THE PERFECT HOUSE

by Blake Pierce

  “I’m up for it,” Jessie said, leaping at the chance to get off desk duty.

  “You know,” Brady said, “I’m going to leave that to you two. I was kidding before. But I really am annoyed that Gray Longworth hasn’t gotten back to me. I’m going to go to his office and let him know that his presence wasn’t so much requested as demanded.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said. “Things are looking up. We’ve got two scumbags to track down as potential murder suspects. That’s more promising than when the day started.”

  As they left the station, Jessie leaned over and asked Ryan a question.

  “Is it weird that we’re both excited to visit the residence of a misogynistic stalker who might have killed someone? I feel like we’re giddier than we should be.”

  “We can save that for therapy, Jessie. Right now I’m on a degenerate high. Don’t bring me down.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  As they pulled up at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Stanford Street, Jessie reviewed Jeff Percival’s file. It was pretty spotty since his last brush with the law, a restraining order filed last summer by a woman who worked at a restaurant Percival frequented. He had no current job listed and was in a dispute with his landlord about overdue rent payments.

  “Ready?” Ryan asked.

  “Yup. Let’s go say hi.”

  “Okay. But since you’re unarmed and you know, not a cop, I’m going to ask you to wait outside until I’ve verified he doesn’t have a weapon.”

  “Details, details,” Jessie teased as they approached Percival’s complex.

  She forced herself to take a few deep breaths and calm down. This was her first real field situation since the National Academy and she tried to remember not to get cocky just because she now knew a few moves.

  Percival’s place wasn’t going to make either the Wootens or Longworths jealous. The two-story apartment complex was easily fifty years old, with exterior-facing doors and a crumbling cement stairwell leading to the second floor and his apartment. The units had bars on the windows and the smell from the nearby dumpsters made Jessie’s eyes water. She wondered if Percival ever took Penelope back here.

  Not exactly a babe magnet.

  When they reached his door, Ryan had her wait several paces back as he knocked loudly, his hand resting on his gun holster.

  “Jeff Percival,” he called out. “LAPD. We need to speak to you. Open up.”

  There was no response from inside. He called out again.

  “Percival, this is LAPD. Open the door now.”

  Still nothing.

  A few seconds later, Jessie heard a high-pitched cry and swiveled around. After a moment, she relaxed. Half a block away, a woman was pushing a very unhappy baby in a stroller. She had just returned her attention back to Percival’s door when she got an idea.

  “Hey, Ryan,” she whispered loudly. “You hear that crying?”

  “Yeah,” he said, not turning around. “What about it?”

  “Are you sure it’s not coming from inside the apartment? Can we be sure this guy didn’t kidnap one of Penelope Wooten’s kids?”

  He glanced back at her and rolled his eyes. But as he did, he also smiled.

  “Jeff Percival, we hear the crying in there,” he shouted as he winked at her. “If you are holding a hostage, now would be the time to release them. Otherwise we’re going to have to enter. You have five seconds.”

  As he said that line, he held up three fingers to indicate when they would really breach. Jessie nodded in understanding and prepared to follow him in.

  “One,” he began. “Two, three…”

  Ryan kicked in the door just after “three” and rushed in. Despite his earlier instructions to wait outside, Jessie followed, feeling naked without any kind of weapon. She scanned the room as quickly and efficiently as possible. There wasn’t much to see in the main room.

  Percival had a loveseat against one wall with a beat up coffee table and television as the only other furniture. The small breakfast nook had a card table and two folding chairs. The kitchen, cramped and narrow, held no surprises.

  By the time she’d finished surveying the room, Ryan was already entering the bedroom. She hurried after him and got to the doorway just as he was checking the bathroom.

  “Closet was clear,” he called out, apparently over the fact that she’d entered before he said it was safe. “Check under the bed.”

  Even though there was only about six inches of space between the bed and floor, Jessie knelt down and glanced underneath. There was lots of stuff there—food wrappers, dirty clothes, dust bunnies—but no people.

  She got up and gave the bedroom a more fulsome examination. It was as pathetic as the living room, with an overflowing laundry hamper in one corner, a baseball bat beside the bed, and a massive, framed poster of Nickelback as the only art.

  The poster rested along the wall next to the barred window and didn’t even work as kitsch. The room was too dark to really see it and it hung about two feet lower than the standard sightline.

  Why would he hang it that low?

  She walked closer to the frame and noticed a surprising number of scrapes in the paint all over the wall near the edges of the frame, as if the thing had been hastily removed and replaced many times.

  On instinct, she removed the frame from the wall. What she saw behind it made her gasp.

  “What is it?” Ryan asked, rushing out of the bathroom.

  She didn’t need to reply for him to get it. He walked over and they both stared, trying to take it in.

  On the wall was an array of photos of Penelope Wooten, some that she’d posed for, others that had clearly been taken surreptitiously. One showed her leaving the supermarket. Another was of her at the park with Colt and Anastasia. A third was of her in an evening gown at a black tie event with Colton. There were easily two dozen photos taped to the wall, each with borderline illegible penciled notes written next to them. One photo was of the Wooten house, with the address written below it.

  “I really think we need to find Jeff Percival,” Jessie said quietly.

  “Already on it,” Ryan said, pulling out his phone. “I’m going to call from outside. The reception is iffy in here.”

  As he walked out of the room, Jessie moved closer to the disturbing collage, trying to discern if there was any larger pattern to it. She could hear Ryan calling in the APB as she rose onto her tiptoes, trying to read one word written in large cursive letters under a photo that Percival had obviously taken while Penelope was sleeping. It took a second to get it, but she was ninety-five percent sure it said “Mine.”

  She was about to pull out her phone to take a photo of the wall when she noticed something odd. Even though he hadn’t finished calling in the alert, Ryan had suddenly stopped talking. Then she heard it—what sounded like a pained, desperate grunt.

  She shoved her phone back in her pocket and looked around the room. Her eyes fell on the baseball bat beside the bed. As quietly as she could, she hurried over, grabbed it, and moved to the bedroom door.

  With the bat gripped tightly in her hands, she peeked around the corner. To her horror, but not her surprise, she saw Jeff Percival behind Ryan, his right arm locked tightly around the detective’s neck as he punched him repeatedly in the kidney with his left fist.

  Without thinking, Jessie stepped out into the room, swinging the bat behind her. Percival, whose back was to her, saw movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced over just in time to see Jessie swing the bat forward. Before he had time to react, it connected with the back of his left knee. There was a loud popping sound as he dropped to his knees, screaming loudly as he released his grip on Ryan’s neck.

  Jessie swung the bat back again, this time ready to clock Percival in the back of the head. But as she did, Ryan, who couldn’t yet speak, held up his hand for her to stop. She froze the bat in midair as the detective kicked Percival onto his back and rolled him over. He swiftly cuffed the man, ignoring his howls.

&n
bsp; “No need to overdo it,” Ryan rasped. “You got him good enough the first time. He’s gonna be limping for a year.”

  Jessie nodded and dropped the bat. Only then did she realize that her whole body was trembling. She tried to play it off as she hurried quickly past the two men, mumbling almost inaudibly.

  “I need to get some air.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  They drove back downtown as fast as they could without resorting to the siren.

  Ryan and Jessie had been all set to follow the squad car taking Percival to the hospital when they got the call from Captain Decker. Facial recognition had a potential hit on her father. He wanted them to come back to look at the footage on the high-def monitor to see if Jessie thought it was him.

  So Ryan had a CSU unit check out Percival’s apartment and told the officers to take him to the hospital. Then he called Brady. He got voicemail so he passed along what happened, explained why they couldn’t stick around, and suggested he meet Percival at the hospital to question him. It was already late afternoon so he promised they’d return in the morning to follow up.

  They sat quietly for much of the drive back, both of them lost in their own thoughts. Finally, Ryan spoke.

  “Thanks for taking that guy out. I was struggling there. He really caught me by surprise.”

  “No problem. I was happy to do it. And I do mean happy.”

  “I think you might have torn every ligament in his knee with that swing,” Ryan marveled. “The Dodgers should give you a call.”

  “Nah, I’m too expensive,” Jessie said, smiling for the first time since the incident. “Imagine what I could do if I ever got that gun.”

  “Still working on it,” he replied.

  “I’ll believe it when it’s in my hand,” Jessie said, then realizing how cynical she sounded, quickly changed the subject. “You think he’s our guy?”

  “He looks good for it,” Ryan said. “He could have easily seen Gray Longworth running on the trail that morning, planted the knife in an area where he knew we’d find it, and connect it to the cheating husband.”

  “Yeah,” Jessie said. “It fits.”

  “Then why do you sound skeptical?” Ryan asked, looking over at her.

  “It’s just that it seems to fit too perfectly. I find messy more credible.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Let’s just see how it shakes out. How are you feeling, by the way?”

  “I’m okay,” Jessie said. “I was a little shaky right after but I’m good now.”

  “That’s not what I meant. It’s almost five p.m.—three hours until you’re supposed to reply to your father. Is that carefree vibe you had earlier starting to fade at all?”

  “Let’s just say I wouldn’t call myself as happy-go-lucky as I was a few hours ago,” Jessie conceded.

  “Have you decided how you’re going to play it?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to tell him to screw off.”

  “That’s one way to go,” Ryan said carefully. “Have you considered saying yes and asking for a meet? Maybe we could trap him.”

  Of course it was a good idea that made perfect investigative sense under normal circumstances. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Jessie already felt like she was putting Ryan at risk by even telling him about the video.

  But if she did exactly what Xander had prohibited and tried to set up some kind of elaborate sting operation, she feared it would backfire. Not only did she suspect he’d likely developed measures to uncover a move like that and counter it, trying something might put members of the squad at risk. He had threatened the lives of anyone who assisted her. If she let others help and they were killed, their deaths would be her fault.

  “I actually have considered that,” Jessie told him, deciding to go with a half-truth. “But I dismissed it pretty quickly. Xander’s no fool. He’d know I was lying. He might hope that I’ll eventually wear down and consider his psycho proposition. But he’d never buy the idea that, days after he killed my adoptive parents, I’d sign on to be bosom buddy serial killers. No—anything other than flat out rejection would seem suspicious.”

  “Okay, so what happens when you reject him?”

  “I’m hoping he gets pissed and tried to convince me in person.”

  “That’s your big plan?” Ryan demanded incredulously.

  “Look, I don’t have a big plan,” Jessie replied, frustrated. “But I’m tired of playing the cat and mouse game with him. This is my way of taking it to him. He’s far more likely to show himself if I snub him. And I’ll never be in a better position to take him on than I am now. My place is secure. I have two cops staying there, covering my back. The department is using its resources to find him. Now is the time to get him.”

  “But if he’s as smart as you say, won’t he know all that?” Ryan pointed out. “Won’t he wait until things have settled down to come to you?”

  “I’m not sure he’s capable of holding back, especially after the e-mail I intend to write him. It’s going to be…disrespectful.”

  “Can I make a suggestion?” Ryan asked, sounding almost nervous.

  “Please.”

  “Tell Decker about the videotape. If he knows the threat to you is imminent, he can provide additional resources. Let him help.”

  “Ryan, I can’t tell him about the tape,” she said. “What I did could be construed as stealing evidence.”

  “Not necessarily. You don’t have to be completely forthcoming. Just shade the truth a bit. Tell him you saw a video in the VCR, figured it was old family movies, and took it to reminisce. It wasn’t until later, when you were taking it out again to play it, that you noticed the Post-it and realized who it was from. That’s completely plausible.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Jessie,” Ryan said delicately. “I think we both know there’s another reason you’re hesitant to show Decker the tape, why you haven’t even offered to let me see it.”

  “What reason is that?” Jessie asked, sounding more defensive than she intended.

  “Come on, Jessie,” he said, quietly coaxing her.

  “Fine,” she relented. “Maybe I don’t want my boss and the people I work with to hear what Xander Thurman said. Maybe I don’t want everyone around me to think I only became a profiler so I could be around the violence and death.”

  “Do you really think that your co-workers would believe that?” Ryan asked.

  “Could you blame them?” she demanded. “It’s in my blood, right?”

  “If that’s how it worked, every criminal’s child would be a criminal too.”

  “We’re not talking about a bank robber here,” Jessie reminded him. “We’re talking about a guy who gets off on torturing and murdering other human beings.”

  “Jessie,” Ryan said quietly but with conviction. “You are not defined by who your father is. Don’t let him try to convince you otherwise. He’s just trying to get in your head. No one who works with you believes that you’re like him. The real question is, do you?”

  Before she could reply, Ryan’s phone buzzed. He put it on speaker.

  “Hey guys,” Brady said. “How’s everything going? It sounded like you had to bail in a hurry.”

  “The captain needed us on another pressing case,” Ryan told him, steering clear of specifics. “Sorry to leave you holding the bag.”

  “That’s okay,” Brady replied. “Unfortunately, I’ve mostly got bad news to share.”

  “Lay it on us,” Ryan said. “We’re all about bad news today.”

  “Okay, well, first, I spoke to Jeff Percival, who will be in a leg cast for six weeks, by the way. He didn’t deny an obsession with Penelope Wooten. But he claims he was in Mexico since last Saturday. He was uncomfortably chatty. He even told me that he hired multiple prostitutes who looked like Penelope while he was down there. But he said he only returned today—that he had just gotten back to L.A. when he found an intruder in his apartment.”

  “Oh great. So this guy is going to try to sue us n
ow?” Ryan said.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Brady assured him. “He did have a collection of photos of a recently murdered woman hidden on his wall. I think you’ll get the benefit of the doubt on this one.”

  “Does his story hold up?” Jessie asked.

  “So far, yes. There was a duffel bag with dirty clothes in his car, along with several receipts on the floor. They’re from Tijuana and some are time-stamped from earlier this week. We’re also checking with Customs and Border Protection. In addition to checking driver’s licenses, they track all license plates of vehicles that pass through the San Ysidro crossing near San Diego. It’ll take a few hours but they should be able to verify if he crossed and when. We’ll hold him based on the assault charge against Ryan but it looks like he may alibi out on the killing. And to be honest, when I mentioned Penelope Wooten’s death, he seemed genuinely shocked by the news.”

  “Damn,” Ryan said. “I thought we had the guy.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” Brady offered, “it sounds like Percival was well on his way to doing what someone else did first,”

  “It’s no consolation,” Jessie said. “There’s still a killer out there.”

  “Speaking of that, here’s the other bad news. We lost Gray Longworth.”

  “What?” Jessie and Ryan said in unison.

  “When I went to his office in Venice, they told me he cut out early for the afternoon. But somehow the officer watching him missed it. Maybe he wasn’t paying close attention because he didn’t expect him to leave so early. Whatever the reason, when I stopped by, Longworth was gone and the officer didn’t have a clue.”

  “What about tracking his phone?” Jessie asked.

  “I tried that first thing. It’s off—has been for hours. It could have just died or he could have done it intentionally to evade us. We’re checking his last known GPS coordinates and trying to get a court order to check his communications today. Maybe he sent an e-mail or text that hinted at where he was going. Either way, he’s been in the wind for hours. We have units out looking for his car and tech is checking for pops on his credit or ATM card. Otherwise we’re in wait-and-see mode.”