The Perfect Alibi (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Eight)

by Blake Pierce

  It was simple: only when the remaining sinners had also faced The Reckoning would The Deliverance be complete for them, and for him. Steps couldn’t be skipped. There were no shortcuts. But it gave him enormous satisfaction to know that the end was in sight. Soon The Deliverance would be upon them.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  After her dust-up with Kat, Jessie decided to make a brief pit stop at home. She hadn’t been there since last night and craved a quick shower and a change of clothes. Maybe the shower could also ease the unpleasant aftertaste of their argument.

  When she walked through the door, she knew instantly that something was wrong. Hannah was nowhere in sight but music was blasting from her bedroom. Empty bowls and food containers were sitting out on the kitchen counter and shoes and a jacket lay on the hardwood floor.

  That was a common occurrence in Hannah’s first few weeks living here. But more recently, she’d made a concerted effort to clean up after herself. Jessie couldn’t explain why, but she sensed that the situation was not just a matter of thoughtlessness. It seemed to be by design.

  She put her things down and wandered over to Hannah’s room. The door was slightly ajar but she knocked anyway. After waiting several seconds without a response she knocked again loudly before pushing the door open. Hannah was on her bed, lying on her stomach, scrolling through her phone. She didn’t speak or look up.

  “How’s it going?” Jessie asked.

  Without giving her a glance, Hannah shrugged.

  “Is everything okay?” Jessie asked, unsure how hard to push. “Did something happen at school today?”

  Hannah finally made eye contact. She pushed a button on her phone and the music stopped.

  “You could say that,” she answered acidly.

  “What?” Jessie asked, sensing an ambush in the making.

  “Someone wrote an awful comment about me on Facebook.”

  “Who?” Jessie pressed. “What did they say?”

  “You don’t want to take a guess?” Hannah retorted with bile.

  “How could I possibly…what’s going on, Hannah? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Hannah sat up, glaring at her angrily, though her eyes were damp.

  “Funny that you would say that. That’s the question I should be asking—what aren’t you telling me? Or maybe why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I truly have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jessie said, completely lost.

  “No?” Hannah said as she tossed her phone at Jessie. “How do you explain this?”

  Jessie caught the phone and looked at the screen. As she read, she felt nauseated for the second time today. Before she could speak, Hannah plowed ahead.

  “Why couldn’t you just talk to me if you felt this way? Instead you had to share it with the whole world!”

  “Hannah,” she said slowly, trying to stay under control. “I didn’t write this.”

  Hannah shook her head in disbelief.

  “Don’t take the coward’s way out,” she hissed quietly. “You can’t just wash this away.”

  “I swear to you, I didn’t write this. It’s not how I feel. Even if it was, I’d never post it to social media. I barely use Facebook at all.”

  “Really?” Hannah challenged. “Because it seems like you’ve been pretty busy today.”

  Jessie looked at the screen again, scrolling up from the post about Hannah. There were two others. The first was an attack on Captain Decker, calling him an out-of-touch dinosaur. The other was a rant about the LAPD more generally, calling it an organization defined by corruption and ineptitude.

  Those posts, along with the one about Hannah, were all thoughtfully composed and well-written. Each seemed specifically designed to alienate people central to Jessie’s world. And each was completely bogus. She looked up at Hannah, who was staring at her expectantly.

  “I know you’re upset,” she said carefully. “But think about this for a second. Do you really think that after having posted on here about a half dozen times in the last year, I would suddenly go on a tear, writing terrible things about you, my boss, and the place I work, all in one afternoon?”

  “How am I supposed to know what’s going on in your head? I know you were out all night. Maybe you just reached some breaking point and started spewing out what you really think.”

  “I’ve been hacked, Hannah. I don’t know by whom. But it’s clearly someone who wants to make every relationship in my life fall apart. Please don’t help them.”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “Here’s the problem, Jessie,” she said, apparently unconvinced. “I don’t know if I can trust you. You held back the fact that we were sisters for months. I know from your hush-hush conversations with Dr. Lemmon and Garland Moses that there’s some other big secret that you’re keeping from me. I don’t know if what you said in that post is how you really feel about me. But it feels true to me. Almost as bad, everyone can read it and they’ll believe it’s true. It’s out there. It can’t be taken back. So whether you meant it or not, it’s my life now.”

  Jessie was at a loss as to how to respond to that. Before she could even try, her phone rang. It was Ryan. She knew she shouldn’t but she picked up, if only to break the tension.

  “I’m kind of busy right now,” she said. “Can I call you back?”

  “We’ve got a new potential suspect. Decker wants us to run him down ASAP. He’s waiting in his office right now for me to brief you both together.”

  Jessie sighed, wondering what else could come here way.

  “Give me twenty minutes,” she pleaded.

  “I’ll try to stall,” he replied. “But he’s antsy. Try to make it ten if you can.”

  He hung up and Jessie looked back at Hannah, who wasn’t making eye contact. She walked over and handed her the phone back.

  “Listen…” she started to say.

  Hannah cut her off.

  “I know that’s where you want to be, not here, not with me. Which am I right now, a brat or a bitch? Maybe both, I guess?”

  “Please believe me…” Jessie pleaded before being cut off again.

  “Just go,” Hannah said.

  She pushed a button on her phone and the music resumed. She rolled over on the bed, facing away.

  After several helpless seconds, Jessie left.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was hard to concentrate.

  Jessie had managed to get back to the station in fifteen minutes and was now sitting on the battered old loveseat in Captain Decker’s office as Ryan walked them through the lead he’d uncovered.

  Thoughts of her arguments with both Kat and Hannah were still swirling in her head when he began and it took all her effort to force her brain to focus exclusively on his words. Whatever he’d discovered, he seemed excited.

  “So I was catching up on all the kidnapping cases, looking for potential connections between them and the Morgan Remar murder.”

  “I thought we were looking at all possibilities,” Decker interrupted, “not just the kidnapping connections. You’re still looking at exes, a robbery gone wrong, and people who did construction work on the house, correct?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Ryan answered impatiently. “We’ve largely eliminated her old flames. Even her ex-husband, who clearly still resents how she ended things with him, has an airtight alibi. He was at a bar with friends after a Lakers game. The robbery angle looks like a dead end. Detective Trembley is looking into the criminal history of people working on their home but hasn’t found anything yet. Jessie and I have been focused on the kidnapping connection.”

  “Okay, go on,” Decker said, seemingly satisfied for now.

  “So as I was looking through the abductions, I noticed a parallel to an older case from six years ago. It had actually been flagged by Detective Sands from Pacific Station, who’s been helping us out. Back then, a woman from Santa Monica was abducted and held for two days in a warehouse in Commerce before getting away. A few weeks later she found he
rself being stalked. She informed the police and told them she was sure it was the same guy.”

  “Was it?” Jessie asked.

  “They could never prove that,” Ryan said. “She’d been drugged and blindfolded so she never got a good look at the man who took her. But she said that when she was trying to fight him off, she felt thick scars on his forearms. The guy who stalked her had multiple burn scars on his arms. They were never able to make a definitive connection. But it turned out this guy had also stalked several other women, at least two of whom he wrote threatening letters to. They were able to nail him as a serial stalker and he was sentenced to nine years in Lompoc.”

  “But Sands looked into this already?” Decker noted.

  “He did,” Ryan confirmed. “When he checked the guy’s current status, the database showed that he had three months left on his sentence. But I noticed that Lompoc has been having issues lately. You might remember that case I worked three weeks ago with the guy who was turned in by his boss for stealing burgers from the fast food place where he worked.”

  “I remember,” Decker said. “He went back after he was released and gunned down the restaurant owner and his wife.”

  “Right,” Ryan confirmed. “But when I was first looking into suspects, the records from Lompoc indicated the shooter was still inside and would be for at least two additional weeks. The screw-up set back the investigation a couple of days. They’ve got a backlog problem with updating data on folks released early for good behavior. So I checked on our stalker—his name is Bryce Laterno. Turns out he was released six weeks ago, before the first victim—Brenda Ferguson—was taken.”

  “And you think he’s back at it?” Decker said.

  “I don’t know that he’s into murder or even serial abductions,” Ryan conceded. “But it seems worth checking out, especially since those written threats he made six years ago involved stabbing the women he was stalking. And did I mention that he’s missed his last two meetings with his parole officer?”

  “Maybe you should hand this over to Sands,” Decker suggested. “This sounds more promising to their abduction case than to our murder.”

  “I already let him know about it,” Ryan said. “I thought he’d be pissed about us horning in on talking to Scott Fellows. But he wasn’t. He said he’s got more leads than he knows what to do with and he’ll take all the help he can get. If we can justify it as part of our investigation, he’s cool with us checking it out. All we need is your sign-off, Captain.”

  Jessie looked over at Decker. She thought Ryan had made an airtight case for pursuing the lead and didn’t want to say anything to change his mind. The captain, whose expression rarely veered beyond mildly annoyed to mildly satisfied, looked to be leaning more to the latter.

  “Okay,” he said. “But don’t lose track of the other leads. I don’t want them to dry up because we’re so focused on the kidnapping connection.”

  “No, sir,” Ryan said, starting toward the door.

  “One more thing,” Jessie said now that the decision had been made. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ryan get a panicked look, worried that she was going to screw it up.

  “Yes, Hunt?” Captain Decker said, cringing slightly.

  She had been about to explain the Facebook posts and her certainty that she’d been hacked. But it was clear from his uneasy expression that he was worried she was going to make some unwanted request regarding the case. She decided in that moment to hold off on the posts and pivot into his vulnerable spot.

  “I really think we need to reconsider asking for protection for the other abductees. If this killer is the same guy and we left these women vulnerable, it’s going to blow back hard on the department.”

  “I know where you stand on this,” he said, clearly having expected her comment. “And anticipating it, I put in another request with Deputy Chief Sklar. It was shot down immediately. In addition to the cost and the logistical headaches, he’s worried that if we did it, it would get out publicly and every woman in the city whose abductor is still out there would demand ongoing protection, bankrupting the department.”

  “But Captain, not every victim was abducted by a serial kidnapper who may go back and murder them.”

  “A point I made, Hunt. That was around the time Sklar told me that if I had proof the kidnapper and the killer are the same person, he was all ears. When I said that I didn’t, he suggested I shut up and leave him alone until I did. That’s where we left it. And that’s where you and I will leave it.”

  “Yes, Captain,” she said.

  She walked out of his office right behind Ryan, frustrated by the decision but unable to justify fighting the losing battle.

  “Good try,” Ryan told her once they were outside. “But it sounds like he went to the mat already.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “But I wanted to give it one more shot, especially considering that Decker likely won’t be interested in my opinions starting real soon.”

  “What does that mean?” Ryan asked.

  “I’ll explain in the car.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When the call came in, it was Jessie’s turn to wince.

  They were on their way to the last known address for Bryce Laterno and she had just finished telling Ryan about the Facebook posts and Hannah’s reaction to the one about her when Decker’s distinctive ring tone came up on her phone.

  “Hi, Captain,” she said hesitantly.

  “Hunt,” he said in that quiet voice that freaked her out more than when he yelled, “it seems you forgot to mention something to me earlier.”

  “Yes sir,” she said. “I assume you’re referring to the posts. You have to believe I didn’t write them.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” he said dismissively. “But that’s not really the point, is it? You should have told me so we could have dealt with it right away. Now we’ve got to do damage control with the media.”

  “The media? Is it really that bad, Captain? I thought it would just be an internal personnel issue.”

  “Are you kidding?” he asked incredulously. “There are going to be multiple minority rights organizations calling for your head in a few hours.”

  “For what? What do those groups care about some fake posts with a random criminal profiler attacking the department?”

  “When’s the last time you looked at your page, Hunt?” Decker asked. “Because it’s a lot more than that.”

  “What?” she asked, feeling the pit in her stomach grow exponentially as she pulled up the relevant screen.

  “Just look,” he said flatly.

  “Oh god,” she said as she scrolled through.

  “What is it?” Ryan asked anxiously from the driver’s seat.

  Jessie put the call on speaker.

  “There are three more posts since I last checked,” she said. “They get progressively worse.”

  “How bad?” Ryan asked.

  “Bad,” she said, reading them silently.

  Decker answered for her.

  “They’re a series of screeds with various racist and anti-Semitic epithets,” he said. “There’s basically no minority group that they don’t attack. It’s impressively all-encompassing.”

  Jessie groaned, barely able to process everything. Ryan glanced at the screen.

  “One of those messages was posted while we were in the meeting with you, Captain,” he said. “It shouldn’t be hard to prove Jessie couldn’t have written them.”

  “We’ve already got Camille Guadino from the tech unit prepping to back trace the source. You need to give her all your social media accounts so she can delete them. It’s only a matter of time before whoever did this starts posting on the others too. In the meantime, I’m having media relations craft a statement on your behalf. It should be ready for your sign-off within the hour. Stay close to the phone, all right?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, before adding, “Can I ask, how likely is Camille’s back trace to find the culprit?”

  “Don
’t hold your breath,” he warned. “She’s not optimistic. The people who can do this are usually pretty good at covering their tracks. We’re more likely to have success the old-fashioned way, by determining who would want to do this to you.”

  “That list is endless, Captain,” she said dejectedly.

  “Maybe not,” Ryan reminded her. “Did you tell him about the tires?”

  “What’s this?” Decker asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Jessie remembered. “Yesterday I discovered all four of my tires had been slashed. It happened in the middle of the day on a quiet street in a nice neighborhood. It felt like a message of some kind.”

  “Don’t forget the cop,” Ryan prompted.

  “Right,” Jessie said. “Around the time I noticed the tires, I saw a motorcycle cop riding away in the other direction.”

  “You think it’s connected?” Decker asked.

  “I don’t know, Captain,” she admitted. “But Sergeant Costabile made it pretty clear that he has it in for me. He threatened both me and Hannah. And that was before he got busted on corruption charges. We all know that he has lots of friends left in the department. Is it crazy to think that he might get them to do the dirty work as part of his vendetta against me?”

  “It makes sense,” Ryan added. “First the physical damage to a possession, followed by attempts to undermine her at work and home. Captain, I don’t know if you saw the first hacked post about Hannah Dorsey. She’s pretty torn up, thinking her big sister wrote it. Costabile’s definitely not above these kinds of dirty tricks.”

  “I don’t dispute that,” Decker acknowledged. “We’ll have someone review all his recent calls and visitors. If it’s him, he’s probably too smart to make such an obvious mistake. But who knows, maybe something will shake loose. The bigger problem is if it’s not him.”

  “What do you mean?” Jessie asked.