Page 30 of The Perfect Deception (Jessie Hunt #40)

It was one big mess.

It became clear to Jessie and everyone else in HSS that Elise Prager’s mind was not the steel trap she claimed. On multiple occasions, she changed her take on how many swaps a couple or single had engaged in. The more she talked, the more apparent it became that neither her records nor her memory could be trusted.

Jessie noted that Hannah had taken to ignoring the woman completely, and had started to drill down on the other single swappers, even though they had a perfectly good suspect in Golden. Jessie, not wanting to set her little sister off, said nothing and let her be.

Instead she turned her attention to the victims, wondering if there might be something they had in common other than the life swaps. She’d been at it for a couple of hours, without success, when she got a call. It was Dr. Janice Lemmon.

Jessie stood up, happy for the interruption. She realized that it was 1:45 P.M. and she hadn’t moved from her seat since she went to the vending machine a while back to grab a bag of pretzels, which she’d scarfed down in sixty seconds flat.

“Hey Doc. What’s cookin’, good-lookin’?”

she said as she stepped into the hallway. It occurred to her that she might be getting a little loopy from lack of sleep, considering that she’d just referred to her 70-year-old psychiatrist by the nicknam.

“good-lookin’.”

“Jessie Hunt,”

Lemmon said, sounding mildly amused.

“You go away for a couple of months and suddenly you’re abandoning all pretense of professionalism?”

“Sorry. I haven’t slept much and my brain’s self-regulation corner isn’t operating at full strength. But you’d probably know more about that than me.”

“I probably would, but perhaps we can get into that another time.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

Jessie could tell there was something on Lemmon’s mind.

“Well, I was waiting for you to call me once you got back and settled, but it’s been a few days so I finally determined that I should reach out to you. Is this a bad time?”

“There’s no good time, Doc. Tell me what you’ve got.”

“I completed my profiles.”

Lemmon didn’t have to say more for Jessie to know what she was talking about. The profiles were of Mark Haddonfield’s two anonymous acolytes—the ones that wrote letters to him promising to slaughter Jessie’s loved ones.

“That’s great. I thought you hit a wall.”

“I did initially. I was able to draw a few conclusions about one of the writers based on the use of language. I’m 99% certain that both of them are male.”

Jessie had already assumed that but hearing it from someone as knowledgeable as Lemmon was reassuring.

“That’s something at least.”

“It’s not much,”

Lemmon conceded.

“But you’ll recall that one of the two writers used the phrase ‘the tip of the spear’ in his message, claiming that’s what he would be for Haddonfield.”

“I definitely remember that.”

“Well based on some linguistic tics, I feel confident saying that he’s likely between 18 and 22 years old and probably white.”

Jessie considered that progress, even if it wasn’t surprising.

“That fits the profile of these incel types.”

“Right. I’m also pretty sure both of these men are from Southern California. Their casual references to specific areas of town, including where you and your loved ones live, feels like they came from locals.”

Again, that wasn’t a stunner to Jessie. While there had been a little national news when Haddonfield was killed by Ash Pierce during her escape, most of the intense media attention paid to the Haddonfield case was local, which would explain why it would be central in the minds of these guys.

“Any luck with the other one, other than him being from SoCal?”

“No, but that may actually be a breakthrough. For a while, I was pretty certain, based on some cultural references to the Unabomber and the Zodiac Killer, that he was in his forties or early fifties. But something felt off. That is, until I realized that unlike th.

“tip of the spear’ writer, this one was intentionally trying to create a fake identity. This man must have suspected that at some point, people like you and me would be poring over the letter, attempting to create a profile based on his words. I believe that this second man purposefully tried to create a profile for us, one of a middle-aged man with a stable but boring job.”

“But you don’t buy that?”

Jessie asked.

“I don’t know for sure.”

Lemmon sounded frustrated, despite her discovery.

“The one thing I’m certain of is that he’s smart. I really don’t think he’s much older than his early fifties. He could be someone younger, trying to throw us off the scent in that way. Or, if he’s particularly devilish in his brilliance, he could actually be between 40 and 55 and have planted these clues so we’d doubt that and dismiss suspects in that age range.”

Jessie sighed in frustration.

“So what’s your final analysis?”

Lemmon sighed too, clearly equally troubled by the lack of specificity.

“First guy: white, male from Southern California between 18 and 22 years old. Second guy: male from Southern California. Probably white but not certain. Likely between 20 and 55. And lastly, it goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway. Their hatred for women bleeds through every word of their letters. So there’s that.”

“Okay,”

Jessie said.

“Thanks, Doc.”

She wanted to sound more appreciative but found it hard to muster much enthusiasm. Part of that was likely her exhaustion. But the larger part was that, while they had a few things to go on with the first writer, the second one could be half the men in the L.A. area.

Lemmon clearly sensed her disappointment.

“Sorry I couldn’t offer more. I’ll go back in a few weeks and review the letters again. Maybe something new will jump out at me.”

“Me too,”

Jessie said.

“Maybe after I get a halfway decent night of sleep.”

After she hung up, she walked down the hall slowly, but rather than go straight back to research, she made a pitstop in the break room to get something more substantial than pretzels. She found a Hot Pocket in the freezer, and even though she wasn’t proud of the choice, she tossed it in the microwave.

As she sat at one of the tables and watched the digital timer count down, Jessie tried to clear her head of the Haddonfield stuff and focus on the case she could actually do something about. Ryan was honchoing the search for Tommy Golden so she tried to concentrate her attention on a different question, one that had been gnawing at the corner of her mind.

Prager had told them that Tommy Golden had only engaged in swaps with the Troppers and the Maplewoods. If she could be trusted with that fact—a big if now—then it made sense that Olivia Maplewood and Mark Tropper would have let their guard down around him, maybe let them into their homes willingly. But if he'd never had swaps with the Dominiks or the Patels, why would Cassandra Dominik or Robert Patel have let him in? Did he know them some other way? Was this whole life swap thing just a coincidence? She felt like she was missing a crucial piece.

Any hope of finding it in that moment disappeared when the microwave dinged, snapping her out of her musings. Before she could try to get back into that headspace, Officer Devery popped his head into the break room. He looked excited, even a little winded, like he’d been running.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

He was short of breath as he said it.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

A small ball of anxiety appeared magically in her gut.

“Someone just walked into the station lobby and I thought you should know.”

“Who?”

She did her best not to snap at the kid. He was just pumped and clearly unaware that she wasn’t in the mood to guess.

“Tommy Golden!