The Perfect Mistress (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Fifteen)

by Blake Pierce

  The rendezvous were almost always at either her partner’s place or at the Riggs Mountain Resort off Highway 243. That made sense. Jessie recalled Rich McClane saying that the motel was struggling and would likely give them a reduced rate if they stayed there. She could imagine that if things were that bad, they might turn a blind eye to someone who wanted to pay an hourly rate.

  Sarah Ripley was listed too but had only had a few get-togethers, less than a half dozen, almost all at her home. In fact she had one scheduled for the night she died, though it appeared that her partner for the evening, someone charmingly named Dutch Dalton, sent a message cancelling just before their appointed meeting time, 10 p.m.

  “I can tell you why Dutch cancelled,” said Garrett, who saw the message she was reviewing. “He was at a Town Council meeting until pretty late on Tuesday. I remember because I had to testify at around 9:30. When I left, it was after ten and he was still there. It might have looked bad for him to cut out early for a late-night hookup.”

  “Great,” Ryan said, frustrated, “one more quality suspect eliminated.”

  Jessie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. There was a ton of useful information here, but it would take time to go through it all and establish the links among the women and which ones actually mattered. Unfortunately, time was something they were fast running out of. She stood up and whispered in Ryan’s ear.

  “Let’s go back to the cabin to review this stuff.”

  He nodded and whispered back.

  “If we had Jamil Winslow available to cull through all this data, I’m sure he’d uncover the key connection among the victims fast. But without his tech wizardry, we’re going to have to do it the old school way.”

  “Right,” Jessie agreed, “And don’t forget that there’s a Sheriff in Riverside with an itchy media trigger finger. We may not have long to do it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  Kat tried to hide her disappointment.

  She wasn’t doing a great job but it was better than Jamil could muster. He looked like his dog had run away. As they stood outside the Pasadena Hostel alongside Detective Jim Nettles, all three wondered what had gone wrong.

  Only a couple of hours ago, they thought they’d hit pay dirt. From Central Station, they watched on hidden cameras as the undercover officers posing as Canadian student backpackers checked in at the hostel and did casual but thorough interviews and searches. But no one at the hostel—employees or guests—had any recollection of someone matching the Night Hunter’s description ever staying there. No one recognized the composite photos or drawings they passed around.

  When that effort was unsuccessful, the full search team on standby was sent in do a more painstaking walk-through of the place, but they also found nothing. Jamil had already searched camera footage from right around the hostel going back weeks and didn’t find anyone even close to matching the man.

  Eventually they all left. But Kat wasn’t satisfied. Despite Decker’s reluctance to waste more resources, she’d convinced him to let her and Nettles do one last assessment of the area now that it had been cleared as safe. She played up the angle that they might pick up on stuff that officers less familiar with the case wouldn’t. It worked.

  Jamil—clearly burned out on staring at street view camera footage—had begged to come. She took pity on him and pressured Nettles to do the same. But now that they were here, it seemed that the forty-five minute drive from downtown L.A. to Pasadena had been for naught. They hadn’t come across any earth-shattering clues. It was a bust.

  Nettles and Jamil walked across the street to grab drinks from a corner store. Kat decided to stay put and sat down on a bench in front of the hostel, resting her head in her hands. She went over everything again, wondering what she’d missed. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that the crumpled paper in the car next to the one bought by the Night Hunter had the address of a hostel, when that was exactly the kind of place where he’d been staying.

  But the lead was a dead end. Of course, it was possible that the man realized he’d lost the paper with the address and simply decided not to risk staying here, no matter how unlikely it was that he’d be discovered. He’d repeatedly proven how scrupulous he was in his planning. He probably had a dozen other lodging options at his disposal.

  She sat up and looked to see if Jamil and Nettles were on their way back yet but they were still in line to pay for the drinks. Trying to clear her head, she looked absent-mindedly at the adjoining buildings on the block. They all had the same Old Town Pasadena architectural style, with lots of red and brown brick structures built in the 1920s. She could even see historical marker plaques near the doors of a few.

  The building at the corner of the block had a plaque, which was probably the only reason it hadn’t been torn down. With its puckered roof and boarded up windows and front door, it gave the impression that it was on the verge of collapsing all by itself.

  Looking at the sign, it appeared that the building used to be a medical supply store, though some of the letters had faded to the point that she couldn’t make out the name of the place. She squinted at the sign, trying to make it out, and was about to give up when an odd sensation that she couldn’t quite explain fluttered in her chest.

  She stood up and walked across the street. As she did, some of the letters became easier to discern. What had originally looked like “land Hu Medica upply” became something else entirely: “Garland Hunt Medical Supply.” She gasped involuntarily.

  “What’s up?” someone called out.

  She looked over to see Nettles and Jamil standing in the middle of the street, holding their drinks and looking at her curiously. She motioned for them to come over and pointed at the sign. Jamil looked at it and them at her.

  “We should call it in,” he said immediately.

  “Why?” Nettles asked. “I don’t get it.”

  “Hold off on the call, Jamil,” Kat said. “We need to know what we’re dealing with before we have everyone come out here again.”

  “What are we dealing with?” Nettled asked, frustrated. She turned to him, surprised that he hadn’t put it together yet.

  “You don’t think it’s a little suspicious that the business across the street from where we hoped to find the Night Hunter has both the first name of his long-time nemesis and the last name of the woman he’s hunting?”

  Nettles’ face flushed.

  “When you put it that way,” he admitted, “it kind of does. So why don’t you want to call it in?”

  “I do,” she insisted. “But my credibility with Decker is already shaky after the hostel search came up empty. I don’t want him to think of me as Chicken Little. Let’s check it out first.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” Jamil cautioned. “Remember what happened to Trembley. He was lured into that hostel and the Night Hunter got the jump on him.”

  “That’s why we’re going to be extra cautious,” Kat countered. “Nettles and I will go in together with weapons drawn. Meanwhile you’ll stay out here and be our eyes. Warn us if anyone tries to enter the building. And don’t let anyone approach you, no matter how innocent they look. It might seem crazy for him to show up here when everyone’s looking for him, but this guy is crazy.”

  Jamil still looked reticent but Nettles was fully on board. Since the front door was boarded up with planks of plywood, they decided to enter through the back alley. Even in the middle of a chilly but sunny day, walking along the narrow pathway was unsettling.

  Kat couldn’t help but remember Andy Robinson’s warning about the Night Hunter the previous night: “He is ten steps ahead of you. He will manipulate you, without you ever knowing it, to get to her. He may have already laid the trap.”

  Was this that trap? Was she doing exactly what he wanted? She knew it was possible but wasn’t sure what choice she had. She couldn’t ignore such a promising lead, though the primitive, fear-based part of her brain was screaming that she should.

  When they g
ot to the door marked “GHMS,” Nettles silently noted that it looked like it had been jimmied open recently. Using hand gestures, Kat indicated that she’d pull it open and he should be ready to shoot if anything jumped out at them. He nodded.

  She yanked the door open and Nettles squared up. But nobody leapt out at them. He stepped inside and she quickly followed, leaving the door wide open. Between the open door, the holes in the roof, and the gaps between the plywood boards over the windows, more than enough light streamed in to give them a solid view of the place.

  The interior of the building had been largely stripped clean. There was one shelving unit along the back wall and a reception desk that appeared to be bolted to the floor. But other than that, there was little in the place other than strewn about trash, a few empty paint cans, and a couple of plastic painting tarps.

  Even though it would be virtually impossible for anyone to surprise them considering there were no places to hide, they moved through the space carefully. Kat’s eyes darted back and forth quickly as she looked for anything out of the ordinary.

  After several fruitless minutes, she was about to call this search a bust too when she noticed several thick streams of dark liquid leaking out from one of the tarps. She pulled out her flashlight and pointed it in that direction. It looked red. Nettles saw what she was doing and walked over. She indicated for him to pull the tarp away and aimed her gun at whatever was underneath. He ripped the plastic sheet back.

  Kat gulped hard, fighting a sudden wave of nausea, as she tried to make sense of what she saw lying on the ground. It appeared to be a human being, or at least segments of him. The figure was male, probably in his fifties, and from the look of his clothes, most likely homeless. He still had the basic components of a person but they had been cut into sections. His arms, legs, and head had been neatly separated from his torso and set an inch apart from it, so that he looked more like a marionette than a man.

  This wasn’t the Night Hunter’s typical M.O. but Kat had no doubt that this was his work and that it was recent. The blood wasn’t dry yet and the smell was strong. She guessed that this had been done in the last few hours.

  Even as she took in the horror before her, Kat knew the man was still playing his cruel games. Somehow, he knew she’d discovered the address crumpled up in the Honda Civic and that she would be coming to this place. He’d left this body as a calling card and a taunt, to let her, and by extension Jessie, know that he wasn’t done; that he could do these things right under their noses and not get caught.

  “This was him,” she told Nettles. “Call it in.”

  He nodded and went back outside, clearly not wanting to spend one more second in this place than he had to. But Kat stuck around and continued to walk around the nearly empty space. The Night Hunter may have thought he couldn’t be caught but she wondered if that was so.

  This murder was a major undertaking and it would have had to happen on short notice. Jessie discovered the note in the Civic around 10:45 last night. Decker had people surveilling the Pasadena hostel across the street by 3 a.m. That left barely over four hours for an elderly man to organize his tools, get to Pasadena, select a victim, somehow get him in the abandoned building, incapacitate him, dismember him, and get out, all before the cops arrived. It was a daunting, time-sensitive task and even someone as experienced as the Night Hunter might have made a mistake. And if he did, they would find it.

  She pulled out her phone. In general, she preferred not to bother Jessie with every peak and valley in the investigation. But this was different. It was huge. She deserved to know.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Jessie’s phone rang, startling her.

  She’d been sitting at the breakfast room table in the cabin, so focused on finding useful connections from the WBA website’s Special Friends Forum, that she’d lost track of much else. From his surprised expression, it was clear that Ryan had been in the same headspace. She looked at the screen. It was Richard McClane.

  “Hi Rich,” she said, putting him on speaker, “good news or bad?”

  “A little good but mostly bad,” he said, launching in without offering a choice as to which they wanted first. “I’m pushing forensics hard on that strand of hair you found on Ellen Wade’s body. I have one tech I trust implicitly and she said they’re very close. She also promised to update me directly the second they have anything on it. I’ll pass that straight on to you.”

  “If that’s the bad news, I can’t wait to hear the good news,” Ryan said wryly.

  “Unfortunately, that’s as good as the news gets,” Rich said, not playing along. “The reason I have to depend on that one loyal tech is because I’ve been largely cut out of the loop. Sheriff Kazansky is pissed in general and especially with me. He’s taking over. He’s just assigned his detectives and they’re a pair of lackeys—their names are Mitchell and Caster. Don’t expect them to be forces for good.”

  “When are they coming?” Jessie asked.

  “Kazansky has scheduled a press conference for an hour from now. He’ll want them there, standing behind him like good soldiers. They’ll leave for Wildpines as soon as he’s done. That gives you about two hours, maybe three tops before the town will be overrun with Riverside County Sheriff’s Department people. And I guarantee they’ll know who you are. So if you don’t have this squared away by then, I recommend you beg off. You’re welcome to stay in the cabin, but you’ll probably want to make yourselves scarce otherwise.”

  The idea of bailing when they seemed to finally be making progress was inconceivable to Jessie, though she knew he had a point.

  “Great,” Ryan said, sounding equally frustrated by the suggestion. “No pressure there.”

  “Does that mean that you don’t anticipate solving three murders in the next three hours?” McClane asked, his arch tone suggested he expected no such thing.

  “We’ve actually had a few breakthroughs,” Jessie told him. “That warrant for the WBA website was a big help. It turns out the site was a front for an infidelity club forum run by Clarice Kimble. Both Ellen Wade and Sarah Ripley were members. We’re certain that the forum is somehow connected to the killings.”

  “That sounds promising,” McClane said.

  “You’d think,” Ryan replied. “But we’ve been here in your cabin, banging our heads against the wall trying to find the relevant connection. So far, we’ve come up empty. From everything we’ve looked at, there are no shared romances among the women. No spouses were involved or seemed to know anything about it. We can’t find any angry or inflammatory messages. There’s nothing that clearly shows that this forum was the motivation for the murders. But there’s too much here for it to just be a coincidence. The answer is somewhere in this site data. We just have to find it.”

  “Well, do it quick,” McClane said. “Time is your enemy now.”

  He hung up, leaving Jessie and Ryan staring helplessly at each other.

  “What next?” he asked. “Just keep plugging away and hope something pops?”

  “I don’t know that we have any other choice,” Jessie said. “We don’t just have to worry about Kazansky’s people big-footing us. This killer has struck on three out of the last four nights. I’m worried that no amount of police presence is going to stop another attack tonight. We have to keep pushing.”

  She had just returned her attention to the laptop screen when her phone rang again. This time it was Kat. She answered and hit the speaker button once more.

  “Jessie?” Kat said with unexpected urgency.

  “Hey. What’s wrong?”

  “He struck again,” Kat said, getting straight to the point.

  “At the hostel in Pasadena?”

  “No. That place was clean. We found a body in an abandoned building across the street. It was a rush job. He didn’t have time to do his typical skinning routine so he made do by cutting the guy into pieces.”

  Jessie saw Ryan’s head drop. She knew what he was thinking: that another person was dead
because of his inaction just over a week ago.

  “How did you know to look there?” she asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from the details of the victim’s death.

  “The building was a vacant medical supply store called ‘Garland Hunt Medical Supply.’”

  There was a long silence as both she and Ryan processed what that meant.

  “You were right,” Jessie finally said. “He planned the whole thing—the uncollected Ford Tempo, the crumbled piece of paper in the Honda Civic with the address for the hostel. He somehow knew it would be found and that someone would notice the medical supply place.”

  “But why?” Kat asked. “Is this just his way of saying that even with a manhunt under way, he can kill someone? We already know that. What purpose does this serve?”

  “Maybe he just felt the itch,” Ryan said, finally looking up again. “Maybe he knows the dragnet is closing in and he just wants to do as much damage as possible in the interim.”

  Jessie didn’t buy it. There was a reason the Night Hunter took such a risk. But since she didn’t want to kick Ryan when he was down, she said nothing. Kat filled in the gap of silence.

  “The Crime Scene Unit is on the way right now. We’re hoping that because he was in such a hurry, maybe he screwed up, left a print, DNA, something.”

  “Maybe,” Jessie replied, “but don’t hold your breath.”

  “Believe me, I’m not,” Kat said. “How are you guys holding up?”

  “We’re muddling through,” Jessie said. “Hannah’s actually thriving, even though we’ve been here less than a day.”

  “Do I hear a ‘but’ in there?” Kat asked.

  “But,” Ryan volunteered. “This case we’re helping out on is about to blow up. Unless we can solve it in the next couple of hours, it’s going to be taken over by another department. Plus the place will be swarming with media. To keep from being recognized, we’ll have to hole up again. It’ll essentially be like living in an unofficial safe house.”