THE PERFECT HOUSE

by Blake Pierce

  She recalled that, at a certain point, all he had to do was hum a few bars of it to calm her down. He did it just before she skied down her first intermediate slope, just before she went onstage in the elementary school play, and just before he popped her dislocated finger back into place during softball practice.

  It had a Pavlovian ability to calm her. It was his way of saying “I’m here and everything’s going to be okay.” But in this case, Jessie suddenly understood, it meant something slightly different. It meant “I will protect you.” It was his way of letting her know that no matter what torture was inflicted on him, Bruce Hunt was not going to reveal anything about her life or location.

  Jessie loved Pa for that. She loved how, even in his moment of greatest pain, he had still been as Bruce Hunt as ever. He’d kept his wits about him. He had come up with a plan. He’d done everything he could to protect his little girl.

  But she knew it had been a futile gesture. Pa couldn’t keep her safe from Xander Thurman. At best he’d delayed the inevitable. Now equipped with her new name and having seen the photos of her displayed throughout the condo, the Ozarks Executioner would eventually find her.

  As she stared blankly at her phone screen, another thought occurred to Jessie. She glanced over at Gerard and Pearsall, who were standing off to the side, both eyeing her apprehensively.

  “Any reason I can’t go back in the condo?” she asked.

  Gerard shook his head.

  “The scene has been processed,” he assured her. “You’re good.”

  She walked back in and surveyed the living room. The chair Pa had been strapped to was a good fifteen feet from the Alexa device, which sat on the breakfast bar between the living room and kitchen. To have ensured his CD order was heard, he would have had to have spoken loudly. It was hard to imagine that Xander would have allowed him to do that. That meant that he must have placed the order when Xander was elsewhere.

  Where in the condo would Xander have gone for long enough that Bruce would have felt confident placing the order?

  It would have had to be far enough away that Bruce felt certain he wouldn’t be overheard. Jessie walked back down the hall, trying to recreate the movements Xander likely would have taken. She glanced at the guest bathroom, acknowledging that it was possible he’d gone in there, allowing Bruce time to place the order. But somehow that didn’t feel right.

  She stepped back into her parents’ bedroom. The bed was now empty and stripped of sheets. Just about everything else was as it had been before. But she had a feeling, not based on any forensic analysis, that this was where Xander had been when Bruce placed the order. And he was doing something in here that made Bruce sure he could order the CD without being heard. An ugly thought popped into her head.

  “My mother wasn’t sexually assaulted, correct?” she asked Gerard, who was lingering halfway down the hall.

  “No,” he said. “They’ll do a full workup at the medical examiner’s. But there was no initial indication of any trauma other than the injury to her neck.”

  Jessie nodded and returned her attention to the bedroom, letting her eyes casually scan it. Just as before, nothing seemed out of place. Her eyes rested on the television.

  Almost nothing.

  She saw the remote control, sitting on top of the set, and realized: there was no justification for the remote to be there. In her weakened state, Ma would have kept the remote beside the bed. Pa would have had no reason to move it. Even if he was using it, he’d have left it on his side of the bed. There was no reason to put it on the television.

  Xander had moved it.

  Why?

  She moved closer to the screen, then glanced over at the VCR and registered something that had escaped her notice when she’d been in here before. Her parents were no tech wizards, as evidenced by the fact that they still had a VCR at all. And for as long as she could remember, it always flashed that familiar “12:00” on the screen.

  But now, under a thick layer of dust, the display read “play.” That meant that someone had put a videotape in the machine. It was waiting to be watched.

  She glanced back over her shoulder to make sure neither FBI agent had entered the room. Then she pushed the eject button. A video cassette emerged from the slot. One look at it confirmed her suspicions that it was from Xander.

  Taped to the spine of the cassette was a small Post-it with one word handwritten in black ink: JUNEBUG.

  That was her father’s pet name for her when she was a little girl. The tape was intended for her. Without thinking, she removed it from the machine and slid it into her jacket pocket.

  “Let’s go,” she called out to the agents in the hall. “There’s nothing here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jessie had to remind herself that she was not in any immediate danger.

  As she stood outside the terminal at the L.A. airport, waiting for Kat Gentry to pick her up, she told herself that her father would not want to cut her up, at least not until he was sure she’d viewed whatever was on that tape. Until she’d seen the message, she was almost certainly safe.

  Jessie looked at her watch. It was 10:51 a.m. She had been in Las Cruces less than twelve hours. After formally identifying her parents’ bodies at the medical examiner’s and giving Special Agent in Charge Brode a detailed but intentionally incomplete description of who the Ozarks Executioner was, she booked a flight back to Los Angeles and asked Agent Pearsall to give her a ride.

  She promised to return over the weekend for the funeral and answer any additional questions they might have. There was no reason for her to stay in Las Cruces and several to get back to L.A. She needed to warn the folks at Central Station that there was a dangerous serial killer on the loose. She needed to confront Bolton Crutchfield about what had happened. And she needed to find a quiet place to watch the video Xander had left for her.

  As Kat pulled up to the curb and waved to her, Jessie felt a sudden pang of emotion at the sight of her. After an entire night of remaining steely and professional, she finally saw a friendly face. She knew her system was desperate to let down its guard, to genuinely feel the impact of the events from last night. But she couldn’t do that just yet. So she forced the feeling back down.

  Kat got out and walked around the car, extending her arms to wrap Jessie in an embrace.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she squeezed her tight.

  “Thanks,” Jessie said, impressed at how measured her own voice sounded. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Thankfully, Kat didn’t pepper her with questions on the ride to the station, which was mostly silent. Jessie had filled her in when she’d called from the El Paso airport to ask for the ride. She’d also asked Kat to get in touch with Ryan Hernandez to update him. She didn’t feel up to repeating the same story multiple times.

  “Ryan said that Captain Decker has blocked off meeting time for you when we arrive. He gave him the basics, though you’ll probably have to fill in the gaps.”

  “I don’t relish that,” Jessie admitted. “He’s going to want to know why I wasn’t more forthcoming earlier.”

  “You have no obligation on that front,” Kat insisted. “Up until now, we didn’t know if Crutchfield was all talk. We didn’t know what your father was planning. There was nothing to tell.”

  “I don’t know that he’ll see it that way.”

  “Jessie, I’d be surprised if he reads you the riot act under the circumstances. He knows you’ve…been through a lot. How are you holding up by the way? Have you slept?”

  “I got a few hours on the flight,” Jessie said. “Otherwise, I’ve mostly sealed off how I feel from the facts of what happened.”

  “Is that healthy?” Kat asked.

  “Probably not,” Jessie admitted. “But if I let myself start reminiscing or grieving, I’m going to fall apart. And I can’t let that happen right now. Xander is still out there and he has some kind of larger plan I don’t get yet. I need to keep focused and resolved so I
can get him. My folks’ funeral is this weekend. I’ll work through my feelings for them then. But for now, I can’t let down my guard.”

  “May I come to the funeral?” Kat asked quietly.

  “That would be nice,” Jessie said.

  They both ignored the catch in her throat.

  *

  The bullpen got noticeably quiet when they walked in. Jessie pretended not to notice and walked over to her desk with Kat right behind her. Ryan saw her coming and stood up. When she arrived, he gave her a quick hug.

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said quietly in her ear. “If you need a sounding board, a chauffeur, a delivery person, or a punching bag, I’m here.”

  “Thanks, Ryan,” she said. “For now, what I need to do is to catch the man who did this. Everything thing else is secondary.”

  “Understood. Let’s go talk to the captain and see how we can make that happen.”

  They started for his office when Ryan looked back and saw Kat standing by Jessie’s desk.

  “You should come too,” he said. “Considering your line of work, it’s possible that you might have some information that could help.”

  Kat nodded and they all walked into Captain Decker’s office. He was on the phone but waved them to the large couch against the far wall. He got off just as they sat down and stood up awkwardly. He didn’t walk over to her but he did nod sympathetically.

  “Hernandez gave me an update on what happened, Hunt. I’m truly sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Know that the department is here to support you in every way possible. You have full access to mental health resources, including a grief counselor. We have generous bereavement time in the benefits plan. There are support groups available. We’re all here for you.”

  “I appreciate it, Captain,” Jessie reiterated.

  “Okay, this is the hard part. I’m sure you’re exhausted and I don’t want to overwhelm you. As I said, Hernandez filled me in a bit. And I don’t need you to go over what happened in New Mexico. But I was hoping you could flesh out your connection to this Thurman guy. I know there is one but it’s all a bit fuzzy to me. It needs to be much clearer if we’re going to keep you safe.”

  Jessie looked over at Ryan, surprised.

  “I didn’t get into the personal stuff,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think it was my place.”

  She nodded. Part of her appreciated his discretion. But at this moment, she almost wished he’d already spilled everything so she didn’t have to.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” she said.

  “I’ve got time,” Captain Decker assured her.

  So she told him everything. She started with her youth in Southeast Missouri and how her real name was Jessica Thurman. She moved on to her father abducting her and her mother, taking them to an isolated cabin in the Ozarks and once they arrived, revealing that he’d been killing people there for years. She shared how he murdered her mother while she watched and then left her for dead.

  She ignored his eyes getting wider when she informed him that her father subsequently got the moniker the Ozarks Executioner and dropped off the grid entirely. She talked about how she was put in Witness Protection and placed with a New Mexico FBI agent and his wife. She talked about how, after that, she’d led what looked on paper to be a reasonably normal life as Jessie Hunt. That is, until her own husband tried to kill her.

  Finally, with some input from Kat, she filled him in on how she’d learned that her father had been in contact with Bolton Crutchfield and how, despite being locked up, Crutchfield had somehow managed to pass information about Jessie’s adoptive family to him.

  “You know the rest,” she concluded.

  Decker sat quietly in his chair for a solid minute before responding. Jessie could tell he wanted to broach the fact that she’d kept all of this to herself until now. But to his credit, he steered clear of that topic. Instead, he addressed his first question to Kat.

  “Are you able to screen grab images of Thurman so we can distribute them?”

  “Unfortunately, the second time he visited Crutchfield, he was in an elaborate disguise as a detective from Rampart Division whose body was discovered bludgeoned and left in his bathtub yesterday. The first visit from two years ago might be more helpful. He was still disguised but it was less detailed, probably because we didn’t know to look for him at that point. What do you think, Jessie?”

  “Yes, the first visit, when he assumed the identity of a psychology professor, looked a fair bit like how I suspect he’d appear now.”

  “Okay,” Decker said. “Then we’ll go off that, maybe have our tech folks digitally alter him so that we have several variations to work from. That’s a start at least. In the meantime, we’re going to give you a protective detail, Hunt.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” he said, incredulous. “This guy murdered your parents and it looks like he’s after you next. Don’t you think we should take a few precautions?”

  “I’m not sure what he wants.”

  “I’m not sure it matters,” he countered. “There’s a serial killer on the loose. And if he doesn’t know your location yet, he will soon. We need to prepare for that eventuality.”

  “But I need to be able to move freely to work,” she protested. “I want to go see Crutchfield. He’s the reason this happened. I want to look him in the eye and confront him.”

  “Are you sure that’s the best move under the circumstances?” Decker asked, dubious.

  “It’s actually not a bad idea,” Kat piped in. “Crutchfield has some kind of thing for Jessie. It’s hard to explain. I wouldn’t call it a crush as much as…admiration. Thurman is his mentor and I think he originally planned to do the bidding of the serial killer he modeled himself after. But once he met Jessie, he started to like her. He started to respect her. He’s developed a strange affection for her. I think his loyalties are conflicted. If she goes into his cell and challenges him about his culpability in the Hunts’ deaths, it might have some impact.”

  “You think he’s going to feel remorseful?” Decker asked, disbelieving.

  “No,” Kat said. “He’s a serial killer. He doesn’t do remorse. But he does view himself as a practitioner of fair play. He may feel that since he gave Thurman information that led to the Hunts dying, he owes Jessie something in return, if only to be sporting.”

  “That does sound like him,” Jessie agreed. “If we can appeal to his warped sense of honor, he might offer up something useful.”

  Decker still looked skeptical but ultimately shrugged.

  “Frankly, I’m open to just about anything at this point. We’re in a tough spot.”

  “Then we’ll head out to Norwalk now,” Jessie said.

  “Fine. But after that, you’re on official leave. I want you to go home and get some rest. You look terrible. And I’m assigning you that protective detail. They’ll be joining you for your trip to see Crutchfield and escorting you home, where they will remain until further notice.”

  Jessie was about to protest when she saw Ryan shake his head imperceptibly. Despite her misgivings, she bit her tongue and nodded. With the meeting over, they began to file out.

  “Do we have any old VCRs in this place?” she asked Ryan as they left Decker’s office. “I don’t have one and I was hoping there was a machine I could borrow.”

  “Sure. They have a bunch of old unclaimed ones near the evidence room. Why?”

  “I found an old video at my folks’ place. I was hoping to look at it later. It might have some footage of better times with my family. I could use that, you know?”

  “I get it,” he said. “Why don’t you go do your bereavement leave paperwork? It won’t take long. In the meantime, I’ll snag a VCR for you.”

  “Thanks, Ryan,” she said.

  As she watched him go, she felt a small pang of guilt at her deception. But it faded quickly when she remembered why s
he had done it. The Ozarks Executioner had a private message for her. And she needed to watch it—soon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  When they got to NRD, Jessie and Kat left the protective detail behind.

  The two men Captain Decker had assigned, Officers Beatty and Nettles, had followed them to Norwalk in a black-and-white. Beatty, blond-haired and gangly, was an enthusiastic rookie. He’d made a few mistakes when dealing with a suspect in a previous case Jessie handled, but he was diligent and high energy. It was unlikely that he’d drift off while guarding her apartment.

  Nettles, older, burlier, and more grizzled, had flecks of gray in his black hair. Jessie had never worked with him before. But Ryan told her that he was a total pro who could be a hard ass when he needed to. Ryan also warned her that he had a wife and two young kids at home so he probably wouldn’t be over the moon about this assignment. His taciturn demeanor when they were introduced bore that out.

  The two officers were allowed to loiter in the small waiting area by the front desk of the NRD facility. But once Kat took Jessie into Transitional Prep, they remained behind.

  “You don’t have security authorization,” Kat had told them, ending the matter.

  They went through the security routine quickly and made it into the lockdown unit in less than ten minutes. When Kat opened the door, Ernie Cortez glanced over.

  The second he saw Jessie, he walked toward her. There was none of his flirty bravado now. He simply wrapped his massive arms around her and squeezed. When he released her, his eyes were damp. He looked like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.

  “Thanks, Ernie,” Jessie said, letting him off the hook.

  He nodded, and with a sniffle returned to his post. Jessie glanced over at Kat, who smiled slightly and shrugged.

  Two minutes later, Jessie walked into Bolton Crutchfield’s cell. She had the emergency key fob in her left hand, though she was determined not to use it. Crutchfield was lying on his back on his metal-framed bed, reading a battered, dog-eared paperback. When Jessie and Kat entered, he sat up, a mildly surprised expression on his face.