The Perfect Show (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Thirty-Three)

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Marnie Krebs looked like she was about to head into outer space.

She was wearing a full-body, protective hazmat suit, complete with a respirator of her own. Because of that, it was hard to get a clear view of the woman. Based on the hints of wrinkling in her eyes, Jessie estimated that she was in her mid-thirties. Those eyes, blue but puffy and tinged with red from crying, were wide with fear.

“Hi Marnie,” Jessie said, not moving any closer but using her warmest, “you can trust me” voice. “My name is Jessie. I work with the police. May I call you Marnie?”

The woman nodded weakly.

“Thanks. How are you feeling?”

“Okay, so far,” Marnie said, sounding distant behind the mask. “But they tell me it’s too early to know if I was affected.”

“We’re all hoping that’s not the case,” Jessie told her. “I know they’re about to take you to the hospital, but I was hoping we could ask you a few questions before then. Is that okay?”

Marnie nodded a little more firmly.

“Sergeant Kenton gave us the basics of what you told him already,” Jessie explained, “but I’d like to get a few more details. We understand you arrived here at six. Did you talk to Tabitha earlier in the day, maybe to reconfirm?”

“Yeah,” Marnie said. “We spoke this afternoon to talk about what we wanted to order for dinner.”

“Do you remember when that was?” Ryan asked.

“I think it was around four,” Marnie said. “I was still at work. I remember that I still had about an hour before I could leave. I was calculating whether I could buy the wine, get home to change, and then get over here by six. But you can look at my phone to double check the time that we spoke.”

“We’ll do that, thanks,” Jessie assured her. “So you talked to her around four and got here at about six. We heard why you opened the door and went inside. I know this is difficult, but when you entered the loft, did you notice anything unusual?”

“Like what?”

“Anything out of place?” Jessie suggested. “Anything missing?’

“I couldn’t really say,” Marnie admitted. “We’ve been friends for a half dozen years, but most of that time was in her old house. Since then, this was the second apartment she’d lived in, so it wasn’t like she’d really settled in completely.”

“What about in the bathroom?” Ryan pressed. “I know finding her must have been horrific, but were you able to pick up on anything out of the ordinary in there? Perfume she didn’t use? New flowers?”

“To be honest, Detective, I couldn’t focus on anything other than my friend lying dead on the floor,” Marcie said. “I called 911 right away. I thought maybe she’d had a heart attack or something, what with the way she was still in her towel. It looked like she’d just gotten out of the shower. It wasn’t until the coroner guy said something about the silver can in there that I got worried that something else had happened.”

Jessie and Ryan looked over at Sergeant Kenton, confused.

“Sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier,” he said, “I was so focused on your questions about the scenes that I let it slide, but Dr. Roone thinks this case may be connected to another one he worked earlier in the week. There was an unmarked, silver cylinder found there too. As soon as he saw that, he called in the hazmat team.”

”I”m sorry, but we really need to get moving,” the petite EMT insisted.

“Sure,” Jessie replied, doing her best to temporarily set aside what she’d just heard, “one more question before you go, Marnie: did Tabitha have any enemies that you’re aware of?”

Marnie shrugged awkwardly inside the suit.

“I mean, she could be pretty harsh in her fashion commentary,” she acknowledged. “Not everybody was a fan. And she had a tendency to flaunt her newfound wealth, like a lot. I know there were some haters online regarding that. But she never mentioned anybody in particular who concerned her. I feel like she would have.”

“What about her ex-husband,” Ryan wanted to know, “did she get along with him?”

“Pretty well, yeah,” Marnie said. “I would call their relationship ‘amicable.’ They wanted to keep it that way for Sammy. She once told me that she didn’t have any animosity toward him. She just felt like she was stagnating with him.”

“That’s two questions,” the EMT noted and indicated that she wanted to close the doors. Ryan looked at Jessie, who nodded that she was okay with it. It took less than ten seconds from that go-ahead for the vehicle to pull out with siren blaring and lights flashing.

Once it was out of sight, she turned around to find herself face-to-face with a man wearing a gas mask. She half-jumped until she realized it was the coroner.

“Whoa,” she said. “You startled me, Dr. Roone.”

“Sorry about that,” he said, removing the mask, “I forgot I was wearing this. I called out to you both on the way over here, but I guess you couldn’t hear me with the sirens. Sergeant Kenton said you were anxious to speak to me, so I came out as soon as I could. I assume you”d like to hear what I”ve learned.”

Very much so,” she told him.

Jessie appreciated that the man didn’t want to waste their time. Dr. Michael Roone, an assistant coroner with the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner, was as fastidious in his manner as in his dress. Though his voice was perpetually gravelly and tired-sounding, he spoke quickly, as if he was constantly trying to end whatever conversation he was in. As usual, tonight he was wearing a suit jacket, tie, and slacks, despite the risk of the clothes getting stained or in this case, possibly covered in poison.

“We think the victim was poisoned using an aerosolized version of a toxin called botulinum,” he said.

“Isn’t that what’s used in Botox treatments?” Ryan asked.

“Yes,” Roone confirmed. “But that’s usually administered via injection and in much smaller doses. When exposed to this quantity of the poison, and in aerosolized form, it can be incredibly harmful. Remember, it’s a neurotoxin. And in massive quantities like this, it can cause anything from blurred vision to muscle weakness. Without treatment, it can lead to full muscle paralysis, including the muscles that cause breathing and make the heart pump. Inevitably, that results in respiratory failure.”

“Dear god,” Ryan muttered. “How common is this?”

“Not very,” he explained. “It most commonly occurs via foodborne transmission, and sometimes through infected wounds. Those are usually accidental. Aerosolized intoxication is much rarer and is almost always intentional. In this form, it’s essentially a bioweapon. The fact that the device that expelled the poison had a timer and a motion-activated sensor would seem to leave little doubt—this was a murder committed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing and the danger of the poison they were using.”

They were all quiet for a moment before Jessie asked the foremost question in her mind.

“How fast-acting is this?” she wondered. “It appears that Tabitha Reynolds barely had time to get out of the shower and certainly not enough to call for help.”

”Typically, it might take hours or even days for symptoms to become life-threatening,” Roone replied. ”In this instance, I”m guessing that—and I can”t stress this enough—the poison was massively concentrated.”

“So how exactly would this work?” Jessie pressed.

Roone scrunched up his face in concentration.

“My theory is that the killer would have placed the cylinder in the bathroom and set the timer,” he explained. “When time was up, the motion sensor was activated. Then, when Reynolds walked passed the sensor on the cylinder, the poison was expelled, exposing her. But since botulinum is colorless and odorless, she probably had no idea it was happening. She was in an enclosed bathroom. Assuming she got undressed and showered, that would have left her exposed for a while. Even a few minutes might be enough to cause her muscles to shut down. By the time she realized the extent of her situation, it was too late to act.”

Jessie pictured Tabitha Reynolds, in those final desperate moments, processing that her body was failing her and trying desperately to do something about it. Her clenched fist, grabbing at her bathmat only inches from her phone, was evidence of that.

“Sergeant Kenton said this wasn’t the first time you encountered this,” Ryan noted dourly.

Roone nodded.

“That’s right,” he confirmed. “Last night, I was called to a scene for a woman named Clarissa Langley. The circumstances were very similar. She was found in her Marina del Rey home, not ten minutes from here. Same basic situation. She was lying on the floor in her bedroom. Initial indications suggested a heart attack even though this was a thirty-nine-year-old woman in good shape. It wasn’t until the discovery of a cylinder just like the one we found in Tabitha Reynolds’ bathroom that we began to suspect something more ominous.”

“Weren’t you and your people exposed to the toxin?” Jessie asked.

”We were,” he answered, ”and we all underwent extensive testing after the fact. Luckily, while exposure to a concentrated dose of the poison is deadly, the toxin diffuses in the air pretty quickly. We arrived on the scene several hours after Langley”s estimated time of death, so our risk was greatly minimized.”

“But not here,” Ryan noted. “Tabitha Reynolds might have died as late as right before 6 p.m.”

”That”s true, which is why we”re having Ms. Krebs taken to the hospital. She”s at the most risk of exposure. Our people didn”t arrive on the scene until about thirty-five minutes later. That obviously put us at some risk, which is why we”re all wearing masks and will get tested again later. But my working theory is that unless one is exposed within the first few minutes after the release of the toxin, the risk is severely minimized. We caught a lucky break in that no one else was in the loft at the time, or we could be looking at multiple victims here.”

“Well,” Jessie said, “I hate to be the one to say it, but with two victims killed using the same method, it looks like we’ve got a serial killer on our hands.”

“Agreed,” Ryan said before turning to the coroner, “Dr. Roone, we’d love it if you could send us your report on Clarissa Langley’s death right away.”

“As soon as I get back to the office,” he promised.

“And I’ll call the detectives who’ve been handling the Langley case,” Sergeant Kenton said. “I can let them know you’re taking over and have them send you the police report immediately. Plus, we’re pulling any available security footage from both homes. I’ll let you know what we find.”

“That would be very helpful,” Jessie said, “Because right now we have two victims and no good leads to follow.”

Ryan sighed, and Jessie knew what he was thinking before he said it.

“I have a feeling that this is going to be a very long night.”