The Perfect Impression by Blake Pierce
CHAPTER THREE
The hall was deathly quiet.
It took Jessie a moment to understand why. It wasn’t just that it was the middle of the night. Every guest on this floor was down in the ballroom right now. The only people around were her, Peters, the sheriff’s deputy standing guard outside the hotel room, and the dead person on the other side of the door.
She let Peters lead as they approached the room. The skinny deputy at the door looked nervous and sweaty, as if just being in proximity to a dead body was too much for him. He didn’t look a day over twenty-two.
“How are you doing, Keith?” Peters asked him.
“Okay, sir,” Keith said. “Nothing major to report. A few people came down the hall, looky-loos. But I shooed them off without much problem.”
“Good job,” he said, before nodding at Jessie. “Keith, this is Jessie Hunt. She’s a criminal profiler from LAPD’s Homicide Special Section back on the mainland. She’ll be helping us out. Jessie Hunt, this is Deputy Keith Heck. He’s been on the team here on the island for about four months now.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Keith said.
“Likewise,” Jessie replied. “Mind if I take a look inside?”
He stepped aside without a word. Jessie put on her latex gloves and opened the door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gabrielle Crewe’s body on the bed. But instead of focusing on it, she began by looking around the room first.
She had discovered through unpleasant trial and error that once she fixated on the victim’s body, everything else seemed to fall away, putting her at risk of missing small details. So she’d learned to study everything else at a crime scene before turning her attention to the body. That was especially important in this case, as she was working without a net. There was almost no support staff on the island. Her titular partner was more adversarial than supportive. She was essentially alone.
The suite was like a large, billowy cloud with a bed. Everything was different shades of white and cream, from the thick curtains, to the carpeting, to the canopy bed draped in a sheer scarf sheets. There was a fireplace next to a hot tub and a sitting area with a massive flat-screen television. Nothing seemed out of place. There was no obvious sign of a struggle. The bathroom looked equally undisturbed. A room service tray with empty plates rested on the dresser beside the TV. Jessie couldn’t help but notice that there was no knife on the tray.
“No one heard anything?” she asked both men.
“Not based on our preliminary interviews,” Peters answered.
“What about security footage from the hallway?” she asked. “Have you had a chance to look at it yet?”
Peters paused before sighing loudly.
“There isn’t any,” he finally said.
“The hotel doesn’t have hallway footage?” she asked incredulously.
“It doesn’t have any footage at all,” he told her, sounding uncomfortable with the admission. “Other than the main entrance and the lobby, they don’t record anything.”
“How is that possible? Just a month ago, I investigated another murder in a hotel and they had cameras everywhere but the stairwells. The Paragon seems like a luxury destination. How much does a room go for here?”
“This suite goes for eight hundred dollars a night,” Deputy Heck offered helpfully.
Jessie turned to Peters.
“That kind of money and they don’t consider the safety of their guests enough of a priority to install a few cameras?”
The detective paused before answering, as if trying to be honest without being truly forthcoming.
“The Paragon considers itself a bastion of privacy,” he said. “They’ve cultivated a reputation for offering folks seclusion and confidentiality. That’s part of why it’s so popular with mainlanders. It gets a lot of return guests. I guess they decided that cameras undermined the vibe.”
Something about the policy didn’t make sense to Jessie. A place like this was opening itself up to all kinds of liability in the event of something like what occurred tonight. She found it hard to believe they’d risk a massive lawsuit just to maintain a reputation for being discreet. But it was clear that Peters wasn’t going to be much help in unraveling that mystery.
Frustrated, Jessie finally turned her attention to the woman on the bed. Without warning, she felt an unexpected tide of panic ripple through her. She clenched her fists tight together, digging her nails into her palms to keep from screaming out loud or running from the room. Even as she fought the grip of horror, she understood where it came from: this was just how Ryan had looked after Kyle plunged a knife into his chest.
She had somehow managed to push that memory from her head in recent weeks. But seeing this woman in the same position made it all flood back with an intensity she was unprepared for. Her breathing had quickened and she felt frozen in place. She could sense Detective Peters’s eyes on her and instructed herself to get a grip.
Stay calm. Breathe slow. Step forward slowly. Set aside everything else. Focus on the victim.
The sound of her own voice in her head—cool and professional—gave her the confidence to approach the body. With each step toward the bed, the anxiety faded and a sense of normalcy returned.
This was a stabbing victim, but it wasn’t Ryan. He was home, either still working in the kitchen or asleep in their bed. He was safe. And so was she. It was time to get back to work. Something about that last instruction clicked. Jessie’s eyes cleared, followed quickly by her mind.
She focused in on the victim. It was obvious that Gabrielle Crewe had been quite beautiful when she was alive. But now her body, surrounded in a halo of blood, had sunk into the mattress. The tips of her blonde hair were matted where the blood had begun to coagulate. Her unseeing brown eyes stared up at the ceiling. Her tan skin had started to turn pallid. She was completely naked.
Jessie counted at least three stab wounds to her chest other than the one where the knife was currently embedded. That suggested either a crime of passion or that someone wanted to give that impression. Killing a person wasn’t an easy thing for most people.
In her experience, those who planned their murders ahead of time usually only did the minimum necessary to accomplish the task. This was literally overkill. She tried to look beyond the blood for any other signs of violence: defensive wounds on the arms or legs, bruising, or unusually contorted limbs.
She found nothing, though there was a splotch of blood on the carpeting at the foot of the bed, suggesting the first wound might have been inflicted while she was standing and that she had fallen or been pushed back onto the bed.
That detail hinted that Crewe was somewhat familiar with her attacker. It wasn’t impossible, but it was hard to imagine that an unwanted stranger had gotten so close to her while she was completely nude without her having screamed or struggled.
Jessie felt a pang of sadness. Even after seeing so many dead bodies, most had a way of getting to her. This woman had made herself vulnerable before another human being. Her reward was to be brutally cut down by someone she almost certainly trusted. Just below the sadness, Jessie could feel another emotion bubbling up: righteous anger.
Her previous dread about the knife now a memory, Jessie leaned in close to get a better look at the murder weapon. It was a steak knife, embedded in the woman’s chest up the heel. It had a plastic handle designed to look like wood. Now only inches away, she noticed something curious.
“Do you have a medical examiner on the island?”
“Not officially,” Peters said. “The head of emergency services over at the medical clinic can handle it in a pinch. But we usually wait for someone from the Long Beach medical examiner’s office to come over. My understanding is that he’s on his way right now. But he didn’t have access to a helicopter so the boat will be another half hour or so.”
“What about a crime scene team?” she asked, ignoring his barb. It seemed objectionable to get into an argument with him in the presence of a murder.
“I believe they’re coming on the same boat,” he answered.
“We need to have them pay special attention to this knife. It looks like it’s been wiped clean. If that’s the case, I bet the rest of the room was too. Getting prints might be a challenge.”
“I’ll tell them,” Deputy Heck promised.
Jessie looked up from the bed at the two men standing expectantly in front of her.
“I’m not sure there’s much else we can do up here. I think it’s time we start interviewing folks.”
“Who do you want to start with?” Peters asked.
“The husband,” she replied. “Always start with the husband.”