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Time was running out.
Jessie looked at the clock on the wall of the small conference room. It read: 3:34 p.m. They had less than an hour until Chief Decker”s news conference about the poison canister murders, and so far, they had nothing to go on.
It wasn’t for a lack of effort. They had checked back in with everyone who could be of help. Sergeant Watt from the Avery Sinclair crime scene had filled them in on what he knew.
”There was a Ring camera on Sinclair”s front door, but it wasn”t operating properly,” he had explained when they spoke earlier. ”We checked the footage from just prior to the 911 call, and it looks like it was damaged. We found a large rock in the rose bushes beside the door, which we think the killer threw at the camera to disable it. Everything from six minutes prior to the call is blurry and distorted. It”s clear that someone approached the house in that time but there”s no way to identify who it is.”
“Any luck on fingerprints or DNA?” Ryan had asked.
”No word yet on the latter, but the fingerprints came up empty,” Watt said. ”The only ones we definitively ID”d on the trophy were Sinclair”s and a woman named Gail Musco, the emcee who handed it to her last night. And we checked—Musco left town for a holiday trip with her family this morning.”
Soon after that disappointing conversation, they’d gotten a call from Officer Stoller, who had accompanied Marian Voytek back to the Vaughn Realty office.
“Ms. Voytek can’t find any record of Clarissa Langley in their files,” Stoller had told them. “She says that doesn’t preclude them having ever met, perhaps at an open house or other event. But apparently Vaughn never formally worked with her.”
Jessie knew that Ryan was thinking the same thing that she was: none of this was enough to take to Parker. The Ring camera neither helped nor hurt Vaughn. Nor did the lack of fingerprints on the trophy. That only confirmed that the killer was wearing gloves. And Jessie could hear Captain Parker in her head, making the very point that Officer Stoller had. Not having Clarissa Langley as a client didn’t prove that Vaughn didn’t know her. It only proved that he hadn’t created a file for her.
In desperation, Jessie had even gone back to Mitchell Vaughn to plead her case, this time notably without Ryan. She hoped that the man might provide something—anything—that could definitively allow them to eliminate him as a suspect. When she had walked into the interrogation room, Vaughn was sitting with his lawyer, a smallish man in his forties with a mustache and an aggressive comb-over, who handed her card that read: J. August Kinney.
“Mr. Kinney,” she began, sitting down opposite both men, “I know your client has invoked his right to counsel, but I’m imploring both of you to reconsider his lack of cooperation.”
“Why?” Kinney asked.
“Because, despite our initial interaction with Mr. Vaughn, I think there’s a better than decent chance that he didn’t commit these crimes,” Jessie told him. “And if that’s the case, then it means there’s a killer out there while he’s in here. But in order to convince my bosses of that, I have to have something to work with. If he can walk me through where he was over the last week, it could prove helpful to both him and us.”
“How can my client know that you won’t use what he says against him?” Kinney asked, sounding unconvinced.
“I can’t promise anything,” Jessie said, “but if he’s not responsible for these murders, then nothing he says will incriminate him, and it might save other lives. As it is right now, the department is ready to recommend charges against your client. If you can give me a compelling reason to advise against that, it will prevent any future damage to his reputation and help us refocus on the real killer.”
“Ms. Hunt,” Kinney said, a smarmy smile on his face, “while I can assure you that Mr. Vaughn had nothing to do with these terrible crimes, and also convey that we wish you success in your investigation, solving this case is not his responsibility. Moreover, here’s what I can promise you. If the LAPD holds a news conference, as I’m hearing it will, naming my client and recommending he be indicted for murder, this department will face a lawsuit unlike anything it’s ever encountered before.”
“There’s no need for threats, Mr. Kinney,” Jessie said.
“I beg to differ, Ms. Hunt,” Kinney countered. “There is no physical evidence tying Mr. Vaughn to these killings. His arrest was based on hasty assumptions and circumstantial evidence that can be easily rebutted. Furthermore, he is a respected member of the city’s business community, and you will be irrevocably besmirching his name, likely making it impossible for him to continue to make a living here. You would be taking this action despite direct warnings about the impact of making these allegations publicly. So let me be clear. Mr. Vaughn will not be cooperating with this department in any way. He expects to be released immediately. And if Chief Decker names him to the news media, rest assured that I will be at a microphone minutes later announcing a pending lawsuit against the department for a sum involving nine digits. Have I made myself clear?”
He had, which was why Jessie had now returned to the conference room more depressed than when she’d left it. Ryan hadn’t even asked how the meeting had gone. It was all over her face.
“Anything from Jamil and Beth while I was gone?” she asked dejectedly.
“I haven’t checked in with them lately,” Ryan admitted. “I figured that if they had something, they would have called.”
“Well, I’m at my wit’s end,” Jessie said, slumping in her chair. “The frustrating thing is that, even if Vaughn had given us alibis for the times of the murders, it wouldn’t help much. Just like with Landon Powers and Danielle Robertson, he could have planted those canisters much earlier and set them to release at a time of his choosing.”
Ryan shook his head in frustration, before raising his hand as if asking for permission to comment. Only he didn’t wait.
“Maybe we check in with the families and staff of the victims again,” he suggested. “It’s possible that someone remembers Vaughn coming by recently. Unlike Powers and Robertson, who both went to these houses regularly, it would be odd for a relator to show up at their home if they didn’t have business with him anymore.”
”But that assumes that Vaughn might be our guy,” Jessie reminded him, ”and I don”t think he is, so that line of inquiry would be following a dead-end lead.”
Ryan was quiet for a moment, as if slightly afraid to say what was he was thinking.
“Go ahead,” she told him. “I can tell you have something on your mind.”
“Okay,” he began carefully, “I get that you think Vaughn is wrong for this. And I’m inclined to agree with you. But nothing we’ve found exonerates him. And what we have found makes him the most likely culprit out of anyone we’ve encountered so far. Maybe it’s time to stop trying to find holes in the case against him and start shoring it up. Is it possible that Parker isn’t the only one being a little pig-headed here?”
Jessie sat with that for a moment, then stood up.
“Please don’t get pissed,” he begged.
“I’m not pissed,” she told him, and it was true. “It’s a fair point. I’ll admit that I’m confident that I’m right about this, but maybe I’m holding on to that too tight. I think I just need to take a little break to clear my head, then come at this fresh. Do you mind if I step out, maybe call Hannah to check in on how Kat’s doing?”
“I actually think that’s a great idea,” he said. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
She leaned over and gave him a kiss to reinforce that she wasn’t upset with him. Then she left the conference room and walked down the long hallway that led to the back door of the West Los Angeles Station. She stepped outside and made her way to a concrete bench along the back wall of the building.
This place was the opposite of Central Station, which was old and dilapidated but had a charming central courtyard with grass, a tree, and multiple wooden benches. The scenery around here was much nicer, with dozens of palm trees swaying in the wind. But the outdoor break area was a fenced-in patch of asphalt with unforgiving benches. Since that was all she had, Jessie sat down, pulled out her phone, and let her finger hover over the screen.
She considered calling Kat directly but worried the conversation might take longer than she had right now. A surge of guilt hit her, as she realized she was avoiding her grieving friend in favor of a case. Trying to push the feeling out of her head, she called Hannah instead.
The call rang once and went straight to voicemail, a clear sign that her sister was either in the middle of something or just didn”t want to be bothered. Hannah had even told her once, back in her junior year of high school, that she would sometimes let the phone ring once before declining it to let the caller know that they”d been rejected in favor of whatever she was doing at that moment. The thought was infuriating. Now, even her mental break was falling through.
Her thoughts drifted to her sister. Even though she had made so many strides, Hannah could still be stubborn and immature. Right now, she was helping out a woman in deep pain, but she could just as easily slip back into her high school mentality, where it didn’t occur to her to think about anyone other than herself. She was technically an adult, and often acted like it. But sometimes she behaved like a little child.
As that realization hit her, Jessie felt an intense shudder that passed up through her body and into her brain, where an odd tingle lingered. She knew the sensation. She’d had it many times before. It almost always meant she was onto something, but that her mind hadn’t yet wrapped itself around what. She couldn’t put her finger on what her brain was trying to tell her, but she knew one thing: it wasn’t about Hannah. It was about this case.
She got up and walked back inside. But this time she wasn’t wandering listlessly. Now she was moving with a purpose.