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Jessie didn’t like waiting, but in this instance, she didn’t have much of a choice.

She looked at the clock on the wall again. It was 4:08. They’d been sitting in uncomfortable chairs in the hospital waiting room for over forty-five minutes now. The nurse had told them that Dr. Ethan Blackwood should be out of surgery by 3:45, but they’d blown through that time.

From personal experience, Jessie understood all too well that sometimes these procedures ran long, but that hadn’t stopped Ryan from checking in at the nurse’s station twice in the last twenty minutes. Both times, he was told that Blackwood had been alerted to their presence and would join them as soon as he got out of surgery.

“I’m starting to wonder if maybe he’s using this operation as an excuse to make a run for it before we know he’s gone,” Ryan said conspiratorially.

“Don’t you think that if he’d done that, one of the nurses would have told us?” Jessie asked. “They know we’re with LAPD. Are they really going to cover for the guy like that?”

Before he could reply, the door opened. Out stepped a man that Jessie immediately recognized as Blackwood. He was better looking than his hospital website photo suggested. Tall and lean, with short black hair and a few days’ worth of stubble, he looked the part of a physician on one of those doctor shows. He was 42 but appeared half a decade younger.

He walked over to the nurse's station and whispered something, after which a nurse pointed in their direction. He strode toward them with a broad smile on his face.

“Ethan Blackwell,” he said, extending a hand. “I apologize for the wait. I understand you’ve been here a while. But when an extra tumor is discovered during a procedure, things tend to run long.”

“We understand,” Jessie said. “Maybe we can talk outside so as not to disturb the other folks here.”

Jessie was actually less concerned with the people waiting for word about their loved ones than she was that Blackwell might not be very forthcoming if he had an audience. He nodded his assent, and they headed out through the automatic doors to a small courtyard.

“What’s this all about?” he asked once the doors closed.

"I'm Detective Hernandez," Ryan said. "This is Jessie Hunt. We're investigating an incident involving one of your financial advisors, and we were hoping you could shed some light on an issue that came up."

Blackwell’s smile remained frozen in place, but his eyes lost their warmth, turning suddenly cold and wary.

“Who’s the advisor?” he asked.

“James Whitaker.”

“He’s not my advisor anymore, and I recommend that if you’re thinking about using him, you reconsider.”

“Why do you say that?” Jessie asked innocently.

“Because he cost me—” he started to say, before pausing to properly calibrate his response for his audience, “well, let’s say that he cost me a great deal of money.”

“Did he cheat you in some way?” Jessie pressed.

“Is that what this is about?” Blackwell asked, sounding convincingly like he had no idea of the purpose of their visit.

“If you could just answer the question, Dr. Blackwell,” Ryan said politely but firmly.

The man looked slightly put out, but still answered.

“He didn’t officially cheat me, but his investment advice was catastrophically bad,” he said, his voice tightening in anger. “Then, when I tried to get him to acknowledge his failures, he was incredibly dismissive. Detective, I do quite well for myself, but even in my position, these losses were difficult to swallow.”

“It sounds like you were pretty upset,” Jessie said sympathetically. “How did you resolve the situation?”

He sighed and shrugged.

“According to my attorney, there wasn’t anything to resolve. Apparently, I assumed the potential for risk when I signed on with Whitaker. There’s all kinds of fine print to that effect. So I just had to take my lumps and move on.”

“Did you?” Ryan asked with a little edge.

“Did I what?” Blackwell demanded, starting to lose his cool. “Did I accept that I lost over three million dollars in a matter of weeks? What else was I supposed to do? Go to the media or something? That would only make me look like some rube and probably cause potential patients to wonder whether they should put their lives in my hands.”

“Maybe you decided to take matters into your own hands?” Ryan suggested.

Blackwell's eyes narrowed, and he took a small step backward.

“What exactly are you investigating?” he asked. “Did something happen to Whitaker?”

Ryan looked over at Jessie, who nodded. Now that Blackwell was riled up, they could drop the hammer, and she could observe him and hopefully get a genuine reaction. Ryan nodded back before returning his attention to Blackwell.

“Actually, something did happen,” he said. “James Whitaker was the victim of a home invasion murder last night.”

Blackwell’s eyes went wide, and his jaw dropped. Jessie couldn’t be sure whether it was a legitimate response or planned because he knew what was coming. Ryan pressed ahead.

“We’re talking to people who have expressed animosity to him, as you did in your e-mail, when you said —” at this point Ryan pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket and read from it directly— “ you need to be held responsible for your inadequate expertise and your cavalier manner. Do you recall writing that, Dr. Blackwell?”

Blackwell shook his head vigorously.

“You can’t possibly think that I would kill someone over a financial transaction?” he huffed indignantly.

“It wouldn’t be the first time someone had,” Jessie noted.

“Listen—yes, I resented the guy, maybe even hated him, but I didn’t kill him.”

“You could go a long way to convincing us of that by telling us where you were last night between 7 p.m. and midnight,” Jessie suggested.

Blackwell looked at her, then at Ryan. His expression seemed to shout, "Are you serious?"

"All right," he finally said, "I was at home with my wife. We had dinner and watched some television."

“What did you watch?” Ryan asked.

“Some action movie on one of the streaming channels,” he said.

“You don’t remember the name of it?” Ryan asked.

“Not off the top of my head,” Blackwell said. “It involved Chris Hemsworth punching and shooting people.”

“Your wife likes that kind of movie?” Jessie wondered.

“I like the punching and shooting,” he replied. “She likes Chris Hemsworth.”

“In that case, “Ryan said, “I assume you won’t mind if we ask to review the GPS location data for your phone and car from last night, as well as your streaming data.”

“Not at all,” Blackwell said with a confidence that suggested that he knew he had an alibi or had planned ahead well enough to make it seem like he did.

“Great,” Ryan said. “Our unit’s senior researcher will be reaching out to you soon to go over all that in greater detail.”

“Not a problem,” Blackwell said, his confidence bleeding over into arrogance. “May I go now?”

“For now,” Ryan said.

The man turned on his heel and stormed back through the sliding doors. Once he was gone, Ryan turned to Jessie. “What do you think?”

“I think that once Jamil reviews the GPS and streaming data, he’s going to find that Ethan Blackwell’s phone and car were at home last night. Whether the good doctor was really there too is another matter. We can question Mrs. Blackwell, but you know as well as I do that having your wife say you were home all night may be an alibi, but it’s not the best one ever.”

“Unfortunately, unless the data or the wife undermine what he told us, there’s not enough to bring him in yet,” Ryan concluded. “For now we’ll just have to keep an eye on him and hope that either he’s innocent or, if he’s guilty, that his cockiness makes him sloppy.”

Jessie was skeptical that Blackwell was the type to make a stupid mistake, which left her in an odd position. She found herself hoping that the man was innocent. Because if he was guilty, she wasn’t sure they’d be able to prove it.