by Blake Pierce
Jessie shook her head.
“The Piersons didn’t have any.”
“Okay then, wasn’t Siobhan Pierson a socialite?” Ryan pressed as they approached the massive front doors to the house. “It seems like there would have been some overlap there. Hey, wasn’t Andy Robinson a socialite too?”
Apparently Jessie’s earlier assumption that he wasn’t going to push her about their Twin Towers meeting was premature. He had just been biding his time. Jessie pressed the doorbell and turned to him.
“Are you trying to piss me off, Hernandez?” she demanded. “Because you’re doing a great job of it.”
He looked amused at her irritation.
“I thought this was how a good fiancée was supposed to behave. It’s my job to tease you.”
Jessie was immediately chastened. She realized that she’d forgotten all about the engagement. Looking down at her naked ring finger, she felt a surge of heat along the back of her neck. How much longer would they need to keep this a secret and at what point would Ryan start to balk? Before she could reply, the door opened.
A pale young woman with red hair stood before them. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five but looked wiped out.
“You’re the detectives?” she confirmed politely.
“I’m Ryan Hernandez. This is Jessie Hunt.”
“Please come in,” the woman said, stepping to the side. “My name is Kelly Hoffs. I’m the Piersons’ personal assistant. Mr. Pierson is in the game room. I’ll take you to him.”
As they followed her through the massive entrance hall, Jessie could hear her shoes echo with each step. Kelly moved quickly, passing through multiple elaborate dining rooms, one with a chandelier the size of a small car. Eventually they reached a more casual section of the house. Jessie saw a kitchen, a full bar, a breakfast room, and a living room that looked like people actually used it. Kelly stopped suddenly outside a huge, closed oak door. Beyond it, a TV was on at high volume.
“I need to let you know that Mr. Pierson is not in a great place right now,” Kelly whispered to them.
“In what way?” Jessie asked quietly, leaning in. Ryan did the same.
“Ever since Mrs. Pierson’s death, he’s been understandably struggling,” Kelly said. “He held up pretty well for a while, when he had things to keep him busy like planning the funeral, dealing with her will, coordinating with the foundation boards she served on. But now that all that’s taken care of, he doesn’t know what to do with his time. He’s taken to listening to music they liked or watching old videos of them, usually while drinking—a lot. He’s already well on his way today. He’s not at his best. I just wanted you to be prepared.”
“Thank you,” Ryan said. “Where’s the rest of the staff during all this?”
“Most are on temporary leave,” Kelly said, “although I’m worried he might make it permanent. The vast majority of folks who worked at the estate were part of Mrs. Pierson’s team. She did her foundation work out of her home office.”
“That’s where she was killed, correct?” Ryan confirmed. “The report said she died between eight and midnight.”
“Uh-huh,” Kelly answered with a wince. “Mr. Pierson found her when he got back from Bakersfield around one in the morning.”
“No one else was here?” Jessie asked.
“Not at that hour. The only people who are regularly here outside of business hours are me and Patty, the housekeeper. But like we told the other detectives, we were both gone by six that night. And nowadays, she and I are the only people still working here on a regular basis. I pay the bills and schedule maintenance and deliveries. She keeps the place from falling apart. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if he lets us go too. He doesn’t seem to care about much of anything anymore.”
It occurred to Jessie that his stagnation might actually be a mark in his favor as a suspect. Unless it was part of an impressive long con, it didn’t logically follow that someone who killed his wife as part of some involved plan would fall into a torpid malaise afterward.
“Okay, thanks for the heads-up, Kelly,” Jessie said. “Can you let him know we’re here?”
Kelly knocked loudly on the big door and didn’t wait for a response before opening it. She poked her head in.
“Mr. Pierson, those detectives I mentioned would be coming by are here. They’d like to speak with you now.”
A gruff male voice said something unintelligible to Jessie. But Kelly seemed to understand and waved for them to enter. Once inside, Jessie took in her surroundings. The room was dark, with deep wood paneling. There appeared to be a large window in the center of the room but it was hidden by a thick curtain. The only light came from the dimmed overhead lights and the television.
It may have been called the game room but that seemed to reference just two games. There was a pool table at one end of the room and a nearby dartboard. Other than that, there was just the TV, several couches, and a small bar in the far corner. Most of the bottles were empty.
Ian Pierson was sprawled out on one of the couches. A half full glass of something golden rested on the coffee table in front of him. Kelly hadn’t been kidding. The man looked terrible.
Jessie had reviewed the case file on the way over and had been expecting the strong-jawed man in a tailored suit from the photos she had flipped through. But that man was almost unrecognizable as this one.
The Ian Pierson before them now was in a long robe. Underneath it, he wore a gray sweatshirt and sweat pants. His dirty-blond hair was a bird’s nest and he had at least five days’ growth of beard. His eyes were red and watery, and the skin around them was puffy. She knew he was forty-four but he looked at least a decade older than that.
When he saw them, he made a clumsy, half-hearted attempt to sit up straight. After fumbling with the remote control for a moment, he muted the TV. Kelly stepped forward.
“Mr. Pierson, please meet Jessie Hunt and Ryan Hernandez. They’re with the LAPD,” she said crisply as if everything was normal. “This is Ian Pierson.”
“Thank you, Kelly,” Ryan said. “We’ll take it from here.”
She nodded and left without another word. Ryan and Jessie walked over and sat on the couch adjacent to Pierson’s. The man followed their movements with sluggish eyes but made no attempt to speak.
“Mr. Pierson,” Ryan began, “thank you for meeting with us. First, we want to express our condolences for your loss. We know this is a difficult time and that you’ve already been interviewed by prior detectives. But Ms. Hunt and I work for a unit that specializes in cases like this and we were hoping to ask you a few additional questions.”
“Cases like this?” Pierson mumbled in a bitter, gravelly voice. “You mean rich women murdered in their own home offices, bleeding out, knowing they were about to die but unable to do anything about it—those kinds of cases?”
Jessie knew he was being sarcastic but he wasn’t far off. Nonetheless, she answered diplomatically.
“Our unit, called Homicide Special Section, typically handles cases that are well-publicized or have high-profile victims. We also deal with cases that involve more than one victim. Your wife falls into several of those categories, as does the other victim.”
“What other victim?” Pierson demanded hotly. “No one mentioned anything about that to me.”
“There’s no reason you would be aware,” Ryan told him. “The second victim, a woman named Gillian Fahey, was killed last night.”
Pierson looked genuinely stunned.
“She was killed…the same way?” he finally asked.
“That’s correct,” Ryan said. “Just like your wife, she was killed in her own home by an unknown intruder. Like your wife, she was cut with one of her own kitchen knives in specific areas of the body near major arteries. Just like the case file for your wife’s death indicates, the perpetrator in this second attack was able to avoid cameras around the home. We suspect the murders are connected. But we’re here so long after your wife’s death b
ecause we only made the connection this morning.”
Pierson, his face a cocktail of confusion and pain, tried to push himself fully upright. It took a great deal of effort. When he settled into a position where he seemed unlikely to topple over, he lifted his head and blinked. Though he was still a little unsteady, he did his best to focus in on Jessie
“Okay,” Pierson said, slurring slightly, rubbing his hair aggressively as if that would give him some extra cognitive edge, “ask your questions. I want to help.”
Jessie thought that, despite what had just happened, he seemed to be making a good faith effort to fight through his drunkenness. She decided to press on.
“Thank you, sir,” she said softly. She started with information they already knew from the case file, to ease him in. “Our understanding is that you were up in Bakersfield the night of your wife’s death. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” he said very deliberately, so as to get each word right, “I had an executive board meeting.”
“And where were you last night?” she asked as casually as she could when trying to pin down a potential suspect’s alibi.
He thought for a second before the cloud lifted from his eyes.
“I was here, doing this,” he answered, extending his arm to indicate the drink, the couch, and the television.
“To be clear, you were getting drunk and watching TV?” Jessie asked.
“That’s right,” Pierson said almost proudly, “same as every day for the last…the last while.”
“Can anyone confirm that?” Ryan asked.
“Nope,” he replied with amazing nonchalance. “The maid, Patty, doesn’t work Sundays. Kelly came by to check on me at…some point but I don’t remember exactly when. She could probably tell you. I know it was daytime. But once she was sure that I was still breathing and hadn’t soiled myself, she took her leave.”
He said that last line with an elaborate arm flourish. Jessie was about to ask her next question when a light seemed to go off for him.
“Hold on, are you asking me that because you think I might have killed this Gilly woman?”
Jessie, her eyes narrowed, was about to follow up when Ryan beat her to it.
“It’s just a routine question,” Ryan assured him. “The cases appear to be connected so we would be remiss not to ask you. Would you be willing to share your phone data to verify your whereabouts last night?”
“Sure. Do I need to hand it over?”
“No,” Ryan said. “Now that we have your authorization, we can get what we need on our own.”
“Mr. Pierson,” Jessie said, holding out a photo on her phone for him to see, “did you or your wife know either of the Faheys?”
Pierson studied the picture for several seconds before looking at her.
“I already knew Simon Fahey by reputation,” he said, measuring each word carefully. “I definitely recognize him and maybe her too. But I’m not sure if that’s from seeing them in news stories or actually meeting them in person. To be honest, I’m not all that clear-headed right now.”
His response was perfectly reasonable, but something about the way he answered felt off to Jessie. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why. Instead of fixating on it, she decided to let it go for now. She found that if she allowed these things to percolate, something worthwhile usually rose to the surface. She moved on to another question.
“Did Siobhan ever say that she felt threatened by anyone?” she asked.
From his quick response and fairly streamlined speech, Jessie knew he’d been asked that before.
“People were always mad at her. She influenced the budgets of several charitable foundations and had final say on her own. People tend not to like it when they don’t get the money they ask for. Sometimes they’re pretty blunt about it. But she never mentioned being worried about her safety and none of those disputes sounded like the kind of thing that would lead someone to come into our home and kill her!”
By the end, Pierson had worked himself up to the point that he was yelling.
“Are you—?” Jessie began before he cut her off.
“Besides, how could they even get in? You saw the gate outside. Someone could get impaled on those spikes. Am I supposed to believe that some old biddy that runs a homeless shelter in Santa Monica is going to pole vault over our gate because she didn’t get her desired donation? Come on!”
Ryan looked at Jessie and she knew what he was thinking: Pierson was too agitated to be of much use to them at this point. She nodded in silent agreement. They both stood up.
“I think we have all we need for now, Mr. Pierson,” Ryan said. “Thank you for being so generous with your time. We’ll reach out to Kelly if we have any further questions. And again, we’re very sorry for your loss.”
The anger having petered out of him, Pierson muttered something mostly incomprehensible, though Jessie thought she heard the word “biddy” again. They saw themselves out, doing their best not to get lost.
“What do you think?” Ryan asked as they walked down the cavernous hallway that they hoped led to the front door.
“I think that man gave me an itch but I don’t know where to scratch,” she said, thinking back to their exchange about whether he knew the Faheys.
“What do you mean?” Ryan asked just as the hallway gave way to the central foyer where they originally entered the house.
Jessie was about to explain when she got a text. It was from Callum Reid. The message read: Recovering. But the plan I mentioned to you privately is a sure thing now. Keep it to yourself. I want to tell everyone myself.
As soon as she saw it, she realized she’d made a mistake by looking. Ryan would ask what it was. And in order to honor her promise to Reid, she’d have to lie.
“Who was that?” Ryan asked almost immediately.
Trying to think on her feet, she did her best to keep her deception to a minimum.
“Reid—he said he’s doing okay.”
“That’s it?” Ryan asked, surprised. “No more details?”
“Not really,” she lied. “I could ask him but I get the sense that he’s wiped out. It was probably a chore just to text at all. Why don’t I just wish him the best from both of us? We can interrogate him later.”
“Okay,” Ryan agreed, though he looked slightly put out.
She hurriedly typed her reply: Of course. Talk later. Wishing you the best.
She shoved the phone in her pocket and quickly changed the subject.
“Besides, right now, there’s someone else I need to interrogate.”
“Who?” Ryan asked.
“My sister.”
CHAPTER TEN
Watching unobtrusively from behind a window, he saw the police leave the estate and smiled to himself as he snapped photos of them. Neither of them seemed to have a clue.
The woman was talking on her phone and appeared agitated. The man next to her had a concerned look on his face. These didn’t seem like people who had made some kind of investigative breakthrough.
And how could they? He had planned these killings for months, gaming them out carefully, considering every variable. And so far at least, they had gone like clockwork, just as he knew they would.
He was aware that cockiness was a risk, one that was common in his profession. But he also knew that the same meticulous approach he took to his work would continue to serve him well in this far more important endeavor.
After watching them disappear into the distance, he returned his attention to the task at hand. He had planned all these elimination events simultaneously, knowing he would only have a small window in which to accomplish each of them once the authorities realized they were connected. That preparation would pay off now.
If he had waited until he’d killed Fahey to look for his next victim and organize her demise, the chances of success would drastically diminish. But because he’d done all the prep work for each woman well in advance, all he had to do now was follow the steps in his detailed outline. The d
ominoes had already been lined up. Just giving one little push would topple them. It was exhilarating.
He was tempted to follow the cops to see where they would go next, but resisted the urge. If he did his job properly, it wouldn’t matter where they went because their search would never lead back to him.
Besides, the next event would be occurring soon and he had to review all the elements to make sure everything was in place. There were a few variables that could complicate things and he needed to be certain nothing had changed since he last checked on the situation’s status.
He’d been accused of overconfidence many times in his life. But he’d never been accused of not doing his homework. This would be no exception. By the end of the night, another woman was going to bleed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hannah didn’t pick up the first time.
Jessie, sitting in the passenger seat as Ryan drove them back to the Santa Monica police station, was tempted to leave a message. But she knew her sister rarely checked them so she called a second time. Just as she feared the call would go to voicemail again, her sister answered.
“What?” Hannah demanded without so much as a hello.
“What a warm greeting that was,” Jessie said, unable to keep the frustration out of her voice. “How are you doing?”
“I know why you’re calling, Jessie,” Hannah said, still giving off a strong “leave me alone” vibe. “Yes, I know that it’s two fifty-four p.m. Yes, I know my appointment with Dr. Lemmon is at three. And yes, my rideshare is almost there. I didn’t forget.”
“No one suggested you did,” Jessie replied, though those were exactly the questions she had intended to ask. “I just wanted to check in with you. You may find this hard to believe but after being in hiding with government protection for over a week, it’s going to take a while before I just casually assume all is well with the people I care about.”
Though her statement was certainly true, Jessie had it admit, if only to herself, that her sister’s physical safety wasn’t the sole reason for the call. Ryan’s skeptical expression from the driver’s seat of the car suggested that she wasn’t entirely believable.