THE PERFECT IMAGE

by Blake Pierce

  “Hi, Roland,” she said softly, keeping as still as possible. His eyes darted from Ryan over to her. “My name is Jessie. I’m not a cop. I’m a consultant for the department and I’d like to help you if I can. Is that okay?”

  He said nothing but his eyes seemed to lose a bit of their panicky energy. She took that as a yes. Kneeling down to make herself less imposing, she continued to speak in gentle measured tones.

  “Can you tell me what has you so upset? Maybe I can help you find a way to work through it.”

  Gahan studied her for several seconds without responding. Finally he pulled the gun out of his mouth. Unfortunately, he promptly pressed the muzzle against his temple. As he did, his considerable double-chin quivered.

  “My life is basically over,” he croaked. His voice was raw and scratchy.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  He snorted at the question.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he snarled. “Maybe it has something to do with ninety percent of my patients leaving in the last ninety days for some guy with a nice tan and a silky voice. Maybe it’s because I’m being vilified on social media for something I didn’t actually do wrong. Maybe it’s because I can’t pay my bills and I’m being kicked out of this office at the end of the month. Or maybe it’s because once the cash supply ran dry, my wife of twenty-eight years left me. I got the papers earlier this afternoon, right around the time my one remaining nurse and the office manager quit. They did it together, which had an extra special sting. So you can see why I’m not feeling all that chipper right now.”

  He was out of breath and the speech seemed to sap some of his passion. Jessie took advantage.

  “You said you were vilified for something you didn’t do wrong. What was that?” she asked, hoping that self-righteous pride might take hold and make him want to defend himself. She watched the gears turn in his head as he recalled the injustice he’d supposedly suffered.

  “A patient accused me of going too far with her neck lift. She said it was obvious that she’d had work done and sued me. But she was the one who insisted on such a dramatic procedure. I specifically told her if she was hoping for subtlety, we should do the work gradually over several visits, otherwise it would look too different from before. But she was adamant. And when I finally did exactly what she asked, she didn’t like it and alleged malpractice. I had documentation of our conversation but my lawyer said it didn’t matter. The jury would see how ridiculous she looked and blame me. He said I was much better off settling and keeping it quiet. So I did.”

  “But it didn’t stay quiet, did it?” Jessie said sympathetically. “The word spread, maybe not organically but with the assistance of the guy with the nice tan and the silky voice, and you couldn’t shut off the spigot. Patients left in droves, am I right?”

  His eyes were wide. He was clearly stunned that someone not only understood what had happened, but seemed to empathize with him. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Ryan slowly lower his gun so that it wasn’t pointed directly at Gahan. It was a small move intended to help lower the temperature.

  “You are exactly right,” the surgeon said.

  “Let me ask you, Dr. Gahan,” she said, shifting gears. “Do you have any children?”

  He appeared surprised by the question but answered anyway.

  “I have a twenty-six-year-old daughter and a twenty-two-year-old son.”

  “Have you thought about what this will do to them?” she asked delicately. “Do they know everything you told me—about the unjustified lawsuit or the campaign to steal your patients and ruin your good name?”

  “No,” he said, embarrassed. “I didn’t want to burden them with it.”

  “I understand,” Jessie said, leaning in toward him slightly. “But imagine the burden this will put on them. If you do this, they’ll assume the allegations against you were true. They’ll think you ended your life because you were ashamed of your actions rather than because you’d been maligned unfairly. If you don’t tell them the truth, who will?”

  She watched as he silently considered the question. Feeling like she was making progress, she continued.

  “More importantly, don’t you want to show them that you can pull yourself out of this moment; that you can get up when you’re knocked down? You’re their father. What lesson do you want them to learn from this?”

  He was quiet, which she took as a hopeful sign. She decided to keep going.

  “I say you sue this patient for sullying your character, and if you can, go after this other surgeon too. To me, this sounds like an orchestrated attempt to destroy your business and your good name. Don’t let them do it, Dr. Gahan. Fight back. Reclaim your reputation!”

  For an interminably long time, he said nothing. Then, without any warning or ceremony, he dropped the gun on the ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  Roland Gahan didn’t realize he was in an interrogation room.

  He wasn’t cuffed and Jessie had asked an officer to lay down a tablecloth over the metal tabletop so that it didn’t seem so sterile and intimidating. He was sitting in a chair with a blanket over his shoulders, sipping coffee. Jessie and Ryan watched him for a few minutes through the one-way mirror as they determined their plan of attack.

  “We better get in there,” Jessie said when they were done. “We don’t want him to get any twitchier than he already is.”

  “Let’s go for it,” Ryan agreed, opening the observation room door for her.

  They had barely entered the interrogation room when Gahan hit them with a question.

  “Why am I still here?” he asked, more pleading than demanding.

  Jessie walked over and sat in the chair closest to him. Ryan took the other chair. When she spoke, she kept her voice low, almost conspiratorial.

  “Before we let you leave, we need to make sure you’re safe. Dr. Gahan, I called a department psychiatrist to come and talk to you. She’s on her way.”

  “But I’m fine now,” he insisted.

  “I believe you,” she said, leaning in as she had back in his office. “But only thirty minutes ago, you had a gun in your mouth. It would be irresponsible for us to just send you on your way without at least having a professional give you a clean bill of health.”

  He sighed, obviously frustrated.

  “Don’t worry,” Jessie continued. “She’ll be here soon and I doubt it will take her too long to clear you. In the meantime, why don’t we take advantage of your presence? There were a few technical questions we were hoping you could help us clear up. Would that be okay?”

  “I guess,” Gahan said, shrugging.

  He looked wiped out but Jessie couldn’t tell if it was part of some larger act. She still wondered if his suicide threat was legitimate. It definitely seemed to be. But even if so, was it really about his career and personal life falling apart? Or might it have been his desperate last move when he thought he was about to be arrested for killing three women? Was he just trying to generate sympathy to throw them off his scent?

  “Great, thanks,” she replied, smiling kindly to hide her doubts. “Before we do that, Detective Hernandez is going to read you your rights. It’s just a formality but an important one.”

  Ryan impressed her by proceeding to deliver the least intimating recitation of the Miranda warning Jessie had ever heard. He was doing his best not to raise any red flags for Gahan. As he did, Jessie watched the doctor closely for any sign of distress or evasion but couldn’t discern anything overt. He seemed to be miles away, his thoughts focused elsewhere.

  “Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way and with those rights in mind,” Ryan concluded, “are you okay talking to us?”

  “Uh-huh,” Gahan muttered.

  “Thanks so much,” Jessie replied. “We’re trying to find out about a few of your patients. That’s actually why we came to your office earlier. Do you remember a woman named Whitney Carlisle?”

  She had decided to start with Carlisle because she wa
s the most recent victim and the one an innocent man would be least likely to know about. Her death hadn’t yet made the news.

  He looked at her fuzzily for a few seconds before something in his head seemed to click.

  “I want to help,” he answered, “but HIPAA requirements prohibit me from discussing information about a possible patient.”

  “We understand that, Dr. Gahan,” Ryan said, “but as I’m sure you’re aware, there’s an exception to the law that allows you to disclose information to law enforcement when the patient has died and that death may have been a result of criminal conduct. And I’m afraid to say that Mrs. Carlisle died yesterday.”

  “Oh my god—how?”

  “She was murdered,” Jessie said, studying him closely. His shocked reaction appeared genuine but someone capable of such a crime might also be capable of unparalleled deception. “Do you remember her?”

  He was quiet for a second, seemingly searching his memory.

  “The name sounds familiar,” he finally said. “But I’m not sure. I have hundreds of patients.”

  Jessie pulled out her phone and showed him a picture of her.

  “Yes, I remember her now,” he said, leaning in close to the phone. “She came in a few months ago. If I recall, it was a minor procedure to improve the look of a scar from a burn she suffered on her leg a few years ago.”

  As he talked about the case, Jessie noticed that his posture improved, as did his spirits.

  “What about Gillian Fahey?” she asked. “Was she a patient of yours?”

  “She was,” he confirmed. “I heard about her death on the news—terrible.”

  “And Siobhan Pierson?” Ryan wanted to know.

  “Oh yes. Siobhan was a long-time patient. She’d been coming to me for years before…what happened to her. Oh my, that’s three of my patients who have been killed in just the last few weeks.”

  “We thought it was unusual as well, Dr. Gahan,” Jessie told him. “That’s why we came to speak with you. We thought that perhaps you might be able to discern some similarity among them that we aren’t able to see.”

  He scrunched his eyes in concentration before looking at her apologetically.

  “I’m afraid I can’t think of anything. As I told you, I’ve seen hundreds, probably thousands of patients over the years. Most of them live on the west side of town. It stands to reason that there would be some connections among them, myself included.”

  “That’s a good point about them all living in the same part of town, Doctor,” Ryan said, circling closer to where they wanted to get. “It reminds me—I saw on your website that you regularly offer in-home initial consultations. Did you do that for these women?”

  Jessie watched to see if he would balk at the question but he seemed so focused on remembering that he appeared to miss the underlying implication.

  “I definitely remember going Siobhan’s place. If you’ve been there, it’s hard to forget. The place is the size of a museum. I also recall going to Gillian Fahey’s home. When I saw footage of it on the news after her death, I recognized having been there before. As to the third one, what was her name again?”

  “Whitney Carlisle,” Ryan prompted.

  “That’s right. I don’t have a specific memory of going to her house, but if she lived close by, it wouldn’t surprise me. I try to be as accommodating as I can. Why?” he asked, and for the first time his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Hold on—all three of these women were killed in their homes, weren’t they?”

  “They were,” Ryan acknowledged.

  Roland Gahan looked down at the floor for several seconds. When he met their eyes again, his expression was different, fearful.

  “Am I a suspect?” he asked, dumbfounded.

  Jessie took that one.

  “Let’s just say that we’d love to eliminate you as a person of interest. The more forthright you are with us, the more likely we are able to cross you off our list. We all share the same goal here. So I think the fastest way to clear you of any suspicion would be to find out if any of the women we’ve been discussing was among those who bad-mouthed you.”

  This was the moment Jessie had been waiting for: the chance to look in the suspect’s eyes in search of the truth.

  “Were they bad-mouthing you, Dr. Gahan?” she asked, then held her breath waiting for the answer.

  They were in dangerous territory now. When they last checked with Jamil before entering the interrogation room, he still hadn’t found any online comments from the victims about Gahan. But as Ryan had noted earlier, that didn’t mean they hadn’t cast aspersions that made their way back to him.

  Still, the only way to gauge that was to observe how the doctor responded to the question. It was risky. Gahan could invoke his right to an attorney at any time. He could simply clam up. Or he could demand to leave the room, which would force them to either release or arrest him.

  He did none of those things.

  “Ms. Hunt, I wouldn’t know if they were disparaging me,” he said calmly, his eyes cold. “I stopped reading the online comments when I determined that they were taking a toll on my mental health. And it’s not like someone would tell me about something like that in person. If you’re suggesting that I killed these women because they might have said something mean about me, you’re wrong. If I killed every woman who said something cruel about me in the last few months, half of Santa Monica would be littered with bodies.”

  “We’re getting close,” Ryan said, his tone challenging.

  Jessie took a deep breath as she waited for the doctor’s reaction.

  “I’m not a murderer, Detective,” he said evenly.

  Despite anticipating this moment, Jessie was at a loss. Nothing in his demeanor gave away either clear guilt or innocence. She doubted pressing the issue would change that.

  “Let’s move on to where you were last night,” Ryan said, aggressively switching subjects. He must have felt they’d hit a wall too.

  “That’s easy,” Gahan said with a raucous snort. “I’ve spent every night for the last few months in the same place: at my house, pouring myself a Seven and Seven, drinking it, and repeating the process until I pass out.”

  “There seems to be a lot of that going around,” Jessie said quietly, noting that drinking oneself into numbness seemed to be a recurring theme with rich, down-on-their-luck Santa Monica men these days.

  “Yeah,” he said, “well, when your business is for crap and your wife runs out on you because you’re a loser, it tends to make you want to shut out the world a bit.”

  The man was clearly peeved, but even when they poked at him, his reaction didn’t rise to a level that Jessie would call angry. She looked over at Ryan, unsure how they should proceed. He took the lead.

  “Can anyone verify that you were at home last night, or the night before, or on January sixteenth?” he asked, though Jessie was sure he knew the answer already.

  “I’d tell you to check my calendar but that doesn’t typically include interactions with teenage cashiers at burger joint drive-thru windows, pizza delivery guys, or the staff at the neighborhood Thai food takeout place.”

  “Well, if you consent to let us look at your bank information and GPS data, it might go a long way to—” Jessie began before Gahan cut her off.

  “Screw that! I’m through helping you people railroad me.”

  He seemed genuinely upset. Before she could reply, a loud knock at the door interrupted them. Ryan opened it and motioned for Jessie to join him, where an officer with a nervous grimace was waiting.

  “The psychiatrist is here,” he said.

  Ryan looked at Jessie.

  “You think we should go at him again or let the doc break things up a little?”

  “I think he’s on the verge of demanding to leave,” she said, “in which case we’d have to arrest or release him. Maybe sending the psychiatrist in will buy us some time to make a decision.”

  “I agree, go get the doctor,” Ryan said to the offic
er, before turning back to Gahan. “The psychiatrist is here. We’re going to take a break and let you talk to her.”

  They stepped outside and closed the door. Ryan flashed Jessie a big smile.

  “What are you so happy about?” she asked.

  “I think we may have our guy,” he replied.

  “What makes you so confident?” she wanted to know. She felt far less so.

  “What doesn’t make me confident?” he countered. “We can check his bank and GPS data, but it sure sounds like he’s not going to have any alibi witnesses, which could be by design. If he knew months ago that he was going on this spree, he had lots of time to prep this ‘non-alibi’ alibi, complete with claims of solo drunkenness.”

  “Go on,” Jessie said. She couldn’t argue with his logic there.

  “It sounds like he’s been to all three houses,” Ryan pointed out. “Hell—he admitted to being in two of them. And as a surgeon, he obviously knew how to make the most effective, damaging cuts with those knives. We don’t have a motive locked down, but revenge against women who might have helped destroy his career is a pretty good one.”

  “We have no proof of that yet,” Jessie reminded him.

  “And we might never, if the bad-mouthing was only verbal,” Ryan replied. “Come on Jessie, you have to admit, this guy fits the profile.”

  She did have to admit it. Gahan had the skill set, the opportunity, a weak alibi, and a potential motive, yet she wasn’t sure.

  “It’s not that I think you’re wrong,” she said, thinking aloud as she spoke, “he’s clearly sketchy and I couldn’t get a good bead on whether he was lying, which is a troubling sign on its own. But I have some nagging reservations.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, do we really think Gahan is capable of sneaking into these women’s homes and doing what he did without leaving a trace? At his size, I’m not sure this guy could walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. And if he really has been drinking that heavily lately, I’d expect him to be sloppier at the crime scenes.”