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

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Jessie could barely bring herself to eat.

She and Ryan were taking a lunch break at a café in Marina del Rey. The plan had been to review all the leads they had in order to determine who to speak to next, but it had been a slog.

They’d gotten an update from Dr. Roone, but it had only confirmed his initial suspicions. Like Clarissa Langley, both Tabitha Reynolds and Naomi Hackett had died from massive exposure to botulinum toxin.

Jamil and Beth were working on getting the GPS location data for both Danielle Robertson and Landon Powers, but it would take a few hours. Jessie wasn’t optimistic that either would pan out, but they didn’t have much else to go on.

Despite Parker’s insistence that they continue to pursue the professional connection between Clarissa Langley’s marketing firm and Naomi Hackett’s tech startup, they still hadn’t uncovered anything that could tie it to Tabitha Reynolds. She had been so successful promoting herself on social media that she’d never employed any marketing firm, much less Langley’s. And her work had no connection at all to Hackett’s startup. The rest of the news was no better.

“Even after looking at the video camera footage from each home in more detail,” Jamil said, “we weren’t able to find anything useful. No one entering or leaving was seen holding a canister and since the devices could have been planted so far in advance, drawing conclusions about more recent visitors is almost pointless anyway.”

Beth managed to offer them one mildly intriguing tidbit.

“When Danielle Robertson reached out to authorize us accessing her GPS data, she did mention a few people that she thought she recalled at multiple houses,” she told them over speaker. “One was a realtor, and another was a gardener, but she didn’t remember any names. She did say that they were both male and that she might be able to identify faces if we showed them to her.”

“These people were at all three homes?” Ryan asked.

“No,” Jamil said. “That’s why we haven’t prioritized it. She said she couldn’t remember if they were even at more than one home.”

“Honestly, she seemed to be grasping at straws,” Beth added. “I think she was just hoping to offer anything that might help, no matter how uncertain the leads.”

“Still,” Jamil assured them, “we’re going to go through family financials, looking for any realtors or gardeners that more than one of them used.”

Jessie was about to reply when she heard a commotion on the other end of the line. Then Parker’s voice came through loud and clear.

“Are you on with Hernandez and Hunt?” she asked the researchers.

“Yes, Captain,” Jamil told her. “We’re on speaker with them.”

”Hi, Captain,” Ryan said, sounding surprisingly pleasant. ”What”s up.”

“Nothing good,” Parker replied, not matching his tone. “I just got word. There’s been another murder, and they just discovered a canister by the body.”

“Where was this?” Ryan asked, putting down his sandwich.

“Pacific Palisades,” Parker told him. “But this one’s different. It looks like the poison didn’t have time to work. The victim’s head was crushed in.”

“Send us whatever you have,” Jessie said, grabbing her mostly untouched turkey wrap as she stood up. “We’re leaving now.”

***

Twenty five minutes later, they arrived at the home of Avery Sinclair.

On the way over, they”d gotten the basics on the woman from the research team. She was 41, married, with two children. She worked as a realtor. In fact, according to Jamil, she was this year”s Westside Realtor of the Year. Jessie looked over photos of the woman, including from her website. She was strikingly beautiful, statuesque, with long red hair, green eyes, ivory skin, and delicate, angular facial features.

Jessie looked up from her phone screen as they arrived on Sinclair’s street. They could identify her house by the multiple vehicles in front of it, which included a hazmat vehicle, a fire truck, three police cars, an ambulance, as well as vehicles from CSU and the coroner. They were just getting out of the car when they were approached by a tall officer with curly brown hair that Jessie didn’t know.

“Hi,” he said, waving as he approached, “I’m Sergeant Watt, lead officer on the scene. I recognized you when you were pulling up.”

They introduced themselves before Ryan launched in. “Let me guess. The hazmat team has sealed off the house. No investigators are allowed in yet.”

”That”s right,” Watt told them. ”No one but them is permitted inside until they clear the scene. Unfortunately, the first officers to arrive have already been transported to the hospital.”

“Are they okay?” Jessie asked.

“Neither of them showed any obvious signs of being affected but they were transported to UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center anyway as a precaution,” Watt answered.

“How did your people originally learn about the incident?” Jessie asked.

”The first officers on the scene were responding to a 911 call,” Watt explained. ”The operator said it sounded over the phone like someone was being assaulted. When they arrived, it was eight minutes after the call to 911, which occurred at 12:06 p.m. No one answered the door, so they forced entry. After a quick search, they found the victim in her bedroom. They called for backup and took some preliminary photos, including of the victim and the murder weapon, which appears to have been a trophy.”

“When did the hazmat team get involved?” Ryan asked.

“After their initial inspection of the scene, one of the responding officers noticed a metal canister partially hidden under the bed,” Watt told them. “That immediately raised alarm bells. Everyone knows about the recent spate of poison killings and has seen what those canisters look like. The moment they saw this one, they evacuated and called for the hazmat team.”

“Were they able to send you the photos they took?” Jessie asked, feeling slightly guilty for sounding like that was a greater concern to her than the officers’ welfare.

“They were,” Watt said, unfazed. “I have them here and can forward them to you as well.”

He held out his phone. The first image was of the trophy. That was blood and hair on the marble base of it. The second photo was a wide shot of Avery Sinclair lying on her bedroom floor. Blood had pooled around her head.

The third photo was a close-up of her wounds. Even with all her experience, it was hard for Jessie to take. Maybe what she saw was made worse by the images she’d just seen of Sinclair looking so put together on her realty website bio page. But the woman in the photo was unrecognizable.

The killer had struck at least four blows to separate parts of her head. Her face was covered in blood and there were deep indentations in the top of her skull, her forehead, her cheekbone, and an eye socket. Jessie looked away, trying not to think about the two young children who would learn later today that their mommy was gone and not coming back.

“Did the hazmat team provide an estimate for when we might be able to get in there?” Ryan asked.

“Nothing firm,” Watt replied, “but if you give me a minute, I can try to get an update.”

“That would be great,” Ryan told him.

Watt dashed off in the direction of the house. When he was out of earshot, Ryan said what Jessie had been thinking.

“What was the point of even coming all this way?” he growled in frustration. “If the hazmat team isn’t going to let us in anytime soon, we’re just spinning our wheels. We could have looked at those photos back in Marina del Rey.”

Jessie couldn’t disagree and was about to say so when their phones rang. It was the number for research. Jessie put the call on speaker.

“Please tell us you have something,” she pleaded.

“Nothing hugely promising,” Beth answered. “We’re still in the preliminary stages of looking for shared connections between Sinclair and the other victims, but so far we’re coming up empty.”

“What have you checked?” Ryan asked.

“Since Sinclair had two children,” Beth continued, “we looked to see if she was using Danielle Robertson as a tutor, but based on an initial review of her finances, it doesn’t appear that she used any tutor at all for them.”

“What about Landon Powers?” Jessie wondered. “Any sign that she ever used him as a trainer.”

“Not that we can find so far,” Beth answered. “She belongs to a gym, but not the one Powers is based out of and her personal trainer is a woman.”

Jessie couldn’t help but sigh. Both she and Ryan were quiet for a moment before she realized that the other researcher hadn’t said anything.

“Has Jamil found anything?” she asked.

”He”s looking into another lead right now, but so far, it hasn”t gone anywhere.”

Sergeant Watt was jogging back over. Jessie could tell from his expression that the news wasn’t good.

“The hazmat team tells me it will be at least another hour before they can authorize entry into the home, probably two before anyone can get up to the bedroom.”

Jessie was about to express her dissatisfaction verbally when she was interrupted by Jamil’s voice.

“Excuse me,” he said over speaker, his tone suggesting he was excited about what he was about to share.

“Go ahead,” Jessie told him, trying not to get her hopes up.

“I was following up on a hunch,” he said. “When I learned that Avery Sinclair was a realtor, it made me think back to how Danielle Robertson mentioned a realtor coming by at least one of the other victims’ homes. I noted that when Sinclair won realtor of the year, the runner-up was a guy named Mitchell Vaughn, Jr.. The name sounded familiar, so I just cross-checked it.”

Jessie felt a tingle in her fingers as she listened, sensing that something significant was about to be revealed. She stayed quiet as Jamil continued.

“It turns out that he was involved with at least two of the other victims. When Tabitha Reynolds and her husband got divorced, Vaughn was the realtor when they sold their home. And when Naomi Hackett’s family moved down here from the Bay Area, he was the realtor for the family they bought their house from.”

“That’s great work,” Ryan exclaimed. “Any link to Clarissa Langley?”

“Not that I could find so far,” Jamil conceded.

“There’s got to be something,” Jessie insisted. “This feels right. I mean, the woman was killed with the very trophy that she won, proving that she bested him. If it was him, it must have felt like poetic justice to use it as the murder weapon.”

“Actually,” Beth volunteered, “when I was looking through the Langley’s financials before, I saw that they paid for staging services for their home earlier this year. There was nothing about them putting the place on the market, but maybe they were considering it and changed their mind. If that’s the case, they would have surely met with some realtors to discuss it.”

Jessie looked at Ryan and said what she knew he was thinking.

“Let’s go find out!”