Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Unwelcome News
JAMIE
It didn’t come as a complete surprise to Jamie that she was fired that morning, right after pouring her coffee.
Never bodes well when a prospective new client snarls at you within the first five minutes.
Or that the cute guy she just met scared the hell out of him.
Usually, Jamie could find a way around the initial psychosis of the moment with a new client that usually began with defiance against the forces that brought Jamie in.
But Duncan Reeves was beyond the pale. A man so convinced his success was solely his own that he simply could not accept he had flaws, or a blind spot, or even so much as a misunderstanding of the situation.
Whatever threat Cliff had levied only lasted so long.
So, when she got on an unannounced Zoom call with her boss and the glowering HR department head was also present, she knew she was finished. She signed a nondisclosure agreement, packed up her computer to send back, took her three weeks’ of severance pay, and logged off.
Getting canned should have made Jamie feel bad about herself.
She could not abide the proper cues of corporate America that relentlessly told her she didn’t work hard enough, she wasn’t worthy of their time sheet approval or 401(k) plan, and no matter how much she gave to the job, it only gave her money and nothing more.
No sense of purpose. Somehow, this latest event had crossed the constantly moving line of the corporate overlords.
Strangely, her firing was having the opposite effect.
She felt relieved. Light. Peppy. Energized.
She might be momentarily deranged, but she decided to embrace it.
For all she knew, in a day’s time she might be camped out under the covers, depression kicking in and anxiety clocking in right around bedtime.
However, in this moment of unexplained glee, she made a phone call.
She dialed the familiar number and listened to it ring exactly three times before the man on the other end picked up, as was his custom. “Crandall.”
A smile came to Jamie as she heard her old supervisor’s gruff greeting on the line. “Is Carl Grubbs pestering you with his conspiracy theories again?”
A short chuckle and then, “Damn, Jamie. How could you tell. How are you?”
“I’m good, Max. I’m good. How are the violent offenders these days?”
“Still offending, still chapping my ass, same old cesspool,” he groused. “What can I do for you?”
“I know this comes out of the blue, but I was just wondering if there were some temp jobs or freelance gigs I could fill over there. I miss doing real work.” Jamie struggled to say what she really felt. “I miss doing something important.”
There was a lengthy pause. Finally, Max spoke. “Listen, kid. I’d love to have you back. You were the best forensic psychologist we ever had. Helped us break some of our hardest cases, put some really dangerous men behind bars. But I gotta ask, Why now?”
Jamie fought off the visions of the night she was almost strangled within an inch of her life. “I figure it’s never going to be perfect timing, Max. Why not now?”
Another pause. Jamie sensed there was something Max wasn’t telling her.
“I don’t know, kid. Things are different. Bureaucracy is making things harder. And there seems to be less crime, but it’s more violent.”
Jamie paused. She didn’t expect him to dissuade her from coming back. Jamie felt a chill run up her spine. “Max, what are you not saying?”
“Listen, I was going to call you. Make you aware before it happened so you could prepare. That’s why your timing is so strange.” He took a deep, heavy breath and exhaled. “They’re letting him out. He copped a plea to rat out another guy, reduced his sentence.”
No …
“Do you want us to put a detail on you for a few weeks after he’s out?” Max offered.
Max sounded far away. Jamie sat frozen, gripping the phone, unable to stop the flashbacks as fear crept in, cold, oily, and insistent.
His rough, dry hands around her throat. His breath hot and stinking of tequila.
His low crackle of a laugh, almost gleeful, while he was strangling her.
The smell of gasoline on his clothes. The abject fear that he was going to set her on fire.
When she first assessed him, she’d noted that he was dangerously obsessive, murderous, and exhibited truly anarchist behavior. The more Jamie thought about it, the more she came to the cold, terrifying conclusion that he would most definitely come after her. She had to prepare.
“Jamie? You still there?”
She came back to the voice on the other end. “When? And how? How is he out? I thought it was fifteen to life?”
“He rolled over on two other guys who committed a double murder in Boyle Heights. He plea-bargained and reduced his sentence to seven years, and that shithead prosecutor got greedy.”
“I’ll take that detail, Max. Thanks for offering.”
“Copy. I’ll make sure the captain signs off on the budget. Hopefully, we will be able to send a couple of guys your way in a few days.”
Hopefully? “Okay.”
“Sure. Maybe I’ll stop by our place tonight on my way—”
But Jamie had already hung up. A deep chord of fear was struck inside her, like a swarm of bees in her gut.
Melvyn Ott was getting out.