THE PERFECT IMAGE

by Blake Pierce

  “The woman’s name is Whitney Carlisle. She was found by her sister, who was going to spend the evening with her. She’s still there so you can get more details from her. Same M.O.—two deep cuts with a sharp blade from the victim’s home. She bled out on the living room floor.”

  “Is she married?” Ryan asked.

  “Yep, just like the other two,” Decker said. “The husband is a studio executive. He was apparently in Orange County. He’s on his way back now.”

  “Captain,” Jessie asked, “why didn’t we get the call instead of you?”

  “I wondered that too,” he said. “It turns out I was still listed as primary on the case. I would have thought that SMPD would have switched it to Hernandez but I guess wires got crossed.”

  “Or Detective Gore just didn’t give enough of a damn to do it,” Ryan suggested.

  “I don’t know what that’s all about, but I’ve had them switch it now,” Decker replied.

  “All right, we’re pulling up to the scene now,” Ryan said. “We’ll keep you posted.”

  They stopped near the front of the house. Unlike the homes of the other two victims, it wasn’t massive. Instead it was a nice, one-story, modern-looking home, with a cubist design comprised of four alternating brown and white sections. What made it notable was its location, only a block from the ocean. Jessie imagined that the view from the back was pretty impressive.

  The place’s charm was currently undermined by multiple vehicles with flashing lights in front of it. There were three black-and-whites, an ambulance, and a medical examiner’s van. Police tape already surrounded the property. Neighbors had crowded around at the tape line, hoping to catch a glimpse of was going on inside.

  They were about to get out of the car when Jessie had had idea. She typed out a quick text to Jamil that read: Any luck on Ian Pierson’s GPS location data yet, especially for the last few hours?

  As expected, his response came almost immediately, since Jamil Winslow seemed to never sleep. It said: Still getting approval even though he OK’d it. Higher-ups want to follow every rule, considering who he is. Should have results by morning.

  That would have to be good enough for now. Besides, Jessie was just doing her due diligence. She didn’t really think Pierson was their killer but she couldn’t dismiss him just yet.

  “Ready?” Ryan asked, as he opened his door.

  “As I’ll ever be,” she told him.

  They walked up the path to the front door, showing their IDs to the officer at the police tape. Once they got to the door, they were met by an older officer whose name tag read Lovering.

  “Detective Hernandez and Ms. Hunt?” he asked. Apparently Decker had communicated their imminent arrival.

  “That’s right,” Ryan said. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “You are, sir,” Lovering replied. “My understanding is that HSS is taking lead on this and SMPD is in a support capacity. I’m Robert Lovering, the senior officer on scene, so I’ve been handling things up until now. The victim’s sister is out back in the yard with a crisis counseling officer. She’s pretty shaken up. I thought I could walk you through the scene until she’s able to talk some more.”

  “Please,” Ryan said, indicating for the officer to take the lead.

  When they stepped inside, Jessie found that the interior style matched the outside. All the furniture was defined by clean lines and angles that reinforced the cubist theme. Officer Lovering led them through the foyer into the living room where Whitney Carlisle’s body still rested.

  She was lying on her back. Her blue eyes were open but vacant. Her left leg was bent awkwardly beneath her, contorted at an unnatural angle. Blood from the deep cuts at her neck and leg had pooled all around her. To her right on the carpet was a heavy lamp which had been unplugged from the wall.

  “We also just found a dog in the closet over there,” Officer Lovering said, pointing back to the foyer. “He was on the top shelf. His neck had been snapped.”

  As if she needed it, Jessie felt an extra twinge at that news. She knelt down beside Whitney, trying to imagine what had happened in her last moments. She closed her eyes and took several slow, deep breaths. The metallic scent of Whitney’s blood filled her nostrils. When she opened her eyes again, a picture began to form in her mind.

  “The killer likely hid in there,” she said, standing up again and pointing at the closet. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they watched while she searched for her dog, getting a kick out of her calling out the pet’s name. At some point they came out to attack her but it didn’t go as planned. She must have seen them come out.”

  “How do you know that?” Officer Lovering asked.

  “Because of that,” Ryan volunteered, pointing to the lamp. “She had time to grab it.”

  “You don’t think they used it on her?” Lovering countered.

  “Why would they?” Jessie asked. “They already had the knife. No—she saw them coming.”

  “But wouldn’t they have been careful enough to wait until she was looking the other way?” Officer Lovering asked.

  Jessie couldn’t deny that he had a good point. She looked around, trying to put herself in Whitney Carlisle’s shoes. Then she saw it.

  “You’re almost certainly right,” she agreed. “With the other victims, surprise was essential. They never even had time to raise their hands, much less grab a lamp. But Whitney had an advantage.”

  “What?” Lovering wanted to know.

  “That,” she said, pointing at the sliding glass door. “From where we are now, I can see the foyer closet in the reflection of that door. If she was standing in about the same place, she would have seen it open and her assailant come out. The closet’s far enough away that she would have had time to move.”

  “But enough time to pull that heavy lamp out of the wall socket?” Ryan wondered. “That seems unlikely.”

  Jessie deflated. He was right. It didn’t make sense for her to grab a lamp. It made much more sense to run. She looked to the left, where an open door led down a long hallway.

  “You find anything unusual that way?” she asked Lovering, pointing at the door.

  The officer’s face lit up at the question.

  “Actually, yes,” he said excitedly. “We didn’t think much of it because all the activity seemed to be out here. But the door to the last bedroom on the left is broken.”

  “What do you mean, broken?” Ryan asked.

  “Part of the frame and a whole section of the door is splintered, like it was forced open, maybe kicked in.”

  *

  “Show us,” Jessie said forcefully.

  He took them to the door, which did indeed look like it had been forced open violently. In addition to the splintering, the top hinge was loose. They stepped inside.

  “Was the light on in this room when you arrived?” Ryan asked.

  “Yes. We haven’t touched anything,” Lovering assured him.

  Jessie walked over to the window and looked out. The bedroom appeared to be situated at the edge of a cliff. In the dark she couldn’t even see how far down the drop was. Turning around, she saw that the room had a second door.

  “Does that lead to an adjoining bedroom?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lovering said.

  All at once, an unsettling sensation overcame her, a feeling that something wasn’t quite as it should be. It flickered briefly before fading away.

  “What are you thinking?” Ryan asked her. He knew her expressions and she must have been displaying one that suggested she was on to something. Unfortunately, the sensation had gone as quickly as it came, like a wisp of smoke she couldn’t grasp. As frustrating as that was, something else emerged in its place: a mental image that didn’t fade. She focused on that.

  “I’m thinking that Whitney ran down the hall to this bedroom and locked the door. I think the killer broke in. But while he did, she snuck out through the other bedroom. He must have realized it and chased after her back into the living
room.”

  “But she didn’t seem to get very far,” Officer Lovering noted. “I would have guessed that she’d make it at least to the front door.”

  “That’s a good guess, Officer,” Jessie said, hurrying back down the hall to the living room. When he and Ryan caught up, she continued. “But I don’t think she ran for the door. I think she was sick of running. I think she stood her ground here.”

  “You think that’s when she grabbed the lamp,” Ryan said, playing out the scenario with her. “Maybe she got in a whack, knocked him to the ground even.”

  “That would explain the leg,” Jessie agreed. “Maybe she came at him a second time when he was on the ground and he kicked her, incapacitating her.”

  “She’d have been in incredible pain, unable to move,” Ryan said. “That’s when he used the knife, while she was lying on the ground, too focused on her leg to prevent what he did next.”

  All three of them stood there silently in communal horror, thinking about Whitney Carlisle’s last terrified, excruciating moments. They were interrupted by another officer, who hurried over to Lovering.

  “Sir,” he said. “We have the security camera footage now. It’s up on the laptop in the kitchen.”

  They all rushed over where another officer was waiting to play it.

  “Can you set it to go straight to when the motion sensor was triggered?” Ryan asked.

  The officer nodded and pulled up all the notifications indicating motion on the cameras. The last one prior to the first officers arriving on the scene was at 5:52 p.m., when a woman rang the doorbell.

  “That’s Carlisle’s sister, Jane Smyth,” Lovering said. “She said she came over to hang out because both their husbands were at a bachelor party in Orange County. That’s about all we got out of her before she broke down.”

  They watched as Smyth repeatedly rang the bell and knocked on the door. In between, she used her phone multiple times to call and text.

  “Didn’t she have a key?” Ryan asked.

  “That’s something I intended to ask her before she fell apart,” Lovering said.

  After a full five minutes, she left camera range only to reappear at the back deck sliding door a minute later. She rapped on it several times before seeming to see something. Jessie could guess what it was. Smyth appeared to double over. The footage was silent but it was clear that she was screaming.

  “We can move on,” Ryan said.

  The previous motion activation was at 5:28 at the front door.

  “There’s not much to it,” the officer at the laptop said, “just a shadow barely in the frame.”

  Jessie’s fingertips tingled at the sight.

  “Play it again, please,” she requested.

  The officer was almost right. It did look like a shadow passing at the edge of the camera’s range but it wasn’t. Now her whole body was tingling.

  “That’s the killer,” she said.

  “How do you know?” Lovering demanded.

  “Play it again,” she instructed. “This time pause it at the 5:28:21 mark.”

  The officer did. When the image was frozen, everyone could see it. Someone wearing all black, including a watch cap covering the face, skirted the very corner of the frame.

  “Play it at quarter speed,” Jessie asked.

  When the video resumed, the shadow person moved off to the right. The last thing visible before they disappeared was a left hand, which looked to have a latex glove on it.

  “The killer knew exactly where the cameras were and how to avoid detection,” Jessie said. “They wore dark clothing, masked their face, stayed out of frame, like they knew the place.”

  No one had a response to that.

  “Go back further,” Ryan finally said. “We need to see how they got in.”

  The video clip prior to that was at 5:17. It showed a man in a hoodie in the backyard walking toward the deck. The he removed the hoodie. His face was still hard to discern but she knew someone who could clean it up.

  “We need to send that to Jamil,” she told Ryan. “Maybe he can work his facial recognition magic.”

  Moments later, Whitney Carlisle stepped outside and seemed to speak to him. The man grabbed something from under the deck, but in the near darkness, Jessie couldn’t clearly identify what it was. They talked a little more before they both stared, unspeaking, at something in the distance. They stayed that way for close to a minute.

  “What’s that all about?” the laptop officer wanted to know.

  “I think they were watching the sun set,” Jessie said quietly.

  They spoke again briefly before the man wandered out of sight and Whitney returned inside. The timestamp read 5:19. Jessie got a shiver as she realized she was probably looking at the last time they knew for sure the woman was alive.

  “So that’s our window,” Ryan said. “She was killed sometime between five nineteen and five twenty-eight. That’s more than we had before at least.”

  “But we don’t know how the killer got in,” Lovering said.

  “There might be other points of entry that aren’t covered by cameras,” Ryan replied. “If the killer knew where the cameras were, they probably knew where they weren’t as well.”

  “Plus, there are blind spots,” Jessie replied. “You can’t actually see the sliding deck door from this angle. Someone could have shimmied along the back of the deck. If she didn’t lock the door when she went inside, it’d be easy to get in and we wouldn’t be able to see it.”

  Ryan tapped the laptop officer on the shoulder and handed him a business card.

  “Can you send all this footage to Jamil Winslow? Tell him we’re especially interested in ID’ing the man at five seventeen p.m.”

  The officer nodded and took the card. The group around the screen started to break up when a commotion from another room got everyone’s attention. Ryan and Lovering moved to the kitchen entryway and Jessie followed close behind.

  A woman was at the sliding deck door, trying to push her way past an officer who was awkwardly attempting to block her path. Jessie recognized her from the security footage earlier. There were mascara lines running down her cheeks and her eyes were red and puffy but there was no question: It was Jane Smyth, Whitney’s sister.

  Jessie called out to the officer holding her back.

  “Let her in.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Smyth moved toward Jessie like she was a homing beacon.

  As she ran over to them, Ryan whispered quickly to Officer Lovering, “Have your men cover the body.”

  Jessie silently berated herself for not thinking of that detail. She resolved to get Smyth back outside as quickly as possible. As the woman got closer, she noticed that her eyes were the same shade of blue as her sister’s. She exhaled deeply, trying to project a calm she hoped she could pass on to her.

  “Are you the one who’s going to finally give me some answers?” she demanded.

  “I hope so,” Jessie said evenly. “I’m so sorry for what happened to your sister. My name is Jessie Hunt. And this is Detective Ryan Hernandez. We work for a special unit that focuses on cases like Whitney’s. Why don’t the three of us go back outside and we’ll try to get you some answers.”

  That seemed to diminish the woman’s ferocity slightly. She nodded and led them back in the same direction from which she’d just come. Jessie noticed that Ryan walked to Smyth’s left, blocking any view of her sister’s body.

  Once they were outside, they all moved over to the edge of the deck, near where the railing met the stairs leading to the yard. It was almost exactly the same spot where Whitney Carlisle stood just over an hour earlier. Jessie looked out at the darkened Santa Monica Bay, dotted with lights that allowed her to see the outline of the coast from Malibu all the way south to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. This was the view that Whitney had been marveling at earlier, and which she’d never see again. Jessie turned to Jane. The time for stalling was over.

  “Mrs. Smyth—” she began.
>
  “Janey, please,” Smyth interrupted.

  “Okay, Janey, we don’t know a lot yet, but I’ll tell you what we do know. It might be difficult to hear though. Are you prepared for that?”

  “No,” Janey replied. “But tell me anyway.”

  “None of this is official yet, but this is what we believe: your sister was murdered with a knife from her kitchen. The killer sliced an artery on her neck and another on her leg. She would have died very quickly. Prior to that, she appears to have tried to escape and subsequently, to fight back. During the altercation, she suffered a leg injury that made it impossible for her to get away. Those are the details about the actual incident. Are you comfortable with me continuing?”

  She noticed that Janey had turned quite pale the more she talked.

  “Go on,” she said weakly.

  “We believe that she was killed sometime between five nineteen and five twenty-eight—”

  “Wait,” Janey said suddenly. “I talked to her during that time. Well, not talked, but texted—she said it was cool for me to come over.”

  Jessie and Ryan exchanged an energized look they hoped didn’t look too eager.

  “Can you please show us your phone?” Ryan asked.

  She unlocked it and scrolled to the text exchange. Whitney’s last message, time-stamped 5:21, read: Sounds good. A nice bottle of white will guarantee you admission.

  “Everything seems normal at that point,” he noted, speaking Jessie’s thoughts aloud. She looked back at Janey.

  “Maybe you can help us,” she said. “I know you said to the officer earlier that you came over to hang out. Can you describe the circumstances in more detail?”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “Whitney’s husband, Gordo—er, Gordon, and my husband, Stewart, were in Orange County for the bachelor party of a mutual friend. Whitney was going to have a solo night but at the last minute I thought it might be fun to hang out, just the two of us. You saw that she said yes. That’s why I was so surprised when she didn’t answer when I got here a little while later. I rang. I knocked. I called and texted.”