by Blake Pierce
Neither Decker nor Ryan replied as she walked out of the room.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Hi, Brenda,” she said, bracing for the inevitable as she walked back to her desk.
“Did you hear that one of the other abductees was killed?” the panicked woman immediately asked.
“I did,” Jessie said, trying to sound calm. “I’m actually working the case. But it’s not public knowledge. How did you find out?”
“A private detective who was working for her called to warn me. She suggested I reach out to you. I told her we’d already spoken.”
Jessie felt a tide of frustration rise in her chest. She knew Kat was upset but the idea that her friend would use an abductee like this filled her with a sense of fury she found it difficult to contain.
“Was the detective’s name Katherine Gentry?” she asked slowly, making sure not to reveal her state of mind.
“Yes. She said you know each other.”
Jessie sighed silently, not wanting to take her frustration out on Brenda.
“That’s true. In fact, I’m planning to call her right now, as soon as we hang up, in fact.”
“So, if you’re handling this,” Brenda began, asking the question Jessie knew was coming, “does that mean you’ll be assigning officers to keep me and the other women safe, in case the person who killed Morgan Remar is the same man who took us?”
“Brenda, I’ve looked into that,” Jessie said apologetically. “Unfortunately, I was just a consultant on the abductions. I only have input on the murder case and I can’t make the department give you protection. Trust me, I’ve tried. But I haven’t given up. I’m going to keep pushing for it. In the meantime, my recommendations aren’t going to make you feel super secure but I’m going to recommend them anyway.”
“Okay,” Brenda said, desperate for any help she could get.
“Keep your doors locked at all times. Don’t leave your home alone. If your husband can continue to work from home, have him do so. Only go out on essential trips. If you have to go and Ty can’t go with you, see if there are friends who can accompany you. Use the contact info for the security company I gave you. They’re good. They can get something solid set up for you in the next forty-eight hours. Mention my name. God knows I’ve spent enough money with them. Otherwise just keep busy. Spend time with your kids. Work out at home. Anything that keeps your mind off this is a good thing.”
“I appreciate the help,” Brenda said, clearly disappointed. “But you’ll have to forgive me for not being impressed when the best the police can recommend is for me to keep busy.”
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you more right now. All I can say is that I’m investigating the case. I’m going to catch this murderer. If it’s the same man who abducted you, then your nightmare is over. If it’s not, then maybe you can feel better knowing the guy who took you isn’t interested in coming after you again. Either way, you’ll be better off than you are now.”
“Thank you,” Brenda said half-heartedly.
“Thank me when I catch him,” Jessie said.
She’d barely hung up before she was dialing Kat’s number. It went straight to voicemail.
“I know you’re pissed,” Jessie said the second she heard the beep. “And I get it. You have every right to be. But calling Brenda Ferguson to scare the crap out of her and tell her to call me? How does that help anything, Kat? You know I’m working non-stop on this thing. I don’t need the peanut gallery throwing stuff at me too. Please call me back when you get this. I think we should meet when I get a ten-minute break, assuming I ever do.”
She hung up, dropped the phone on her desk, and leaned back in her chair. Closing her eyes, she tried to shut out the noise of the station bullpen. She needed a few seconds to let her brain process everything that had happened in the last eight hours.
But she only got about twenty seconds of solitude before she heard her phone ring again. Despite her deep desire not to, she glanced at it. It was Ray Sands. Apparently his wife had accepted that he wasn’t having an affair and given him the message. She picked up.
“Hi, Detective Sands,” she said, faking cool professionalism. “Thanks for getting back to me.”
“I’m sorry,” he told her, sounding genuinely rueful. “I know you were just helping out a friend on these cases. Now you’ve been dragged in. It must suck.”
“Thanks, Detective,” she said, appreciative of the sentiment. “It does truly suck. But this is where we are now. So I’m just diving in. I was hoping you could help me with that.”
“Of course,” he said. “I’m happy to do whatever I can. Just so you know, I’ve already sent over some material to you and Detective Hernandez. I heard he’s working the case with you.”
“He is.”
“He’s a good detective,” Sands said. “At least that’s what I hear. I’ve never worked with him.”
“He’ll do,” Jessie said, deciding not to expound on that. “What material did you send?”
“It’s everything from the task force files, not just related to Morgan Remar, but the other abduction victims too. I’m assuming you’re looking into any possible connections.”
“We are. Thanks,” Jessie replied. “But are you telling me you already got the task force up and running since we spoke yesterday?’
Sands chuckled softly.
“I’m a pretty persuasive guy when I want to be, Ms. Hunt, kind of bullheaded too.”
“That’s one of my favorite qualities in people,” Jessie said, smiling. “Is there anything specific I should be looking at?”
“Well, you could probably stand to look at some of the folks we originally interviewed as potential suspects in Morgan Remar’s abduction. Before we realized it was a serial kidnapper, we were looking at lots of folks. After the third abduction, we basically stopped looking at all of them. Maybe she was unlucky enough to have two different people after her.”
“But none of them jumped out at you?” Jessie asked.
“No one I felt strongly about,” Sands admitted. “But like I said, I was checking alibis for when she was taken. Maybe everything changes now that you’re looking for a killer.”
“Thanks, Sands.”
“Not a problem,” he said warmly. “And like I said, I also sent details on the other abductions, way more than you could have accessed otherwise. I’m not sure it will matter for your purposes, especially if we’re looking at a different perp. But I figured it couldn’t hurt.”
“I appreciate all of it. We’re dealing with slim pickings here. So I’d rather have too much to sift through rather than nothing at all.”
“You bet,” he said. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do. And I’ll keep you apprised on anything worthwhile we uncover.”
Jessie hung up and clicked on the task force file he’d sent her and Ryan. It was massive, with detailed subheads for each victim. How Sands had managed to pull all this together since yesterday was beyond her.
Ryan walked over hesitantly. She knew he’d been avoiding her until she finished all her phone calls. It was the wise move. He’d learned to steer clear until she was done letting off steam.
“How’s it going?” he asked, audibly wincing.
Jessie smiled, letting him know he was safe for now.
“I’ll skip the bad news. The good news is that Sands from Pacific Station sent us a treasure trove of files on all the abductions, including their interview notes with all the suspects in Morgan Remar’s original abduction. That should help us find a place to start.”
“Great,” Ryan said. “How many interviews are we talking about?”
“It looks like they targeted four credible suspects. Want to split them up?”
“Sounds like a plan,” he agreed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Two hours later, they had nothing.
All four suspects had credible alibis for the time of the murder. Jessie was reduced to checking the manifest of Morgan’s flight back from Austin
last night to see if anyone on board had a record. Two folks did but a quick check indicated that both of them had alibis as well.
In desperation, she turned to photos of the location of Morgan Remar’s abduction to see if there was anything about it that reminded her of the murder scene. Nothing jumped out. She was just about to get up for another cup of coffee in the hopes that it might soothe her developing headache, when she noticed something she hadn’t paid attention to before—a sign on a fence at the site.
The sign read “Coast Construction.” Morgan had been held in a still-under-construction warehouse on an isolated hill in Playa Vista. The construction had been stopped because of a dispute between the company having it built and the lender.
Detective Sands had already looked into the employees of both companies, as well as the construction firm workers, as most of them would have known the warehouse would be unoccupied for several weeks. That made it an ideal spot to hold someone without fear of discovery. While several of the employees at the various companies had records, none of those people had trouble accounting for their time.
But that wasn’t what Jessie found so interesting. Rather, it was something that wasn’t in the files Sands had sent.
“Check this out,” she said to Ryan. “The construction company listed in their records is Coast Construction. But in Kat’s files on Morgan’s abduction, the construction company is listed as Construction Associates.”
“Could Kat have made a mistake?’ he asked.
“That’s what I assumed at first,” Jessie said. “But when I looked more closely, I saw that both of them were right. Coast Construction is a subsidiary of Construction Associates. Since Kat wasn’t able to access the crime scene or get interviews with the construction company, she had to go with the name listed in public records.”
“Right,” Ryan agreed, catching on. “But Sands and his team at Pacific Station were able to access the crime scene and saw the actual signs that indicated the company on the project was Coast Construction. He had no reason to pursue the matter beyond that because the information he needed was right in front of him. And Kat didn’t have the time or resources to investigate what company did the construction work at the locations where the other abductees were found.”
“No,” Jessie said. “But I do.”
She resumed poring over the paperwork, following a hunch that she kept to herself. If Coast Construction was a subsidiary of Construction Associates, she couldn’t help but wonder if the larger company had other ancillary firms as well. It took less than five minutes of working with the tech team to discover that Construction Associates had seemingly intentionally created an untraceable web of ownership, possibly to hide the fact that many of their workers were undocumented.
So she called the company directly. But while she hit a brick wall asking for their financials, it only took one call on her behalf from an assistant district attorney to get the breakdown sent to her. When she reviewed the data, she found that Construction Associates had seven subsidiary companies under their banner. When she cross-checked them, she found something that by now seemed almost inevitable.
Every abduction site was at a location owned by a subsidiary of Construction Associates. In addition to the warehouse in Playa Vista where Morgan Remar was held, all three other women were held in various abandoned or under-construction commercial properties in isolated areas, each owned by C.A.
There was no reason for Sands to have noticed this, although Jessie was sure he would have soon, now that all the case files had been compiled. And there was no way that Kat, operating solo, could have made the connections in the time she had.
Of course, finding a connection among the places where the women were taken didn’t necessarily mean any of them were connected to Morgan Remar’s murder. But it was something to go on at least. In fact, it was the only thing.
She looked up at Ryan and smiled.
“What is it?” he asked.
She enjoyed a brief moment of satisfaction before responding, knowing how rare they could be.
“We have a lead.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jessie thought she might throw up.
The dirt road out to their intended location was bumpy and the police car’s suspension left a lot to be desired. As she tried to take deep, calming breaths and fight the urge to tell Ryan to pull over, she wondered if this was even the right call.
But then she remembered that it was by far their best option. After having the tech team run some calculations, they discovered that there was only one person associated with all four job sites, the parent company’s client representative, Scott Fellows.
As the Construction Associates rep, he was obligated to keep in touch with the clients, the lenders, and the subsidiary builder. He was the one person best positioned to know where all the sites were and whether work was in progress or had been stopped for some reason.
Unfortunately for Jessie and Ryan, he was also the representative for one additional subsidiary construction firm, Valley Builders. And according to his office, he was currently on site at their job in Sylmar, deep in the mountains of the San Fernando Valley at the edge of the Angeles National Forest.
On the way up, Jessie texted Detective Sands what she’d learned and where she and Ryan were headed. She wanted a head start in talking to Fellows but didn’t want to alienate the head of the task force that had given her the lead.
It was about fifteen degrees hotter in Sylmar than downtown, close to ninety, and Jessie could feel it. With the dirt road so dusty, they had to keep the car windows up and the air conditioning blasting. By the time they’d arrived at the under-construction stables in a small orchard on an otherwise barren hillside, she was ready for a Dramamine and a nap.
They pulled into the small parking lot for the stables next to a red BMW that looked like it had seen its fair share of dusty roads. Jessie got out and hurried over to a thick-trunked tree. She knelt behind it, hoping she was out of sight, and waited for her breakfast to come back up.
But after about a minute, her stomach settled and she stood up again. Ryan was leaning against the hood of the car, trying not to laugh.
“How ya doin’, slugger?” he asked teasingly.
She scowled at him and walked back over slowly.
“I blame your driving,” she said, only half-seriously. “It was like you were trying to make me puke.”
“You see dead bodies all the time,” he said incredulously. “And a dirt road is your undoing? I thought you were tougher than that, Jessie Hunt.”
“And I think you may want to zip it if you ever want to spend the night again, Ryan Hernandez.”
Ryan raised his hands above his head in surrender, though his smirk suggested he wasn’t entirely chastened.
“Can I help you?” someone called out from behind them.
Jessie turned around to find a man walking toward them in black loafers, khakis, and a button-down shirt.
“Maybe,” Ryan said. “Are you Scott Fellows?”
“Who wants to know?” the man asked with a snide tone that made Jessie half-wish she still felt bad enough to vomit on him.
His look matched his tone. In addition to the seemingly inappropriate attire for checking on a stable, he wore aviator sunglasses and had his black hair slicked back within a Brylcreem pinch of its life.
“The LAPD wants to know,” Ryan said with a sharpness that let the guy know his bullying style wasn’t going to play with them.
Fellows stopped walking briefly before regaining his composure.
“I swear I was about to pay those tickets, Officer,” he said, trying and failing to sound jokey.
“It’s Detective, Mr. Fellows,” Ryan said, not amused. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Yeah, okay,” Fellows said less confidently. “What’s this about?”
“Is there somewhere we can go with a little shade?” Jessie asked.
“There are some benches in the stable,” he rep
lied and motioned for them to follow him. “Should I be asking for badge numbers or something?”
“We can show you those if you like, Mr. Fellows,” Ryan said, really hitting the bad cop vibe hard. “I’m Detective Ryan Hernandez. I work Homicide out of one of our downtown stations. This is Jessie Hunt. She’s a criminal profiler for the department.”
They entered the comparative shade of the empty structure. Jessie found something disconcerting about being in a stable devoid of horses, straw, or any hint of manure.
“Profiler?” Fellows repeated as they sat down on benches directly across from each other right outside the stalls. “I thought that was just something out of serial killer movies.”
“No,” Jessie said. “We’re real. So do you know why we’re here, Mr. Fellows?”
Fellows looked briefly like he might try to work them, then seemed to give up on the idea.
“I could think of a lot of reasons people might be pissed at me but none of them would require a criminal profiler to get involved.”
“What kind of reasons?” Jessie asked. “And can you please take off your sunglasses?”
“You want me to incriminate myself?” he asked disbelievingly as he did what she asked. His light blue eyes flickered with apprehension.
Jessie had reviewed everything she could find on Fellows on the way up north so she was already well aware of the kind of activities that might make him unpopular. But she wanted to make him feel vulnerable so she pressed.
“We investigate homicides, Mr. Fellows,” she told him. “Unless you’re about to confess to one, we don’t really care that much about the improprieties you’re involved in. But being deceptive about them will certainly engender suspicion from us. Do you want us to be suspicious of you, Mr. Fellows?”
“No.”
“Then you’re probably better off being straight with us, even if your misdeeds involve hiring workers without legitimate paperwork, manipulating property owners into selling for less than market value, or working with unscrupulous brokers who might pay you off for your assistance.”
