CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Image Management's lobby was designed to impress—all white walls and chrome accents and oversized photographs of beautiful people in beautiful clothes.
A young receptionist sat behind a curved desk that looked like it belonged in a spaceship, her smile carefully practiced as she looked up at Kari's approach.
"I'm here to see Diana Shepherd," Kari said.
The receptionist's smile flickered almost imperceptibly. "I'm sorry, Diana called in sick today. Can I take a message, or would you like to speak with someone else?"
Kari felt a prickle of unease crawl up her spine. Diana had seemed fine yesterday at the cafe—tired, but not ill. And calling in sick the morning after their conversation felt like more than coincidence.
It felt like someone who knew the walls were closing in and was preparing to run.
Before she could respond, the lobby door opened behind her and a young woman rushed in.
She was barely twenty, with the kind of striking bone structure that photographers loved—high cheekbones, a long neck, eyes set at just the right distance apart.
But her appearance was disheveled, her mascara smeared, her hands twisting together nervously as she approached the desk.
"Is Mama here today?" the girl asked the receptionist, her voice carrying the edge of barely contained panic. "I really need to talk to her. It's important—I just got back from a casting and something happened and I don't know what to do—"
"I'm sorry, sweetie." The receptionist's voice softened with sympathy. "She called in sick this morning. Do you want me to try her cell, or—"
The girl's face crumpled with disappointment.
"I've already tried calling her. She's not answering.
" She stood there for a moment, looking lost, then seemed to collect herself.
"Never mind. I'll figure it out." She turned and hurried back out the door without another word, leaving behind a faint scent of perfume and desperation.
Kari stood frozen in the lobby, the word echoing in her mind like a bell.
Mama.
The models called Diana "Mama."
M.
She thought of the messages on Jennifer's phone, all those texts she'd read and reread, certain she was looking at a toxic romantic relationship.
I made dinner. Too much for one person. Not a lover cooking for their partner.
A surrogate mother offering a home-cooked meal to a lonely girl who probably hadn't had anyone take care of her like that in years.
I thought we had something special. Not romantic love. Not passion. The special bond between a mentor and the young woman she'd taken under her wing—a bond that Diana had convinced herself was mutual, irreplaceable, eternal.
You can't just shut me out. I won't let you. Possessive, controlling, desperate—but not romantic possession. The smothering, suffocating "love" of someone who saw herself as essential to another person's survival and couldn't accept being told otherwise.
There had been nothing explicitly romantic in those messages.
Nothing that required a romantic interpretation.
Kari had assumed an affair because of the intensity, the jealousy, the desperate need that pulsed through every word.
But she'd been reading them through the wrong lens, seeing what she expected to see instead of what was actually there.
Jennifer wasn't trying to escape a romantic relationship gone toxic. She was trying to escape an obsessive friendship with someone who had appointed herself as mother, protector, and sole source of support—someone who couldn't handle it when her "daughter" tried to grow up and live her own life.
The "work mom" who was "like a big sister." The caring mentor who understood what it was like to be lost in L.A. The woman from a small town who looked out for vulnerable young models who had no one else to turn to.
Diana.
Mama.
M.
"Ma'am?" The receptionist's voice cut through Kari's racing thoughts. "Can I help you with something else?"
"I need to see Vanessa Caldwell. Right now."
"Ms. Caldwell is in a meeting with a client. I can schedule you an appointment—"
"Get her out of it." Kari pulled out her phone, letting the receptionist see her thumb hovering over the keypad. "Or I call L.A.P.D. and have them send a squad car to pull her out. Your choice."
The receptionist's smile faltered, uncertainty flickering behind her carefully made-up eyes. She picked up her phone, spoke quietly into it, then looked back at Kari with an expression that was no longer friendly. "Ms. Caldwell will see you in her office. Down the hall, last door on the right."
Vanessa Caldwell's office was as sleek and impressive as the lobby—floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, minimalist but expensive-looking furniture, photographs of famous models covering one wall in a gallery of perfect faces.
Vanessa herself stood behind her desk, arms crossed, her expression cold enough to freeze water.
"Detective Blackhorse. I thought I made it clear that we've cooperated fully with your investigation. If you have additional questions, you can submit them through our legal counsel—"
"I need to know about Diana Shepherd."
Something shifted in Vanessa's face—a tightening around the eyes, a slight stiffening of her already rigid posture. "What about her?"
"Tell me about who she was before she became your assistant. Before she became Diana Shepherd at all."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do." Kari stepped closer to the desk, trying to keep up her momentum.
"There's no trace of Diana Shepherd before she started working here.
No social media history, no news articles, no digital footprint of any kind.
Because Diana Shepherd isn't her real name.
You know who she really is. You know what happened to her before she reinvented herself. "
Vanessa was silent for a long moment, her face unreadable. Then she walked to her office door and closed it with a soft click.
"What I'm about to tell you is confidential," she said quietly, not turning around. "Diana's past is not something she shares with anyone. I've respected her privacy for years, protected her from questions, helped her build a new life. If you use this to hurt her—"
"I think Diana has been killing young models for years and staging their deaths as suicides and overdoses. I think she killed Amanda Escalante last week, and I think she may have killed Tayen Chee, too."
Vanessa turned around. Her face had gone pale, losing control of herself for the first time since Kari had met her. She groped for her chair and sank into it, her hands trembling as they gripped the armrests.
"That's... that's insane," she said, but her voice lacked conviction. "Diana would never hurt anyone. She loves those girls. She dedicates her entire life to taking care of them."
"Tell me who she is. Her real name. What happened to her."
Vanessa stared at her desk, her perfectly manicured nails pressing white crescents into the leather of her chair. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.
"I scouted her about eight years ago. She was from a small town in Nebraska—Millbrook, I think, or maybe Millbury.
One of those dying farming communities where everyone leaves as soon as they graduate high school.
She had the look. God, did she have the look.
The height, those incredible eyes that photographed like nothing I'd ever seen.
I brought her to L.A., introduced her to the right people, got her started in the business.
" Vanessa's voice caught. "I thought I was doing her a favor. Giving her a chance at a better life."
"But?"
"But she couldn't handle it. The pressure, the constant criticism, the rejection—she took everything personally.
Every photographer who said her nose was wrong, every designer who passed on her, every casting she didn't book.
Other girls develop a thick skin, learn to separate themselves from the business.
She couldn't. She internalized all of it, and she started. .. unraveling."
"What happened?"
"Fashion Week. Her second year in the industry.
She was walking a show—a big one, career-making, the kind of opportunity most girls would kill for.
And she just... stopped. In the middle of the runway, in front of hundreds of people—buyers, press, photographers.
She stopped walking and started crying. Couldn't move, couldn't speak, and couldn’t respond to anything.
Security had to physically carry her off the runway while everyone watched.
" Vanessa closed her eyes, as if she could still see it happening.
"It was everywhere for about a day. Then the next scandal came along and everyone forgot about her.
But her career was over. No one would touch her after that. "
"And she was hospitalized?"
"Six months in a psychiatric facility. Complete breakdown—depression, anxiety, some kind of attachment disorder, I don't know all the clinical terms. When she got out, she had nothing.
Her career was destroyed, her savings were gone, and her family—" Vanessa shook her head.
"They'd already written her off when she left Nebraska.
They weren't interested in helping her put her life back together. "
"So she came to you."
"I felt responsible. I was the one who brought her here, who convinced her she could make it, who painted pictures of fame and success that she wasn't equipped to handle.
When she showed up at my office, begging for any kind of work, I couldn't turn her away.
" Vanessa looked up at Kari, her eyes glistening.
"I gave her a job as my assistant. Let her start over with a new name, a new identity.
And she was good at it. Really good. She understood what the girls were going through because she'd been through it herself.
She connected with them, supported them, became like a mother figure to so many of them. "
"What was her name?" Kari asked. "Her real name, before she changed it?"
Vanessa hesitated, years of loyalty and secrecy warring with the horror of what Kari was suggesting. "I shouldn't—"
"People are dying. Tayen Chee has been missing for days and may already be dead. Every minute we waste is another minute Diana has to cover her tracks. What was her name?"
"Corinne," Vanessa said finally, the word coming out like a confession. "Corinne Lindquist. From Millbrook, Nebraska."
Kari felt the final piece click into place with an almost audible snap.
Diana was close to all the victims—she'd been their confidant, their support system, their "Mama.
" Diana was the "work mom" Jennifer's mother had described, the mentor who was "like a big sister.
" Diana—Corinne—had pointed Kari toward Pemberton to throw her off the trail, had expressed concern, and offered information designed to send the investigation in the wrong direction.
And Diana had a history of mental instability, of being unable to cope with rejection, of breaking down when things didn't go the way she expected.
The caring mentor who couldn't let go when her protégées tried to leave. The surrogate mother who couldn't accept that her "daughters" might want to live their own lives, make their own choices, form relationships that didn't include her.
"Where does Diana live?" Kari asked.
"She has an apartment in Koreatown. I can give you the address." Vanessa was already reaching for her computer. "But if she called in sick, if she's not answering her phone—"
"Give me everything you have. Apartment address, emergency contacts, anywhere else she might go. It might just be a matter of life and death."