Page 9 of The Perfect Illusion (Jessie Hunt #39)

Sullivan’s jaw dropped open briefly before he recovered. His eyes, already suspicious, turned into narrow slits.

“I’m sure that I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said huffily.

“I’m sure you do,” Jessie replied. “We’re LAPD, Mr. Sullivan. We obviously have access to all your legal records. It might be better to dispense with the denials and just answer the questions you’re being asked.”

“Look, lady, I don’t know what you heard, but I never touched Tricia,” he growled. “Anyone who says different is full of it.”

Jessie could feel that Brady's eyes were now on her and she glanced in his direction. He was clearly surprised that she'd gone all in so early. But his expression seemed to say, "Now that you've started, you may as well keep going." So she did.

“We’re less concerned about if you touched her than if you killed her.”

She let the words hang there, studying his reaction. Unfortunately, the Botox complicated matters, as the ability of Sullivan's facial muscles to respond normally was severely compromised. His brow furrowed slightly, and he pursed his lips in either shock or anger.

“Tricia’s dead?” he asked. His tone expressed mild surprise but neither sadness nor curiosity.

“She is,” Jessie replied. “Murdered. And only weeks after tersely refusing to judge your pageant. That must have annoyed you.”

“It did,” he answered, apparently fully over the news of Patricia’s death.

“I thought it was quite rude of her to pass on it without any explanation or get back to me when I reached out again. But I hope you’re not suggesting I killed her over something like that. Like I said, I never even touched her.”

“You seem really intent on making it clear that you never physically harassed her,” Brady noted, somehow managing to still sound amiable under the circumstances.

“But you’ll forgive us for wondering if maybe Tricia was aware of the other allegations against you and didn’t want any part of you.

If you were worried about that, maybe you were also worried that she’d say something that could damage your reputation. Is that possible?”

Sullivan pushed himself up from his chair, making the thing squeak in what sounded almost like pain.

"Listen," he said with dripping condescension, "I answered your questions because you're cops and all. But now you're making accusations, and I'm not feeling so helpful. All I can tell you is that I didn't ever harass that bitch, even though she was uppity enough to deserve it."

Jessie seethed. She felt an invisible fist squeeze her insides, as if it was attempting to force the fury out of her and into the open. She didn't know if Sullivan was a killer or just a scumbag, but his lack of respect for the dead made her want to beat some reverence into him.

She glanced at the handset for his phone on the desk and briefly imagined picking it up and smashing one end into the man’s temple.

She pictured herself doing it repeatedly, slamming the plastic into his now-soft skull even after he’d slumped in his chair.

With Brady leaning back on the couch, she suspected she could get in at least half a dozen blows before he’d be able to get up and stop her.

“That’s not very nice talk, Mr. Sullivan,” Brady said, grabbing onto the armrest and pulling his considerable body upright, “Especially considering that I noticed that while you repeatedly deny harassing Patricia, you haven’t actually denied killing her. That seems weird to me.”

“Okay,’ Sullivan said petulantly, “I didn’t kill her.”

“Can you prove that?” Brady asked.

Jessie, standing silent as she watched this back and forth, realized she’d been holding her breath and slowly exhaled.

“How would I do that?” Sullivan wanted to know.

“You could start by telling us where you were last night between five and seven,” Brady suggested.

At that, Sullivan smiled smarmily.

“That’s easy,” he said. “I was at a run-through for the pageant this Saturday.”

“Can people vouch for your presence the whole time?” Brady asked.

"I can do better than that," he said, opening a desk drawer.

“Careful,” Brady warned, his hand going to his right hip, where his gun holster rested.

“I’m just getting out a thumb drive,” Sullivan said. “Is that okay?”

“What’s on it?”

“It’s a recording of the run-through,” Sullivan said. “I like to review them later to see where there are issues: timing lulls, poor spacing—that sort of thing.”

“Go ahead,” Jessie said.

Sullivan took out the thumb drive and held it up between his thumb and forefinger for them to see.

Something about the thing jogged a memory for Jessie.

It took a moment for her to make the connection.

The thumb drive looked very similar to the decorative pendant on a necklace in Mark Haddonfield’s box of personal effects.

Could that be what the pendant actually was—a thumb drive hidden as a decoration?

She knew what she would be doing when she got home.

Sullivan plugged the drive into his desktop and motioned for them to come around to look at the screen. A video popped up with a wide shot of a ballroom with a stage at the back. There was a timestamp in the upper corner. Sullivan moved the video to 5 P.M.

“That’s me,” he said, pointing at a man shown from the back who seemed to be wearing the same sport coat that Sullivan had on now. When he turned around, it was clear that it was him.

“Where was this run-through held?” Jessie asked.

“Same place as the pageant will be,” Sullivan said. “The Costa Mesa Grand Hotel.”

He fast-forwarded at double speed, repeatedly pointing himself out every time he appeared on camera.

From 6:06 to 6:21 P.M., the official window of death for Patricia Hollinger, he was never off-screen for more than four minutes.

That stretch of time was barely long enough to run to the bathroom and back, much less drive to Brentwood.

That didn’t mean that Sullivan couldn’t have hired someone to do his dirty work.

But based on their current surroundings, Jessie had doubts that he could afford anything that ambitious.

They’d need to follow up to be sure, but it was looking increasingly likely that, while Marcus Sullivan was a reprehensible person, he was not Patricia’s killer.

That didn’t stop Jessie from reconsidering grabbing the phone handset and doling out some justice for the crimes he had committed.

She felt that invisible fist squeezing her again and turned to Brady.

“I was going to run to the restroom,” she said. “You got this?”

“Sure,” he said, clearly slightly surprised that she would exit the interview before it was over. But he said nothing more.

She left the inner office and rushed through the outer one too. After stepping into the hall, she pulled the door closed behind her and leaned against the wall. Taking long deep breaths, she waited for the fist to release its grip, and along with it, the anger bubbling inside her.

It took quite a while.