Page 4

Jessie’s heart sank immediately.

Even from the back, Aaron Riddell didn’t give off a very friendly energy.

After parking in the private lot for the South Bay Yacht Club, she’d walked into the main lobby. There was a large mirror in the entry vestibule off the main lobby, which allowed her half a second to check herself.

Because she hadn’t been expecting to work today, she wasn’t in her typical professional attire. Rather, she wore blue jeans and a casual, loose-fitting top under a light gray, zippered sweat top with a hoodie, all of which masked her athletic runner’s build. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Despite wearing almost zero makeup, she noticed that her green eyes still popped. Her white sneakers gave her an extra inch, bringing her to a full five foot eleven.

There were two men in the center of the lobby. One was a fastidious-looking fellow in his fifties wearing slacks, a dress shirt with a tie, and a vest. He had on wire-rimmed glasses. Jessie pegged him as the rep for the club.

Facing away from her was a very different-looking man. He was easily six-foot-four and 220 pounds. His bald head gleamed. He wore jeans and a sport coat, which had a slight, weapon-sized bulge protruding from the right side, another sign that this guy was a cop.

“Gentlemen,” she said, not wanting to make any verbal assumptions about who was who.

The bald guy turned around and she saw a badge hooked to his belt, confirming her suspicion. She guessed that he was about forty, though the deep creases in his face made him look close to a decade older. His dark eyes were simultaneously stormy and penetrating. He was well-built, though less conventionally chiseled than Ryan, more like a block of granite.

“Are you Hunt?” he wanted to know, his tone sounding like he was already conducting an interrogation.

Jessie was skeptical that the guy didn’t know who she was. Even if he’d never heard of her exploits, he would have looked up who he was working with. The question felt like an attempt to assert some kind of dominance.

“You can call me Jessie,” she said, trying to create a good working vibe from the get-go. “Detective Aaron Riddell, I presume?”

“That’s right,” he said with a scowl. “You can call me Detective.”

“Okay then,” she said, pretending like his reaction was no big deal, “and who’s your friend here?”

“I’m Oliver Stanton,” the man said, “the executive director of the South Bay Yacht Club. I’ll be your primary point of contact as we work our way through this tragedy.”

“Good to meet you, Mr. Stanton, even under these unfortunate circumstances,” Jessie said warmly. “Anyone care to update me on what I might have missed?”

"The body's out back on the deck," Riddell said. "They fished Peterson out of the water about a mile offshore. He got tangled in the fishing line of a passing boat, or they might never have found him. There's a crime scene team checking him out now. I looked him over briefly but came back here to wait for you to find your way down to join us."

“Well, I’m here now,” Jessie said, trying not to bite at Riddell’s passive-aggressive hint that she might have gotten lost along the way.

“Right, you want to check him out?”

“Sure,” Jessie said.

“This way,” he said, turning his back and heading for the exit to the harbor. “You’ll find that the stab wounds—.”

"I'm just going to stop you there, Detective," Jessie said quickly. "I usually prefer to come to my own conclusions while looking at the body before taking in other opinions. That way, those views don't color my perspective, and I don't start off with any preconceptions."

Riddell stared at her in disbelief, as if she’d just said she liked to conduct seances on victims or something.

“Whatever floats your boat,” he said dismissively.

“Oh, I see what you did there,” Oliver Stanton noted, falling into step beside them. “Very clever.”

“I wasn’t joking,” Riddell informed him.

Jessie said nothing. She was about to look at a dead body, and she didn't want her impressions clouded by her increasing agitation with the man she'd been paired with. She needed her head clear.

Her phone rang and she glanced down. The call was from Jamil, HSS’s head of research. She shouldn’t have been surprised that he was already reaching out. Jamil was a full-fledged genius, capable of filtering through massive databases, sorting surveillance video into manageable buckets, or making complex financial records understandable, all seemingly in the blink of an eye. Having said that, his social skills could use a little work.

“That was quick,” she said when she picked up.

"Hello, Ms. Hunt," Jamil said, polite as always. "Detective Hernandez said you were on your way to the scene, so Beth and I tried to expedite our investigation as much as possible for you."

“I appreciate that,” Jessie said. “Where is Detective Hernandez? I assumed that he’d want to be in on this call.”

“He did,” volunteered Beth, Jamil’s sole employee, “but someone we reached out to for information wasn’t as forthcoming as we hoped so he’s using his particular powers of persuasion to change their mind.”

“Gotcha,” Jessie said. “Hey, listen, I’m going to put you on speaker in a sec. I’m here with Detective Riddell of the L.A. Sheriff’s Department’s Homicide Bureau. We’re partnering on this and I want to keep him looped in on everything you learn. Hold on.”

"Yes, ma'am," Jamil said.

Jessie looked over at Riddell, who had a curious expression.

“I reached out to my unit’s research department while I was on the way down here,” she explained. “They’re the best in the business. I wanted to see what they could find out about Daran Peterson right off the bat so we could hit the ground running.”

“You don’t worry that their information will color your perspective and start you off with preconceptions?” he wanted to know, barely holding back a snarl.

Jessie smiled sweetly at him, refusing to let him bait her. Instead, she turned to Oliver Stanton.

“Would you mind giving us a little privacy, Mr. Stanton?” she asked. “We need to discuss some delicate matters.”

“Of course,” Stanton said. “I’ll just hurry ahead to make sure folks on the boat know you’re coming.”

She gave him a less saccharine smile than the one she’d just offered Riddell, then returned her attention to the research crew.

“Go ahead, guys,” she said, pushing the speakerphone button. “Detective Riddell is anxious to hear what you’ve discovered.”

“All right,” Jamil began, “Daran Peterson, age 29, was an executive vice-president of a menswear brand called Peterson Limited. It was started by his father thirty years ago.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Riddell said. “Some of the preeners in the department are big fans.”

“Preeners?” Jessie repeated.

“You know, the kinds of guys who are more interested in looking good than getting the job done.”

“Unlike the regular guys, who wear jeans to work?” she asked, unable to help but poke at him just a little bit.

“Exactly,” he said, unfazed. “I see you’re wearing jeans too.”

“Well, I’m no preener,” she told him before turning her attention back to the researcher. “Go on, Jamil.”

“From what we can tell, Peterson never had a job that wasn’t at his dad’s company,” Jamil continued. “It’s afforded him a pretty nice lifestyle. The sailboat. A condo on the sand in Manhattan Beach. A fancy-looking green Lotus. We’re estimating his net worth at around $34 million.”

“That’s not all,” Beth added. “It looks like he wasn’t exactly a ‘nose to the grindstone’ type of dude. Lots of travel that doesn’t seem connected to the job, tons of partying. He’s a bachelor and seems to be making the most of it. It looks like womanizing is actually his primary gig.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” Riddell challenged.

There was a long pause on the line. Jessie could picture Beth, an attractive six-foot-tall former volleyball player who had probably dealt with her fair share of Daran Petersons in her life, trying to keep cool.

“It could be a problem if that womanizing wasn’t consensual, which is what Detective Hernandez was looking into,” Beth finally said. “Speaking of, he just hung up the other line. Wait one second.”

In the brief moment before Ryan came on the line, Riddell noted, “sounds like your research gal is a bit hypersensitive.”

“That ‘research gal’ could knock your head right off your shoulders with a well-placed volleyball spike. I wouldn’t piss her off.”

“Hey,” Ryan said, coming on the line, “Sorry to keep you waiting but I was just talking to the manager of a nightclub that Peterson liked to frequent called Glass Hut. Apparently, they got a restraining order against the guy.”

“Why?” Jessie asked.

“That’s the reason for the delay,” Ryan said. “The guy was real squirrelly until I put the screws to him. But once he caved, he was pretty forthcoming. Apparently Peterson hit on multiple female patrons with what the manager called ‘relentless fervor and intensity.’ They warned him repeatedly that they were getting complaints about his aggressiveness, especially when he’d had a lot to drink. They let it slide for a while because of his family business. But when one woman threatened to sue the club for creating an unsafe environment, they decided to take action. They told him he wasn’t welcome anymore. When he said he’d be coming anyway, they got the restraining order. According to the club manager, their place wasn’t the only one where this was an issue. I’m trying to get more on that.”

“Great, thanks,” Jessie said. “Please keep me posted. We’re approaching the body, so I have to run.”

“Okay, by the way, how bad is Riddell?”

“The jury’s still out,” Jessie said quickly, before Ryan could add anything else. “But he’s on this call so I’ll save my take until later. Gotta go.”

She hung up and turned to the detective, who looked like he wanted to say something obnoxious. But she short-circuited that.

“I assume the body’s over there?” she asked Stanton quickly, nodding toward the edge of the dock, where the crowd of crime scene techs stood.

He nodded back without speaking. The techs, who had turned around now, stepped back to make a path for her. She walked over and paused, closing her eyes and allowing herself a moment to clear her head before looking at the man. When she opened them, she found Daran Peterson lying on his back. There was a plastic tarp under him so that he wasn’t lying directly on the wooden dock.

He was wearing a black, short-sleeved Polo-style shirt and casual pants. His doughy face was completely white, and his dark, depleted hair was damp. His eyes were closed. There were no obvious signs of violence, though she knew he'd been stabbed.

“Did you already take photos, or do we need to roll him over?” she asked no one in particular.

“We have photos,” said one of the techs, a youngish guy holding an equipment box. “But we can roll him if you like. It won’t disturb any evidence at this point.”

“Go ahead then,” she said.

Two of the techs did as she requested, slowly rolling Peterson onto his side so that she could see his back. One of them slowly lifted the shirt so she could get a better view. Jessie counted at least a half dozen entry wounds, maybe double that, though it was hard to be sure because the skin was so mangled.

Even though there were real signs that Daran Peterson wasn’t the most sympathetic victim of all time, Jessie couldn’t but feel some measure of compassion for the guy. Bleeding out as you wait to be dumped in the cold Pacific waters didn’t sound like the greatest way to go.

“How many penetrations?” she asked.

“We count ten,” the youngish tech said, “but the medical examiner will have to get him back to the lab to be sure.”

“Where is the M.E.?” she asked.

“Bathroom break,” the tech said.

“I’m done now,” someone said from behind them. Jessie turned around to see a smallish Asian man with a neatly trimmed beard and gloves on his hands. He was chewing a big wad of gum. “I’m Dr. Tran.”

“Jessie Hunt,” she replied. “So you agree with the estimate of ten wounds?”

“That’s about right,” he said between chomps. “But he was likely dead after the third or fourth one.”

“You didn’t say that earlier,” Riddell said, sounding put out.

“I thought it was obvious,” Tran said. “But I keep forgetting that what’s obvious to me isn’t so to everyone. Sorry.”

“Well, it looks like whoever did this was either very angry with Daran Peterson or wanted to give us that impression,” Jessie noted.

“Why do you say that?” the youngish tech asked.

Jessie thought that was obvious too but didn’t say so.

“Because otherwise, they would have stopped stabbing when he stopped moving,” she answered before turning to Oliver Stanton. “Where’s the boat again?”

“The motorsailer is over there,” he corrected with a touch of pretension as he pointed out to the water. “It’s the one about three hundred yards out of the harbor being tugged in. They should have it to the dock in a few minutes.”

"Great," Riddell said, expressing real enthusiasm for the first time. "Let's go meet it. Maybe something on board can tell us who turned Peterson into a human pin cushion."

Though she didn’t love how flippant the detective was, she had to admit that she harbored the same hope.