Page 14 of The Perfect Illusion (Jessie Hunt #39)

Jessie made good time.

“What do we know so far?” she asked when she joined him.

“The victim’s name is Rebecca Martinez. I’ve already had preliminary discussions with the M.E. and with CSU,” he said. “They’re still working on the official time of death, but we already have a pretty good idea of it.”

“How’s that?” she asked.

"Apparently her husband saw her on a home security camera and called it in," Brady explained. "He's on his way back now on a private plane, but I have a call set up with him in a few minutes."

“A private plane,” Jessie noted. “Where was he?”

“This is an unusual one,” Brady explained. “The husband’s name is Kai Cody. He plays for the L.A. Angels baseball team. He was on a road trip with the team in St. Louis. The team owner gave him his private jet to fly back as soon as he heard what happened. He should be here in about four hours.”

“In that case,” Jessie said, trying to process all this, “maybe I should change up my process and look at the body before we talk to the husband. I don’t want to go into that conversation without knowing the details of the situation.”

“Sure thing,” Brady said, leading her into the house. “The reason we think this is connected to the other case is that Martinez was found wearing a sash and tiara, and just like Patricia Hollinger, it appears that she was posed in a specific position post-mortem.”

“So she’s a beauty queen too?” Jessie asked as she followed Brady down a long hallway to a door where a uniformed officer stood guard.

“Her sash says Miss San Diego 2018 ,” he said. “A preliminary web search confirmed that she won the title that year. You ready to go in there?’

Jessie nodded. Brady took a step inside, and she did too.

To her surprise, they weren't in a bedroom as she'd expected.

They were in a living room. The group of people hovering around a figure on the sofa revealed where Martinez was.

Before Jessie focused her attention there, she honed in on the trail of blood on the carpet leading from the sofa all the way to another doorway.

“She was killed somewhere else and moved in here?” she said more than asked.

“The bathroom,” Brady confirmed. “It’s a mess in there. We’re confident that the murder weapon was a fireplace poker that was found on the floor next to the vanity. It’s covered in blood. CSU is checking it for prints, but I’m not hopeful.”

“I’ll check that out later,” she said. “For now, let’s take a look at the victim.”

She and Brady walked over to the couch. The deputy M.E. and CSU team stepped aside without having to be asked. Jessie stared at Rebecca Martinez.

The woman wore a lavender negligee, not unlike the one that Jessie had planned to change into tonight.

She was propped up halfway on the sofa so that it looked like she was lounging there casually, very much like Hollinger had been posed.

As Brady mentioned earlier, she had a sash across her chest and a tiara on her head.

Both were largely devoid of blood, suggesting they were placed on her post-mortem.

The woman had likely once been beautiful but it was hard to tell that now.

There was significant bruising on her face and neck, along with multiple deep, bloody gashes.

It appeared that her left side below the ribs had been deeply pierced, likely by the poker.

Her long, black hair was matted with blood, and her green eyes were blank and glassy.

Jessie felt a profound sadness for this woman. She guessed that Rebecca Martinez was in her mid-twenties. She was a beauty queen married to a baseball star living in a giant mansion. Her whole life was ahead of her. Until it wasn’t.

The sound of Brady’s ringing phone jarred her out of her thoughts.

"It's Kai Cody," he said. "We agreed to talk at 11:30, but he's calling a little early. You up for this?"

“Not much choice,” Jessie said.

“Let’s do it somewhere else,” he said, leading her out of the living room to the back patio as he answered the call. “Hello, Mr. Cody.”

“Detective Bowen?” the man asked over speaker, his voice sounding scratchy and raw.

“That’s right,” Brady said as both he and Jessie sat down at the patio table. “I’m here with Jessie Hunt, one of our profilers. We’re both terribly sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Cody said. “I’m just trying to keep my head above water right now. You’ll have to forgive me if I seem a little out of it.”

“We understand,” Brady said. “And we get that this is an incredibly difficult time for you. Having said that, we’re hoping that you can tell us a little more about what happened tonight. The more information we have, the better chance we have of catching whoever did this.”

“Right,” Cody said, sounding beaten down, before sighing heavily. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to employ a technique that I use during games in order to get through this.”

Jessie glanced over at Brady, not sure what that meant. He asked the question for her.

“We’re not sure what that means exactly, Mr. Cody,” he said carefully.

“Just that I’ve developed this thing over the course of my career that helps me in a big moment in a game, or when I’m being heckled by fans at an opposing team’s stadium.

I kind of shut out everything except the minute details of the task in front of me.

For example, how much is the pitcher that I’m facing sweating?

Is the wind making the flags at the back of the stadium blow at all?

Is the bat I’m holding positioned at the perfect angle?

Zoning in on the particulars allows me to block out any distractions.

I call it focused detachment. The only downside is that it makes me into a bit of a stone-faced zombie.

Some people say I come across as an emotionless jerk.

I’m hoping that if I can go to that place in my head right now, I can answer your questions without completely losing it emotionally. ”

“Got it,” Brady said.

Jessie said nothing, pondering Cody's odd comment.

It was entirely possible that he was pre-warning them about his impending emotional detachment as a way to explain away a suspicious-seeming lack of feeling at his wife's death.

But for now, at least, she was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt.

And if this "focused detachment" thing really worked, she wondered if it might be a tool she could use to temper her own hard-to-control urges. But that was an issue for another time.

“What do you want to know?” Cody asked.

Brady looked over at Jessie to see if she wanted to start off the questioning. She leaned in to get closer to the phone mic.

“Mr. Cody, this is Jessie Hunt,” she said. “We were hoping you could walk us through what led you to call the police. What made you think something was wrong?’

“Becks and I have a routine when I’m on the road,” he said quietly.

His voice became instantly monotonous as he was apparently already using his focused detachment technique.

“We always talk about an hour before game time. I find some corner of the locker room and we check in. Then I always call her after the game is over so we can say our goodnights.”

“But not tonight?” Brady prodded.

"It was the same as usual," he answered, his voice as calm as still water on a lake.

"The game started at 6:45 P.M., or 4:45 L.A.

time. I called her around 3:30, and we talked for ten minutes.

The game ended around 7:30 her time, or 5:30 your time.

I showered and changed and then did a little press with the beat writers.

Then we took the bus back to the hotel and had a team meal.

I texted her that I'd call after that was over, and she said she'd be waiting.

The meal ended around 11:45 here, or 9:45 for her.

I called as soon as I got back to my room.

She didn't answer. So I texted. No response.

I thought maybe she'd fallen asleep despite our plan to talk. It's happened on occasion."

“So if it wasn’t that uncommon, why did you have concerns?” Jessie wondered.

“I didn’t at first,” Cody said, his voice quavering slightly before returning to the monotone.

“I just figured I’d check in on her. We had to move out of our place in Bel Air for some renovations.

The house in Cheviot Hills is a rental. And since it doesn’t have the same security as our home, I had a company set up all kind of cameras as an extra precaution.

Some are inside the house. So I checked them. ”

He paused for a moment, as if gathering himself for what he had to say next. Jessie and Brady waited silently, not wanting to prod him. They didn’t need to. After five seconds, he resumed.

"I saw her on the camera set up in the living room," he said slowly, doing his best to control his tone.

"At first I just thought she'd fallen asleep watching TV or something.

But then I noticed that she had some kind of crown on her head.

That was weird, so I zoomed in on the video.

That's when I noticed…the injuries. I called 911 right away. "

He stopped at that point. After ten more seconds, it became clear that he was done. Jessie looked over at Brady. She didn't have any more questions for the man right now. Apparently, neither did Brady.

“Okay, thanks for your time, Mr. Cody,” he said softly. “We may have more questions for you once you get back into town, but that’s it for now.”

“Where do I go when I get back?” he asked, sounding like a helpless child. “The police station? A funeral home? I don’t know what to do.”

“We’ll send a police liaison to meet your plane,” Brady told him.

“They’ll walk you through next steps. For now, we’ll need to take Becks to the medical examiner’s for an autopsy.

The house will be temporarily closed off as a crime scene.

By the time you arrive, the liaison will have an action plan to help you get through the next few hours and days.

They’ll also ask to get access to your home security footage and Rebecca’s phone. ”

“Okay,” Cody said, barely audible. “Thank you.”

“Sorry again for your loss,” Brady said.

The line went dead. It took both of them a few seconds to regroup. Jessie got there first.

“We need to get our hands on that security footage as soon as possible,” she said.

“And if they haven’t already, your officers should do a thorough sweep of the house to find out how the killer got in.

In the meantime, we need to find any possible connection between these women.

Obviously, there’s the pageant angle, which feels pretty strong.

But I don’t want to leave any stone unturned. ”

“I’m right there with you,” Brady said.

“I was going to call Jamil and ask him to work an all-nighter, assuming he’s not still at the office anyway,” Jessie said. “We’re not going to sleep any time soon either, so I think we should order some coffee. By the morning, we may end up mainlining the stuff.”