The Perfect Disguise (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Ten)

by Blake Pierce

  Jessie had only a fraction of a second to decide how to respond. Taking a deep breath, she squared her body toward the girl and then, against the protestations of her hands and heart, did absolutely nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Beth’s arms wrapped around her as she squealed with joy. Jessie glanced over at Trembley, who had been about to rip the girl away, and shook her head slightly. He dropped his hands.

  “I can’t believe you’re really here,” Beth squeaked in what sounded like the voice of a ten-year-old. “It’s not a dream.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Beth,” Jessie said, fighting the strong urge to extricate herself from the girl’s clammy embrace. “I’m Jessie. This is Alan.”

  “Beth, let the woman breathe a little,” Lenore said gently over the intercom from the other room.

  Beth released her grip and stepped back, looking embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I don’t get any visitors other than my parents. And that’s only when they fly in every few weeks. So I’m a little out of practice on my manners.”

  “That’s okay,” Jessie assured her. “We appreciate you meeting with us. Should we sit down and talk?”

  Beth nodded and led them over to a plastic table with plastic chairs. It looked like an oversized kids’ play table at a preschool playground. Jessie glanced up at Lenore, who remained just outside the door.

  “Would you like Lenore to join us?” she asked.

  “No. I don’t need supervision. I can have an adult conversation without assistance.”

  Her tone indicated that she wasn’t offended by the question, but rather proudly stating a fact about herself.

  “Okay,” Jessie said. “But if you change your mind, you just let us know. I want to be honest with you, Beth. What we want to discuss might be a little uncomfortable. So whatever makes you feel safe as we talk—that’s what Alan and I want too.”

  “I’m okay,” Beth said emphatically.

  “All right then, let’s dive in. Do you remember an actress named Corinne Weatherly?”

  The excited smile on Beth’s face disappeared immediately. She gulped hard and nodded.

  “Of course,” she said. “She sent me down the road that ended up here.”

  “You believe she’s responsible for you being here?” Trembley asked, talking for the first time.

  Beth looked at him as if she was startled that he could speak. But after a moment, she replied.

  “No,” she said with a cold flatness. “She’s not responsible. I’ve had a lot of therapy since I came here and the doctors and I came up with an analogy that I think works. I picture myself, prior to all this, as having been walking on the edge of a steep hill. Sometimes I’d slip a little and struggle to regain my footing. Then Corinne came along and shoved me off the edge. I tumbled a fair ways down. But it was a hill, not a cliff. If I had reached out for some trees or bushes to slow down, I might have been able to stop my momentum and climb back up. But I just let myself tumble, didn’t even extend my hands for help. I fell a long way, almost to the bottom of that hill. That’s on me. Just because you get shoved doesn’t mean you don’t get back up. But I didn’t really know how to reach out for help back then. Now I do. So, to answer your question, no, Corinne wasn’t responsible. But shoving me sure didn’t help.”

  Jessie took all that in, marveling at the girl’s ability to describe her own psychological journey, even as she maintained some doubt that Beth really had climbed back up that hill. After all, she was still here, living at the hospital.

  “Did you follow her career after the incident?” she asked.

  Beth smiled.

  “Not for a long time. But you hear things, even in here. I knew she lost some cachet lately and that she was trying to get it back with that new horror movie. I wish I could say I felt bad that she was struggling but that wouldn’t be completely honest.”

  “How did you hear about the Marauder movie?” Trembley wanted to know.

  “Partly because I still follow the industry. That’s why I stayed out here in L.A. My parents wanted me to move back east so they could be closer to me. But I told them that I still plan to make it here. I’m working on a screenplay. It’s almost six hundred pages now.”

  Jessie smiled back at the girl, who was clearly proud of the length. Though she was no Hollywood expert, Jessie was pretty sure most scripts didn’t run longer than 120 pages. Still she said nothing about that.

  “So you knew about the movie because you follow entertainment news?” she pressed.

  “Well, that and the tour,” Beth said matter-of-factly.

  “Tour?” she repeated, confused.

  Lenore spoke up from the back of the room. Jessie hadn’t realized the nurse had been able to hear their conversation from outside the room.

  “We take low-risk residents on field trips from time to time. We go to the zoo, museums, that sort of thing. On Friday, we took a tour of Sovereign Studios.”

  Jessie and Trembley exchanged looks, trying not to appear as stunned as they felt.

  “Friday of last week?” Trembley reconfirmed.

  Lenore nodded. Jessie turned back to Beth and asked her question as if nothing was amiss.

  “So they mentioned the movie on the tour?”

  “Yeah. We passed by different stages and they said what shot on each one. There was that TV show Lenore is excited to watch, Courting Justice, on Stage 31.”

  “We can’t wait. It premieres in the fall,” Lenore volunteered over the loudspeaker.

  Neither Jessie nor Trembley corrected her misimpression.

  “She’s got a crush on the main star, Kendall Cox,” Beth teased. “Personally, I like Callie Hemphill. She’s a tough cookie. Anyway, the guide mentioned that Marauder was shooting next door on Stage 32 and that Corinne was returning to the franchise that helped make her a star—his words.”

  “How did you react to that news?” Jessie asked.

  “I might have had a mini panic attack,” she admitted. “They had to stop the tram so I could go to the bathroom and regroup. But after that I was okay.”

  “You never saw her?” Trembley pressed.

  “No. Or else the mini panic attack would have probably turned into a mega attack.”

  “Beth,” Jessie said, trying to redirect the conversation as casually as possible, “what were you doing on Sunday night?”

  “This last Sunday?” she said, trying to recall. “I know it was spaghetti dinner. Sunday is always spaghetti. Then we watched a movie in the rec room. I left early because I’d already seen it. I had some Private Time.”

  “What’s private time?” Trembley asked, turning to Lenore, who seemed surprised to be asked a question. She pushed the speaker button to reply.

  “It’s a privilege for low-risk, long-term residents,” she said. “If they aren’t interested in that evening’s group activity, they can cash in some ‘privilege points’ for ‘Private Time.’ They can return to their room, relax in the courtyard, work in the art center—as long as it’s quiet, solo, and not disruptive, it’s okay.”

  “Are residents supervised during Private Time?” Trembley asked.

  For the first time, Lenore looked uncomfortable.

  “Only if they’ve violated a rule recently,” she said. “Beth hadn’t so she would have been on her own.”

  “For how long?” Trembley wanted to know.

  “As long as she was back in her room for final check at lights out, the evening was hers.”

  “When is lights out?” Jessie asked.

  “Eleven thirty p.m.,” Lenore said.

  Jessie nodded as if all this was going just as she’d expected and turned back to Beth.

  “So what did you do with your Private Time, Beth?”

  Beth smiled as she recalled her evening.

  “Not much. I walked around a little. I went to the picnic area across the road to work on my script. It was dark so I had to use my flashlight.”

 
“So you were off the hospital property for a while?” Trembley asked, failing to sound as casual as Jessie had.

  “I guess,” Beth said, frowning, “for a little while. Why?”

  “No reason,” Jessie answered, sensing that Beth was getting slightly agitated. “You heard about what happened to Corinne, right?”

  “I heard she died,” Beth answered emotionlessly.

  “How did that make you feel?”

  Beth stared at her for several seconds before answering. It was the first time Jessie got the impression that the girl was calculating her response.

  “I didn’t feel any kind of way. She’s a person I knew for about a month six years ago. My experience with her was negative. But I didn’t really know her well enough to have a strong reaction to her death. Should I have?”

  Trembley piped up.

  “It’s just that this woman, in your words, gave you the shove that led to you being kept in the hospital. It wouldn’t be crazy to think you’d feel strongly about it.”

  Jessie’s heart sank, sensing what came next. Sure enough, Beth didn’t reply to his words. But her body responded. Her eyes welled up with tears as she got up from the plastic table and shuffled over to the corner of the room. She sank down into a crouched ball in the corner, looking at the wall, hugging her knees. Jessie could hear Lenore fumbling with the keys, trying to get into the room.

  “What’s wrong?” Trembley asked.

  Lenore finally got the door open, hurried over to Beth, and whispered something in her ear. Then she stood up and pointed to the door.

  “I think we’re done,” she said quietly. “I’ve seen this before. She’s not going to answer any more questions at this point.”

  They got up and followed her out. Trembley looked confused. Jessie tried to hide her frustration. It was only when they’d rounded the corner out of sight of the girl that anyone spoke.

  “What happened?” Trembley asked.

  “What happened, Detective,” Lenore began, stern for the first time since they’d arrived, “is that in one sentence you reminded her that she was stuck in a mental hospital and talked about what would and wouldn’t be considered crazy. For someone in her position, that’s the grand slam of offensive, triggering statements.’

  Trembley stood there silently as he processed the impact of his insensitivity.

  “Is there any chance she’ll calm down enough for us to try again?” Jessie pleaded.

  “She’ll never talk to him again,” Lenore said, nodding at Trembley, whose head was down. “She might give you another shot, if she doesn’t associate you with his comments, but not for a few days at least.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Trembley said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  Jessie didn’t want to get bogged down in that and moved on quickly.

  “Lenore, be straight with us. It sounds like Beth had a long stretch of unsupervised time on the evening that Corinne Weatherly was murdered. In your opinion, is it logistically and temperamentally possible for her to have gone to Sovereign Studios and done this?”

  Lenore sat with the question for a second before answering.

  “Logistically, I don’t know. I mean, could she technically have somehow gotten a ride to the studio, snuck in, killed a famous actress, snuck back to the hospital, and gotten into her room before lights out? I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if that’s possible. What I do know is that Beth hasn’t had an unsupervised, solo outing in the time I’ve been here. Even if she had the desire and the knowhow to make it happen, both of which I question, I just don’t think she has the intestinal fortitude for it.”

  “What do you mean?” Jessie asked.

  “Like I said before, she’s very fragile. Just the thought of her getting a rideshare or cab seems unlikely. I could see her having a breakdown if it arrived a minute late. I’m not saying it’s inconceivable. But it’s pretty darn close.”

  As they left the long-term care unit and returned to the main office to get their guns, Jessie turned over all the details in her head. By the time they left the hospital, she was inclined to agree with Lenore.

  Petra Olivet, aka Beth Stanard, almost certainly hadn’t done this.

  They were back to square one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Trembley disagreed vehemently.

  At first, as they drove from away from the hospital, he projected a hangdog vibe. But not for long.

  “How can you just dismiss her as a suspect?” he demanded. “She has no alibi!”

  Jessie tried not to let her own irritation bubble over and kept her tone as calm as possible.

  “I’m not dismissing her,” she said. “We should run her story down, see if there are any provable contradictions. But I think the chances that she did this, rather than someone who was in active contact with the victim, are pretty remote.”

  “We don’t know how remote,” he insisted. “Maybe a cab dropped her off in front of the studio and she walked in with a cleaning crew or something.”

  “Yeah, Trembley, maybe she did,” Jessie shot back, feeling her patience dwindling. “And maybe we could have asked her about that if you didn’t imply she was a frickin’ psycho to her face. But now we have to wait some indeterminate period before she’s calm enough to talk again. By then, all our leads could be cold.”

  “I admit that I screwed up,” he said, not sounding all that apologetic. “But that doesn’t change the fact that she had motive and opportunity. She’s unaccounted for during the window of death.”

  In his frustration, he was riding the accelerator as they zipped along the pothole-strewn mountain road that skirted along the outskirts of Elysian Park.

  “First of all, slow down,” Jessie ordered. “I’d prefer not to crash before we solve this case. Second, if we’re talking motive and opportunity, I can think of four people that we know were on the studio lot at the same time Corinne was killed. Maybe we eliminate them before fixating on the girl curled up in the corkboard-lined safe room. Besides, she has no discernible connection to the producer whose name was scrawled on the victim’s makeup mirror.”

  Trembley, who had slowed down considerably, took a long breath. When he spoke, he sounded more controlled.

  “I can’t explain that. But one thing’s for sure. Beth or Petra, or whatever her name is, may be unstable. But she’s not stupid. She admitted to following industry news. Surely she knows who Boatwright is. It’s not totally out there to think she wrote his name on the mirror to throw us off the scent. Come on, Jessie, you’re already eliminating her when she’s as credible a suspect as anyone else.”

  Jessie was about to argue but stopped and took a moment to step back. Trembley was right. Though she hadn’t officially dismissed Petra/Beth as a suspect, in her head, she’d moved her to the back of the line. That kind of assumption was exactly the sort of thing Ryan would have given her a hard time for.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have been so skeptical. Let’s play out the thread on her. We’ll check her phone data, talk to local cab companies, review footage from outside the main entrance of the studio. Does that sound reasonable?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I’ll happily concede it could be her if you acknowledge that it could easily be any of the other folks we’ve been looking into. Fair?”

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  “Good,” Jessie said. “Then let’s get out of our own way and get back to interviewing people who can actually shed some light on this thing.”

  “Great idea,” Trembley said. “Next on our list was Jake Morant, her new agent. We still want to visit him now?”

  “Sure,” Jessie said. “The only thing I like more than talking to an old, fading agent is talking to a young, grasping one. Glad I had a light breakfast.”

  *

  Jake Morant didn’t seem to care that he was a cliché.

  Even before they met him, Jessie was getting a major snake oil vibe from the guy. His office was in a towering West Holly
wood office building at the corner of Sunset and Doheny, just blocks from legendary nightclubs like the Viper Room and Whiskey-A-Go-Go.

  After they rode up twenty floors, the elevator opened directly into the offices of Creative Talent Associates, which took up the entire floor. After announcing themselves, Jessie and Trembley were quickly ushered into a small, secluded room. Jessie suspected it was because the presence of the LAPD in the reception area of a fancy agency wasn’t the look CTA was after.

  It didn’t take long for them to be escorted to Morant’s office. The young assistant leading the way down the gleaming hall overlooking the Hollywood Hills moved shockingly fast, considering her four-inch heels. Jessie tried to keep up but found that the effort made her shoulder wince and her back cringe. She slowed down and let Trembley move ahead of her. The assistant knocked on the door, waited for the booming shout of “enter,” and opened the door.

  Jake Morant, seated behind a massive mahogany desk and wearing a headset that he quickly ripped off, popped out of his chair like a jackrabbit and animatedly welcomed them in.

  “Thanks so much for coming,” he exclaimed as if they were there to take an industry meeting, before turning to the assistant and saying in a mock whisper, “No interruptions, please, Jenna.”

  Jake Morant was the antithesis of Phil Reinhold. Trim and sharply dressed in a navy suit, the guy was slightly built but looked to be in good shape. His black hair was slicked back and his pale skin suggested he didn’t get outside a ton. Jessie guessed that he was in his early thirties.

  He motioned for them to sit on the plush love seat while he sat in a high-backed wooden chair across from them. As she sank into the deep cushion, Jessie couldn’t help but chuckle at the overt attempt to use room décor as strategy. Though he wasn’t a tall man, sitting in a chair that looked more like a throne while his guests submerged into a sofa theoretically gave him a psychological advantage. But for Jessie, who wasn’t negotiating a deal, it was more amusing than intimidating.