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He lifted an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”
“You made me think about it actually, when you mentioned the way those two students reacted to the loud noise in Dr. Tate’s study. They were in pain. If that’s what they lived with every day, then their lives must have been constant discomfort with only isolated moments of peace. That could explain why they went to figure out where the killer’s noise was coming from. They were killed in or near their homes or in their businesses—places where they would ordinarily have sanctuary.”
“So we’re looking for someone who wanted to take away their safety?”
“Well, yes, but that’s focusing on the killer. I want to go back to focusing on the victims. What would our victims do to try to alleviate the constant pain and discomfort they suffered?”
“Go see a doctor?”
Faith grinned. “Bingo.”
Michael nodded. “Ah. You think that a doctor might have seen all three of our victims and might also be interested in a little moonlighting as a serial killer.”
“I think it’s an angle worth exploring,” she replied. “Let’s look up their medical records and see if anything pops up.”
Ordinarily, finding someone’s medical record was as difficult as learning someone’s confession history from their priest. But when the people in question were violently murdered and that medical record could tell the FBI who might have done it, medical providers were a little more willing to cooperate. Faith and Michael were quickly able to compile a list of doctors who saw each of the women for complaints related to sensitive hearing.
Rebecca, somewhat surprisingly, had only seen a few doctors and no one after her sophomore year of college when she began studying sound engineering. She, apparently, had decided to put her hearing to good use rather than try to reduce it.
Maria had seen quite a few more, but again, her visits stopped years before. The last appointment was with a doctor hired to develop a special set of ear plugs she could wear in concert to prevent the noise of the other instruments from bothering her. That was when she was twenty-five. Evidently the earplugs worked because for the last six years of her life, she never complained about her hearing again.
Emily was the outlier. She had seen no fewer than sixteen specialists complaining about her sensitive hearing and explored treatments ranging from mundane to borderline pseudoscience. That made sense. She was a linguist, and since most people didn’t have super hearing, languages weren’t developed with a degree of nuance that would require exceptional hearing to understand and analyze. She was the only one of the three to whom super hearing wouldn’t provide an advantage.
One name showed up on all three lists: Dr. Lucas Hammond.
“I guess we know who we’re talking to next,” Faith said.
“I don’t know,” Michael demurred. “He hadn’t seen Maria or Rebecca in years. He saw Emily ten months ago. Why would he suddenly decide to kill them now, and why would Emily be the last one he killed? I think we might just be looking at another coincidence.”
“First of all,” Faith countered, “if that’s the case, then we should talk to him to rule that out just like we talked to Elena. Second of all, it looks like Emily sued him for malpractice.”
Michael lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t say?”
“I do say. Evidently, she accused him of fraudulently claiming to be able to mitigate sensitive hearing. She claimed that his very expensive and very invasive treatment—including a full-body exam—did absolutely nothing to improve her condition and claimed he was simply taking advantage of vulnerable people to earn money that would be difficult to recover since experimental treatments are usually taken at the patient’s own risk.”
“Did she win the lawsuit?”
“No,” Faith admitted, “but I can’t imagine that the publicity was good for his career.”
"Probably not," he agreed. "So we have a motive for Emily. What about the other two?”
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that Dr. Hammond is guilty of malpractice. He might want to eliminate anyone who might look at Emily’s case and say, ‘Hey, yeah, he did that to me too.’”
“But why not Emily first?”
“Probably to remove suspicion. He already won the lawsuit, but it would look bad if she died right after the suit was dismissed. If, on the other hand, two other victims who don’t have an obvious connection to the third go first, maybe we think exactly what we thought, that it’s some psycho.”
Michael nodded. “All right. I’m convinced. Let’s go talk to this guy.”
Faith felt better as the three of them drove toward St. Christopher’s Medical Center. Some of that had to do with the discovery of a new lead only a few hours after their last one dried up. Most of it, though, had to do with Michael’s encouragement regarding West.
He was in jail. She was free. Turk was alive. So were David and Michael. He hadn’t broken her. He had failed.
And when Faith finished with this case, she was going to go home and watch him get sent away.
A smile spread across her face. You lose, West.
Chapter Seventeen
