The Perfect Facade (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Twelve)

by Blake Pierce

  The one thing both women agreed on was that Kimberly’s description of Claudia was on the money. The consensus was that she was nicer than all of them, less catty and more generous, quieter and more private. They all said she was a good person.

  Jessie looked up from her notes at Karen, who shrugged back helplessly. Neither of them seemed sure how to proceed with the women. They’d hit a wall.

  “I was thinking,” Karen finally said, her tone suggesting she didn’t necessarily believe what she was about to say. “This could be the start of a pattern—one woman in a group of drunk friends, targeted by a killer hoping to take advantage of her diminished situational awareness.”

  Jessie smirked at her.

  “You sound a lot like a person looking for an excuse for HSS to take over this case from Hollywood Station.”

  “Would that be so bad?” Karen countered. “You guys have more resources. Everyone responds more promptly when you’re involved. Plus you have that whiz kid at your disposal.”

  The whiz kid she was referring to was Jamil Winslow, the police researcher who had transferred to Central Station from the Manhattan Beach Police Department after working with Jessie and Ryan on a case in that ritzy beach town.

  Jamil was a godsend. Despite his diminutive, frail appearance, the twenty-four-year-old was not just unbelievably smart, with an amazing facility to navigate complicated tech and dry paperwork, but also relentless in pursuing leads and seemingly impervious to fatigue.

  Having him available to help them work through the cavalcade of credit card receipts and the avalanche of video from the hotel, the club, and the restaurant would be a huge bonus. That alone pushed Jessie from being dubious at having HSS take over to being an enthusiastic proponent. She knew Decker wouldn’t balk if she asked. In fact, he was likely counting on it.

  She was just about to make the call when one of the crime scene techs stepped into the room. He was holding an evidence bag.

  “What’s that?” Karen asked, looking at the formless mess inside.

  “We missed it on our first pass of the suite,” he said sheepishly. “It was covered in vomit and no one bothered to look too closely. But we caught it on the final go around.”

  “I still can’t tell what it is,” Karen said, hesitant to touch the bag.

  Jessie leaned over and looked more closely.

  “I can,” she said after a moment. “It’s a black bowtie. It would seem that it wasn’t just the girls in that suite last night.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jessie dropped the evidence bag on the conference room table and watched to see how the women reacted.

  At first no one understood what they were looking at. But eventually Veronica leaned over and gasped. That made the other two look closer as well. They seemed to process what they were seeing at the same time. All three of them turned red.

  “This doesn’t look good,” Karen said with real venom. “We’re trying to solve your friend’s murder and not one of you mentioned that there was someone else in that room. I’m assuming it was a stripper?”

  They nodded.

  “This is cover-up stuff,” Karen told them. “Not only are you all at risk of being charged with a crime, but you neglected to share information that could be crucial to determining who did this to Claudia.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Veronica said. “We should have told you. It’s just that—”

  “We were embarrassed to admit it,” Kimberly jumped in. “We didn’t want to do anything to tarnish Claudia’s memory.”

  “Besides,” added Lauren. “He was gone before Claudia crashed for the night so it didn’t seem relevant.”

  Jessie watched as Karen turned a shade of purple she’d never seen on her. Though she was just as upset, she tried hard to hide it. She didn’t want three potential suspects to see her out of control.

  “Typically, it’s the police investigating the murder who decide what’s relevant,” Karen growled. “Who’s to say he didn’t steal one of your room keycards and sneak back in later, hoping to rob you or worse?”

  Lauren looked sheepish.

  “I didn’t think of that,” she muttered.

  “Give me the guy’s contact information,” Karen snarled.

  As Lauren searched her purse, Jessie watched the three women. Something felt off. She got the distinct impression that they still weren’t sharing everything. She wondered what exactly happened in the suite with that stripper.

  “Here you go,” Lauren said, pulling out a business card and handing it to Karen. “His name is Rock Harder.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” the detective replied.

  “That’s what he called himself,” Lauren told her, shrugging. “This is the phone number for the company I booked him through.”

  Karen looked at the card. Jessie could tell she was still seething. She was pissed too but didn’t want her colleague to make a rash decision.

  “Detective Bray, can I get a minute outside?” she said.

  They closed the door and moved into an adjoining room. Before she could speak, Karen started in.

  “We should bring all these rich bitches in and file charges for obstruction, or at least keep them in a holding cell for a few hours—let them sweat for a while.”

  “I get it,” Jessie said calmly. “They absolutely deserve it. But I have another idea.”

  “I’m all ears,” Karen replied.

  “I think we should let them go.”

  “What?” Karen demanded incredulously.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but I know these kinds of women. I literally know one of them personally. I know how they think. I traveled in their circle for more time than I care to think about. If we let them go home, they’ll get comfortable. They’ll get arrogant. In here, they’re all on their best behavior, being super cautious about everything they say. But if we get them each alone in their natural habitat, with their expensive furniture and maids on call, they’ll feel more relaxed. That’s when they’re more likely to make a mistake or inadvertently reveal something. That’s when they’ll backbite and try to throw each other under the bus. Trust me, Karen. We’ll get so much more out of them if we let them go.”

  “What if one of them killed her and tries to run?” she asked. “These women have the resources to get out of the country.”

  Jessie had an answer for that.

  “We insist they turn over their passports until the investigation is complete. That gives us an excuse to go see them tomorrow—to collect their documents. In the meantime, we have local cops sit on their houses overnight. If someone tries to run, we’ll have solved this thing in record time. What do you think?”

  Karen still seemed irked but couldn’t find a compelling reason not to go along with Jessie’s plan.

  “Fine,” she finally said. “I’d rather be talking to a stripper anyway.”

  Jessie smiled.

  “You’re about to get your wish.”

  *

  His real name was Jerry Blatt.

  At least according to his employer, It’s Raining Men Entertainment, which gave them his home address in West Hollywood. Jessie left her car at the hotel and Karen handled the driving so she could reach out to both Decker and Jamil. As Jessie suspected, the captain was more than happy to have HSS take on the case.

  “There’s a not insignificant chance that the theory you mentioned is right,” he said. “If there is someone out there hunting women who are partying on the town, we should take this case as a precautionary measure.”

  Jessie was impressed that she couldn’t hear any hint of B.S. trickle into his tone. They both knew HSS taking over this case was a stretch. Maybe this murder was part of a pattern. Maybe wealthy women at girls’ night out parties were in imminent danger all over the city. But so far, they didn’t have anything to justify that suspicion. Right now at least, it seemed like an intriguing but isolated incident.

  Still, if the lead detective from the assigned station didn’t have a problem wit
h handing over the case to HSS, Decker was clearly more than happy to take it on. Jessie decided to hold off on calling him out for tricking her into signing on. After all, she was in the middle of it now. She’d save the guilt trip for when it served her purposes.

  Once they were done, Decker transferred her to Jamil Winslow. Amazingly, he didn’t answer. Jessie left a message. It was only after she hung up that she remembered it was Saturday afternoon and a twenty-four-year-old guy might not be hanging out at work.

  It took less than a minute for him to call her back.

  “Are you in the office?” she asked, surprised.

  “No,” he said. “I’m home. But I’ve linked my work number to my cell so it alerted me to your message. I’m heading in now.”

  “That’s not necessary, Jamil. I don’t want to ruin your afternoon.”

  “Are you serious?” he asked. “I was bored just sitting around. This gives me something to do. Have the Hollywood Station people send me everything: video, forensic data, financials. I’ll start in as soon as I get there.”

  “You’re a prince,” Jessie marveled.

  “I know,” he agreed. “I’ll update you when I have news worth sharing.”

  She hung up and looked out the window. As they drove west along Sunset Boulevard to the apartment of Jerry Blatt (aka Rock Harder), they passed Fête on the right. Jessie sank in her seat as she realized it was the last place Claudia Wender had visited before her death at the hotel.

  She imagined the woman, a decade her senior, half-drunk and happy, shimmying with her friends on the dance floor, enjoying a night away from domestic life. She pictured Claudia laughing as her friend was forcibly removed from the club and following her outside into the chilly December night, the sweat from her evening of revelry disappearing when met by the cold air of the Hollywood Hills.

  Jessie opened the file of photos of Claudia that Karen had sent her. They included brutal crime scene images and a perfunctory driver’s license photo. But they also showed screen shots from her Facebook page, including a night out with her husband and a family vacation somewhere tropical.

  Most heartbreaking of all, she came across a photo dated barely over a month ago. It was from a school Halloween parade. Claudia wore a skin-tight Black Widow costume and her kids, a girl and boy, were dressed as Wonder Woman and Batman. None of them seemed troubled by mixing up different superhero universes as they smiled broadly for the camera. Claudia draped an arm around each of them, who leaned in tight against her.

  “We’re here,” Karen said, pulling her back into the present.

  Jessie looked up. They were parked in front of a modern-looking apartment complex on a small residential street just off San Vicente.

  “Has anyone contacted her husband?” Jessie asked.

  “We asked Westport Beach PD to do it. Since her friends could ID her, we didn’t see any need to have him come all the way up here, especially with the kids and all.”

  “That was thoughtful,” Jessie said. “We’ll need to interview him, of course.”

  “Yeah,” Karen agreed. “I thought we’d give him the night and talk tomorrow, when we go down to re-interview the birthday friends.”

  Jessie nodded quietly and opened the car door. Hearing Karen mention tomorrow caused a swell of mixed emotions. This assignment was supposed to be a few hours of consulting. That’s what she had promised Captain Decker. But now that she was in it, could she really just leave Karen to handle everything on her own? Could she abandon her when the next step was to go into the belly of the Orange County beast, a place Jessie knew all too well?

  As she silently weighed her options, Karen led the way up to the building. It was a bland, cookie-cutter design, like so many others that had taken the place of quirkier complexes in recent years. Someone was leaving the main entrance as they arrived, allowing them to enter without buzzing up to announce themselves.

  They took the elevator up to the second floor and approached the door to unit 216. There was no sound coming from inside. Karen released the holster cover and rested her right hand on top of her gun as she knocked on the door with her left. There was no response. She waited about twenty seconds before knocking again. As she did, Jessie checked that her own weapon was accessible.

  After another thirty seconds, they heard a shout from somewhere in the back of the apartment.

  “What?” came an agitated, male voice.

  “Mr. Blatt, this is Detective Karen Bray with LAPD. Please open the door. We need to speak with you.”

  There was an extended silence followed by a sudden, heavy thump, as if someone had been thrown against a wall or the ground.

  “Mr. Blatt, are you all right?” Karen shouted. “We need you to open the door immediately.”

  No one spoke but they heard a loud groan from the other side of the door. It sounded less than ten feet away. Both women unholstered their guns.

  “Step back,” Karen told Jessie, who immediately moved to the side.

  Karen leaned back, then moved forward, quickly driving her foot against the door near the handle. The wood cracked and splintered and the door buckled but didn’t open. Jessie was impressed by the force and precision of the maneuver. It was clear that Karen had done this many times before.

  “No!” someone shouted from behind it.

  But it was too late. Karen kicked again and this time the door flew open. They dashed inside.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Rock Harder was sprawled out face down on the floor in front of them, completely naked, hugging his left shin.

  A blanket rested on the floor beside him. He looked up at them with pained, watery eyes and managed to grunt.

  “What the hell?”

  “Jerry Blatt?” Karen asked.

  “Yes,” he said, still clutching his shin. Underneath, Jessie could see blood seeping through his fingers. “What is happening?”

  “Mr. Blatt,” Karen said, making no attempt to help him. “We’re investigating the death of Claudia Wender. We have some questions for you. Can you please put some clothes on?”

  He winced as he tried to readjust himself. Jessie averted her gaze slightly so that she wasn’t staring directly at the man’s naked, muscular body. It was immediately clear, with his rippled, tan torso, sandy blond hair, and surfer dude good looks, why he might be popular at his job.

  “I’d love to, but I’m in a bit of pain here,” he said, rolling over from his front to his back and exposing more of himself than either woman cared to see. “I slammed my leg on the coffee table trying to get to the door before you broke it down. Thanks for that, by the way.”

  Jessie holstered her gun, grabbed the blanket on the floor, tossed it to him, and then extended her hand to help him up. He reached out but she shook her head.

  “Your hand’s bloody,” she told him. “I’ll grab you by the arm.”

  “Thanks,” he said as she heaved him up. He limped over to the couch and settled down gingerly. “Did you say someone died?”

  “Yes,” Karen said, keeping her weapon out as she tossed him a dish towel to put on his leg. “You don’t recall the name?”

  “Remind me again,” Jerry asked as he delicately pressed the towel over the impressive gash.

  “Claudia Wender,” Karen repeated. “You performed for her last night at the Hollywood Center Hotel.”

  “Oh right. Everyone just called her Cloudy so I didn’t make the connection. You’re saying she died?”

  “She was murdered, Mr. Blatt,” Jessie said flatly.

  He looked up from his leg and for the first time, seemed to focus on the situation.

  “What?” he asked. “When?”

  “Sometime after you did your routine,” Karen said. “So you can understand why we’re here.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said softly, before blinking a few times, finally seeming to realize they weren’t just here out of courtesy. “But I don’t know anything about it. I did my thing and left. She was fine when I saw her.”<
br />
  “When was that exactly?” Jessie asked.

  Jerry repositioned himself on the couch, valiantly attempting to pretend he wasn’t in pain. Jessie could tell he wanted to ask for a minute to go clean himself up but didn’t want to look like a wuss. That wouldn’t comport with his Adonis image.

  Even if he asked, she wasn’t inclined to let him. The more exposed he was, both physically and emotionally, the more likely they were to get the truth out of him.

  “I was booked for midnight. I was there for about an hour. When I left, she was still alive, though I wasn’t sure all her friends would make it through the night.”

  “What does that mean?” Karen asked.

  Jerry sat up straighter, sensing that he’d been too blasé in his tone.

  “I just mean they were pretty drunk. When I was leaving, one of them looked like she might have already passed out, though I can’t be sure.”

  “Which one?” Jessie asked.

  “I didn’t get any of their names other than the birthday girl, ‘Cloudy.’ But she was blonde, I think. That one was especially rowdy during the show, really grabby. But they were all pretty wild.”

  “So you arrived at midnight and left at one a.m.,” Karen reconfirmed.

  “I don’t remember the exact time I left. I was booked for an hour and it was my last show of the night, so I wasn’t as tied to the clock as I usually am. I remember getting back here around one thirty and it’s not that far away, so that timing seems right.”

  “Are you confident about that?” Jessie pressed. “Was your judgment compromised at all?”

  Jerry smiled despite the pain.

  “If you’re asking if I was drunk too, the answer is no. I don’t drink. I’m on scholarship, getting my degree in engineering, and it’s tough enough to study while moonlighting as a stripper. Seeing how sloppy all of them were didn’t tempt me to change my habits.”

  He seemed to sense that the comment came off as cold and continued before they could reply.

  “I don’t mean to be a jerk. I’m just telling you the truth. They were a raucous group. Cloudy, or Claudia I guess, was actually the most under control of them all. She was definitely drunk but she wasn’t obnoxious. She was actually kind of quiet. She seemed nice. I was glad the show was for her rather than some of the others. I’m really sorry to hear that this happened to her, but I didn’t have anything to do with it, I swear.”