CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
It was her.
Jessie recognized the woman as the same one in the various photos Jamil and Beth had sent.
Like so many of the other women that Mannix had courted, Rebecca Sullivan had brown hair.
Apparently, that was his type. Sullivan’s was tied back in a bouncy ponytail.
She wore black slacks and a professional cream blouse, which seemed like the right attire for a hospital administrator.
If she was their killer, she had likely changed at some point.
Jessie couldn’t imagine her committing a double murder in that outfit.
Arterial spray would have almost certainly got on her clothes.
Sullivan pressed the remote control to lock her car and it beeped once.
“That’s a good sign,” Jessie said. “She wouldn’t be locking the car if her daughter was in it. One less thing to worry about.”
Sullivan was walking along the path from the driveway to her front door, though her attention was on her phone.
“I say we go now,” Jessie said urgently. “If she gets inside and locks the door, things get much more complicated.”
“I get it,” Webb said, “but the concern is whether she has a weapon. We don’t want to put agents at risk.”
“Unless she’s got an ankle holster we can’t see, I doubt it,” Jessie told him. “There’s nowhere to hide anything on that outfit and her purse is too small to hold a gun or a knife. It can barely hold her makeup and ID.”
Webb looked conflicted.
“Better decide quick, Special Agent,” Jessie said, using his title to needle him into action. “She’s almost to the porch. We’ve got about ten seconds before she gets to that front door.”
That seemed to seal it for him.
“All teams go,” he said forcefully.
The agent in the passenger seat relayed his instructions, ordering all units to converge on the suspect.
Immediately, the SUV and the two sedans peeled out.
Both sedans pulled into the driveway behind Sullivan’s car.
The SUV that Jessie was in didn’t bother with that, instead hopping the curb and driving over the front lawn.
It stopped ten feet from the porch, which Sullivan was now standing on, looking at them with her mouth agape.
“Don’t move!” the SUV passenger seat agent barked through the open window, even before he’d thrown the door open.
Sullivan, her eyes wide with terror, held still.
Jessie and Webb waited as four agents kept weapons trained on the woman while another took her phone and purse.
The sixth agent, who was female, patted her down.
Jessie tried to gauge if Sullivan’s fear was due to finally being caught or because she had no clue what this about.
“Clear,” the female agent barked, once her pat down was complete.
“Purse is okay,” said the agent rifling through the thing.
Something about watching a stranger pick through her stuff must have snapped Sullivan out of it, because it was then that she finally spoke.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Rebecca Sullivan,” Webb said getting out of the car, as he held out his ID, “I’m Special Agent Webb with the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation. We are investigating a series of murders and your name came up.”
Jessie thought that was an awfully casual way to describe it but kept quiet.
“My name came up?” she repeated in disbelief.
“We’re going to read you your rights,” Webb told her. “After that, we intend to ask you some questions.”
Jessie didn’t love this approach. If Sullivan was their killer, it probably didn’t matter.
But if she wasn’t and invoked her right to counsel, they might lose valuable time getting to the truth.
They needed her to be amenable to answering questions.
So, as the SUV passenger seat agent was about to Mirandize Sullivan, Jessie stepped forward, reminding herself to proceed as if the woman wasn’t involved, and held up her hand for him to wait.
“Ms. Sullivan,” she said as reassuringly as she could under the circumstances, “I get that this is a scary situation. You have no idea why there’s an army of agents on your lawn.
But I promise you that once we get the preliminaries out of the way, we can explain what’s going on and you can clear things up. Does that sound okay?”
“Who are you?” Sullivan demanded.
“My name’s Jessie,” she said warmly. “I’m helping with the investigation, trying to get to the bottom of things. I may be able to help you, but we have to follow the official rules first.”
She nodded at the agent that he could proceed. He read her rights, concluding with the line, “with those rights in mind, are you willing to speak with us?”
Realizing this was the most crucial moment, Jessie jumped in before Sullivan could answer. “This is the part where we can hopefully clear everything up. But in order to do that, you have to officially consent to questioning. Do you?”
Sullivan looked at the array of suited agents before returning her gaze to Jessie. “I consent to talk to you,” she said pointedly, “and only you.”
“Okay, thanks,” Jessie replied before anyone could object. “That’s totally fine. But Special Agent Webb is in charge of the case so he’s going to be here too, okay?”
Sullvan nodded reluctantly. Jessie hoped Webb didn’t press the issue. Of course he wasn’t going to agree not to ask any questions at all, but it would be easier to let him join in once some kind of rapport had been established.
“You guys can stand down,” she told the other agents.
“You don’t want to cuff her?” one of them asked.
“I think we’re good for right now,” Jessie said, looking at Sullivan. “We’re good, right?”
The woman nodded vigorously.
“Okay, Ms. Sullivan,” she said gently, “I told you we’d explain things before asking you any questions, so here goes. There have been a series of murders over the last three days, including two earlier today. We’re here now because of a connection you have to the case.”
“What connection?”
“You used to be married to a man named Jason Mannix, correct?”
She watched Sullivan’s face closely as she posed the question. Resentment immediately filled the woman’s eyes.
“That’s one way of putting it,” she snarled. “Another is that I was involved with a rat bastard who had barely said his vows to me before he started cheating. Why are you asking about Jason?”
‘We’ll get to that,” Jessie said, sensing that beside her, Webb was getting anxious to jump in. She hoped he could contain himself a bit longer. “But first, when was the last time you saw him?’
Rebecca sighed heavily, as if trying to retrieve the memory was a burden.
“Not since the annulment,” she said, “so maybe nine or ten years ago?”
“And you’re sure you’ve had no interaction with him since then? You never ran into him at a movie theater or a farmers’ market?”
Sullivan shook her head.
“To be honest, one of the reasons I moved this far north of the city was because Jason always talked about loving the energy of the downtown area of L.A. I figured if I lived up here, I was never in danger of running into him.”
“It’s clear that you’re not a fan,” Jessie said, poking to see how the woman would react.
Sullivan snorted at the question. “Maybe I wasn’t clear before but he was nailing other women before the ink was dry on our marriage license. Let me ask you a question: is he dead? Because if he is, I can’t really fake giving a crap.”
“He’s not dead,” Jessie said, “but multiple women he was involved with in recent years are.”
She took note of Sullivan’s shocked expression.
“Did he kill them?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“We don’t know,” Webb said, finally unable to stay quiet. “He’s in custody right now as a precaution. It could be him or it could be someone who’s violently jealous of him or the women in his life.”
Jessie flinched slightly at hearing that. She hadn’t been ready to bring up Sullivan’s history of violent incidents yet, but now there was no choice.
“I’m guessing you’re referring to the restraining order he had put on me?
” Sullivan asked disdainfully. “Come on, that was a decade ago. I had one bad stretch after my life fell apart, all at his hands. I’ve never had a run-in with the law since.
You can check my records. My only hiccup in 33 years on this planet was exclusively Jason-related. He had an… effect on me.”
“Yes,” Jessie said knowingly. “I’m well aware of the effect.”
Sullivan smiled bitterly at that.
“I’m not surprised that he’d focus his charm on you,” she said. “You look like his type.”
Jessie didn’t know what to make of that. Yes, she had brown hair and a trim figure, but there had to be more to it than that for Mannix to fake marry someone. Before she could address that, Sullivan continued.
“Anyway, once I got away from him, my life turned around. I got my job at the hospital. I met and married a wonderful man. We have a beautiful daughter. Honestly, I haven’t thought about Jason in forever.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything about him on the news today?” Webb asked skeptically.
“I’ve been at work this whole time,” she said. “And I never listen to the news on the way home. I prefer podcasts—true crime ones, ironically.”
“So, you were at the hospital all day today?” Jessie asked, using this as an opportunity to test the woman’s alibi.
“Yes, at the West Valley Care Center in Chatsworth.”
“Can anyone verify that?” Webb wanted to know.
“The people I work with can,” she said, mildly offended. “I can give you the name of my assistant, of my deputy, of the board members I met with and the doctors I consulted. There were a lot of them.”
“That’s great,” Jessie said, though it wasn’t. If all that bore out, their best lead was about to evaporate. “Are you also willing to let us review the GPS data from your phone and vehicle for the last several days?”
“If that clears all this up faster, then sure,” she said. “But first, I’d probably insist that you move that black tank off my lawn.”
“We can do that,” Jessie assured her, trying to hide her disappointment at how this was playing out.
“Can I ask a question?” Sullivan’s voice was tremulous. “If someone is killing women that Jason was with and it’s not him doing it, am I safe?”
Hearing the question made a light go off in Jessie’s head. But rather than pursue it now, she set it aside.
“We plan to put you in protective custody until this is resolved,” she said, “along with your family, of course. In fact, if you wait here on the porch for a moment, I want to get that process started.”
Sullivan moved over to a bench on the porch while Jessie and Webb headed over to the SUV.
“You’re really treating her with kid gloves,” the agent said sourly. “What if she’s the killer?”
Jessie didn’t see it that way. “Whether she is or not, if she’s in custody, we can keep eyes on her. If she’s guilty, her victims are safe. If she’s innocent, then she and her family are secure.”
Webb grumbled under his breath but didn’t object. If that had him annoyed, what she planned to say next would really get under his skin.
“Speaking of keeping folks safe, something that Sullivan said gave me an idea for a new lead.”
“What is it?” he asked, trying but failing to pretend that he wasn’t excited by the prospect.
“You’re not going to like it,” she told him.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s risky. Very risky.”