by Blake Pierce
He knows this office better than we do. We have to change the dynamic or he’s going to gut us both.
Gripping the torch light, she decided the time had come to do something. She delicately felt around the bookshelf to her right until her fingers found a flat unoccupied spot on the top, about four feet off the floor. She stood up, placed the flashlight in that spot facing the direction where she’d heard Kallas unsheathe the knife, and counted silently to three. Then she pushed the “on” button. The click sounded like a thunderclap.
She took one large step back away from the bookshelf as the torch illuminated the middle of the room. Kallas wasn’t in the spotlight but she could hear him moving from somewhere nearby, fast approaching.
A second later, she saw him, advancing on the flashlight, his right arm raised with a long-bladed knife in his hand. Then the light was knocked to the floor as Kallas banged into the bookshelf. She heard the sound of the knife whipping through the air about three feet to her right, swinging wildly as he swiped at what he hoped was her.
The flashlight was now on the floor, facing the other direction, uselessly illuminating the bottom of the bookshelf. Jessie used the chaos to unsnap her holster and pull out her gun. Before she’d even removed it, she heard a deafening, violent thud and a pair of grunts that indicated that Ryan had tried to tackle Kallas.
The murkiness prevented her from doing anything with her gun, as firing it would be a literal shot in the dark. Instead, as she listened to the scrambling, she moved toward the door, feeling around for the light switch. Behind her, there was sickening thwack she couldn’t identify, followed by something even more troubling—the return of silence.
If Ryan had gotten the upper hand in the scuffle, he almost certainly would have said something by now. The lack of any noise was a bad sign. Trying to ignore it, she ran her hands all over the wall until she finally felt something. It was the light switch. She flicked it and the room was suddenly bathed in light.
She squinted as she adjusted, looking back in the direction where the fight had occurred as she re-gripped her gun. She took in the scene, processing everything all at once. Lying on the ground unconscious, about six feet from her, was Ryan. Just in front of him was Kallas, who was already leaping up toward her. He must have lost the knife because his hands were empty. She raised her weapon as she flicked off the safety. But before she could fire, he slammed into her, sending the gun flying and smashing her back against the door.
Jessie felt the wind escape her chest as she first collided with the wall and then fell to the ground with Kallas beside her. He appeared stunned. She tried to ignore her suddenly watering eyes and burning chest as she rolled away from the man, who was flailing about, trying to grasp her.
As she gasped for air and tried to regroup, she looked around for her gun. It was nowhere in sight. She glanced over at Ryan. He was breathing but blood was streaming down his forehead. She saw his gun resting underneath his stomach. Just beyond him was the knife.
She crawled in that direction as quickly as she could and was almost to Ryan when she felt a hand grip her ankle. Glancing back, she saw Kallas, now alert and with a nasty smirk on his face. With her free leg, she reared back and kicked, nailing him in the nose.
He yelped loudly but didn’t let go. She turned back around, trying to focus on her task. As she clawed at the carpet, Ryan’s gun only inches from her fingers, she felt Kallas’s other hand grab her calf. A half-second later he yanked back hard, ripping her away from Ryan and back toward him.
As she was pulled back, Jessie looked around desperately for anything to defend herself with. The only thing she saw was the small torch flashlight. It wasn’t much but she grabbed it anyway, gripping it tightly in her right hand.
Kallas was on top of her now and grabbed her, twisting her over onto her back. She looked up at him. His nose was bleeding from her kick and it had dripped down onto his formerly perfect white teeth. Still, he smiled malevolently.
“Maybe we should make our own video, Jessie,” he snarled as he pinned her hips down with his hands and knees. “The one with Missy was good. But I think I could poke a few more holes in you.”
“You recorded yourself killing her?” Jessie asked, in stunned disbelief.
“It was her best film yet,” he said excitedly. “I put graphics on it and everything. It’s titled Playing Doctor. Funny, huh? I bet I could come up with an even better one for you.”
He chuckled. Jessie knew that this moment, when he was enthralled with his own cleverness, might be her last chance to surprise him before he focused in on what he planned to do to her. So she took advantage of it.
Jessie swung the torch flashlight at him, aiming for his right eye. She knew she’d made a direct hit when she made contact with something softer than bone. The sudden scream that escaped his lips reinforced her certainty.
He reached up to stop her but she pulled the light back and swung again, not taking aim this time. She managed to smash the thing against his teeth before the force of the blow sent it back into his open mouth, causing him to gag.
Kallas shook his head wildly and she lost her grip on the light. He reached up and tore it from his throat. As he looked down at her with his one good eye, the fury and hatred he felt was palpable.
He slapped her hard across the face with his left hand, as he grabbed a handful of her hair with his right. She tried to bat his arms away but he was too strong. He lifted her head up by the hair and slammed her head back down on the thin carpet, making her skull rattle and her vision blur. She felt him lift her head again. But this time she couldn’t find the strength to swat at him. She clenched her eyes tight in anticipation of what was coming.
He was just about to slam her down again when Jessie heard an earsplitting crunch. A moment later, the weight of Kallas’s body was no longer on top of her. Despite the pain, she opened her eyes and tried to focus them.
To her right, Dr. Richard Kallas was lying on his stomach. Two uniformed LAPD officers had him pinned down as one of them cuffed his hands behind his back. Kallas was still howling in pain and rage.
But after a moment, his screams began to sound more distant. In the seconds before it happened, Jessie realized she was losing consciousness. And then everything went dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
Jessie wasn’t out for long.
When she came to, she was lying on the exam table in the room where she’d been moved to. According to Captain Decker, who was standing over her with a worried expression, she’d only been out for about ninety seconds.
“How’s Hernandez?” she asked, ignoring her aching jaw.
“They’re checking him out now in the office. He’s conscious but woozy. The EMT said the cut on his head isn’t that deep. How are you?”
“Sore.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a good thing you texted me the exact address and suite number of this office or we’d still be looking for you and your head would be split open like a melon.”
Jessie tried to sit up but felt mildly nauseated and lay back down. She took a deep breath and when she was sure she could speak, she replied.
“What’s the deal with Kallas?”
“The doctor with the disturbing cutlery collection? He’s being transported to Cedars-Sinai to get that eye looked at. You really did a number on him. I’m assuming he’s your top suspect in the Penn murder and that’s why you brazenly disobeyed direct orders.”
“He claims to have a video of the killing,” Jessie said, trying not to rub it in. “We should get people on that ASAP. And that’s not the only reason I disobeyed orders, Captain.”
“I’m all ears,” he replied with raise eyebrows.
For half a second, Jessie debated whether to confide in him. But ultimately, if she wanted to keep herself and the people she cared about safe, she had no choice.
“I need you to shut the door for this,” she said quietly.
Decker looked more surprised than she’d ever seen him. But without ano
ther word, he walked over and closed the door.
She sighed deeply, and then began.
*
Jessie pretended her head wasn’t splitting in half.
She popped another ibuprofen as she watched Richard Kallas through a two-way mirror in the observation room. He sat cuffed to a bolted-down metal table in a Central Station interrogation room. His left eye was bandaged, though the doctor had said it would eventually heal. He was missing a tooth but nothing had been done about that yet.
It had been three hours since the attack at Kallas’s office and the world seemed very different now, though still not as safe as Jessie hoped. Since she didn’t know when she’d be free, she had called Kat Gentry, who had just returned from enjoying a multi-day date with Deputy Mitch Connor, the Lake Arrowhead liaison for the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department.
She asked if Kat could relieve Garland Moses on the Hannah-watching front. But Garland instead offered to let her crash at his place. Jessie didn’t mind, as the more people she trusted around Hannah, the better.
Ryan was still at the hospital. Doctors were confident he could be released soon but wanted to keep him overnight as a precaution. They’d wanted her to stay too but she insisted on discharging herself to conduct this interrogation. She promised that she would return afterward and spend the night there so they could keep her under observation.
The Butters situation still weighed heavily on her mind. She wanted to talk to Kallas with a clear head but wasn’t sure she could until she got an update on that situation. As if on cue, Captain Decker stepped into the observation room and asked the camera tech to step out for a moment.
“What have you got for me?” she asked him hopefully.
“I can’t get into specifics,” he said quietly. “But it’s happening as we speak. We’ll know more by tomorrow.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all I can share at this point,” he insisted. “The less you know right now, the better for you. Just trust that people are taking it seriously. You just focus on Kallas right now.”
“You sure I’m authorized to conduct this investigation? No one’s going to drag me out on a disciplinary charge in the middle of it?”
She knew it was a cheap shot but she’d held her tongue for this long and just couldn’t contain herself any longer.
“Don’t push it, Hunt,” he warned, though not unkindly. “Department policy requires that a detective be involved in any formal interrogation, so Trembley will be in there with you. But he knows that you’ll be taking the lead and won’t step on your toes.”
“Thanks, Captain,” she said as they left the room and stood outside the interrogation room door.”
“No problem,” he said. “Just remember, I’ll be watching. So please don’t stab him in the other eye.”
“I’ll try my hardest,” she assured him as she opened the door and stepped inside.
Detective Alan Trembley was already in there, as was one uniformed officer. Trembley smiled at her knowingly, oblivious to his own unkempt curly blond hair and the glasses halfway down the bridge of his nose. In addition to being boring, the guy was a bit scattered. But he’d come a long way since she’d first met him. More importantly right now, she knew he wouldn’t get in the way of what she needed to do.
She looked over at Kallas, who was staring at her dully.
“Is he medicated?” she asked Trembley.
“He is,” Kallas said before Trembley could reply. “But don’t let that stop you from attempting to outwit him. But before you try, I wanted to ask: how’s your detective buddy doing? No brain damage, I hope?”
Jessie smiled at him. Something about the guy’s smarm seemed pathetic when he wasn’t in his medical tower office.
“No new damage,” she told him. “He’s alert and remembers your attempt to murder him, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I was purely concerned for his welfare,” Kallas said. “I want him to be in tip-top shape when I sue him for police misconduct for attacking me without warning in my place of business.”
Jessie leaned in and spoke slowly, relishing every word.
“Good luck with that. Oh, by the way, I just thought you should know—we have video from your office building showing Michaela leaving on three separate occasions, long after business hours.”
Kallas didn’t seem fazed.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Kallas insisted. “I agreed to see her at that time because she was worried about being recognized.”
Jessie nodded sympathetically.
“I see,” she said. “We also found video of a man in a hoodie driving your car about six blocks from Michaela’s place on the night of the murder.”
Kallas nodded expectantly.
“I’ve been meaning to file a police report about that. I think my car was stolen and taken for a joyride that night. I parked it on the street and when I found it the next morning, it was in a different spot and missing gas.”
He smiled as he said it, not even trying to sound convincing. Something about his brazen willingness to lie when the truth was obvious felt strangely familiar.
“How unfortunate that you didn’t file that report then,” Jessie noted.
“Here’s the thing, Jessie,” he said, leaning in himself now. “If you really had anything on me, you wouldn’t be in here right now trying to work me. This is a sign of your sad desperation. My attorney is going to have a field day with you.”
Jessie leaned back in her chair and studied him, wondering how he was able to compartmentalize the different parts of himself: the man in front of her now and the creature who had committed that vile act two nights earlier.
“I’m not desperate, Dick,” she said softly. “I just wanted to give you a chance to tell me how you did it in your own words. It will likely be your last chance. Once your lawyer gets here, you won’t have the chance. And I know you’re dying to.”
“This is the best you’ve got?” he asked haughtily, though his one working eye betrayed some apprehension. “You’re trying to bait me into some kind of false confession?”
“We found the video, Dick.”
“What?”
“The video of you assaulting and stabbing Michaela to death, we found it. Thanks for letting me know it existed. We might never have thought to look for something so depraved on our own. But because of your tip, we looked, and we found it in that innocuous-sounding computer file you titled ‘graft analysis.’ As you know, it’s definitive. You’ll be convicted. It’ll probably take the length of a sitcom episode for the jury to complete their deliberations.”
Kallas stared at her silently. She could tell from his expression that he knew she was telling the truth. She continued.
“So like I said, the only reason I’m in here is to let you give me your version. I don’t need it. We’ve got you. It’s not like a confession will make much difference. They can’t execute you twice, after all. But as you know, I’m a profiler so I’m inherently curious about this kind of aberrant behavior. So I’m giving you one last chance to come clean. If you’re not interested, that’s your call. I’ll head out for a late dinner. Just know that once I walk out that door, you’ll have lost the last sympathetic audience you’ll ever get.”
She stood up. He said nothing.
“Tick-tock, Dick,” she said as she headed for the door.
She was just grabbing the handle when she heard him speak.
“Wait.”
*
If they hadn’t sedated her, she wouldn’t have slept at all that night.
Kallas’s words echoed in her mind all the way to the hospital after the interrogation and resumed again the moment she got up. She replayed them once more as she stood in the shower, letting the warm water massage the twisted muscles in her back.
He had gone through every detail of the crime meticulously, from the moment he’d decided to kill Michaela until he drove off afterward. His description of the murder matched the video he�
�d taken perfectly.
But it wasn’t the actual killing that made it hard to get the case out of her head. It was Kallas’s demeanor. She still recalled his answer when she asked why he’d killed her.
“You don’t get it,” he’d said as he sat in the interrogation room, his body still coiled in excitement at recalling what he’d done. “I’d seen her movies. I could tell from the bored look in her eyes that she needed something more. So I sought her out. And I found her. We found each other. And it was better than I could have imagined. One time she wore a nurse’s uniform. The next she pretended to be a patient. We used almost every room in the office. It was a delight.”
“So what changed?” Jessie asked him.
“She lied to me.”
“What did she lie about?” Jessie had asked, working hard to keep judgment out of her voice.
“I told her that I would take care of her, that she should stop having dates with those pathetic fans. I also told her that after she’d completed whatever movies she was contracted to do, she should stop shooting them entirely. I would make up her lost income. She said she would make the changes. But she didn’t stop.”
“She still saw other clients?” Jessie prodded.
“Several. I confronted her about it and she acted as if she thought I was kidding. She said I couldn’t possibly be serious. When I told her that I was, she said I was weirding her out and that we couldn’t see each other anymore. That wasn’t right. So I made things right.”
“Richard,” Jessie asked, knowing it would probably be her last question, “looking back, do you feel guilty at all for what you did?”
“For what exactly?” he replied, genuinely perplexed.
“For raping and killing a seventeen-year-old girl, for stabbing her nine times, for ending the life of another person just because she wouldn’t be exactly what you wanted her to be? I almost understand losing yourself in the moment. But afterward, in the days since, have you felt bad at all?”
She pictured Hannah lying on that bed instead of Michaela. The two of them were so alike—troubled, smart girls, damaged by the world but still with promising futures.
