick them up later. It was better to spend as little time as possible with the dogs in the pickup. It attracted suspicion.
He glanced over at the briefcase, and the memories of his old job resurfaced again. He worked for a Doctor Karl Vanheusen, a brilliant man, one whose ideas could have revolutionized veterinary medicine if he hadn't been censored by ignoramuses too stupid to see the value in his work.
He was a tech for Doctor Vanheusen and heard much of the doctor’s musings on his pheromones. He couldn’t wait for the FDA to approve the drug for use with pets, but of course, things went a different way. He assumed Doctor Vanheusen would fight, but he didn’t. He hung his head and started destroying the pheromone just like ordered.
Well, he couldn’t allow that. He knew there was value in the doctor’s work. He didn’t know what that value was at the time, but he knew he couldn’t allow the doctor’s magnum opus to be discarded like that.
So, he stole a few vials and downloaded the research that detailed how to synthesize the pheromone. That was the hard part. A home chemistry set of the kind parents bought precocious children was all he needed to ensure a steady supply of the pheromone, which required very little in the way of exotic raw materials to synthesize. The raw materials he did need, he accumulated over the next year at his following job at the animal clinic.
His wistful smile faded when he thought of the clinic. He enjoyed working with the animals there, but the people—staff and client—were not so enjoyable. Dr. Vanheusen was always kind to his animals, but some of these people… he had never seen animal abuse before then.
The worst was Honey.
His fingers tightened reflexively on the steering wheel. He took a big breath, held it and released it slowly, then repeated until his arms relaxed.
Honey was his first. She was a fourteen-year-old Red Tick Hound whose owner decided that since she was too old to work, she must be put down.
The poor dog, of course, had no idea that the reason her master brought her to the vet was to have her killed. She was old and slow and nearly blind, but she was still sharp-minded and strong enough to have a few more good years left.
The vet, Doctor Parvati, the only vet at that clinic who cared about the animals more than about money, saw the same thing and refused to put the animal down. The owner, a fat, ugly, mean-tempered man named Gus Friese, threw a fit, yelling and screaming that it was his dog, and he could do whatever he pleased with her.
