The Perfect Impression

by Pierce, Blake

  When she turned back around, he glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. Other than the angry horizontal scar that cut almost four inches across his forehead, he looked like any other frail elderly man. Still, it was best not to push it. He started the car and pulled out. There was no need to take unnecessary risks. He was a patient man.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After prepping her omelet, Hannah ambled casually though the house, wearing only a tank top and boxer shorts.

  It was a rarity for her to have the place to herself, especially on the weekend. But since Ryan was at work and Jessie was on an island just off the coast, she planned to enjoy this small window of freedom.

  It also gave her a chance to plan her next move without having to constantly look over her shoulder. It had been weeks since she had her altercation with the child rapist whom she thought had kidnapped another victim, and the high was fading.

  Though the man hadn’t actually abducted the girl in question, Hannah had found kiddie porn stashed in his place when she broke in. Unfortunately, the guy had returned before she could sneak back out and she’d barely escaped. Anonymously turning him in had been satisfying but she couldn’t cling to the satisfaction forever.

  She returned to the kitchen and folded over her goat cheese, sundried tomato, spinach, and provolone cheese omelet, then left it on the stove on low to settle while she went to the bathroom. She faced away from the mirror and twisted her head around to get a better look at the spot on her back where the pedophile had smashed her with a crowbar during their fight. Sometimes she pressed on the bruise to get a residual thrill from the ache. It had changed colors multiple times and was now a dull yellow. Unfortunately, the pain had finally subsided a few days ago.

  She turned around to face the mirror and studied herself. She wouldn’t turn eighteen for a few months, but she knew she looked more like twenty-one. She was almost as tall as her sister, though skinnier, mostly because she wasn’t as dedicated to working out. Her sandy blonde hair cascaded down just past her shoulders and her green eyes—the same color as Jessie’s—looked refreshed after a solid night of sleep. She knew that if she really wanted to, she could get an adrenaline rush just by dressing up a certain way and visiting a particular part of town.

  But she wasn’t looking for that type of trouble. Hannah preferred the kind that got her heart pumping and put scumbags away. She tried to convince herself that if the risks she took resulted in a bad guy going down, they could be justified, even if that was only a secondary goal.

  The main goal, of course, was always the rush. She’d come to accept that it was the only way to generate any real feelings. Most of the time she was faking them, modeling emotions based on what she saw from other people and in movies. Sensations like delight, nervousness, apprehension, guilt, and empathy were fleeting at best. If she wanted to have any true stirring in her gut or heart, she required the biggies like fear, hatred, and ecstasy.

  But shoplifting and walking across busy streets to make cars dodge her wasn’t getting the job done anymore. She got a nice hit of adrenaline last summer when she’d confronted a drug dealer peddling his wares to kids while joining Jessie’s friend, Kat, on a stakeout that was supposed to be danger free. An even bigger, better jolt came when she helped Jessie bust up a sexual slavery ring by pretending to be a potential candidate.

  But those kinds of opportunities were hard to come by. That’s why she’d gone after the child rapist. That’s why, in the weeks since, she found herself scouring message boards, hunting for potential predators to target.

  Hannah turned on the faucet and threw some cold water on her face in an attempt to stop the spiral she could feel coming on. It seemed to work. She dried her face, pulled on some sweatpants, and returned to the kitchen, where she turned off the stove, put the omelet on a plate, and doused it in a combination of avocado cubes, chopped red onion, and salsa verde.

  When she sat down at the table, she reminded herself how she’d gotten on this train of thought in the first place: she wanted to stop the cycle. She sensed that she was teetering on the edge of a cliff. At any moment, with one wrong move, she might end up naked in a ditch or worse. She knew there could be worse.

  There had to be a way to address her need to push the envelope without constantly putting herself at risk. She knew Jessie had some of the same urges. But she’d managed to channel them into hunting killers. Luckily, she also had backup from a police department. That wasn’t an option for Hannah. She’d considered joining the military when she turned eighteen, but knew that she’d chafe against the discipline.

  She wanted to be normal. She didn’t know why she wasn’t, though she suspected having a genetic connection to a brutal serial killer probably had something to do with it. She’d tried talking to Jessie’s therapist, Dr. Janice Lemmon. It was clear that the psychiatrist knew something was off. But Dr. Lemmon hadn’t ever truly called her on it, apparently waiting for Hannah make the first move, something she couldn’t seem to do.

  On more than one occasion, she’d considered just telling Jessie everything. They were sisters. They had the same monstrous father. They’d both seen and experienced horrors most people would never face. Jessie would get it, she was sure. But how would she react?

  Hannah worried that, despite their shared pain, Jessie would hit the roof. Any one of the things she’d been doing was enough to freak a guardian out. But intentionally putting herself in harm’s way just for thrills? Hannah pictured herself being tossed into a padded room in a straitjacket or sent to military school or some version of rehab for whatever it was she had.

  She had developed some casual friendships at school over the last semester, but didn’t feel anywhere near close enough with those people to reveal something of this magnitude. That left her with one person, the same person she always returned to: Kat.

  Jessie’s best friend, Katherine Gentry, was once the head of security at a psychiatric prison for the worst, most disturbed murderers and rapists in the western United States. When her second in command, in the thrall of serial killer Bolton Crutchfield, helped facilitate Crutchfield’s escape, she lost her job. Now she was a private detective.

  It was her case, on behalf of the parents of a drug-addicted son, which led to Hannah tagging along on a supposedly uneventful stakeout. And it was during that stakeout, while Kat went to the restroom, that Hannah saw and confronted the dealer. The incident might have ended badly for Hannah had Kat not returned in time and left the dealer on the ground with a broken wrist, moaning in pain.

  So Kat knew about her proclivity to push boundaries. Equally as important, she’d kept what happened that day from Jessie. Almost certainly, the primary reason was that she didn’t want Hannah to get ripped to shreds by her sister for what she did. But at least part of it was because she didn’t want to get ripped to shreds either.

  So she’d kept the secret from her best friend. And that meant she was vulnerable. Hannah could tell her about the other incidents with some confidence that Kat would stay quiet to cover her own ass.

  And if she balked? Well, then Hannah might need to remind her of exactly what she was putting at risk if she told Jessie. That kind of secret could ruin friendships. Some folks might call it blackmail. She didn’t want to play the card if she could avoid it. But if she had to, it was there.

  Hannah wanted to find a way to be normal. She wanted to be a good person. She wanted to get help. But not if it meant being separated from the only family she had left. That wasn’t acceptable. She simply wouldn’t allow it.

  She took her first bite of the omelet. It was perfect. Jessie had often told her she should consider culinary school and she’d mulled it over on occasion. But she doubted that even the dinner rush at a Michelin-starred restaurant would be enough to sate her cravings. She was about to take her second bite when the doorbell rang.

  *

  Kat hated that she was so nervous.

  She waited impatiently for the series of alarms and locks to cycl
e through to conclusion. When Hannah opened the door, looking happy and healthy in her sweats and tank top, she almost abandoned the whole idea.

  Maybe she didn’t need to challenge the girl directly. Maybe there was another, more subtle way to address her concerns. But then she remembered what had brought her here in the first place and she knew there was no easy way out of this.

  “How’s it going?” Hannah asked, clearly surprised by her unexpected visit. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Kat replied. “Ryan texted me that he had to work today and that Jessie was handling a case on Catalina. He asked if I could check in to make sure you didn’t need anything.”

  “I’m good,” Hannah assured her breezily. “I’ve been dressing and feeding myself for a few years now.”

  Kat chucked uncomfortably. “That’s great. Do you mind if I come in anyway?”

  “Sure,” Hannah said, pushing the door open all the way.

  Kat glanced back at the street one more time. She had the oddest sensation that she was being watched. But there was no one suspicious around.

  A middle-aged woman walked her dog, talking to it like her child. A mother pushed a stroller, seemingly more interested in what was playing on her AirPods than in her child. An elderly man, his head barely above the steering wheel, drove painfully slowly down the street. A young couple jogged along, laughing at some shared joke.

  It was a typical Sunday mid-morning in the comfortably middle-class Mid-Wilshire district neighborhood. She suspected her own anxieties about the coming conversation were messing with her head. She stepped inside.

  “You want something to eat?” Hannah asked, as she reset all the locks and alarms Jessie was so adamant about. “I was just having breakfast.”

  “No thanks. I already ate.”

  She sat down across from the girl at the breakfast table, deciding how best to proceed. It was true that she’d come over at Ryan’s request. But she’d also come because, with both Ryan and Jessie away, it was the perfect opportunity to talk to Hannah alone. Realizing she’d been sitting silently for too long, she decided to just rip the Band-Aid off.

  “So we need to talk,” she said.

  “That sounds ominous,” Hannah replied mildly before taking a big bite of an amazing-looking omelet.

  “I don’t mean it to,” Kat said quickly. “It’s just that I’m worried about you.”

  For the briefest of seconds, she saw a flicker in Hannah’s eyes and got the strange sensation that the girl knew what she was going to say.

  “Why?”

  “I think you know why.”

  “How could I possibly?” Hannah asked.

  “I know what you did,” Kat said, deciding to just come straight out with it.

  “I truly have no idea what you’re talking about, Kat.”

  “Okay, we’ll do it that way,” Kat said. “You came to visit me at my office one Saturday about a month ago. You were leaving as I arrived.”

  “I remember,” Hannah said.

  “Well, the strangest thing happened. I have these security protocols. Ever since my days at the psychiatric prison, I’ve been kind of compulsive about them. When I got up to my office, I noticed that a few of them had been breached. I won’t bore you with the details. But I was concerned so I checked the hidden camera in the office and found a familiar face rummaging through some files that I thought I’d hidden but apparently not well enough.”

  “Weird,” Hannah said, not admitting to anything but no longer maintaining an expression of self-righteous indignation.

  “I know, right?” Kat said, starting to warm up to the task. “Long story short, I did a little research and found out that one of the suspects I’d been investigating in the case of a missing girl, an ex-con that I’d eliminated as a suspect, had been arrested. Apparently an anonymous tipster told the authorities exactly where to find some child pornography concealed in his house.”

  “That’s lucky,” Hannah said, impressively blank-faced.

  “Yeah. The guy kept babbling about some girl who tried to sell him candy for school before breaking in later and attacking him. The cops didn’t take him seriously, even though he was pretty banged up. It sounded too ridiculous.”

  “It does sound ridiculous,” Hannah agreed.

  “All the same, I checked the security footage from the convenience store down the block, where the anonymous call was made. And even though the caller was wearing a disguise, she looked awfully familiar to me.”

  Hannah didn’t say anything, instead taking another bite of her breakfast and chewing it slowly.

  “Are we really going to keep playing this game?” Kat asked. “We both remember what happened with that drug dealer in the park last summer. We both know you have some kind of need to put yourself at risk. So are you going to tell me why you broke into the home of a convicted child rapist and ended up in what sounds like a vicious fight?”

  Hannah stared at her for a long time. She seemed to be genuinely conflicted. After swallowing her latest bite, she opened her mouth to respond. For what seemed like an eternity, no words came out. And then Kat saw her expression change. The hesitation was gone and her face grew hard.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kat,” she finally said.

  “Come on, kiddo, let me help you. Please, tell me why you did this? Or if you won’t tell me, talk to your sister or that psychiatrist she’s always raving about.”

  Hannah pushed her plate to the side and leaned forward. Her gaze was steely.

  “I can’t help you. I wish I could. But I would say this: if you knew that your best friend’s sister had been putting herself in harm’s way for months and you didn’t say anything, that would reflect really poorly on you. And if you thought that I was the girl who went after this pedophile and didn’t go straight to Jessie with your concerns, that would be a real breach of trust. It’s the kind of betrayal that could end a friendship. And from what I understand, Kat, you don’t make friends so easy. Can you really afford to put this one at risk?”

  Kat felt a chill go down her spine. She knew what this girl had been though, the awful things she’d seen. And she knew that they had damaged Hannah in ways she couldn’t understand. But she hadn’t anticipated that the girl would be willing to blackmail her into silence. She felt sick to her stomach.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this, Hannah,” she pleaded. “We can find a way to help you. But you have to let me. You have to be honest.”

  Hannah stared back at her. Her face was a mask. Her eyes were emotionless.

  “I think it’s time for you to go,” she said coldly. “We only let friends in the house.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Jessie waited until they were alone to start yelling.

  She led Detective Peters into the very Harbor Room where they’d conducted interrogations only hours earlier and began a new one, on him.

  “Now I know why there are almost no cameras in this place!” she shouted. “It’s like one big key party!”

  “Listen—” Peters began but Jessie cut him off.

  “You knew all about it and never said a word. When Barksdale was talking about privacy and confidentiality for guests, you knew they were euphemisms and you let him do it. Worse, you let me waste valuable time going down dead ends when I could have been pursuing real leads.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he protested. “You saw what the captain’s like. He’s more the head of a tourist bureau than a cop these days. He hates controversy, anything that reflects badly on the island. How do you think he’d react if I told some mainlander that the fanciest hotel in town is secretly a haven for wealthy Angelenos to get their rocks off with glorified escorts?”

  “Is that really the main concern for you?” Jessie demanded. “If your boss is mad at you? What about the woman found with a knife in her chest?”

  Peters jutted his lower lip out in a pout.

  “There was no evidence that the hotel’s secrets had anyth
ing to do with this. I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “Everything matters,” she told him.

  He looked like he wanted to say something more but stopped himself. That was fine because she wasn’t done.

  “Detective Peters,” she began, before changing tacks, “Colby, we are trying to catch a murderer here. Avoiding bad press is not the top priority. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. I get that you’re in a difficult position and I’m sure you’re not psyched to have an outsider come in and take over your investigation. But that’s my mission—to find the person who snuffed out Gabby Crewe’s life. Everything else is secondary to me.”

  She considered leaving it there, but after a moment’s reflection, she decided she just couldn’t.

  “And frankly, I’d love a little help. I’m a civilian profiler. I have no real authority here. You’re the detective. You’re supposed to be the hard ass who throws witnesses and suspects off their game with aggressive questioning so I can watch their reactions. At least, that’s how it’s worked for me in the past. But here I am, trying to both push their buttons and observe how they respond to being pushed, while you try to give them a soft landing. You have to decide what your priorities are here, Detective. Are you a cop or are you a publicist?”

  He didn’t have a response to that. Instead he put his hands on the conference table and lowered his eyes. Jessie watched as he engaged in silent conversation with himself, muttering under his breath and shaking his head. Finally he looked up.

  “I screwed up,” he admitted. “How do I fix it?”

  “I’m not sure you can,” she told him, softening slightly. “But we don’t have much choice other than to press ahead. We’ve got more suspects than hours left to investigate. And if we don’t uncover the killer before he or she takes that ferry back to the mainland, who knows where they might end up next? If they feel the heat, these kinds of people have the resources to go right to the airport and catch a flight to a country without an extradition treaty. So we have to decide who to re-interview next.”