by Blake Pierce
“That’s what therapy’s for,” he finally said unhelpfully.
She was about to offer a snarky reply when her phone rang. She looked down. It was her friend Kat Gentry. She sent it to voicemail.
“So are you willing to meet with Hannah again?” she asked. “To see if you can draw any firmer conclusions?”
“I’m willing to meet with her, assuming she’s open to it,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to have any massive ‘a-ha’ moment. In the end, it’s hard to discern whether she’s just a moody teenager, a traumatized, emotionally stunted young adult, or some combination of both.”
A text popped up on her screen from Kat: Need your help on a case. Meet me at Downtown Grounds at 7:30 a.m.?
Jessie looked at the time. It was 7:10. Whatever Kat needed must be pressing if she wanted to meet so soon.
“You left off one option,” Jessie noted, as she typed back “ok.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“A sociopath who’s hiding it well.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Kat was already waiting in the bustling coffee shop when Jessie arrived.
Even before she sat down, Jessie could tell her friend was anxious.
That was unusual, at least lately. Katherine “Kat” Gentry used to be far more intense. As the former head of security for a psychiatric prison and before that, an Army Ranger in Afghanistan, it kind of defined her.
But after she was fired when Bolton Crutchfield escaped from prison and she reinvented herself as a private investigator, she’d seemed much more relaxed. And especially recently, after she’d started dating Mitch Connor, a sheriff’s deputy from a town in the mountains a couple of hours away, she’d seemed downright happy. He’d helped her out when she consulted on one of Jessie’s cases and they’d been inseparable ever since, driving back and forth to spend weekends together.
But now, as Jessie walked over, weaving in and out of the crowd, she saw that old, familiar apprehension on Kat’s face. Somehow the long scar that ran down her face vertically from her left eye, the one she’d gotten from an unspecified incident in a far off desert, seemed more prominent when she was worried.
“How’s it going, Kat?” Jessie asked loudly before she took a sip of the coffee her friend had already ordered for her. “Still having lots of sex?”
She smiled mischievously as several people turned their heads and scowled. The fact that Kat’s troubled expression didn’t change at the teasing told Jessie this must be serious.
“I need your help,” she said without preamble.
“Okay,” Jessie said, turning serious herself. “What’s going on?”
Kat allowed herself a sip of her coffee before diving in.
“Do you know about the recent string of abductions of local women?”
“A little,” Jessie replied. “I know that three women were kidnapped in the last month or so. All of them escaped. I haven’t paid super close attention since it’s not my beat and none of them are Central Station cases.”
Jessie and Ryan both worked out of Central Station in the downtown-area Central Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department.
“I have a new client,” Kat said. “Her name is Morgan Remar. She was the second woman taken. She was abducted about three weeks ago and got away after being held for five days. She’s been working with the Missing Persons unit out of Pacific Station. But after two weeks, they’ve come up empty. In the last couple of days, they haven’t been very responsive at all. So she hired me.”
“No offense, but if the incident happened way out near Pacific Station, why did she hire you?”
“It’s a fair question,” Kat said. “She works in Venice but lives nearby and her husband works downtown, just a few blocks away. In fact, I met her in this very coffee house about three months ago and we became friendly. She got frustrated and asked if I could help.”
“Okay, fill me in on what you know.”
Kat sighed deeply, as if the thought of explaining everything she’d learned was especially daunting.
“Here’s the short version,” she finally said. “The first victim was Brenda Ferguson. She’s a thirty-six-year-old stay-at-home mom with two kids from her second marriage. Her husband is a record executive. She was taken mid-morning, while jogging on a trail near her Brentwood home. After being held for three days in a garden shed, she managed to get away.”
Jessie furiously scribbled down notes as her friend talked.
“Am I going too fast?” Kat asked.
“No. You’re good. Keep going.”
“Okay. The second victim was my client, Morgan. She’s twenty-nine and lives in West Adams with her husband, only a few miles from this place. But she works at a homeless shelter in Venice. She was abducted on her way back from lunch on the Boardwalk. Like I said, she was held for five days before she escaped. He was holding her in an old wardrobe.”
“And the third woman?”
“Her name is Jayne Castillo. She’s thirty-three, married, and lives in Mid-City. She was taken from a grocery store parking lot a week and a half ago and got away after three days trapped in a dumpster.”
“Have you reached out to the other two women?” Jessie asked.
“I’ve tried,” Kat said, looking frustrated at the memory of it. “But I keep hitting brick walls. They won’t talk. The cops won’t talk. That’s why I came to you. I’m at my wits’ end here. Morgan’s paranoid that this guy is still out there and I can’t offer her any assurances because I’m no closer to finding him than I was the day she hired me.”
Jessie took another sip before asking her next question. She knew what Kat was getting at but wanted to think about how she’d answer.
“How can I help?” she finally asked.
Kat didn’t need any prompting to reply.
“Can you reach out to the detectives handling the cases? Maybe they’ll be more forthcoming with you. Right now, I’m flying blind here.”
Jessie sighed.
“I can try,” she said. “The problem is that these guys are all from other stations. They aren’t likely inclined to share details of their cases with a profiler from another station where we don’t also have a victim. But it can’t hurt to try. Maybe I’ll find someone friendly.”
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Kat acknowledged. “Are you sure you have the time?”
“It’s fine,” Jessie assured her. “Things are actually a little slow right now. I’m wrapping up paperwork on a case from last week and waiting to testify in another. But I don’t have anything active at the moment. Of course, that means Captain Decker could assign me to something new at any time. But until then, I can try to shake something loose.”
“I’d really appreciate it.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jessie said. “How many times have you helped me out on a case when I didn’t want to go through official channels? This is the least I can do.”
“Thanks, Jessie,” Kat said, sounding relieved for the first time since they started talking.
“Not a problem. But let me ask you, can I talk to Morgan? It would really help me to get her firsthand perspective.”
“Of course,” Kat said. “She’s at an out-of-town conference right now and won’t be back until late tonight. But I can set something up for tomorrow.”
“That sounds good. I’ll see what I can find out in the interim,” Jessie said before taking another big sip of coffee. “Now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way, I have another question.”
“What’s that?”
“You having lots of sex?”
Kat finally broke into the smile Jessie had been hoping for when she asked the first time. Her face also turned a deep pink.
“I’m keeping busy,” she said cryptically.
“I’ll bet you are,” Jessie teased.
“What about you?” Kat countered, trying to apply a little pressure of her own. “How are things with Ryan?”
It was Jessie’s turn to blush.
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“They’re good,” she said. “We trade off where we spend the night, though it’s usually my place because of Hannah.”
“And you don’t mind living in sin with an impressionable youth under your roof?” Kat asked, a teasing smile playing at her lips.
“Believe me, that girl has seen enough stuff that I don’t think she’s fazed by her sister’s boyfriend spending the night. I think she actually finds it reassuring.”
“We’ll see if she’s so reassured when you all fall into the pit of Hades,” Kat persisted, trying not to laugh as she said it.
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“You have no idea.”
Despite the teasing, Jessie allowed herself to relish the moment. For a few seconds at least, she could forget that she wasn’t sure if her little sister was a sociopath or if she or her boyfriend might get gunned down at work. She could pretend she led a normal life with normal family and relationship issues.
Then the moment passed.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jessie got lucky.
As she walked into the bullpen of LAPD’s downtown Central Station just after 8 a.m., trying to keep a low profile, there was a flurry of activity. Vice had just conducted a major overnight raid, busting up a large prostitution ring. The whole station was filled with hookers, pimps, and johns.
That meant that no one noticed her as she slinked to her desk. Even Ryan, who was helping a uniformed officer subdue an irate john, didn’t see her walk by. She couldn’t help but notice him. Even though they’d been together for a few months now and she was intimately familiar with the contours of his body, she never ceased to be impressed by his sheer attractiveness.
At six feet tall and a shade under two hundred pounds, he wasn’t physically imposing. But as she knew personally, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his muscular, thirty-two-year-old frame. Despite his chiseled torso, Ryan exuded surprising humility and warmth for a veteran homicide detective. He had an easy smile and his black hair was cut short so it didn’t obscure his friendly brown eyes.
When he talked, his soft-spoken tone gave no hint that he was the most celebrated detective in the department’s Homicide Special Section, or HSS, which investigated cases that had high profiles or intense media scrutiny, often involving multiple victims and serial killers. Jessie sometimes thought that his ability to navigate that gig and a relationship with her should earn him a special medal of commendation.
Pushing thoughts of her boyfriend out of her head as she sat down, Jessie began pulling up the case files on the abducted women. The details were sparse, seemingly in large part because the women had all been blindfolded for much of their ordeals and couldn’t offer much help.
After familiarizing herself with the incidents as much as possible, she decided to call the primary detective on Morgan Remar’s case. For one thing, it was the one most relevant to Kat. In addition, the assigned detective at Pacific Station, Ray Sands, had a stellar record and a good reputation as someone who cared more about solving cases than following strict procedure. Maybe he’d be open to helping.
“Sands here,” he said, picking up before the end of the first ring.
“Hi, Detective Sands,” she said as casually as she could. “This is Jessie Hunt. I’m a criminal profiler based out of Central Station. How are you doing this morning?”
“I’m very busy, Ms. Hunt. What can I do for you?” he asked, polite but no-nonsense.
“I was hoping to pick your brain on a case you’re working right now.”
“What case is that?” Sands asked warily.
“The Morgan Remar abduction; I was hoping you could fill in a few of the blanks.”
“What’s your interest in the case, Ms. Hunt? I’ve heard of you and I thought your specialty was homicides, mostly involving serial killers.”
“It is,” Jessie conceded. Deciding her best hope was to just be straightforward, she told him the truth. “I’m actually looking into this for a friend, Katherine Gentry. Ms. Remar hired her as a private investigator and she’s been facing some pushback in trying to get details on how the case is progressing.”
“Yes. I’m familiar with Ms. Gentry,” he replied with a tone of exhaustion. “She’s certainly been…persistent. I’ll tell you what I told her. We just don’t have much in the way of quality information that we can share at this point.”
Jessie got the sense that Sands was a decent guy but knew he wasn’t being totally forthright.
“Detective, are you telling me that after one month and three abductions by what is clearly the same perpetrator, you don’t have any useful leads?”
She couldn’t hide the skepticism in her voice. Sands didn’t respond for a few seconds.
“Look, Ms. Hunt,” he said very slowly, punching each syllable hard as he spoke. “You’re making a lot of assumptions there, first among them: that these cases are connected.”
“Are you suggesting that they’re not?” Jessie asked, surprised.
“We don’t know definitively,” he said unconvincingly. “All the abductions occurred in different jurisdictions. All the women were found in areas far from where they were taken.”
“But they were all kept for about the same length of time before escaping,” Jessie countered. “They were all held in contained spaces. They were all in the same general age range and the same general socioeconomic level. You’re not seriously claiming these are unconnected?”
“No,” he admitted. “But not every detective investigating the other abductions feels that way. And since I suspect that you’re going to call them after talking to me, I want to be clear that no conclusions have been drawn.”
Jessie sighed. She understood Sands’s caution but it was incredibly frustrating.
“Look, Detective. I get it. This is politically sensitive. And you don’t know me. But Kat Gentry is a good friend. And she’s trying to help a very scared young woman. I’m just trying to get some answers that will help set her mind at ease.”
“You don’t think I know Morgan Remar is scared?” Sands demanded, sounding genuinely angry for the first time. “I’m the one who interviewed her in the hospital while doctors did skin grafts on her and tried to repair the ankle she destroyed kicking herself out of that wardrobe. I’m the one who had to tell her there was no useful evidence found at the location where she’d been held. I’ve been working on this case for two weeks straight, while my fellow detectives from the Mid-Wilshire and West L.A. stations have held back on any information-sharing. I only just got approval for a task force this morning. I’m aware of the situation, Ms. Hunt.”
“I’m sorry,” Jessie said, aware of just how badly she’d stepped in it. “I didn’t mean to suggest you didn’t care. I just, well, I’m sorry.”
Sands was quiet. She could hear him breathing heavily. But she took the fact that he hadn’t hung up as a good sign. Before he did, she tried another tack.
“You said you got a task force approved this morning?”
“Yes,” he muttered.
“Can I ask what changed?”
“There was a fourth abduction,” he said.
“What?”
“She was found late last night in Griffith Park,” Sands said. “Same M.O., only this time she was held in a dog crate for four days.”
“Jeez,” Jessie muttered under her breath.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “So that’s what finally got the folks down at headquarters to override the other station captains and make us pool our resources. We hope to be up and running by this afternoon.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“Yours truly.”
“No wonder you’re so chippy,” she said before realizing he might not take her comment in the joking vein it was intended.
“Are you kidding? This is me at my most charming,” he said, clearly not offended.
“Okay then, as long as I’ve got you in what you consider a good mood, can I ask you another insulting question?”
“Fire away,” he said. “I’m used to it by now.”
“Four abductions. Not a single lead as to the identity of the kidnapper. And yet every woman managed to escape. Doesn’t it seem odd that a perpetrator who was so adept at abducting these women is so inept at keeping them?”
“It does,” Sands said, offering no further comment.
“Can I assume by your pregnant pause that you are as skeptical as I am that any of these women actually ‘escaped’ on their own?”
“You can,” Sands said. “While not everyone agrees with me, I feel pretty strongly that this guy—and we know it’s a guy—allowed his victims to get away.”
“What makes you so sure?” Jessie asked.
“Apart from what you noted—that it seems exceedingly unlikely that the same man who grabbed up all these women without getting caught would be sloppy in holding them—there’s something else.”
“What’s that?”
“We found the places where he held each woman. In each instance, there wasn’t a single trace of usable DNA. There were no fingerprints. There was no incriminating evidence of any kind. That’s hard to pull off under any circumstances, as you well know. But almost impossible if he returned to find these women gone and had to hurriedly clean up.”
“But not if he let them go,” Jessie said.
“Correct,” Sands agreed. “If he allowed them to escape at a moment of his choosing, that would give him time to clean up after they left. I suspect he was cautious from the moment he brought them to the locations where he kept them, knowing it would eventually be discovered and searched thoroughly.”
“Why would he do that?” Jessie asked. “Why risk letting them go when they might be able to identify him later?”
“Don’t forget they were all blindfolded.”
“But they wouldn’t have been when he first grabbed them.”
“No,” he conceded. “But the first three women taken were all certain he wore an elaborate disguise.”
“Still, they could estimate his height and weight, his ethnicity. They might be able to identify his voice.”
