The Perfect Impression by Blake Pierce

CHAPTER TWELVE

Jessie grabbed onto a nearby chair for support. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut.

“Are you sure?” she asked, hoping it was a mistake though she already sensed it wasn’t.

“The medical examiner is,” he said. “He just gave me an update before he and CSU took the body over to the hospital. He said he’ll have a draft report by this afternoon.”

“How far along was she?” Jessie asked.

“He couldn’t say for sure. But his rough guess was between six and ten weeks.”

Jessie sat down next to him at the table, letting the new information wash over her.

“That actually makes a lot of sense,” she said quietly. “I’ve been struggling to find a motive. This could be a good one.”

“For who?” Peters asked. He sounded angry.

“A husband who didn’t want another kid,” she suggested. “A lover who didn’t want his infidelity revealed. That lover’s jealous wife or girlfriend; a friend who resented her—the options are limitless.”

“Wonderful,” Peters muttered. “I took this assignment to avoid stuff like this. And now I’m neck deep in it.”

Jessie understood the sentiment, though she didn’t share it. She’d gotten into this kind of work specifically because of stuff like this. She was the child of a serial killer, one who killed her mother in front of her when she was six. Then he left her for dead in a snowed-in cabin, tied up for three full days before she was rescued, staring at the lifeless remains of the woman who raised her. There was no way of ever truly escaping the darkness for her.

Maybe it was that very past which made it inevitable that she would pursue a career trying to get into the heads of the worst among us; to better understand them in order to stop them. Her destiny was further sealed when her father reentered her life. But he didn’t come back just for her.

He also butchered a couple in front of both Jessie and the couple’s own adopted daughter. Only later would she learn that the girl, Hannah Dorsey, was her half-sister; that their shared serial killer father had brought them together as part of his sick, operatic vision of family renewal.

And it was only after she took Hannah in, becoming her formal guardian, that Jessie began to rethink whether she wanted her personal life defined by the daily battle against evil. When that evil, in the form of her sociopathic ex-husband, murdered her mentor, almost killed her boyfriend, and tried to do the same to Jessie and Hannah, she decided to pull back. That’s why she now taught at UCLA, only occasionally taking cases for the department.

But on those occasions when she accepted a case, she had to be all in. It was the only way she knew how to work. And it was what the victim deserved, whether they were the casualty of a serial killer or a crime of passion.

Looking across the table at Detective Colby Peters, she wondered if he was up for this. As imperfect a partner as he was, she needed him. There were simply too many suspects and too much ground to cover on her own.

“I get that this isn’t the kind of case you like,” she said gently, “and I wish you didn’t have to work it. But here we are. You and I are the only ones who can get justice for Gabby Crewe. It doesn’t matter if she was a perfect person, or even a good one. She was a human being who didn’t deserve this. And someone, maybe someone in this hotel right now, did it to her. While she lies on a slab, that person is alive, breathing, maybe taking a nap in a comfortable bed. That is unacceptable to me. And I aim to do something about it. How about you?”

He lifted his head, and though he still looked shaken, he nodded.

“Good,” she said emphatically. “Then let’s review what we know. Maybe between the two of us, we can crack this thing before the ferry arrives and the clock starts ticking faster.”

Peters took a deep breath. It seemed to help him. He looked less defeated already.

“How did your interview with Aldridge go?” he asked.

“Oh yeah, that,” she said, realizing she hadn’t shared any details from that charming experience. “He’s a first rate jerk. Under normal circumstances, I’d have him tossed in a cell just to teach him a lesson. But more importantly, he told me that his wife bailed yesterday on an afternoon ferry, angry with him about something. He got belligerent when I asked what about, which seems vastly more suspicious now than it did a few minutes ago. I had him write up his movements last night so hopefully we can confirm them later.”

“So where does that leave us?” Peters asked.

“With over a half dozen credible suspects, most of whom claim to have been drunk, no cameras to verify anyone’s whereabouts, and no keycard logs to establish a timeline. Unless the medical examiner comes back with a smoking gun, we’ll have to stitch this thing together with unreliable testimony.”

She looked at Peters. Thanks to her litany of horribles, the detective’s brief stretch of resolve seemed to be fading. She tried to remedy it quickly before he was too far gone.

“Let’s start with staff,” she said. “It’s easier to account for their time. We don’t have any reason to suspect most of them. Barksdale, Leena at the front desk, the security guys—none of them have obvious motives, and no witnesses mentioned of them being near Gabby’s room.”

“Except for Tex the waiter,” Peters noted.

“True,” Jessie said. “We can’t eliminate him. He admits being near the room at multiple times during the likely window of death.”

“Right,” Peters agreed. “He said he dropped off the room service tray at ten thirty-six and was on the same floor with another order when he found Melissa Ferro screaming as she ran out of the room at eleven twenty.”

Jessie didn’t consider that definitive.

“But according to the logs of the only department at this hotel that keeps them, almost all of his time in between those visits can be accounted for in the kitchen or on other room service runs. It’s not impossible that somewhere in there, he went into Gabby’s room and stabbed her, but it’d be tight and it’s hard to imagine that he wouldn’t get at least a little bloody.”

“Okay, so we set him aside for now,” Peters said. “To my mind, the only thing we know for sure is that Gabby Crewe died sometime between when she placed the room service order and when Melissa Ferro found her.”

“Be careful,” Jessie cautioned. “We can’t dismiss the possibility that Ferro did it herself and is giving us a bogus timeline.”

“Ugh,” Peters groaned. “I feel like we’re sinking in quicksand here.”

“A little,” Jessie conceded. “But your point is still applicable. The murder clearly took place before eleven twenty, no matter who did it. And we can actually shrink the window of death even more. We don’t know when the killer got to Gabby’s room. But we do know the murder couldn’t have occurred until after the room service tray, including the steak knife, was dropped off at ten thirty-six.”

“I assume that the killer arrived toward the end of that window of time, after Gabby had finished eating,” Peters said.

“Why?”

Peters looked appalled at her question.

“Someone would have to be awfully cold to kill a person and then eat a late-night breakfast,” he said.

“I’ve seen worse,” Jessie countered. “But I think you’re right. This doesn’t feel like it was done by someone who reveled in the murder after the fact. Having said that, it’s possible that Gabby and her murderer ate together before the attack. She was naked at the time and I didn’t notice any defensive wounds, both of which would suggest she was comfortable with the person and not expecting what was about to happen. Did the M.E. mention anything about that?”

“Actually,” Peters said, flipping through his notes, “he did say that there was no obvious sign of a struggle, which fits with your suspicion. So assuming she knew her killer, that likely means it was one of the people she came here with.”

Jessie wasn’t comfortable with the blanket assumption, but the point was valid.

“In general that makes sense,” she agreed. “But let’s not exclude everyone else. If these people have been coming here twice a year for a while, she may have developed a few other vacation friends we’re unaware of. But for now, I agree that we have to hone in on her travel companions.”

Peters looked at the page of his notepad open in front of him.

“That means her husband, Steve, along with Richard and Melissa Ferro, Barry and Marin Lander, and Theo Aldridge. I guess we can eliminate Ariana Aldridge, since she left the island before the murder took place.”

Jessie wasn’t ready to drop Ariana from the list just yet, at least not until she heard back from the cop sent to her house. But she didn’t want to overwhelm Peters, so she let that go for now.

“So what are people’s alibis?” Jessie asked, before answering her own question. “Steve Crewe and Richard Ferro both claim they were in the bar, which the bartender confirms in part.”

“In part?” Peters repeated.

“She said they were definitely around but she couldn’t account for exactly when. People were going to the restroom and to the courtyard with the fire pit. She wasn’t willing to vouch for every minute, just acknowledged that they were around a lot.”

“So a half-alibi then,” Peters said bitterly. “Then there’s Melissa Ferro. She claims that she found the body after discovering the door wasn’t completely closed. My notes say that prior to that, she was freshening up in her room after being out and about. That doesn’t seem super ironclad.”

“No,” Jessie agreed, recalling how Ferro’s facial expression had gone from upset to calculating when pressed on her exact whereabouts. “I believe the phrase she used was ‘flitting about,’ to describe what she was doing. If you recall, Steve Crewe burst into the conference room with his beer mug before we could pursue her alibi further.”

“So I guess we should revisit that with her,” Peters said, underlining her name in his notes.

“I think so,” Jessie said. “And then we have the Landers, who were very happy to share that from about ten on, they were in their room in bed, though definitively not sleeping.”

“Another claim we have no way of verifying,” Peters said, frustration leaking into his voice. “I’m guessing your best buddy Theo Aldridge won’t be much more help.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” she confirmed. “He’s supposedly putting together that timeline of where he was and with whom. But he was as vague as Melissa Ferro when we talked. I suspect we’ll have to press him harder on the second go-round.”

Peters toggled back and forth among the pages of his notebook for a few more seconds before looking up at her.

“So basically, we can’t eliminate anyone.”

“Basically,” Jessie agreed.

She was debating how best to proceed when a young man she didn’t recognize entered the room.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said diffidently from the doorway. “I’m Darren, one of the security guards Mr. Barksdale called in last minute. He asked me to pass along a message to you both.”

“What that?” Peters asked.

“He said that the castle walls are crumbling.”

“What does that mean?” Jessie asked.

Darren looked a little sheepish as he answered.

“That’s his colorful way of saying things are going to crap. Guests are getting restless again. He mentioned that you hoped they might sleep for a few hours but they’re not. He’s getting lots of calls from guest rooms, people demanding to check out so they can make the morning ferry. He says it’s ridiculous because the boat won’t leave for hours yet but some of them are being…quite forceful in their language.”

Jessie sighed as she rubbed her eyes. It seemed that her threat to them all that trying to leave the island would have consequences had lost its power. She gave Peters a tired smile.

“Let’s go put down the rebellion,” she said.