THE PERFECT IMAGE

by Blake Pierce

  “Okay, well now that you know I’m fine, can I go?” Hannah wanted to know. “The car is about to pull up to the building.”

  “In a minute,” Jessie promised before delicately addressing the real reason she was checking in. “This is your first in-person therapy session with Dr. Lemmon since everything happened. Do you expect it to be any different from the telesessions you’ve been having lately?”

  Even as she heard the words come out of her mouth, she knew they wouldn’t convince anyone, much less her inherently suspicious little sister.

  “Thank you,” Hannah said, surprising Jessie with her polite response until she realized that she was talking to her rideshare driver. After the car door slammed, her sister responded more forcefully, though her voice was hushed. “I know you’re wondering if I’m going to tell Dr. Lemmon about how the Night Hunter really died. Don’t worry—I have no intention of saying anything.”

  “I’m not worried,” Jessie insisted, although she wasn’t exactly sure how she felt. “But someone is dead because of a choice you made and I think it would serve you well to discuss that, even in nonspecific terms.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Hannah replied. “But I’m about to get in the elevator and there are other people, so we should probably drop it for now.”

  “All right, I just—” Jessie started to say before she realized her sister had hung up. She sighed and said, more to herself than to Ryan, “That went well.”

  “Did you expect anything different?” he asked.

  “I guess not,” she admitted.

  “Well, I have a good way to take your mind off it,” he said. “You might have missed it while you were on the phone but Jamil texted us both. He says he had time to do a deeper dive into both victims’ social media and he has some updates. You want to call him back?”

  She nodded and did exactly that. Unlike Hannah, he answered before the end of the first ring.

  “How’s it going, Jamil?” she asked.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m still processing the news about Detective Reid’s heart attack. But doing this research has kept me occupied. I have some new information for you.”

  “Shoot,” Ryan told him.

  “First of all, I found that Gillian Fahey and Siobhan Pierson did have a few friends in common, at least online. They even had a couple of exchanges on different platforms, though they were very surfacy, just a comment here or there on the other one’s feed. I get the sense that neither of them realized who the other woman was. They both used handles unconnected to their real names.”

  “Okay,” Jessie said, trying to hide her disappointment, “anything else?”

  “Yes,” Jamil said definitively, “one small thing and one big thing. Which do you want first?”

  “Start small and work your way up,” Ryan suggested as they turned onto Olympic Boulevard. The Santa Monica police station was in sight now.

  “All right, it appears that both women considered themselves amateur ‘influencers,’ and they weren’t wrong. Praise or criticism of a business or service from either of them usually got lots of comments. In several cases, they talked about the same places. I’m still compiling a full list of establishments that both of them criticized. I thought that if someone’s business might have been hurt by what they said, that might serve as motive.”

  “Good thinking,” Jessie congratulated. “If that’s the small thing, I can’t wait to hear the big one.”

  She could almost hear Jamil blushing through the phone.

  “Thank you,” he said softly before finding his professional voice again. “The other thing is that I managed to access Gillian Fahey’s direct messages. She has some from Ian Pierson.”

  Jessie turned to Ryan, her mouth open wide. Jamil had been underselling the big thing. As she regrouped, the researcher continued.

  “There aren’t a ton of them and they’re several months old, but they’re definitely worth checking out. I’ll send them to you.”

  “Great,” Ryan replied. “Can you summarize the gist though?”

  “They’re pretty nonspecific. I’d say intentionally so, as if they were written so that if someone—say a spouse—found them, they wouldn’t be overtly incriminating. Even so, the fact that they exist at all seems noteworthy to me.”

  “No question,” Ryan agreed.

  So did Jessie. The itch that she couldn’t scratch earlier when talking to Pierson returned with even greater intensity. Only now she knew why.

  “Do the messages include their real names?” she asked.

  “No,” Jamil said. “Just handles. Why?”

  “Just testing a theory,” she answered cryptically. “Regardless, that’s great work.”

  “Thank you. I’ll send you the messages as soon as we hang up,” Jamil said giddily, clearly proud that his discovery had met with so much enthusiasm.

  “Thanks much. We’ll talk again soon,” Jessie said before hanging up and turning to Ryan. “You know that unsettled feeling I mentioned when we talked to Ian Pierson?”

  “Yeah,” Ryan replied.

  “I know why now. It was a sense that he wasn’t being straight when he dodged our questions about knowing the Faheys. He definitely knew her, and pretty well.”

  “How can you be sure?” Ryan asked. “Maybe they were just online friends.”

  “No,” Jessie said firmly. “He called her Gilly, just like Simon Fahey did. That’s personal.”

  Ryan seemed convinced, so much so that even though they were less than a block from the police station, he quickly pulled into the left lane and made a U-turn.

  “I assume we’re heading back to see Ian Pierson?” Jessie asked.

  “You assume right.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Hannah was nervous.

  That feeling—like so many emotions that others dealt with regularly—was so rare for her that it took a moment to identify it. But once she did, she knew why.

  Sitting across from Dr. Janice Lemmon, as the legendary psychiatrist’s eyes bored into her, would unsettle even the most emotionally anesthetized person, which was exactly how Hannah viewed herself.

  Long before her adoptive parents were murdered in front of her; before she was kidnapped by a serial killer who wanted to sculpt her into becoming one too; before she gunned down the unarmed, elderly man who had been hunting her new family, Hannah Dorsey discovered that conventional emotions like apprehension, pleasure, and guilt were strangers to her.

  Even more intense ones, like joy, fear, and anger, were hard to come by unless she put herself in extreme situations. In the last year, she’d sought them out by doing everything from confronting drug dealers to breaking into the home of a convicted pedophile to using herself as bait to catch a gang of sexual slavers.

  And finally, less than two weeks ago, she’d shot and killed the Night Hunter. Yes, the primary purpose of that act was to prevent him from doing her family more harm. But she couldn’t deny that firing that gun and watching the life leach out of him gave her a thrill. And that scared her.

  “You seem like you’re miles away,” Dr. Lemmon said, pulling her out of her navel-gazing. “What are you thinking about right now? Hannah?”

  Hannah looked back at the woman. Behind her thick glasses, Dr. Janice Lemmon fixed her with a warm but penetrating gaze. It would be easy to dismiss her at first glance. Her outdated perm was comprised of tight little blonde ringlets that bounced when they touched her shoulders. She was a small woman, barely over five feet tall.

  But she was visibly wiry; probably a result of the Pilates that Jessie said she did three times a week. For a woman in her mid-sixties, she looked great. And those sharp, owl-like eyes missed nothing. Hannah knew that in addition to being a psychiatrist and behavioral therapist, Lemmon was also a highly regarded criminal consultant who used to work full time for the LAPD. She was not to be underestimated.

  Hannah wanted to tell Lemmon the truth, to unburden herself of the weight of the secret. But she wasn’t sure
if she could say what really happened without consequences. Was the doctor bound by patient confidentiality? Or was she obligated to tell the authorities about something like this?

  The police already knew that Hannah killed the Night Hunter. But they believed it was done in self-defense. And though he deserved to die, she could make the argument that it was. After all, she was protecting her family from a serial killer who had murdered over eighty people, and those were just the victims that law enforcement knew about. He was an evergreen threat.

  But Jessie and Ryan seemed to think that by shooting the man when he was unarmed and handcuffed, she’d crossed some line. It felt arbitrary to her. Just two minutes before she’d shot him, the Night Hunter was holding an old woman hostage and taunting Jessie about which of her loved ones he would kill first. Just because he had been outsmarted and subdued, they were supposed to use kid gloves on him? That didn’t seem right.

  And yet, she hadn’t told Lemmon the truth. Did that mean that some part of her believed that she had done something wrong? Clearly, if she was holding back, something about what she’d done was bothering her.

  “Hannah?” Lemmon repeated. “What is it?”

  Hannah realized that she still hadn’t answered the doctor.

  “Nothing,” she lied. “Sorry. I just got distracted. You were asking me something about how school was going? What exactly was the question again?”

  Lemmon frowned. It was obvious that she wasn’t buying the “distracted” excuse.

  “Tell me what you were thinking about just now,” she repeated.

  Hannah really wanted to. But how could she? How could she admit what was troubling her to Dr. Lemmon if she couldn’t admit it to herself? The answer was simple: she couldn’t.

  *

  This time, they didn’t wait for Kelly Hoffs to lead them to Ian Pierson.

  Ryan made a perfunctory attempt to greet the assistant when she opened the front door. But after the assistant let them in, Jessie stormed right past her into the foyer.

  “Is he still in the game room?” she demanded.

  “As far as I know,” Kelly said, taken back. “What is this about?”

  “We have a few more questions for your boss,” Jessie informed her, already heading down the long hallway.

  When she got to the game room door, she didn’t knock before shoving it open. Pierson was lying in the same spot where they’d left him a half hour earlier. Only now he looked like he’d passed out.

  “Pierson,” she barked.

  Startled, the man shot up, lost his balance, and tumbled off the couch to the floor. As she walked over, he looked up groggily.

  “What’s going on?” he muttered.

  By now, Ryan and Kelly had caught up and were entering the game room as well.

  “These detectives wanted to speak with you again,” Kelly said, making a futile but admirable attempt to infuse the situation with some dignity.

  “We’ll take it from here, Kelly,” Jessie said forcefully as she walked over to the man.

  “Should I be calling Mr. Pierson’s attorney to have him come over?” she asked Ryan.

  “That will depend on the answers he gives,” Ryan told her. “If we read him his rights, then yeah, but for now we just want to chat.”

  Pierson managed to pull himself upright and climb back on the couch.

  “I thought I answered all your questions already,” he said, squinting at Jessie, seemingly to make sure she was who he thought she was.

  “We have others,” she replied, before lowering her voice. “And unless you want your sweet assistant over there to know about some of the lies you told us earlier and lose that admiring, sympathetic look in her eyes, I suggest you send her on her way.”

  Suddenly, Pierson looked far less groggy.

  “It’s okay, Kelly,” he said loudly. “You can go. I’ll let you know if I need you.”

  Kelly nodded courteously and left the room, closing the door behind her. When she was gone, Jessie sat down, this time on the same couch as Pierson. She wanted him to feel the pressure of her presence. Ryan took a seat on the other couch.

  “You weren’t honest with us before, Mr. Pierson,” Jessie said with a finality that let him know there was no point in denying it. He still made a lame attempt.

  “I barely remember what I told you before,” he murmured. “What are you saying I lied about?”

  “When I showed you Gillian Fahey’s photo before, you gave the impression that you weren’t sure you knew her. But you did know her quite well, didn’t you?”

  “I…” he started before trailing off.

  He looked torn between wanting to deny everything and wanting to come clean. Jessie knew he just needed a small shove. She allowed her features to soften and made sure that the next words she spoke didn’t sound accusatory.

  “Tell us about how you met Gilly, Ian.”

  That seemed to cause an emotional dam to break inside him. He choked back a sob, and then allowed the second one free rein. Jessie looked at Ryan, who clearly thought she was on the right track. He said nothing, not wanting to interfere with the connection she’d managed to establish. Pierson coughed a few times, and then seemed to regroup.

  “One morning a few months ago, I was speaking at an event at her firm in Playa Vista,” he said heavily. “At the reception afterwards, we started talking and realized we lived in the same area. I’ve even jogged past her house sometimes on the way to the pier. We really hit it off. After the reception, we kept talking; went to a coffee shop. Next thing I know, I look up and an hour has passed. Everything felt so natural.”

  He stopped, as if arguing with himself about whether he should continue. Jessie stayed silent. Now that he’d started, she knew he couldn’t stop himself.

  “We exchanged numbers,” he continued. “I wasn’t going to call but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. So I gave in and contacted her, suggested another coffee get-together, officially to discuss the tech landscape in town. She agreed. I offered to pick her up so she didn’t have to drive. I arrived in my limo. I wanted to impress her. It seemed to work.”

  “What happened then?” Jessie pressed. Pierson was talking but seemed hesitant to cut to the chase.

  “We had another good conversation and afterwards I offered a ride back to her office. She accepted. But once we were in the limo, the vibe changed. I touched her. She touched me back. And it escalated from there.”

  “Be more specific,” Jessie instructed.

  Pierson looked at her with a pained expression, as if he couldn’t believe she was going to make him say it out loud.

  “We had sex in the limousine,” he said softly. “After that, it became a semi-regular thing. For the next couple of weeks, we had multiple rendezvous; maybe five or six. But then we stopped.”

  “Why?” Ryan asked.

  “For one thing, it was wrong,” he answered. “As exciting as it was, I was consumed with guilt. I loved my wife and had just let this thing get out of control. Gilly—Gillian felt much the same way. I think it was even worse for her because she had kids. And beyond that, her husband and I both have high-profile positions. A sex scandal could ruin reputations and maybe even businesses. It just wasn’t worth it.”

  “So you just ended it?” Jessie asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, “a couple of months ago. And we haven’t communicated since then. Neither of us told our spouses. It almost felt like a dream, not quite real. In fact, after that, I hadn’t heard the name Gillian Fahey until you said it to me earlier. Now I can’t help but wonder if what we did somehow led to this. I already felt like Siobhan’s death was somehow punishment for our indiscretion. And now Gilly—it can’t be a coincidence. Can it?”

  Jessie didn’t know the answer to that yet. She looked at Ryan, wondering if he had any other questions. He leaned in and gave Pierson a hard look.

  “Is there more you need to tell us, sir?” he asked. “Now would be the time to come clean about anything else you’ve been
hiding. You don’t want us to discover that you’ve been deceiving us twice.”

  “No,” Pierson insisted, “I swear. That’s it. I was just too shocked and ashamed to say anything before.”

  Ryan studied him for a long second before turning to Jessie. She could tell he wanted to confer privately before saying anything more.

  “Give us a minute, Mr. Pierson,” she said, standing up and leading Ryan to the far end of the game room. Once there, she asked in a hushed tone, “So what do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to make of it,” he admitted. “If we can confirm it, his explanation makes sense. Jamil did say that he and Gillian Fahey hadn’t DM’d in months. And we know he had an alibi for his own wife’s murder, though his alibi for last night is sketchier.”

  “True,” Jessie agreed. “But why would he kill Gillian Fahey? We don’t have any indication that she was going to reveal their affair. It’s not like she could tell Siobhan Pierson about it. The woman was already dead. As erratic as his behavior has been, and despite his lies, we don’t have any evidence to suggest he’s responsible for either murder. And it seems hard to believe that both weren’t committed by the same person.”

  There didn’t seem to be much else to say. They couldn’t eliminate Ian Pierson as a suspect, but neither of them realistically thought he was their man. They returned to Pierson, who had poured himself a glass of something clear that Jessie doubted was water.

  “Mr. Pierson,” Ryan said sharply, gaining the man’s full attention. “We’re going to follow up on your statement. For now you’re not under arrest. But you should expect either us or someone else to check back in with you. And I’m instructing you not to leave L.A. County without authorization. No trips to Bakersfield for board meetings until further notice, got it?”

  Pierson nodded. Personally, Jessie doubted they had to worry that he’d leave the county. He didn’t seem inclined to leave his couch.