The Perfect Block

by Blake Pierce

  “Maybe it’s time we asked him a few more direct questions,” Jessie said.

  “I was planning to go say hi now,” Ryan replied. “But I still want to keep it as casual as possible. You want to observe?”

  “Sure,” Jessie said. “How will this work?”

  “I was going to collect him and offer to get him a coffee in the break room. Maybe you’re already there, sitting at a nearby table. I’ll just chat him up, see what I can learn. You watch and see what jumps out at you. Sound good?”

  “Sounds good,” she agreed. “I’ll be there.”

  While Ryan went to get Romano, Jessie headed to the break room. She had just prepped her coffee and sat down when the two men entered. She put her head down to avoid eye contact, focusing intently on the plastic stirrer she was using to mix in her cream. Hernandez and Romano were mid-conversation.

  “…but aren’t you worried about STDs?” Ryan was asking.

  “Nah, man. I use protection. I’ve even taken a few tests, paid for in advance by the potential new lady friend. I figure if they’re so worried, they’re probably clean too, right?”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” Ryan said, not quite agreeing.

  “Listen, man,” Romano said as if he were explaining the intricacies of a baseball triple play, “these ladies are very specific about what they want. Part of my job is to set them at ease. If it got around that I wasn’t safe, my business would totally dry up.”

  Jessie forced herself to stifle a mocking grunt at the notion that anything about this guy’s life was safe. Apart from his job, it was clear from his abnormally muscled physique and his unnaturally dark skin that Dan Romano was an enthusiastic tanner and steroid user. He looked like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger’s more Mediterranean brother.

  “I got ya,” Ryan said, ignoring Jessie and playing along. “So how profitable was your business, Dan? Were you working every wife at the country club?”

  “First of all,” Romano said, getting unexpectedly serious, “let me be plain. My business is personal training—nothing illegal about that. That’s what I got paid for. Any extra time I spend with the ladies is gratis. I just want to make that known. My cousin is a lawyer and he told me that I’m good. Clear?”

  “I hear you, Dan,” Ryan said reassuringly. “We’re clear. So what’s your ‘second of all’?”

  “Right. So the answer is no, I wasn’t ‘assisting’ all the ladies. If you work with everyone, it stops being exclusive, you know?”

  “That makes sense,” Ryan said, nodding.

  “And some ladies just weren’t into it. Like that one who just died, Victoria something. But she never gave off even a whiff of interest. So I stayed clear.”

  “So you never ‘worked’ with her?” Ryan asked, using air quotes around “worked.”

  “No, man,” Dan assured him. “She scheduled a few training sessions but she kept canceling. I don’t know why. If you ask me, she didn’t need any legit training anyway. Whatever she was doing on her own was working because her body was bangin’.”

  “Could she have been using another trainer?”

  “I doubt it. The guys in our industry don’t like to tread into another dude’s territory. Bad form, you know? I would have heard if she was working with someone else for real workouts or fun workouts, if you get my drift.”

  “I get your drift, Dan,” Ryan said, admirably managing to keep his tone mockery-free. “So what can you tell me about Victoria?”

  “Not much. The closest I ever got to her was grabbing an orange juice for her when she fainted one time. She had diabetes—pretty bad, I think. I know what that’s like. My little brother had juvenile diabetes. No fun.”

  Ryan couldn’t help but glance over at Jessie, who raised her eyebrows. She knew they were thinking the same thing: Dan would likely be very familiar with how insulin injections worked.

  “That sucks, man,” Ryan said, returning his attention to Romano. “So if someone said you were training her, they’d be lying?”

  “Or just wrong. Like I said, she booked a few appointments but she always bailed.”

  “Okay, thanks for the info,” Ryan said. “Hey, listen, I have to get back on the clock. But I thought of a way we might be able to help you with that husband who’s been bothering you.”

  “That would be awesome. How?”

  “Take this pad and pen,” Ryan said, sliding across the legal pad and ballpoint that were conveniently sitting on the table. “Write down your schedule for the last couple of days, starting on Monday morning. Don’t leave anything out. Then we’ll check that against records of where the hubby was at those times. If we find a lot of overlap, him showing up where you are, we might be able to get a restraining order against him.”

  “I don’t want to make a big fuss,” Romano replied. “I just don’t want this guy coming after me.”

  “I get it,” Ryan assured him. “Just write down every detail of your life for the week so far. We don’t have to make anything official. But if we find that he’s been tailing you, we can have a quiet chat with him that will get him to back off. Most guys, even rich, pissed off ones, will back off if the cops come knocking at his door. I promise—we’ll be discreet.”

  “Okay,” Romano said, pulling out his phone to check his calendar.

  “I have to run,” Ryan said, standing up and nodding at Jessie to meet him outside. “Give it to Detective Trembley and we’ll follow up. It’ll all work out, Dan. Don’t worry.”

  Jessie followed Ryan back to the observation room, where they wouldn’t run into Romano accidentally.

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said once he closed the door behind them. “The diabetes connection had me wondering. But everything else about this guy makes me think he’s not our man. What do you think, Junior Profiler?”

  “I tend to agree, Experienced Detective,” she said. “For one thing, I just don’t think Romano is smart enough to pull off any element of the crime. Then there’s the fact that he came to law enforcement at all. Even if there is a jealous husband after him you’d think a killer would want to stay off the radar of detectives at all costs. Plus, he’s in there providing a detailed breakdown of his every movement for the last several days. If what he writes down doesn’t match his phone’s GPS, he’ll be setting himself up to look guilty.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “We need to find out if what he said is true about not having much interaction with Victoria Missinger. If that’s a lie, the rest might be too. Let’s not eliminate the possibility that this guy isn’t as dumb as we think. I’ve been played before.”

  “Maybe I go back and talk to that Andrea Robinson woman from the country club,” Jessie suggested. “She was pretty knowledgeable about the goings-on there. And unlike some of the other women at the club, she seemed to actually want to help. If she saw Romano and Victoria Missinger together or even just heard rumors about them, it might let us know if we’re on the right path.”

  “Go for it,” Ryan said. “Just don’t be too forthcoming. If she’s this chatty with you, she might be with others too. We don’t need the entire Beverly Country Club knowing our business.”

  “I’ll call her now and then we can regroup, sound okay?”

  Ryan looked like he wanted to say something but seemed to think better of it and simply nodded in agreement. Something in his expression told her that whatever he was going to tell her, she wasn’t going to like it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It didn’t take long for Ryan to spill the beans.

  He tried to come at it sideways by asking her a question first. He waited until they were back at his desk before diving in, after she’d finished setting up a coffee get-together for that afternoon with Andi Robinson.

  “So you weren’t really in any condition to give me a coherent answer yesterday, but I was hoping you could now. Care to tell me how you ended up in an abandoned apartment building, fighting off a vagrant with a steak knife in a bathroom with a years-old dead body?�
�

  Jessie didn’t see any reason not to be forthcoming. She had already told him about Crutchfield and his connection to her father. It didn’t seem unreasonable to tell him about her request for information and the favor he wanted in return.

  So she let him know everything about the visit yesterday, including Crutchfield’s not-so-veiled threat to reveal her whereabouts to her father. She told him how she agreed to check out the address he mentioned, though she waited until past his deadline to spite him. And she walked him through the details of her trip to the apartment complex. After she’d relived the discovery of the body, the vagrant attack, and her escape, she stopped.

  “I guess that’s pretty much it. I drove to the hospital, got some shots and stitches, and you showed up. Now that I’ve told you everything, do you care to tell me whatever it is you’ve been holding back this whole time?”

  Ryan looked momentarily surprised, before breaking into an embarrassed grin.

  “I don’t know if you’re that good at reading people or I’m that bad at hiding things,” he said.

  “I think it’s a little bit of both. So start talking.”

  Okay,” he started. “First of all, the vagrant was caught near the complex. His name’s Josiah Burress. He’s got a long record of assaults; almost killed a man once. So it could have gone a lot worse for you.”

  “That’s good to know,” Jessie said. “But it’s not what you’re stalling revealing. Just tell me. You’re starting to freak me out.”

  “It’s about the body in the tub,” he finally admitted. “We’ve identified her. She was a woman named Patrice Houston. She’d been missing for almost five years but because she was a known prostitute and drug addict, the search wasn’t a top priority. The detective who originally had the case figured she OD’d in some homeless encampment and was tossed in dumpster or something.”

  “Sounds like the investigation was real top-notch,” Jessie said derisively.

  “I’ll just say that the detective in charge of the case is now retired and we’re all better off for it. Unfortunately, that’s not the part that’s going to freak you out.”

  “What is?” Jessie asked.

  “Patrice appears to have been killed by strangulation. There are notches in her windpipe that match striations we’ve seen in other women who were killed by a notorious serial rapist and killer.”

  Jessie felt her stomach drop. Before Ryan could continue, she knew who was responsible and she knew why she had been sent to that particular apartment.

  “It was Delmond Stokes, wasn’t it?” she said.

  Ryan nodded, not speaking.

  It all made sense to Jessie now. Delmond Stokes had terrorized the Central California region for years, assaulting and sometimes murdering a series of women. He had started with prostitutes and eventually worked his way to housewives and single working women. He was known for using thick wire to choke the women he killed, wire that often left permanent grooves in the women’s windpipes. By the time he was captured in Bakersfield three years ago, he was believed to have had over three dozen victims, at least four of whom he killed.

  More relevant to the moment, he had spent many years in Los Angeles prior to moving north and it was assumed that he’d committed similar crimes here, though no bodies had ever been found…until now. Though it wasn’t common knowledge, he was also incarcerated at NRD, the same facility as Bolton Crutchfield.

  “Can’t be a coincidence, right?” Ryan finally said, voicing what they were both thinking.

  “No way,” Jessie said. “Despite the safeguards, those two must have communicated. And Crutchfield somehow gained Stokes’s trust enough to get him to reveal where he’d left a body. There’s no other way he could have known that much detail.”

  “But you’re forgetting one thing,” Ryan said. “He got the unit number wrong. You told me he said unit 2016. But it was 206, correct? Maybe he heard it wrong. We could use that to figure out how they spoke to each other.”

  “Maybe…” Jessie murmured.

  “What?” Ryan pressed. “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “It’s just that I don’t think Crutchfield would make a mistake like that. He’s very meticulous. He wanted me to find that body and make the connection to Stokes. He wanted to prove to me that he can reach out to anyone he chooses, whenever he wants, including my father. So he would have made certain to use the right unit number unless he had a specific reason not to.”

  “What reason could he possibly have?” Ryan asked.

  “You’re the cop who took him down,” Jessie reminded him. “Don’t you have any theories?”

  “All I did was catch and arrest him. I’ve never had a substantive conversation with him. You know him way better than I do. What do you think he’s up to?”

  Jessie thought for a moment, then grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote down the address.

  1024 Visitation Avenue, unit 2016.

  She stared at it for a few moments, growing increasingly frustrated.

  “He loves games,” she said. “It’s a riddle.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said, prodding. “But he wouldn’t give you a riddle he didn’t think you could solve. He wants you to solve it. So it must be something important to you. What does he know you want?”

  “To find out where my father is,” Jessie said immediately.

  “That makes sense,” Ryan agreed. “But he’s not going to give that up. He’d lose too much leverage.”

  “No,” Jessie said. “But he might give me a piece of the puzzle. Like I said, he likes playing games with me. But he knows that I’ll stop playing if there’s nothing in it for me. So he has to give me something that will keep me coming back.”

  An idea flashed through her head and she gasped audibly.

  “What?” Ryan asked, worried.

  Jessie wrote down the address again, but this time she made a few adjustments, putting all the numbers together.

  10242016, Visitation Ave. unit.

  “I still don’t get it,” Ryan said, flummoxed.

  “What if I tried this?” Jessie said, writing it again with a few small tweaks and deletions. Now it read:

  10/24/2016, visitation.

  “A date?” Ryan asked.

  “Not just any date,” she said. “Crutchfield told me that my father actually came to visit him once at NRD disguised as a doctor. I think this might be the date they met. And if we have the exact date…”

  “They can check the surveillance footage,” Ryan finished.

  “Exactly,” Jessie said. “If I can see that footage, maybe I can uncover some clue that will lead me to my dad’s whereabouts.”

  “Do you think they’ll let you look at it? Won’t you have to jump through tons of bureaucratic hoops?”

  “The head of security asked if I wanted to be roomies,” Jessie noted. “I think I can convince her to let me take a peek.”

  “When are you going to go?”

  “I’m not meeting with Andrea Robinson until later this afternoon,” Jessie answered, standing up and grabbing her purse. “So I say no time like the present.”

  *

  Kat had the footage cued up and waiting when Jessie arrived. If there were any hoops to jump through to get access to it, she didn’t mention them. After the infuriatingly slow process of going through all the security measures, they finally walked into Kat’s office twenty minutes after Jessie had arrived at the NRD.

  “How do you know this is the right guy?” Jessie asked as she sat down in front of the monitor.

  “Crutchfield doesn’t get a lot of outside visitors,” Kat said. “And they all have to be authorized. This was his only one that day, that whole month actually. He used the name Dr. Bertrand Roy. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “It’s actually vaguely familiar, but I can’t place where from. Do you remember him?”

  “No,” Kat said. “He visited Crutchfield before I took over security here. The visitation policies were less stringent back then
. You ready for me to play the footage?”

  Jessie nodded and Kat pushed the start button. The camera was of the cell and the image was from behind the visitor, meaning only Crutchfield’s face was visible. A man walked in at 2:06 p.m. wearing a sweater vest and slacks and sat down at the very table where Jessie had been yesterday.

  Even without seeing his face, Jessie knew it was him—her father. She’d recognize Xander Thurman anywhere. Even twenty-plus years later, he had the same leisurely gait, as if there was no hurry to get anywhere. His once dark hair was now sprinkled with gray but still cut short, as if he’d recently gotten out of the military.

  He had the same long, angular torso she remembered. Like Jessie, he had always been tall and wiry. He had a wolfish leanness to him that even the professorial attire and the glasses he was wearing couldn’t hide. He was pretending to be a nervous academic but the act was obvious to her. His lack of anxiety at being in the presence of another serial killer was evident. He seemed…comfortable.

  Crutchfield said something but Jessie couldn’t hear it.

  “There’s no audio?” she asked.

  “We only had a video feed back then,” Kat said.

  “What the hell is the point of that?”

  “My predecessor said something about a zone of privacy. It never made sense to me. I gather the administration felt like I did, which is part of why he was replaced. Now every inch of that cell is wired for sound. We can monitor his breathing patterns when he sleeps. Not that any of that helps you.”

  Jessie forced herself to let her frustration go and tried to zero in on the body language of both men. They had started talking almost immediately. Jessie gathered that Crutchfield recognized his visitor because his demeanor was unlike anything she’d ever seen from him. He seemed giddy, like a preteen girl meeting a member of her favorite boy band. Even at this distance on a video screen, she could see his eyes glistening with manic intensity.

  It was a strange sight but it wasn’t a shock. After all, Bolton Crutchfield had modeled his murders on her dad’s, using the same methods. He was a fan. And now his greatest dream had come true. His hero had come to see him—was standing right in front of him—in the heart of a supposedly secure lockdown psychiatric facility. It was clearly a special moment for him.