Page 24 of The Perfect Deception (Jessie Hunt #40)

Jessie tried to hide her frustration.

They’d been at this for hours now and all they’d managed to do was hurt their own case.

She knew she shouldn’t look at it that way. Eliminating a suspect was just another step in the process of finding the killer. But that fact didn’t make it feel any better.

They’d spent all evening working with the research team to follow up on Walter Winston’s alibi. Just as they’d suspected, when Jamil checked the GPS data for the man’s phone and vehicle, he found that the items had remained unmoving at his apartment building all of last night.

Hannah had checked with every cab company that served the area. None of them showed a record of a driver picking up a ride around Victoria Park and traveling to Lafayette Square. Beth had provided a near-death knell to th.

“Winston as killer”

theory when she found footage from traffic cameras adjacent to his building. One had a view of the main entrance of the building and the parking garage gate. Another showed the rear entrance of the place.

Zooming in, she was able to see when Winston pulled into the garage on his way home from work. It was at 5:19, right around when he claimed. There was no sign that he left again via any door or gate. It wasn’t definitive beyond a reasonable doubt, but the combination of data points told Jessie that they needed to move on for now.

Jessie glanced at the clock on the research office wall. It was just after 10 P.M. She was starting to think they should call it quits for one day and start again fresh tomorrow. She could really use a good night’s sleep and was about to broach the idea when Ryan’s phone rang.

“It’s Captain Parker,”

he said holding it up for her to see before answering.

“Evening, Captain.”

He listened to her for few seconds before interrupting.

“I’m sorry Captain. But I’m in Research with Jessie and the crew. Can I put you on speaker?”

He got the go-ahead, and a moment later, they could all hear her.

“I just got a call from a Sergeant Hauk. I believe you worked with him earlier?”

“That’s right,”

Ryan confirmed.

Jessie saw his face sink for the same reason her heart did. She steeled herself for the news.

“He’s in Lafayette Square and wanted you and Ms. Hunt to come over as soon as possible. He said two more people have been found with their throats cut. They were each in bed, but not their own. It’s two men this time.”

“Send us the addresses,”

Ryan said. He grabbed his sport coat while Jessie stood up.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

***

When they finally wrapped up at both crime scenes, it was approaching four in the morning.

Jessie sat on the front porch of the Patel home, pretending not to notice the neighbors rubber-necking from beyond the police tape. She knew some of them were recording her on their phones and that the footage would end up on the local morning news.

They had successfully managed to keep a lid on the nature of the crimes that occurred at the Maplewood and Dominik homes for over 24 hours. But with two new murders committed in the same manner as the first ones, that would be difficult. And once people saw that Jessie Hunt was involved, after having gone to ground for two months, there was likely to be a media frenzy. It was only a matter of time.

Ryan and Sergeant Hauk stepped outside and joined her. They’d been dealing with the sign-offs on some required paperwork, a part of the process that she, as a civilian department employee, could thankfully skip. She stood up to meet them.

“Anything new crop up while I was waiting out here?’ she asked, noting the weariness in her voice. She’d gotten about four hours of sleep in the last day and a half. It was catching up to her.

“In the last fifteen minutes, you mean? Nope.”

Ryan said, not meaning to sound short but coming across that way. He was tired too. She let it go.

“So where does that leave us?”

Sergeant Hauk asked, rubbing his eyes aggressively.

Ryan sighed, then launched in.

“It leaves us with two dead husbands, found completely clothed in each other’s beds, with their throats slit. There’s no sign of struggle in either instance. The preliminary time of death for Mark Tropper was between 5 and 7 P.M. Patel’s death was pegged between 7 and 9 P.M.”

“So we think the killer went straight from murdering one of them to finish off the second?”

Jessie marveled at the audacity.

“That’s a pretty tight timetable.”

"It would really be nice if we had some neighborhood security cameras that might show someone approaching either home," Ryan muttered for not the first time tonight.

Hauk shook his head. He clearly felt the same way.

“The neighborhood HOA prohibits them as they don’t ‘foster a neighborly sensibility.’ I’m pretty sure they’ll be changing that up at the next meeting.”

“What else do we know?”

Ryan asked.

Jessie tried to put some of the puzzle together.

“According to what we pulled off Patel’s phone, he returned early from a golf trip in Lake Tahoe around 4 P.M. yesterday afternoon. That fits the timetable for his time of death. He likely got home from the airport sometime soon after five.”

“And his golfing buddies confirmed that the reason he left was that he really did tweak his shoulder,”

Ryan noted.

“It doesn’t sound like he was using it as an excuse to sneak back here while his wife was out of town.”

“Maybe,”

Jessie countered.

“The fact that he was found in the bed of a neighbor suggests that maybe he wasn’t there for a Boy Scout Jamboree.”

Hauk chuckled at that, despite the situation, before noting.

“and Patel was found in Tropper’s bed. That doesn’t scream innocuous activity either. He was there for a reason.”

Jessie added on to that.

“And all this happened while the men’s wives’ were on a girls’ trip together in a place that isn’t easy to leave early. The husbands had to know their wives wouldn’t be showing up unexpectedly.”

“Now that you mention that, I did get one update while you were out here. As you know, the first ferry heading back here from Catalina doesn’t leave until just before 8 A.M.. Melanie Patel and Belinda Tropper were trying to secure a charter helicopter to bring them back early. But because it’s the middle of the night and these pilots mostly do island tours, they were having trouble.”

“That may be a blessing in disguise,”

Jessie noted.

“It gives us more time to dive into some vexing questions before dealing with the emotional fallout they’ll bring.”

She saw Ryan frown and knew why. Navigating the emotional fallout of these crimes was part of what made her a good profiler. And if she was avoiding the emotion of the situation, she wasn’t bringing her full skill set to the table.

The truth was that her emotions had actually threatened to overwhelm her earlier. The sight of both these men, each in their early thirties, drained of life as they lay limply on those beds, hit her hard. She imagined what it would be like to come home to find Ryan like that. These new widows were in for rough times. Before she could clean up her comment, Hauk spoke up.

“What vexing questions are you thinking about specifically?”

She decided to focus on that, rather than convincing her husband that she hadn’t shed her humanity while she was away.

“For one thing, I’m wondering how one person managed to get each of the victims, men and women alike, into someone else’s home without a fight. There didn’t seem to be a sign of struggle at any of the crime scenes. “

“We did get Olivia Maplewood’s preliminary bloodwork back from the medical examiner,”

Ryan reminded her.

“Indications are that, like Cassandra Dominik, she was drugged. I would think that’s even more likely with the men. Both of them are good-sized and would be able to put up a decent fight if they were conscious.”

Sergeant Hauk frowned.

“Even if they were unconscious at the time, whoever did this would have to be pretty strong to get all these people into bedrooms and up on beds before cutting their throats.”

Jessie wasn’t ready to draw that conclusion.

“That assumes that they hadn’t already gotten into the beds willingly.”

“Good point,”

Hauk acknowledged.

“That’s the key, right?”

Jessie was surprised no one else had said it out loud yet.

“Now that we have all the particulars on these husbands, we need to address the elephant in the room.”

“Which is?”

Hauk asked.

Ryan gave the same answer that she would have.

“It seems obvious but we need to know for sure: were these two couples in life swaps like our other victims were?”

Jessie nodded. Luckily, we don't have to wait to find an appropriate time to ask the grieving widows that question. We have someone else who can answer it for us just as well as they could."

“Let’s go see Elise Prager,”

Ryan said, already making his way down the front porch steps.”

“You do realize that sunrise isn’t for almost two hours?”

Hauk reminded them

Jessie smiled.

“We’ll bring her coffee and a muffin.