by Blake Pierce
She waited and could almost hear Burnside’s brain working in the intervening silence.
“You didn’t get this from me, okay?” he insisted.
“Of course not.”
“Nothing’s turned up on the laptop yet. We’re still waiting. The phone is still missing too. But we traced it to its last known location, a few blocks away. We found the SIM card in an alley, or at least what was left of it. It had been crushed, and from the look of it, burned.”
“That seems unusually thorough for a thief, don’t you think?” Jessie noted. “Almost like the robber was more interested in keeping Michaela’s call data hidden than in keeping her phone.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Ms. Hunt,” Burnside replied.
“No, of course you don’t. As long as this conversation isn’t officially happening, is there anything else you want to tell me about what occurred last night?”
More silence as Burnside weighed his response.
“I don’t have anything more to share about last night,” he finally said. “But I will say this. Going forward you might want to let this one go, Ms. Hunt. I can tell you don’t want to. And I know from your reputation that letting things go isn’t really what you do. But in this instance, you might want to reconsider.”
“Why?”
“I have to go, Ms. Hunt. But I wish you all the best. Take care of yourself.”
Before she could reply, he had hung up. She was pondering whether to call him back when she saw Garland Moses walk into the bullpen and make his way to the stairs leading to his tiny second-floor office. As usual, the legendary profiler projected the image of a rumpled, absent-minded professor, with his gray hair a mess, his glasses in danger of sliding off his nose, and his sport jacket dwarfing his wizened frame. She stood up and chased after him.
“Hey, Garland,” she said, reaching him at the bottom of the stairs and walking up with him. “You’ll never guess who I ran into yesterday.”
“You shouldn’t challenge me like that, Ms. Hunt,” he replied, winking. “I guess stuff for a living, you know.”
“Okay, then have at it,” she teased.
“I’m going to say Dr. Janice Lemmon,” he mused casually.
“How could you possibly know that?”
“That’s easy. You know I know her and seemed delighted by that information when you found that out. Also, your current gossipy, schoolgirl tone suggests that whoever it is has what you believe to be some sort of personal connection to me. That limits the options pretty dramatically. Therefore, Dr. Lemmon.”
“That’s pretty impressive,” she admitted.
“Also, she called me and warned me you were fishing for info,” he said with a wink in his voice.
“I see,” Jessie said, giddy at the thought. “Do the two of you chat on the phone often?”
“I feel like I’ve been transported into a Jane Austen novel and you’re the scheming protagonist. Please tell me that you didn’t accost me merely to hone your matchmaking skills, Ms. Hunt.”
“That’s not the only reason, Garland. I do have a favor to ask.”
“What’s that?” he said, as they reached the top of the stairs.
“I was hoping to introduce you to my half-sister, Hannah.”
“Ah yes, the girl you saved from the serial killer.”
“The girl you helped me save,” Jessie corrected. “If not for your suggestion, I never would have found her.”
“How is she?” he asked, brushing off the compliment.
“I was hoping you could tell me. I thought we could manufacture some sort of casual encounter and you could judge for yourself.”
Garland looked at her disapprovingly as they approached his office door.
“So you want to introduce me to her under false pretenses so I can profile her because you’re worried she might be a little serial killer-ish?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” Jessie protested. But…yes.”
“I’m not totally comfortable with that,” he told her as he opened the door. “I don’t think it’s fair to the girl and I worry that it might further erode the trust the two of you already sorely lack.”
“How do you know tha…”
“However, I have to admit I’m curious to meet this girl. She sounds like a real pistol. I’d be willing to do that. To go through what she’s suffered and still be even moderately functional? It’s quite incredible. I can’t guarantee anything beyond a chat. If you’ll accept those terms, I’ll agree to it.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” Jessie said.
“Very well then. We can talk later to set something up,” he said, then slammed the door in her face.
Under normal circumstances, Jessie would have been offended. But she decided to take the win. Garland had agreed to meet with Hannah. And once he did, Jessie was sure that he would be able to help. Even subconsciously, he’d end up profiling her. It was in his blood, just like it was in hers.
It was what they did.
CHAPTER EIGHT
By the time Ryan arrived, Jessie had a full head of steam.
She’d spent the rest of the morning getting as much background information as she could on Michaela Penn. He had barely reached his desk before she started peppering him with details.
“Something doesn’t fit with this girl,” she said before he even sat down.
“Good morning, Jessie,” he replied. “How are you?”
“Good morning,” she said, offering a brief smile acknowledging the niceties of human interaction. “How am I? I’m confused. Michaela Penn is a real contradiction. This is a girl who graduated from a prestigious Catholic girls high school a year early while on an academic scholarship. She was legally emancipated at the age of sixteen. All very impressive, right?”
“Right,” Ryan agreed, clearly giving up on the pleasantries.
“But the reason her emancipation was approved was because her father, who now lives up near Lake Arrowhead, was abusive. She was able to prove to the court that she was better off on her own.”
“What about her mom?”
“Her mother died of ovarian cancer when she was seven.”
“No other relatives?” Ryan asked.
“Not in California.”
“Where did she live then?”
“Until she graduated early, she boarded at the school. Since then, she’s bounced around among three different apartments until she settled on the place where she was found last night. None of the others were anywhere near as nice.”
“So how did she afford the new place?” Ryan wondered.
“That’s a good question. Like Lizzie said, she’s a waitress. She works at Jerry’s on Ventura Boulevard. And according to her manager, she only worked part-time. That’s not going to pay for the place she was living in, much less all the art and electronics we saw.”
“Any clues from her social media?” Ryan asked, finally firing up his computer.
“Not so far,” Jessie admitted. “I’ve looked at her Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Tumblr, and Whisper accounts, along with everything else I could find. It’s pretty standard stuff—selfies at the beach, pictures with friends at concerts, funny memes, inspirational quotes, tons of smiles; not a mean comment in her mentions. It’s almost…too normal.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s hard to explain. I know people’s social media is curated to project the best possible image. But hers is relentlessly normal—nothing controversial, nothing revealing. It’s just so impersonal. After looking at it all, I didn’t get the sense that I knew her any better than before. It felt like a puzzle with several pieces missing.”
“So there’s nothing in there that would explain why someone would stab her multiple times?” Ryan asked drily.
“No,” Jessie said, not playing along. “Nor why a bunch of cops would try to shut down the investigation before it began. By the way, I talked to Burnside earlier, the officer stationed outside the bui
lding last night. He basically begged me to drop the case. It sounded like he was genuinely concerned for me.”
“Maybe he thinks Costabile is going to try to beat you up after school.”
Before she could reply, Captain Decker poked his head out of his office and called them in.
“Hernandez, Hunt, I need to have a little chat, please.”
Jessie glanced at Ryan, who had a look of resignation on his face.
“What?” she asked.
“That’s his ‘ream you out’ voice,” he said as he got up. “I can only imagine what the Valley Bureau people told him.”
“Well, I’ve got a little reaming out of my own to do,” Jessie said, her spine stiffening as she led the way to Decker’s office.
“Great,” she heard Ryan mutter quietly behind her. She pretended not to hear him.
They entered the office to find Captain Roy Decker standing behind his desk. He looked a decade older than his sixty years, skinny, mostly bald, and sunken-faced, with more wrinkles than she could count. He was staring at his computer screen with a frown. His beady eyes were intensely focused and his long, sharp nose seemed to point accusatorily in their direction.
“I understand you had a little excitement last night,” he said without looking up.
“We stumbled onto a case with some unusual features,” Ryan volunteered vaguely.
“Well, it seems that your involvement has piqued the interest of some of our friends in Valley Bureau,” he replied, his voice betraying nothing.
Jessie wanted desperately to respond. But from experience, she’d found it best to let Ryan feel things out first. His many years of exemplary service had garnered him some goodwill that Jessie hadn’t earned yet.
“Sir,” Ryan began carefully, “I think their pique might have something to do with how they were caught flat-footed on this. They were violating protocols left and right. Hell, the body was being removed before the assigned detective had even arrived. It wasn’t their finest moment.”
“They neglected to include that in the preliminary report,” Decker acknowledged. “May I ask what you were doing there in the first place? It’s not exactly your jurisdiction.”
“Was in the area after dinner and heard word of a victim who had been stabbed multiple times. I’m like a moth to a flame when it comes to that sort of thing and thought Hunt’s insight could be valuable so I asked her to help out.”
Decker glanced up at him. Jessie could tell he wasn’t fooled by Ryan’s incomplete, pronoun-averse answer. She thought this might be the moment when he pressed them on the nature of their relationship, which they’d been keeping under wraps. But he seemed to think better of it.
“Well, according to the report, it looks pretty open and shut; robbery gone wrong. So I guess we can move on without any unneeded friction between precincts.”
“Actually, Captain,” Jessie said, speaking for the first time, “I’m not sure it’s as simple as that.”
“Of course you’re not,” Decker said, seeming to sink even further into himself. “Go ahead, Hunt. Ruin my day.”
“I don’t mean to do that, sir,” she said, trying to harness all the diplomacy she could muster. “But the scene doesn’t support the theory that this is just a simple robbery gone wrong. Hardly anything was stolen. The SIM card in the phone, which was taken, was completely destroyed. The killer went into the bedroom with the murder weapon, seemingly with intent. The victim was stabbed nine times, hardly the MO of your typical apartment thief. And even after the girl was dead, the place was left largely untouched. I’m not saying definitively that it wasn’t a robbery. But open and shut? I don’t think so.”
She wanted to go on; to say that something about the case stunk to high heaven. But deeming that extra claim to be counterproductive, she left it there.
Decker sat down and closed his eyes. When he opened his mouth, it was twisted into a pained grimace.
“What would you have me do with this information, Ms. Hunt?”
“Captain, I think you should allow us to pursue this case. Detective Hernandez’s role as part of HSS allows him to take over any LAPD case the unit deems within its remit. Let us see where this goes. Give us the day. If we can’t find anything worthwhile, we’ll close up shop.”
Decker sat quietly for a moment, weighing her proposition.
“Unfortunately, that’s not possible,” he said, turning to Ryan. “Detective Hernandez, I just got word that your testimony in the Barton murder case has been moved from tomorrow to today. You need to be at the courthouse at ten a.m.”
Jessie and Ryan exchanged deflated looks.
“Captain,” he pleaded, “it’s only eight thirty now. Let me start the process of taking over the case. Maybe we can conduct an interview with the roommate. At least let us get the ball rolling.”
“I can’t do all that. I’m not going to pull the Valley guys off the case. The politics of that are just too ugly. But I can offer a compromise. I’ll let Valley Bureau know that HSS wants to work in concurrence with them, to information share and pool resources. That will allow you access to witnesses and evidence.”
“But we need to access all that now, sir,” Jessie insisted, “while the trail is hot.”
“Hunt, will you please let me finish before you dictate procedure to me?”
“Sorry, Captain,” Jessie said, silently berating herself for alienating the man who could most help her out now.
“Hernandez, you put in the paperwork and note Hunt as the profiler on the case, which will permit witness interviews at the very least,” he said, then turned to Jessie. “Hunt, that should allow you to re-interview the roommate. Once the door is cracked open, Valley won’t be able to easily close it.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jessie said.
“Just don’t go overboard, Hunt,” Decker implored. “I know that’s not easy for you. But stick to interviews, work that can be justified under the ‘profiler’ job description. You’ll be solo for a while until Hernandez gets out of court. Without a cop to back you up, you need to tread more lightly. Are you familiar with that concept, Hunt?”
“Vaguely, sir,” Jessie said, smiling. “Thank you.”
“Please don’t make me regret this,” he said, almost begging.
Jessie answered as honestly as she could.
“I’ll do my best.”
CHAPTER NINE
Jessie was waiting in her hospital room when Lizzie woke up.
The girl looked around, clearly disoriented. Jessie got up and held a cup with a straw to her lips. She sucked down the water voraciously.
“Can you talk?” Jessie asked when Lizzie was through gulping.
“Where am I?” the girl asked hoarsely. “Who are you?”
“You’re in Valley Presbyterian Hospital,” Jessie told her patiently. “I’m Jessie Hunt with the Los Angeles Police Department. We met last night, though you were pretty drugged up at the time. Do you remember last night?”
At first Lizzie just looked confused. But then the memories seemed to flood back in. In an instant she grimaced and closed her eyes tight.
“I remember enough,” she said quietly.
“Do you remember talking to me?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, then let’s start fresh. I’m sorry, but the questions I have to ask you are going to be difficult. But in order to find out what happened to Michaela…”
“Mick,” Lizzie corrected. “She went by Mick.”
“In order to find out what happened to Mick, I’m going to be blunt and I need you to be honest, okay? Don’t try to protect her memory by keeping important details from me. Everything is going to come out eventually, so the sooner the better. Are we clear?”
Lizzie nodded.
“Okay, let’s start with how you knew Mick.”
“We went to high school together at St. Ursula Academy. She graduated a year early and we kind of lost touch. But we reconnected a few months ago. I go to school at Cal State Northridge an
d didn’t want to live on campus. She had a new place and wanted a roommate for company. So I moved in.”
“It’s a pretty nice place,” Jessie said gently. “You were able to afford it as a student?”
“I only paid a quarter of the rent, basically for the room. She footed the bill for everything else.”
“She could afford that?”
“I guess so,” Lizzie said unconvincingly.
Jessie decided to hold off before pressing on that point.
“So you’ve been roommates a few months now?” she asked.
“Uh-huh. Since last fall actually.”
“And what were you doing last night before you came home?”
“I had a study session. I came home around nine forty-five. Mick gets up early for work lots of days so I tried to be quiet in case she was asleep.”
“But…” Jessie pressed, sensing Lizzie wanted to say more.
“But I saw that her light was on. So I peeked in and…” She trailed off.
Jessie opted not to push on the details of a crime scene she’d seen herself. She didn’t want Lizzie’s emotions to overwhelm her and prevent her from providing other important details.
“I asked you this last night but you were a little out of it. Did Mick have a significant other?”
“No. She was single.”
“What about an ex?” Jessie asked. “Maybe a relationship that ended badly?”
“She wasn’t romantically involved with anyone the entire time I lived with her. She wanted to keep the focus on work. She was trying to build a nest egg.”
“Waitressing at Jerry’s?” Jessie asked incredulously.
Lizzie looked at her uncertainly, then glanced away.
“Can I get some more water, please?” she asked.
“Sure,” Jessie said, refilling the cup and returning it to her.
After the girl took several more large gulps, Jessie tried again.
“Lizzie, do you remember what I said about being honest? How hiding things wouldn’t help Mick?”