CHAPTER TWENTY
Kari had been wrong before. Every detective had.
You followed a lead that seemed promising, convinced you were finally onto something, and then it turned into a dead end that cost you days or weeks of work.
It was part of the job, part of the frustrating, painstaking process of building a case out of fragments and speculation.
But she couldn't remember being this frustrated in a long time.
She sat across from Detective Carter in a coffee shop near the L.A.P.D. station, surrounded by the debris of two hours of intensive work. Carter had spread printouts across the small table—medical records, appointment logs, financial documents, witness statements, phone records.
All of it pointed toward Dr. Callum Pemberton. And none of it was enough to prove anything.
"His middle name is definitely Michael," Carter said, tapping a highlighted section of one document.
"So M could be him using that name to keep things discreet.
And look at this—Jennifer had seven appointments with Pemberton in the six months before her death.
That's more than twice the average for his patients.
She was seeing him almost every three weeks. "
"But that doesn't prove they were romantically involved. It could just mean she was getting more procedures, or that she had ongoing issues that required follow-up."
Kari stared at the documents spread across the table, willing them to reveal something they hadn't already told her.
Jennifer had been seeing someone secretly.
That someone had used the initial M in her phone.
Pemberton fit the profile almost perfectly—charming, powerful, with access to vulnerable young women and the medical knowledge to stage an overdose convincingly.
But fitting a profile wasn't the same as committing a crime. And without concrete evidence linking Pemberton to Jennifer's death, they had nothing but suspicions and coincidences.
"What about his alibis?" she asked. "For the nights of the deaths?"
Carter's expression soured further. "Solid.
Frustratingly, infuriatingly solid. The night Jennifer died, Pemberton was at a medical conference in San Diego.
He gave a presentation at eight PM, attended a reception until midnight, had drinks with colleagues until almost two.
Dozens of witnesses, plus hotel records showing he didn't check out until the next morning. "
"Could he have driven back to L.A. during the night? San Diego's only a couple hours away."
"I thought of that. But his car never left the hotel parking structure—I pulled the security footage myself.
And there's no record of him renting a car, taking a rideshare, or getting on any buses or trains.
" Carter shook her head. "Unless he teleported, he was physically in San Diego when Jennifer died. "
"What about the other deaths? Amanda Escalante? Destiny Morales?"
"Similar story. The night Amanda died, Pemberton was at a charity gala in Beverly Hills until past midnight.
The night Destiny died, he was on vacation in Cabo San Lucas with his wife.
" Carter's jaw tightened. "His wife, Blackhorse.
If he was having affairs with these models, his wife either didn't know or didn't care.
Either way, she vouched for his presence in Mexico. "
Kari sat back, taking it all in. They had a clear pattern—five deaths, all connected to the same agencies, all staged to look like suicides or overdoses.
They had a victim's phone showing a possessive relationship with someone using the initial M.
They had a suspect who fit the profile almost perfectly, who had access to all the victims, who had the medical knowledge to stage their deaths.
And they had alibis that weren't cracking no matter how hard they pushed.
"Maybe Pemberton isn't M," she said reluctantly. "Maybe we've been looking at this wrong from the beginning."
"Then who is? We've been through everyone connected to Jennifer—the photographers, the agency staff, other models, her doctors, her landlord.
No one else fits the profile." Carter gathered the scattered papers into a rough stack.
"Maybe M stands for something else entirely.
A nickname, a code word, an inside joke we haven't figured out. "
"Or maybe there's someone we haven't considered yet. Someone we've overlooked."
Carter looked at her. "Like who?"
Kari didn't have an answer. She'd talked to everyone she could think of—the roommates, the agency heads, the photographers, the doctor.
She'd followed every lead, chased every connection.
And she kept ending up in the same place: frustrated, confused, certain that the answer was right in front of her but unable to see it.
"What about Tayen?" Carter asked after a moment of silence. "Any leads on where she might be?"
"Nothing. No credit card activity since she disappeared, no phone pings, no sightings. She's either hiding very effectively or..." Kari didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.
"Blackhorse, I have to be honest with you.
" Carter's voice was gentle but firm. "I've done everything I can do without official standing to investigate these deaths.
I've pulled records, made calls, talked to witnesses.
But I can't commit all my time to this one case.
I have other investigations, other missing persons, other families waiting for answers. "
"I understand."
"That doesn't mean I'm giving up. It just means I have to be realistic about what I can do.
" Carter paused, regarding Kari sympathetically.
"And you should be realistic too. Tayen ran away from home once before.
She changed her name, cut off her family, built a completely new life.
Isn't it at least possible that's what she's doing again?
That she got scared or overwhelmed and decided to disappear on purpose? "
Kari wanted to argue, but the words wouldn't come.
Carter was right—there was no concrete evidence that Tayen had been taken against her will.
No signs of struggle at her apartment, no witnesses to an abduction, no ransom demands.
Just a young woman who'd gone dark on social media the same day her friend had died under suspicious circumstances.
It could be a coincidence. It could be fear. It could be Tayen running away again, the way she'd run from the reservation two years ago, the way she'd run from her aunt and her past and everyone who'd known her before.
But Kari didn't believe that. Couldn't believe it. Something had happened to Tayen, something connected to Amanda's death and Jennifer's death and all the other young women who'd died in suspicious circumstances over the past five years. The pattern was too clear, the timing too convenient.
She just couldn't prove it.
"I'll keep looking," Kari said. "On my own if I have to."
"I know you will." Carter stood, gathering her jacket from the back of her chair. "Call me if you find anything solid. Anything I can actually act on. Until then, I'll keep this file open and check in when I can."
After Carter left, Kari sat alone in the coffee shop, staring at the empty chair across from her.
She thought about the messages on Jennifer's phone, the desperate attempts to create distance from M.
She thought about Diana's suggestion that Pemberton might be involved, and the solid alibis that seemed to clear him.
She thought about Tayen, somewhere in this vast sprawling city, possibly alive and hiding, possibly already dead and waiting to be found.
And she thought about her mother, who had spent years investigating patterns of suspicious deaths among indigenous people, who had seen connections that everyone else dismissed, who had been so close to exposing something when she'd died under circumstances that everyone had accepted too easily.
Kari wasn't going to accept anything easily.
She was going to keep digging, keep questioning, keep pushing until she found the truth.
Even if everyone else had given up. Even if she was the only one who still believed there was a killer walking free among the beautiful people of L.A. 's modeling industry.
She pulled out her laptop and opened a search window.
She'd talked to everyone who knew Tayen, everyone who knew Amanda, everyone who worked at the agencies.
But she hadn't dug deeply into the backgrounds of everyone she'd talked to.
She'd taken people at their word, accepted their stories, trusted their presentations of themselves.
Maybe it was time to verify what she'd been told.
She started with Jessica Vance, typing the name into a search engine and scanning the results. Press releases, industry profiles, a few society page mentions from charity events. A career that stretched back thirty years, documented every step of the way. Nothing that raised any red flags.
Next she searched Vanessa Caldwell. More of the same—a modeling career in the nineties, a transition to talent management, a scandal involving a married Hollywood actor that had been tabloid fodder fifteen years ago but seemed to have no connection to violence or death.
Caldwell's life was an open book, thoroughly documented by entertainment reporters and industry publications.
Then she typed in Diana Shepherd.
The search returned almost nothing. A staff listing on the Image Management website. A bare-bones LinkedIn profile with minimal information. No social media presence, no news articles, no digital footprint of any kind from before she started working at the agency.
Kari frowned at the screen. Everyone had a digital footprint these days, especially people who worked in image-conscious industries like modeling and entertainment.
High school photos on Facebook, old tweets from a decade ago, mentions in local newspapers from their hometown.
But Diana Shepherd seemed to have materialized out of thin air when she started at Image Management.
Which meant either she was extremely private—obsessively so—or Diana Shepherd wasn't her real name.
Kari thought about what Diana had said at the cafe. I came to L.A. with dreams of my own, once upon a time. Small town girl from the Midwest.
The roommates had said something similar.
Diana was from a small town, understood what it was like to feel lost in the big city.
But which small town? What had her name been before she came to L.A.
and reinvented herself? Why was there no record of her existence before she started working at Image Management?
Lots of people reinvented themselves when they moved to California. Lots of people left their old identities behind and became someone new. That was half the mythology of this city—the idea that you could come here and be whoever you wanted to be.
But Kari's instincts were prickling now, the way they'd prickled when she'd first learned about the pattern of deaths among Elite Vision models. Something wasn't adding up. Something about Diana's story didn't quite fit.
She opened a new search window and started digging deeper.