The Perfect Impression

by Pierce, Blake

  Barry Lander was a pleasantly bland guy. Shortish, with light brown hair that was just starting to recede, he looked to be about thirty-five. He was trim and looked like he worked hard to put a layer of muscle on his slight frame.

  Marin Lander was his inverse. She was as tall as Jessie and extremely skinny, which gave her face an elegant, if slightly severe appearance. She looked like a European runway model who existed on rice cakes and vodka. Jessie suspected she was younger than her husband, but she looked older than him. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun that didn’t do anything to alter the perception.

  Both were dressed in jogging suits, his blue and hers pink, like Melissa Ferro’s. Apparently that was a thing with this group. Neither of them had the fatigued aura of so many of the other guests. They looked alert and borderline cheery. Jessie led them to the end of the hall, where she found that Detective Peters was already in the Harbor Room with the weepy mom and her baby.

  That left her the larger, less claustrophobic Bison Room. She assumed it was named after the animals which now roamed Catalina after their descendants were brought to the island for a film shoot in the 1920s.

  She opened the door for the Landers, who took seats next to each other at the large, rectangular table intended for as many as twenty people. Jessie sat across from them and remained silent for a moment, still debating how best to approach the interview. She finally decided to just let them tell their story, listen for inconsistencies, and watch their body language. Maybe if they got comfortable enough, they’d let something slip.

  “So I understand that you came to the island as part of a group?” Jessie began, leaving the question as open-ended as possible.

  The couple looked at each other, initially uncertain who should go first. But after that brief hesitation, Marin Lander took the initiative.

  “That’s right,” she said. “We’ve been coming here with Gabby and Steve and Melissa and Rich for about three years. This was the first time that Theo and Ari joined us for an outing. We usually come twice a year, summer and winter. It’s a chance to get away from the kids for a weekend without getting too far away, you know?”

  “Sure,” Jessie said. “And you always stay here?”

  “Yep,” Barry volunteered. “The staff is great. It’s close to the heart of town. And you can’t tell right now in the dark, but the hotel sits right next to the only golf course on the island. Staying here affords us preferential tee times, which we take full advantage of.”

  “So what do you do here when you’re not golfing?” Jessie asked, still trying to loosen them up enough to reveal something unintended. “I visited once a few years ago. I liked it but it doesn’t seem like the sort of place with endless options to keep you occupied.”

  The Landers gave each other one of those secret couple’s smiles that confounded outsiders.

  “We find ways to keep busy,” Marin said. “Right, honey?”

  Barry nodded devilishly.

  “When we come here, we like to chill more than load up on activities,” he said, not specifically addressing his wife’s more provocative comment.

  “So it’s kind of a romantic getaway?” Jessie pressed, trying to get a clearer picture.

  “You could call it that,” Barry answered noncommittally.

  Jessie found it odd that he was being so cagey about the nature of the trip but decided to move on for now.

  “You said this other couple was joining you for the first time. How did they end up coming along?”

  “Gabby introduced us to Ari about two months ago,” Marin Lander told her. “I think they took the same meditation class. Then we met Ari’s husband, Theo. Everyone vibed so we started spending time together. We felt comfortable enough to invite them along and they jumped at the chance.”

  “And how did that go?” Jessie asked.

  The couple again exchanged a look that Jessie couldn’t decipher, reminding her why she preferred to conduct these interviews individually.

  “I think it might have been a little overwhelming for them,” Marin eventually conceded.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know, you might do better to address that to them directly,” Barry said, the first time either of them had been outright unresponsive.

  Jessie couldn’t get a bead on these people. They clearly weren’t being totally forthright. But they didn’t have that familiar, sweaty nervousness that suggested their deception was related to feelings of guilt. They were hiding something but it wasn’t something they were ashamed of.

  “My understanding is that you all went to dinner and then hung out in the hotel bar?” she asked, hoping to verify the timeline established by her other interviews.

  “That all sounds right,” Barry said, “though we can’t really speak to anything after about ten. We went up to bed around then.”

  “Do you remember who in your group was left in the bar when you went up?”

  “I think the Ferros and the Crewes stayed,” Marin offered. “Theo left around the same time we did.”

  “And his wife, Ariana—when did she go up?”

  “You haven’t talked to Theo yet?” Marin replied.

  “No. Why?”

  “I think he’s better equipped to answer that question,” the woman said.

  “You can’t tell me directly whether she was there when you went upstairs?” Jessie asked, getting annoyed.

  The Landers traded uncertain looks. Jessie was about to escalate the intensity of the questioning when Barry answered.

  “I can tell you she definitely wasn’t in the bar. Beyond that, Theo would be the person to talk to.”

  Jessie knew that pursuing this line of questioning would get her outright angry, which was never good when trying to profile people. It clouded the judgment. So despite her desire to hone in, she switched topics.

  “Did you see Gabby get into any disagreements over the course of the weekend?” she asked.

  Both Landers shook their heads.

  “Did she seem upset about anything?” Jessie pressed. “More so than usual?”

  “She did seem a little more tense than normal,” Marin answered. “But I know her mother’s been sick and their little one, Ellis, just got over a bad ear infection. She almost backed out of the trip altogether. I think it was the general stress of all that more than any one thing in particular.”

  Jessie sat with that for a moment. She felt like she was starting to see the shadow of Gabrielle Crewe, if not her true image. She was nice but less so to her husband; full of moral righteousness but not to the point of alienation; stressed enough for others to notice while vacationing but not so much that she skipped the vacation altogether. She was forming a picture of the woman but nothing she’d gleaned so far offered any insight into why she was murdered in her hotel suite with a steak knife.

  “So you were in your room when Gabby’s death was discovered?” she asked, getting back to basic facts.

  “Yes,” Marin said definitively. “We were in bed enjoying a romantic moment, when we heard Melissa screaming. By the time we got dressed and came out into the hall, everyone was there with us—Steve, Rich, and all the other guests on the floor. It was wild.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I don’t recall exactly,” Barry said. “But it was definitely before midnight.”

  “That sounds right,” Marin agreed.

  Jessie was glad she wasn’t dependent on them for the timeline as their estimate was far less specific than others. She couldn’t think of anything else to ask them, at least not until she’d had a chance to talk to the Aldridges. There was something funny about that couple but the Landers weren’t going to be the ones to reveal what it was.

  “You know,” she observed drily, “you don’t seem all that broken up over Gabby’s death.”

  Barry Lander nodded, not as upset as one might have expected at the charge.

  “I think we’re both just in shock,” he said. “And since we never saw her body, it
doesn’t quite feel real to me.”

  “Also,” Marin added, “I tend to bottle up my emotions in traumatic situations. My therapist has been working on it with me.”

  Jessie decided she’d had enough of these two for now.

  “I think you need a little more work,” she noted, unable to stop the dig from slipping out.

  “I agree,” Marin said sincerely.

  “We’re done for now, but be sure not to leave the hotel without permission,” she warned them before stepping out into the hall to stretch. Peters was already there, talking to Deputy Heck. She ambled over to join them.

  “How are your interviews going?” she asked the detective, who gave Heck a nod he didn’t explain before turning to her. The deputy nodded back and headed into the Catalina Ballroom.

  “Pretty quick once I got rolling,” he said. “It turns out that a lot of these people were already asleep at eleven thirty at night. I’ve already gone through three of them. If the same holds true for the others, it should take less than an hour to clear all of them.”

  “You want to tell me what’s going on, Detective Peters?” Jessie asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s clearly something happening that has you concerned but that you’re hesitant to share. I thought we’d gotten to know each other well enough over these last few hours for you to realize that I vastly prefer sharing to hiding.”

  He sighed.

  “I’m hoping it’s nothing,” he said. “If it is, I didn’t want to add to your plate unnecessarily.”

  “I’m used to having a full plate, Peters. Hell, it’s usually overflowing. What’s going on?”

  Heck came out of the ballroom, looked at Peters, and shook his head. Jessie glared at the detective, about ready to blow. The detective saw her face and must have sensed what was coming.

  “We might have a problem,” he said hurriedly.

  “What’s that?” she asked through gritted teeth.

  “Theo and Ariana Aldridge are missing.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jessie did her best to hide her frustration as Peters filled her in.

  “Stone the security guard already checked the couple’s room and found it empty,” he said. “With the additional three security guards not yet having arrived, he and Dooley are searching the entire hotel on their own.”

  “Okay,” Jessie said, waiting to see if there was any good news.

  “In the meantime,” Peters continued, “I pulled up the lobby security footage, hoping the Aldridges might have passed through the one area of the hotel that had cameras. I didn’t find anything. The last time anyone remembers seeing Theo Aldridge in the ballroom was a half hour ago. Nobody seems to recall Ariana ever being there.”

  “Are you sure about the footage?” Jessie demanded.

  “I’ll check it again, but yeah.”

  While Peters reviewed the footage one more time, Jessie returned to the front desk, where Barksdale was furiously tapping away on a keyboard. He stopped when she arrived.

  “I’ve managed to clear eight additional rooms,” he told her. “That’s all we had available. Hopefully between those and the current guest rooms, it will be enough to hold everyone you’ve questioned.”

  “That’s great news,” Jessie said quickly, her priorities elsewhere. “How long was the front desk unmanned between when Leena came up to tend to Tommy and you took over down here?”

  “Only a minute or two,” he replied. “But I’m not sure that even matters, Ms. Hunt. There are multiple entrances and exits to the hotel. A guest with a keycard would have easy access to all of them and we’d never see them come or go.”

  That gave Jessie an idea.

  “I recently worked a case in which every keycard swipe was logged by the hotel security system. Any chance you guys do that here too?”

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “We’re not big on logging things here.”

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  She looked out over the expansive, empty lobby, at a loss as to how to proceed. There were still several interviews left to conduct but none seemed as pressing as finding the Aldridges, who were clearly involved in this in some way.

  There was also the issue of Gabby Crewe’s body. The crime scene team would likely be wrapping up their work in the Crewes’ room soon. But Jessie doubted any results would be available until much later in the day, putting it lower on her priority list. With that on hold, this was her window to gather real-time, relevant information and evidence. But she was short-handed and that window was closing.

  Her lack of resources made her appreciate how lucky she was to usually have unlimited access to them. Typically HSS snapped their fingers and people came running. At least that used to be the case. If Captain Decker was to be believed, the entire unit was in danger of being disbanded due to a lack of recent “buzzy” headlines.

  But out here, in the middle of an isolated island town, there were hardly any resources to call on. She was dependent on the town’s tiny police force, a few security guards for hire, and the goodwill of the hotel staff. If they started to abandon her, so did any real power she had to enforce her demands.

  The funny thing was that she wasn’t technically a cop or even an LAPD employee. She was a freelance consulting profiler on assignment for the department. The only real authority she had in the moment was what she could convince people of. Once that started to crumble, so did her clout and any chance of catching the person who stabbed Gabby Crewe to death.

  That thought led her quickly to another one. The murder weapon wasn’t any old knife; it was a steak knife, there as part of a room service order, as indicated by the tray on the dresser. She turned back to Barksdale.

  “Do you guys at least keep track of room service orders?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he answered. “We’re not Philistines.”

  “Then you have a record of the order for the Crewes’ suite last night?”

  Barksdale’s fingers few across the keyboard again.

  “Yes,” he said. “An order of steak, eggs, and toast was placed at ten twenty-two p.m. It was delivered at ten thirty-six by our on-call room service waiter, Esteban.”

  “Where is Esteban now?” she asked.

  “In the kitchen,” Barksdale said. “Even with everything going on, we’re still getting orders.”

  “Can you ask him to come up here, please?”

  Barksdale called the kitchen and made the request.

  “He’s on his way,” he said as he hung up.

  “His name is Esteban, but everyone calls him Tex,” Peters said from behind, making both of them jump. “I could have told you that he delivered the order to the room.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Jessie asked once she’d regrouped.

  “I’ve been a little busy, Hunt,” he said defensively. “He was my first interview when I got here. He’s the one who was bringing up another order when Melissa Ferro came out of Gabby Crewe’s room screaming. I was able to confirm that he was running around all night, dropping off orders.”

  “It’s true,” Barksdale confirmed, looking at the screen. “I have him delivering four orders during that hour from about ten twenty to eleven twenty, including the one to the Crewe suite. It’s hard to imagine Esteban murdering anyone, much less in that amount of time.”

  “I’ve seen stranger things,” Jessie told him before turning back to Peters. “That’s not the point though. I’ve been desperately trying to create an accurate timeline, using a bunch of drunk people as my guide. Even if we eliminate the waiter as a suspect, this gives us a narrower time of death.”

  “How?” Barksdale asked.

  “We believe that Steve Crewe was in the bar at ten twenty-two,” she explained. “That means the order was almost certainly placed by Gabby. So we know she was alive at that point. Did you ask Tex if she answered the door when he brought the food?”

  “No,” Peters admitted.

  “She didn’t,” someone said from
across the lobby.

  Jessie turned around to see a handsome Latino in his early twenties striding toward them.

  “Tex, I presume?” she asked.

  “A nickname I didn’t ask for,” he answered in a thick drawl that was clearly the source of the moniker. “My name is Esteban Mejada.”

  “Okay, Esteban,” she said, deciding not to waste any time on pleasantries. “So you were saying she didn’t answer the door.”

  “That’s right. I knocked, waited about thirty seconds, and knocked again. No one answered so I put the tray down, noted the time on the ticket, and went back to the kitchen for my next order, which I knew would be ready by then.”

  “Is that common?” she asked. “For a guest not to answer?”

  “Sure,” he said. “The guest might have fallen asleep or be in the bathroom. If I can’t get a signature confirmation, I’m just supposed to note that, along with the time, to verify that I actually completed the delivery so I don’t get in trouble if it’s stolen. Technically, I’m also supposed to take a photo of the tray in front of the door with the room number visible, but we’re kind of lax about that.”

  “Did you hear anything when you dropped off the tray?” she asked. “Loud voices? Music? The TV?”

  “I honestly couldn’t say,” Esteban replied. “I’m moving so fast and dropping off so many orders most nights that it all starts to blend together. And like I said, I had another order pending so I was anxious to get right back down to the kitchen.”

  “And that was the last time you were on the fifth floor until you found Mrs. Ferro running out of the room screaming?” Peters confirmed, apparently trying to make up for his shoddy questioning earlier.

  “Yes,” Esteban said, blushing. “I was bringing up an order for room 504.”

  Jessie wondered what that was about. Glancing at the computer screen, she saw an asterisk next to the order.