The Perfect Impression by Blake Pierce
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
As she watched Ariana Aldridge sit forlornly in an interrogation room at LAPD’s Central Station interrogation room glass, Jessie supposed it could have been worse.
Ariana didn’t put up much of a fight. Before they left the house, she gave Ginny a kiss and called her husband several harsh but appropriate names, but she didn’t make any aggressive moves toward him. Jessie did still cuff her for the ride to the station as a precaution. After that, while Ariana waited to be interrogated, Jessie and Detective Peters argued from the observation room on the other side of the two-way mirror.
“You should have told me,” he repeated for the third time since they’d arrived.
She’d already explained why she didn’t include him in the questioning of either the Landers or the Aldridges, but he was still put out. The truth was that she did feel a little guilty about it, but not enough to apologize.
“She’s all yours now,” she said instead. “I didn’t arrest her. She still thinks she can talk her way out of this. Hell, maybe she can. I told her you were going to go over every second of her time on the island and that if she couldn’t substantiate her alibi for you, then she should expect to be charged.”
“If she didn’t convince you, why should I expect to have a different reaction?”
Jessie, her skull thick with exhaustion, tried to make herself understood.
“I didn’t check every detail of her story. Maybe I missed something. All I know is that all the other people in their group seem to have someone to vouch for at least part of their time. She doesn’t. Beyond that, she snuck back on the island. She wore a disguise. She had clear motive to kill Gabby, even if she was wrong about her having a tryst with her husband. That’s a lot to overcome. But I’m happy to let you be the one to either absolve or charge her and let the Avalon Sheriff’s Station get the credit.”
He was about to object but then thought better of it, apparently realizing the arrangement might work out well for him.
“What do you plan to do?” he asked.
“I plan to go home. I’ve got some family stuff to deal with and then I have a pillow with my name on it. I don’t know that there’s much more I can do tonight. If you get a confession and close the case, congratulations. If something new and astounding comes up, call me. If she just sticks to her story, then we’ll go back at it tomorrow. Cool?”
She didn’t wait to hear his answer as she walked out the door. Glancing down the hall she was tempted to go to the research department and check in with Jamil. She knew Ryan was out running down leads on his case with Trembley.
But even though she was sure Jamil would be happy to fill her in, she couldn’t help but think that Ryan might resent it, as if she was checking up on him like an anxious mother. Besides, he was sure to share every detail when he got home. So, using all the willpower she had left in her bleary-eyed, bone-tired body, she turned in the other direction and headed for the station exit.
*
No one was home.
Jessie knew she wouldn’t find Ryan but she’d expected to see Hannah. It was starting to get dark out and she was tempted to text her. But then she paused, wondering if she really wanted her sister home right now, considering the conversation they needed to have.
She texted Ryan to see if he was wrapping up soon, in the hope that he might be able to come home in time to offer some emotional backup for the inevitable sisterly confrontation to come. He responded almost immediately with a selfie of him and Trembley in a car, both making goofy faces. The caption below the picture read: Ride-along fun! She didn’t have the heart to bring his spirits down so she sent back a smiley face and left it at that.
Though she knew it was pointless, she checked her messages again in case Peters had any updates or questions. There were none. If he had something to share, he would have called. She grabbed an apple from the fridge and wandered around aimlessly.
Eventually, she poked her head in Hannah’s room, in the futile hope that maybe the girl had fallen asleep and she’d just missed her. But the bed was empty. She sat down on it, debating what to do next.
Against her better judgment, she pulled out her phone and checked where Hannah was. Though her sister had turned off her own phone’s location services, Jessie had secretly installed another GPS tracking system that ran in the background, imperceptible to any user who didn’t know exactly where to look.
After an initial check to make sure the app was working, she had generally avoided using it, at least in recent weeks. She told herself that if she only used it in an emergency, she wasn’t really violating her sister’s privacy. But now, as she opened the app, she silently admitted that her justification didn’t hold much weight. But that didn’t stop her.
To her relief, she saw that Hannah was at Tommy’s Coffee. Only half a mile away, it was her favorite hangout. She often spent hours there after school or on weekends, feet curled up under her on a worn loveseat in the corner of the coffeehouse.
The pit of anxiety in her gut, one she hadn’t even realized was there until now, subsided. She fell back on Hannah’s bed, letting herself sink into the mattress. She looked up at the ceiling, wondering what her sister thought about at night when she stared up at the same light sconce Jessie was looking at now.
When she was lying in this very bed last summer, was she planning to confront that drug dealer when she went on the stakeout with Kat? Or was it a spur-of-the-moment thing? What about when she volunteered to pose as an underage escort to bust a sexual slavery ring? Was she resting her head on this very pillow when she decided to break into Kat’s office to get information on a missing girl that led her to a pedophile?
That last one was a whole other level. At least with the dealer, Kat had been there. At least with the sex slave ring, there were multiple undercover cops in vehicles close by. But it’s not like the guy she confronted was just going to get a little handsy with her. He was a child rapist who had attacked her. Jessie had seen the bruises that proved it.
She sighed in frustration, unsure how she could broach all these new horribles while keeping her cool and not pushing Hannah further away. At her wits’ end, she closed her eyes and gave her brain a break, allowed it to float wherever it wanted.
For several seconds, her thoughts receded and she pictured only the rolling waves of the ocean from earlier today. To her surprise, when her mind reengaged, it landed on a word she hadn’t expected, one that had passed through her head only briefly moments earlier: handsy.
Why had that particular word taken up residence in her thoughts? She seemed to recall hearing it said by someone in just the last twelve hours, which meant it wasn’t used in the context of Hannah. It was almost certainly spoken while she was on the island. And that’s when it hit her.
Maura the bartender had used the word to describe how Steve Crewe and Rich Ferro sometimes got with the bar waitresses and with her, until she shut them down. While it was still unseemly, the behavior made more sense in the context of the lifestyle she now knew they embraced. At least it did for Crewe.
But now that she thought about it, it didn’t make a lot of sense for Richard Ferro, a gay man who had reached an understanding of sorts with his wife. Why would he be making passes at waitresses? It was possible that he was doing it for Crewe’s benefit. He’d admitted that he wasn’t out to his friends. Maybe he felt he needed to engage in some kind of public performance to maintain the image.
But this group didn’t seem like the type to care about that sort of thing. After all, the Landers hadn’t tried to keep their threesome with Theo a secret because it involved two men. They’d done so because the hookup violated their rule against intermingling within the friend group. The idea that Steve Crewe would have balked if Rich Ferro had pinched a waiter’s butt instead of a waitress’s seemed unlikely. So why do it?
That’s when she remembered another moment from earlier in the evening, when she and Detective Peters were interviewing Ferro in the Paragon Hotel Harbor Room. Leena from the front desk had come in with a message for the detective. As she walked over to him, Richard Ferro’s eyes had followed her with curiosity. In retrospect, Jessie thought they were filled with something closer to desire.
At the time, he hadn’t known Jessie was watching him so there was no reason to play at being straight. It was something he’d done without thinking about it, instinctively. Simply put: he was attracted to the cute front desk girl, which meant that he was at the very least bisexual. It also meant that he’d misled her, which made her wonder what else had he lied about.
She suddenly sat up in the bed. It occurred to her that neither she nor Peters had ever actually contacted County Supervisor Philip Blake to confirm Ferro’s version of events. They had just accepted it based on what he said and on Maura the bartender’s partial alibi saying she’d seen them leave the bar together.
Whether they had let it slide because neither of them wanted to upend the complicated family dynamics of a man who supposedly wasn’t out yet or because they were hesitant to question—and potentially alienate— a politician who might run for mayor, it was a huge mistake. And it was mostly her fault.
Peters was sheriff’s detective, yes. But he worked for a tiny department and had a boss who wanted this whole case to go away. This wasn’t on him. Jessie was supposed to be a highly regarded criminal profiler. No amount of lack of sleep could excuse the oversight. She silently castigated herself, noting that this was one of the major downsides of only consulting for the department from time to time. She risked losing her edge.
She texted Jamil, knowing he’d be able to get Supervisor Blake’s personal contact information far quicker than she could. While she waited for him to find it, she thought again about Ariana Aldridge, forcing her brain to shake off the cobwebs that had allowed her to leave the woman in Peters’s custody, simply hoping it would all work out.
The more she reconsidered it, the harder it was to buy that the woman would have left that hotel hallway only to coldly return later to kill Gabby Crewe. Seeing her in Theo’s office with a baby in her arms, her eyes flashing, it was clear that Ariana was one to get passionate in the moment. But once the anger subsided, she at least appeared to be a sane, reasonable person.
After having dealt with her, Jessie thought there were two far more likely scenarios. She could imagine Ariana banging on the door and confronting what she thought was Gabby and Theo together right then and there. Or she could also have done exactly what she claimed: run off in distress to lick her wounds.
But the idea that she ran away upset, only to return later to confront Gabby, without knowing for certain that Theo was the person in her room, didn’t sit right. It wasn’t impossible that it went down that way. She’d helped catch killers who were more than capable of gutting people without batting an eye. But Ariana Aldridge didn’t strike her as one of them.
Beyond that, how would such a scenario even play out? Did Gabby Crewe, completely naked, invite her in for a chat that escalated into a stabbing with a steak knife? Maybe that’s exactly how it played out. Certainly, no theory should be taken off the table. But one thing was clear: the situation was not as straightforward as Jessie had initially thought—perhaps even hoped—it was.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a text from Jamil, who delivered as usual. He responded to her request with all of Blake’s contact numbers, including the man’s personal cell. She decided to use that.
She got his voicemail and debated whether or not to leave a message. Ultimately she decided that caution was what had gotten her in this predicament in the first place and laid it out there, if in slightly veiled language.
“Supervisor Blake. This Jessie Hunt. I’m a criminal profiling consultant for the LAPD. I’m investigating a murder that took place last night at the Paragon Hotel on Catalina Island. During the course of our interviews, one person mentioned that you could verify his whereabouts from about ten thirty to ten forty-five that evening. Richard Ferro said that he helped you to your room and remained in your company for a period of time thereafter. If you could get back to me as soon as possible to confirm the accuracy of his statement, I would greatly appreciate it.”
She gave her number and hung up, satisfied that she’d been at least somewhat diplomatic. Standing up, she hurried out of Hannah’s room. She still needed to talk to her sister but that could wait. She’d been in the dark about her behavior for weeks, if not months. A few more hours wouldn’t make a difference. There was a more pressing concern.
As she pulled out of the garage, she called Peters and got his voicemail too. He must have been in the middle of interrogating Ariana Aldridge.
“I’m headed to Richard Ferro’s house just north of Westwood,” she said. “I have a few questions for the guy. I’m not certain he’s really gay, which makes me unsure about a lot of other things he said. I’m sending you the address. Meet me there.”
She turned her attention to the road. Suddenly she didn’t feel so tired anymore.