CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Jessie had been wrong.
It didn’t take them five minutes to get to Claire Hoffman’s condo complex. It took seven.
Susannah pulled up to the curb, and Jessie was out the passenger door before the car had come to a complete stop. They reached the exterior gate, which was locked. Susannah punched in the special gate code for the complex that was only available to emergency personnel so they could gain access in situations exactly like this one.
As they raced through the courtyard to the building’s main entrance, Jessie got a call. She pulled out her phone and looked at the screen. It was from Kat. That would have to wait. She sent it to voicemail and waited as Susannah entered the code for the interior door as well.
The building was only four stories high, with four units on each floor. But, of course, Hoffman lived on the fourth. Susannah hit the elevator button. When it didn’t open immediately, Jessie made a decision.
“I’ll take the stairs,” she said, “meet you up there!”
She darted over to the stairwell and took the stairs two at a time. By the time she reached the top floor, she was out of breath. Her recovery from the fight with the poisoner two weeks ago had left her unable to do her normal workout routine and she could feel the difference.
Seeing that Susannah hadn’t arrived yet, she tried to put her physical and mental exhaustion out of her head and find Hoffman’s unit. She was in 404, which was at the end of the hall.
Jessie was debating whether to wait for her partner to arrive when she saw something that made her blood run cold. On the floor just outside the door to the unit were two oranges and a head of lettuce.
It was certainly possible that someone inadvertently dropped an item from the store as they returned home. But three? No—this seemed less like an oversight and more like someone who had been forced into their home while holding groceries and had several items fall out without the assailant noticing.
She sprinted down the hall. When she got to the door, she found it closed. Forcing herself to breathe more quietly, she delicately turned the handle. It didn’t give at all. The thing was locked.
She was torn. She knew Susannah had the ability to pick locks, but she wasn’t here yet, and even if she had been, there wasn’t time for that. Clearly, Pearson was already in there with Claire Hoffman, doing who knows what. Jessie knew what.
Without another thought, she pulled out her weapon and did exactly what Susannah done at Pearson’s rental house. She fired a single shot at the handle and then a second one just to be sure. Then she kicked in the door.
She dropped to the ground and rolled inside. Pearson might prefer to knock out his victims and then suffocate them, but that didn’t mean he didn’t carry a gun or some other weapon. There was no one in the living room, which didn’t surprise her. That’s not where he did his dirty work.
But now that she’d fired her weapon, finding the bedroom became a race against time. She needed to get to Claire before Pearson completed his task. As she rushed through the living room toward the small hallway leading to what she hoped was the bedroom, she heard a cacophony of approaching sirens. Apparently the cavalry was on the way, but she feared they would be way too late.
On the short drive over here, Jamil had informed them that this was a one-bedroom condo, so she was pretty certain that the door she was staring at had both victim and perpetrator behind it. It was far more flimsy than the front door, and she didn’t even bother with the gun this time.
She kicked at the most vulnerable spot and the door, after giving the briefest of opposition, flew open. She knelt down on one knee and scanned the room.
Sure enough, a woman lay on the bed, completely naked. She didn’t have a mask on, which Jessie prayed meant that Pearson hadn’t gotten to the final stage of his process yet. As she peeked into the room, he was nowhere in sight.
Had he made a run for it when he heard the sirens? No, Jessie was already inside the condo by then. Had he tried to escape when he heard the gunshot? Unlikely. There was only one door to this place, and he wouldn’t have had time to sneak by as she came back here.
There was a balcony beyond the sliding glass door along the far wall, but that would be a forty-foot drop. She was dubious that he’d made that choice. She shimmied inside the room, making sure that there were no closets behind her. There weren’t, but there was one against the other wall. The door was slightly ajar.
She was about to move in that direction when she heard something. It sounded like an exhale from someone who’d been holding their breath. And it had come from the other side of the bed, next to the sliding door. She was just lifting her gun to point it in that direction when it happened.
Michael Pearson, who’d been crouched in hiding on that side of the bed, popped up slightly. Something flashed in his right hand. Jessie started to take aim when she realized what it was.
The man was holding a letter opener, and it was pressed against Claire Hoffman’s throat. Jessie considered firing but most of his torso was still behind the bed and his head was blocked by Claire’s body. She didn’t have a clear shot, and she wasn’t confident enough in her skills to take on this challenging.
“I’ll kill her!” he shouted.
Jessie took some small solace in those words, however threatening. They meant that he hadn’t already suffocated Claire. With that information in hand, Jessie, despite the rising anger in her chest, decided to change tactics.
“Okay, Michael,” she said, lifting her arm in the air and pointing her gun at the ceiling, “let’s stay calm here. I’m going to put my weapon away, and we can just talk this out.”
“You’re just trying to stall until the other cops get here,” he snarled.
“The other cop is already here,” Susannah said from behind Jessie, startling her. She hadn’t heard her come in. The detective’s gun was drawn and pointed at Pearson.
“Looks like your friend didn’t get the memo about putting the guns away,” Pearson said. His voice was confident, but his hand was shaking, intermittently poking Claire’s Hoffman’s throat slightly. Jessie saw a small trickle of blood roll down the woman’s neck.
“Michael,” she said, holstering her gun. “Let’s all bring the temperature down in here. Detective Valentine is going to holster her weapon and we’re going to find a way through this. That’s what you want, right?”
“I want transport to a non-extradition country,” he barked. “That’s what I want.”
“We can discuss that,” Jessie said, her voice even despite the rage that made her feel like her body was shaking from the inside out. There was no way this bastard was leaving the county, much less the country. “But we need a show of goodwill from you. Move the letter opener away from Claire’s neck.”
Pearson seemed to consider the idea. As he did, Jessie studied him. The man had an unassuming air about him. Nothing screamed serial killer, although appearance rarely gave that sort of thing away. Pearson was of average height, with lifeless brown hair, dull eyes, and generally unmemorable features. Maybe that was part of the issue. Maybe this was his way of finally making an impression.
“How do I know that if I do that” he finally asked, “you won’t just pull out your guns and shoot me dead?”
Susannah took that one.
“Because we’re law enforcement officers, not murderers,” she said. “We want everyone to get out of this alive. Even you.”
Jessie wasn’t so sure she agreed with that sentiment, but she kept her thoughts to herself.
“You know,” Pearson said, his voice turning plaintive as he nodded at Claire Hoffman’s naked torso, “if this one here had been as decent as you two, maybe she wouldn’t be in this situation right now.”
Jessie somehow doubted that the man was choosing his victims based purely on how nice they were. But she held her tongue on that point too. Instead, she tried to appeal to his ego.
“Listen, Michael, maybe these people didn’t treat you right, but forget about them,” she said. “I can’t promise you that you’re going to leave the country. That’s not realistic. I want to be honest with you about that. But I can promise that you’re going to become a celebrity now. Your trial will be all over television. You’ll have women sending you letters asking to meet you, talking about how great your conjugal visits will be.”
He licked his lips at that idea, so she kept going.
“But all of that only happens if you’re alive,” she added. “You hear those sirens? Those officers will be up here soon. And the more cops in this room, the more chance that something goes wrong. But if you toss that letter opener away and surrender yourself to us, you’ll be in cuffs before they even get up here. And then the whole process starts. The news stories. The jail interviews. Those letters I mentioned from adoring groupies. Your life is about to change, in some ways for the better. So what do you say, let’s end all this craziness?”
He turned the offer over in his head. Jessie could tell that it appealed to him. He just needed to take that final step. He looked over at Claire and then back at Jessie. And then he stood up. He started to walk slowly, moving toward the foot of the bed.
“That’s great, Michael,” Jessie said. “You just need to drop the letter opener.”
“You know,” he said, “maybe if the girls back in school were more like you, I wouldn’t have ended up like this.”
Saying those words seemed to do something to him. Jessie watched as he cast his mind back to whatever trauma from his youth had led him down this road. And in that instant, she saw his eyes darken. She knew the moment was lost.
Suddenly he leapt across the foot of the bed, the pointy end of the letter opener headed toward her. But apparently, she hadn’t been the only one to notice the change in Pearson. With incredible speed, Susannah unholstered her gun and fired, hitting the man in the right shoulder.
He collapsed onto the bed, his torso landing on Claire Hoffman’s legs. His arm fell limply by his side and the letter opener dropped from his hands, bouncing once on the bed before coming to rest at Jessie’s feet.
Susannah, without hesitation, holstered her weapon and moved toward Pearson. Within seconds, she had yanked him from the bed to the ground. He lay on his stomach, where she jammed her knee into his back as she pulled out her cuffs.
Jessie looked at Pearson. The man had tried to kill her, even after she set aside her feelings and tried to help him survive this thing, an offer he’d never made to his victims. The rage returned.
Jessie glanced at the letter opener lying at her feet. She could imagine the cold steel in her palm as she grabbed it, clenched it tight in her fingers, and jammed it deep into the top of Pearson’s skull. Unable to stop the image from invading her brain or the excitement from filling her gut, she bent down to pick it up.
“What are you doing?” Susannah said, shaking her out of her fever dream. “Don’t touch that, Jessie. You know it’s evidence.”
“Right, sorry,” Jessie said, covering quickly. “I was just going to move it away from him. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“Just let the crime scene folks bag it,” Susannah said, apparently oblivious to the churning hatred still roiling inside her partner. “Can you check on Hoffman?”
“Yes. Of course,” Jessie said, trying to get back into her normal headspace. She wanted to slap herself in the face but decided against it. Instead, she moved over to the bed to check on the victim she was supposedly here to save.