The Perfect Impression

by Pierce, Blake

  Jessie sat quietly for a moment, unsure how to proceed. This could easily be a sham excuse, designed to hide the fact that he had no real alibi. But if what he said was credible, someone might be at real risk. She sighed.

  “You need to give me something, Mr. Ferro,” she said reluctantly. “Otherwise I have to draw my own conclusions.”

  He looked at her, seemingly pained at what she was asking of him. In the long silence that followed, Jessie watched a squirrel dart down one tree and up another. She began to wonder whether Ferro intended to respond at all. She was debating whether to push harder when he sighed and blinked slowly.

  “Can I count on your complete discretion?” he beseeched her before looking over at Peters.

  “To the best of my professional ability, yes,” she assured him. Peters nodded in kind.

  “All right; I’m putting my faith in your integrity,” he said.

  For a second it looked like he might change his mind but then he spoke in a hushed croak.

  “I can’t say the name of the person I was with because he’s famous and he’s not out. Ms. Hunt, I’m gay.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Jessie had barely processed the words when Melissa Ferro stormed out toward them from behind the bush where she’d apparently been hiding.

  “This interview is over,” she hissed in a loud whisper. “Richard, don’t say another word!”

  Jessie was so stunned that she almost fell out of her seat. Peters, to his credit, recovered quicker.

  “You can’t be out here, Mrs. Ferro,” he said, standing up. “I asked you to wait in the bar.”

  The woman shook her head violently, unmoved.

  “This line of questioning is wholly inappropriate. You are invading our personal—”

  “It’s okay, Mellie,” her husband interrupted, stunning Jessie for a second time. “Let’s just be honest with them. We have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  His wife, flustered and confused, stood there in silence. Jessie pushed through her own shock and used the lull to press the man.

  “You were saying, Mr. Ferro?”

  He looked at her, then at his wife. After a moment, he stood up and reached out his hand to her. She came over and grasped it tight.

  “Ms. Hunt,” he said, returning his attention to her. “As I said, I’m a gay man. I didn’t start to come to terms with it until later in life. By then I was married with two children. Before I acted on it, I told Melissa. I wanted to be, for lack of a better word, straight with her. It was difficult, but after many long, tough conversations, we decided to stay together. I love her, maybe not in the way one would expect, but with all my heart. She’s my best friend. We have kids. We’ve built a life together. I didn’t want to throw that away.”

  “But I wanted him to be happy,” Melissa whispered, finally accepting that she couldn’t just end the conversation. “So we came up with a plan.”

  “That’s right,” Richard added. “We decided to embrace this lifestyle, where those kinds of boundaries no longer exist. Now we’re both able to satisfy our desires without guilt and still hold onto the family we both treasure.”

  “And you don’t resent him for this?” Peters asked Melissa Ferro.

  “I did for a while,” she admitted. “It wasn’t what I envisioned for myself. But eventually I made peace with the fact that it was better than the alternative: breaking up our home. It’s unconventional, I’ll admit. But it works.”

  “So what about last night?” Jessie asked, happy that they had found a path to stay together, but no closer to confirming Richard Ferro’s alibi.

  “As I told you previously, I’m not comfortable saying his name,” he insisted. “But I will say this. If you went through the guest list of people staying here at the hotel last night, you could probably find one guest who fits the high-profile description I described. I was with him for a short stretch last night, from around ten thirty to ten forty-five, though I was well-lubricated and may have the times off.”

  “Can anyone confirm this other than the man?” Jessie asked.

  Ferro pondered the question in his mind for a second before responding.

  “I don’t remember seeing anyone when we got to his room,” he admitted. “But I did make a big deal in the bar of saying I was going to help him get there because he was so toasted. He was faking being extra drunk to make it convincing. I think I told Maura, the bartender, to save my barstool or something. It was loud and crazy. She might not have even heard me.”

  “So you were in his room for about fifteen minutes,” Peters confirmed. “Weren’t you concerned about his wife walking in?”

  “No. He told me she’d be out until at least eleven. There was some kind of art show at the Catalina Casino she wanted to check out. He made an official appearance and then begged off so he could get back early to see me.”

  “Did you know about any of this?” Jessie asked Melissa Ferro.

  “I knew Rich had plans, though he wasn’t specific,” she said. “And as you may recall, I had made some of my own for around that same time. I made sure he wasn’t intending to use our suite but other than that, I left well enough alone.”

  Peters looked hard at Richard Ferro. Jessie could tell he wasn’t excited about what he was about to say.

  “Mr. Ferro,” he began, “I sympathize with the sensitivity of this situation. And we’ll try to confirm what we can independently. But you need to understand that we may have to talk to your liaison from last night to verify things.”

  The man looked devastated.

  “I would plead with you to do all you can to avoid that,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “This man opened up to me, made himself vulnerable. If he thinks I betrayed his trust, it could undo him. He’s already in a tenuous emotional place with the stress of living a lie.”

  “We may not have a choice,” Jessie warned him.

  “Then I may not have a choice either,” he said, standing up straight, seeming to find a new reserve of resilience. “If it comes down to it, I won’t make him be my alibi. It would destroy him. If he’s outed as part of some murder investigation, he won’t recover from that, professionally or personally. I fear what he’d do. If it comes to that, then just arrest me. If I have to take the heat for this to protect him, then so be it. I can handle it. You’ll eventually find Gabby’s killer and I’ll move on somehow. I’d rather have my reputation get temporarily dragged through the mud than feel responsible for someone’s death.”

  Jessie looked over at Peters, who appeared as conflicted as she felt. She wanted to solve this case but she didn’t want it to turn into a witch hunt that ended in someone’s suicide. If there was a way to verify what Ferro said without going to this mystery man, she preferred to do it. Before she could express that thought, Melissa Ferro stepped forward, as if she was a human shield protecting her husband.

  “You’ve heard what each of us has had to say. We’ve been more than accommodating. We’ve shared our deepest family secret. But you’re bordering on harassment here. We’re calling our lawyer and we’re not answering any more questions.”

  She was still holding her husband’s hand and as she turned to leave, she tugged hard, taking him with her.

  Jessie watched them go, knowing that they’d soon tell their friends about their decision. The rest of them would surely follow suit. The friendly interview portion of this investigation was officially over. And with that, so was any semblance of control.

  It was only a matter of time now before these people left the island, free to backstop their legal options and if desperate, leave the country entirely. The game was almost over, and she was losing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Ryan was impressed.

  He had worked with Jamil Winslow on a case in Manhattan Beach just before the stabbing, so he knew the kid was smart. But even Jessie’s effusive praise, touting his brilliance once he transferred to the LAPD’s Central Station to become their resident police researcher, hadn’t p
repared him for what Jamil was capable of.

  By late morning, the skinny, frail twenty-four-year-old wunderkind had pulled up all available surveillance video from near the homes of the X-Acto victims, as he’d taken to calling them. They were just getting ready to review the footage when Detective Alan Trembley walked in.

  “Hi, boys,” he said enthusiastically.

  Ryan couldn’t help but laugh. Apparently the guy had enjoyed his vacation a little too much. In addition to his unruly, curly blond hair, smudged glasses, and too-big sports coat, he also had a bad sunburn. The hyper-redness of his cheeks only amplified his baby face. Trembley was pushing thirty but barely looked out of college.

  “Hey, Trembley,” he replied. “Forget the sunscreen?”

  “My first time seeing you in months and you start off by teasing me?” the young detective said, bounding over to give him a hug. “I guess some things never change.”

  “Nor should they,” Ryan said. “Sorry to make you come in on a Sunday.”

  “That’s okay. Captain Decker said he was short-handed and when I found out it was a chance to work with you again, I leapt at it. I still remember the first case we worked together with Jessie. You know it?”

  “Of course,” Ryan said, thinking back to deviously clever woman who had almost gotten away with framing someone else for a murder she committed. “If not for Jessie, Andrea Robinson might still be out there, wreaking more havoc.”

  “Where is she now again?” Trembley asked.

  “At the Forensic In-Patient Unit at the women’s division of the Twin Towers Correctional Facility,” Ryan said. “It’s a good thing too. Apparently she’s developed a bit of a fixation on Jessie. The last thing we need is another psycho obsessing over her.”

  “It sounds like we’ve got a psycho of another variety on the loose,” Trembley said. “Decker tells me this one uses an X-Acto knife to kill the victims.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as that,” Ryan said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Jamil, you want to fill him in?” Ryan suggested.

  “You’re letting Winslow handle case presentations now?” Trembley asked, pretending to be appalled. “At this rate, the kid’s going to be running the department by the spring.”

  “Nice to see you too, Detective Trembley,” Jamil said, speaking for the first time. It was as close as the unfailingly polite researcher got to snark.

  “Right back at you,” Trembley said, pulling up a chair. “So what are we dealing with?”

  Jamil quickly walked the detective through all the details that Ryan had shared with him just hours earlier. When he was done explaining the grotesque nature of the crimes and why they hadn’t initially been connected, Ryan chimed in.

  “There’s something else I haven’t told you. I was waiting to have you both here before I shared this. I know this is unusual but I need to ask each of you to treat what I say next with discretion.”

  “Ooh, this sounds exciting,” Trembley said, rubbing his hands together in excitement.

  “I didn’t mention this next part to Captain Decker yet,” Ryan said. “His plate is pretty full.”

  Jamil gave him a look that suggested he didn’t buy that as the reason, but said nothing.

  “What is it?” Trembley asked.

  “When I described the murders to Jessie, it reminded her of a reference in one of Garland Moses’s old case files. She showed it to me. There were some similarities to a murder from decades ago that he was never able to solve. It involved the Night Hunter.”

  “Who?” Trembley asked.

  Ryan was about to explain but Jamil beat him to it.

  “He was one of the worst serial killers in modern history,” he said. “Slaughtered about eighty people from the mid-1980s through to the end of the 1990s, and that’s just the number they could officially attribute to him. He only stopped after a brutal death match in Garland’s condo. The Night Hunter escaped by jumping from the second floor. He was never heard from again. Most people think he died from his injuries. Sounds like Garland didn’t agree. But didn’t he chop up his victims with a machete?”

  “He did,” Ryan confirmed. “But according to the document Jessie showed me, after the fight at his condo, Garland found an address taped to his medicine cabinet mirror. When the cops got there, they found a woman who had been killed using an X-Acto knife. She had her skin peeled off like long ribbons of flesh. It was never officially attributed to the Night Hunter and I haven’t found a similar case anywhere in the country until these two.”

  “So you think this Night Hunter is back?” Trembley asked. “Wouldn’t he be collecting social security right now? He has to be pushing seventy.”

  “Probably well past it,” Ryan corrected, “at least based on Garland’s estimate from their fight. And I’m not sure it’s even him. Maybe he had a protégé he was grooming to take over.”

  “Who didn’t commit a crime for almost twenty years?” Jamil asked skeptically.

  “Or it could be a copycat,” Ryan offered. “Someone who recently got access to a copy of the same document I saw and was inspired. It’s not unheard of. Bolton Crutchfield studied other serial killers for inspiration, including Jessie’s father. If someone else was equally infatuated with the Night Hunter, maybe they stumbled across this detail. It would be like gold to them.”

  “Or maybe the simplest explanation is the best,” Trembley suggested. “The Night Hunter got amnesia from hitting his head after jumping out of Garland’s condo and only recovered his memory recently. Now he’s picking up where he left off.”

  “That’s the simplest explanation?” Jamil asked incredulously, trying not to laugh.

  “Whoever it is,” Ryan said, not deigning to address Trembley’s theory, “I worry that they’re not done.”

  “And that’s why you don’t want to tell Decker,” Jamil said quietly.

  “What do you mean?” Trembley asked.

  Ryan could tell Jamil had put his finger on it and considered trying to stop him from revealing the truth. But he didn’t do it. Trembley was an integral part of Homicide Special Section and he deserved to know what was going on.

  “HSS is on the ropes,” Jamil whispered. “With Mr. Moses’s murder, Ms. Hunt’s departure, and Detective Hernandez’s rehabilitation, the unit has been shorthanded. As a result, fewer major cases have been closed. It’s obvious that HQ has taken notice. If Captain Decker thought we had a chance to nail one of the most notorious serial killers of the last half century, who was operating right here in L.A., it might be hard for him to keep that to himself, especially if it could save the unit.”

  “Is that true?” Trembley asked Ryan.

  “It’s a concern,” he admitted, “which is why I don’t want to involve him until we have more to go on. That means we need to start reviewing the footage Jamil has cued up.”

  “Well, I hope it is the Night Hunter,” Trembley said, choosing not to linger on what he’d just learned. “It would be a lot easier to take down some old dude trying to escape using a walker.”

  “Don’t underestimate him,” Ryan cautioned. “If it is him, he’s killed countless people and managed to evade capture for over thirty-five years. Even if he’s less mobile than I am right now, he’s a threat. Forget that at your own risk.”

  *

  At first they didn’t even know what they were looking for. But after an hour of fruitless scrolling through multiple video feeds they found something.

  “Look!” Jamil said, pointing at Ring video footage culled from a home across the street from Jenavieve Holt. It showed her speaking to an older man on the night of her death. It was dark out and the video was grainy, but the man’s hunched frame and slow movements suggested he was in his twilight years. The view of her door was blocked so they never actually saw him enter her place, but it was the logical conclusion.

  “With that large windbreaker on,” Trembley noted, “it’s impossible to discern many notable characte
ristics. I think he was holding what looked like a small travel bag, but that’s about it.”

  Even when he reappeared outside her door hours later and shuffled out of frame, they couldn’t make out any useful details. Ryan did notice one thing, however.

  “Check that out,” he said, noting that a few seconds after the man left the screen, a dim, red light appeared on the street.

  “What do you think it is?” Trembley asked.

  “I can’t be sure, but based on how low the light is to the street and the wattage, it might come from a car’s brake light. If so, that suggests that the man had driven there rather than walking or getting a rideshare or cab.”

  “It’s not much,” Trembley muttered. “But I guess it’s something.”

  Ryan didn’t say it out loud, but he was starting to suspect that it was much more than “just something.” The man in the footage was older, even elderly. The time the image was taken matched when Jenavieve Holt was killed. It wasn’t a straight line yet, but the chances that this was anyone other than the original Night Hunter were getting more remote with each passing second.

  He said nothing. That was partly because he didn’t want to jump the gun and make assumptions the evidence couldn’t yet confirm. But it was also because he almost didn’t want to believe it. If this was the work of a serial killer who had been in hibernation for decades, that was something new. A killer willing to patently lie in wait for years was somehow more troubling to him than one on a rampage.

  He returned his attention to Jamil’s monitors. It looked like the researcher had a little more luck with the first victim, the young man named Jared Hartung. There was no footage from nearby houses showing his place during the approximate time of death. But Jamil had found video from a house about half a block down, earlier that night.

  In it, an old man parked an older model sedan on the street before scuffling off in the direction of Hartung’s place. He returned to the car three hours later, still hobbled but with what Ryan could only describe as extra pep in his step, like he’d just done something that had him in a playful mood.