Page 31 of The Perfect Deception (Jessie Hunt #40)

It wasn’t just Golden.

Jessie saw that he’d brought his lawyer too.

By the time she and Devery learned that, they were already in interrogation room 2. Ryan stood outside the door with his phone. When he saw them, he shoved it back in his pocket.

“I was just about to text you. I assume you heard.”

“Devery here told me. Said Golden just walked into the station lobby?”

Ryan nodded.

“That’s right. He turned himself in with his lawyer by his side.”

“Who is it?”

“Bridget Halloran.”

Ryan sighed as he said it.

“She’s not going to be fun to deal with.”

Jessie had never met her. “Why not?”

“She’s very smart and very combative. She also loves publicity, so this thing could go off the rails pretty quick.”

“Well, let’s find out.”

They were about to enter the room when Devery spoke up.

“Any chance you want a uniformed officer in there, just for intimidation purposes?”

Ryan gave him a sour smile.

“Bridget Halloran doesn’t get intimidated very easily. And no offense, kid, but I don’t think you’re the one to change that.”

“Let him in, Ryan,”

Jessie said.

“He wants to eventually join HSS and this could be a good learning experience for him.”

Ryan frowned but relented.

“Okay, but not a word. Got it?”

Devery, a goofy smile on his face, nodded vigorously. He opened the door and Jessie entered, followed by Ryan. Golden and his lawyer were seated at the bolted-down metal table in the middle of the room. Golden had completely changed clothes since this morning.

Instead of the blue Pinnacle Club trainer’s shirt and workout shorts, he was wearing blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt with a hoodie. Most surprisingly his hair, which had been dirty blond this morning, was now jet black. He was a man who clearly knew how to alter his appearance on the fly, a skill that Jessie found quite suspicious under the circumstances.

His attorney’s look was equally dramatic. Bridget Halloran was wearing a tailored, emerald green business skirt, which popped against her ivory skin. The outfit also contrasted dramatically with her fiery red hair, which cascaded down to her mid-back. When she looked at Jessie, her green eyes flashed. So did her painfully white teeth, which gleamed as she offered a wide, shark-like grin.

“Nice to see you again, Detective Hernandez.”

Halloran’s eyes never left Jessie.

“Ms. Hunt, I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure.”

“Likewise,”

Jessie said, though ‘pleasure’ wasn’t the word that came to mind for her.

She and Ryan sat down, after which he launched in.

“Your client already had his rights read to him, so with you by his side, I’m assuming we can dive right into it. He’s obviously here to talk.”

“He is,”

Halloran said.

“but with conditions. Mr. Golden has voluntarily surrendered to authorities, which I think should engender some goodwill. He’s here to clear up some confusion but I won’t allow him to put himself in a compromising position. So there’s really no point in asking questions that I’ll be forced to shut down. With that in mind, please proceed.”

Jessie could sense that Halloran was itching to object, so she decided to see if she could throw her off her game a bit before they started.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Ms. Halloran, how do you and Tommy know each other? I wouldn’t have pegged you to travel in the same circles.”

“Please address my client as Mr. Golden.”

Halloran was smiling broadly but her tone was sharp and humorless.

“And I’m happy to answer that question. Mr. Golden is my personal trainer and he came to me for legal guidance in this matter.”

“So this is pro bono then?”

Halloran scoffed.

“I don’t do anything pro bono, Ms. Hunt. How do you think I afford this outfit?”

“It’s really pretty,”

Jessie acknowledged.

“But you do know that your client isn’t in the best financial shape? Is he going to pay you back with free training for life?”

“I’d be less concerned with that than with why your department set up a dragnet to capture a man who helps women get firmer buttocks for a living.”

“Well for one thing,”

Ryan said, ignoring the back half of that comment.

“Mr. Golden ran from our interview with him and during our pursuit, nearly ran me over with his vehicle. So, whatever additional issues we need to address, he’s going to have to face the music on that.”

“May I respond to that?”

Tommy asked Halloran, speaking for the first time.

She nodded, but her eyes seemed to be saying something more complicated, along the lines o.

“only say what we discussed earlier.”

He appeared to register what she was conveying.

“I’m sorry about that. I was panicky and didn’t even see you until it was too late. There was no intent to harm you.”

That last line sounded like it had been fed to him.

“Setting aside almost running me over, why did you run in the first place, Mr. Golden? And at this point I should say that we’re only using that name because we don’t yet know what your real last name is yet. I suspect we’ll have it after we book you and get your fingerprints.”

Halloran held up a hand.

“I’m going to let my client answer that question, but within prescribed limits.”

“Okay,”

Ryan said.

“we’re all ears.”

Golden sighed and ran his hand through his now-black hair.

“In my past, I’ve had a few run-ins with the law. Nothing violent! But when you—an LAPD detective—came to the club, I thought that my past…indiscretions were coming back to haunt me. So just like in the car, I panicked. Obviously it was ridiculous to think the solution was to run away, but that’s the point. I wasn’t thinking.”

Jessie spoke up.

“And yet you had the wherewithal to avoid detection for hours. You dodged surveillance cameras. You changed outfits and even dyed your hair. You seem like you were thinking pretty efficiently about how to avoid capture, Mr. Golden.”

“That’s related to some of those prior indiscretions I mentioned, when I had to leave my circumstances in a hurry. I learned a few tricks along the way. I guess I figured that if I escaped at the club, you’d let things go because the infractions I’d committed elsewhere weren’t worth the hassle. But then I saw the news.”

“What did you see?”

Jessie asked.

He stared back at her.

“I saw you in footage outside a house in a neighborhood I know well. And then the anchor said something about multiple people in the neighborhood being murdered. She didn’t reveal names but I checked online and saw that one of the houses you visited belonged to Mark and Belinda Tropper. Since I know them, I realized that you thought I was a suspect. That’s when I really freaked out. So I called Bridget.”

Halloran gave them another shark smile.

“And that’s why we’re here: to clear up any misimpression you may have had about Mr. Golden’s recent activities.”

“Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than that.”

Jessie figured it was time to get down to the nitty-gritty.

“You see, there wasn’t just a murder at the Tropper home. There was also one at the residence of James and Olivia Maplewood. I believe you know them quite well too.”

Golden’s mouth dropped open in either real or impressively feigned shock.

“I don’t know if I should answer that.”

He turned to Halloran.

Jessie replied before she could.

“Whether you answer or not, you must know by now that we’re well aware of the arrangement you had with those couples. And you must also know that this doesn’t look great for you. In fact, right now you’re our best suspect. So, if you weren’t involved, maybe now’s a good time to be little less cutesy about your criminal history and come clean. As Detective Hernandez said, we know you’re not really Thomas Golden. We know you faked your current identity documents. We know you’ve piled up six figures worth of credit card debt in seven months. We even know that your personal training certification is fabricated.”

Though she couldn’t see him in the corner of the room behind her, Jessie distinctly heard Officer Devery gasp quietly at the cascade of revelations. Apparently also surprised, Bridget Halloran’s eyes darted briefly to her client before she regrouped and focused again on Jessie, who continued.

“So, here’s the way we look at it. We’re investigating multiple murders. We think more may be forthcoming. If you have information that might exonerate you for these crimes but implicate you in other, lesser ones and you hold back, we may view that as aiding and abetting whatever crimes you could have helped prevent.”

“That’s absurd,”

Halloran sneered.

“My client has no obligation to actively help in your investigation. If harm comes to someone else, that’s on the perpetrator of the crime and the police who were unable to catch him. I figured you would know better than to attempt such cheap intimidation tactics, Ms. Hunt.”

Though Jessie hadn’t wanted that response, she had anticipated it, and she had one of her own.

“And based on your reputation, Ms. Halloran, I figured you’d know how public perception works. Whatever you believe your client’s obligations are, the people of Los Angeles may feel differently. And if I hold a press conference after we’re done here, explaining to the media and the public that we have a person in custody who could help stop a serial killer but is choosing not to, how do you think that will reflect on him? How will it impact his trial for, at the least, attempted vehicular homicide of an LAPD detective? How about the trial for whatever crimes he’s being so coy about? Not well, I’m guessing.”

“You wouldn’t do anything so unethical,”

Halloran hissed.

“I don’t consider it unethical to do everything within my power to bring killers to justice. Now either your client is that killer or he’s impeding our ability to eliminate him as a suspect. Either way, that’s a bad look.”

“It was fraud, okay!”

Golden blurted out.

“Tommy, stop,”

Halloran snapped.

"No way. Look, I defrauded a couple of middle-aged ladies back in Virginia. It was this scheme involving fake jewelry. It went bad, so I bolted to Tennessee and got involved with some stuff there, where I pretended to be an art dealer. The FBI started poking around so I paid someone to help me disappear. My real name is Alvin Cruvelli. I got new ID and came out here to start fresh. But I got into debt and felt trapped. So I faked the personal training certification. But I swear, I basically went straight after that. I have legit income from this job and I really like it. I'm good at it too. I just don't have the official paperwork. And I definitely didn't kill anyone."

Halloran was shaking her head in frustration. But to her credit, she rebounded quickly.

“So as you can clearly see, my client’s legal hiccups don’t rise anywhere near the level of murder.”

“That hasn’t been established yet,”

Ryan said before turning his attention to the former Tommy Golden.

“Maybe now’s a good time to tell us about your participation in these ‘life swaps.’ Did you get involved in order to steal from these couples? To try to finagle gifts out of them?”

“No!”

He sounded genuinely surprised at the allegation.

“I’ll admit that I didn’t say ‘yes’ for the reason I gave Elise. When she mentioned the idea, she said it might offer me a chance to see what married life was like without the real responsibility. I said that sounded cool, and I guess I meant that at the time, but I really agreed because it seemed like an easy way to live large and get with hot women without any strings attached.”

“What do you mean?”

Ryan asked.

Golden—or Alvin—shrugged.

“These people lived in huge mansions that I got to enjoy for the time I was there. I was expected to take advantage of everything they had. And maybe I shouldn’t be proud of this part, but it was a no-strings way to have a good time. These wives liked to keep in good shape. They wanted to hook up as a way to spice things up in their marriages. And their husbands were okay with it. It all just fell into my lap. I didn’t have to worry about dating in this new city that I was unfamiliar with. And there was no real commitment. Once the swap was over, I left. No guilt. No expectations. Or at least that was the way it was supposed to be.”

“Supposed to be?”

Jessie pressed.

Alvin Cruvelli sighed.

“It’s never as simple as that, is it? One of the wives—Olivia Maplewood—wanted to do another swap. But I guess her husband didn’t love how enthusiastic she was about it. He complained to Elise; said he wanted to have a heart-to-heart with me. That didn’t sound fun. Then I heard through the grapevine about some guy who supposedly became obsessed with the other wife in his swap, and how his own wife ended up killing herself out of shame. I just didn’t want any part of a mess like that. So I basically stopped doing them.”

Jessie looked over at Ryan and saw that he was thinking the same thing she was. This guy’s whole story could be completely bogus, but it had the ring of truth to it. They’d need to check his alibi for both nights, but she had the sinking feeling that he was going to come up clean.

And if he did, that meant there was still a killer on the loose. And evening was fast approaching