The Perfect Ruse, page 4
“Hold on one second, Sergeant,” she said, before calling after the M.E., “Dr. Gallagher … Cheryl!”
The medical examiner, who was almost out the door, stopped in her tracks. Her spine straightened as she visibly bristled at the use of her first name. When she turned around, the forced smile on her face was as tight as the bun her blonde hair was tied in. She made a fuss of re-adjusting her white lab coat and walked over, making up for her small size with quick, forceful strides.
“I was just headed off to the lab to prep my preliminary report, Ms. Hunt,” she said sharply, before unconvincingly adding, “but I’m happy to share anything that might be of use now.”
“That would be great, Cheryl,” Jessie said, finding herself unable to stop from poking the doctor slightly, whom she knew hated being addressed by her first name. But the woman had just tried to sneak out without giving them any details at all, so a little poking was deserved. “I think Detective Goodwin and I would love anything you could offer in the way of time and means of death.”
Gallagher looked like she wanted to go with her typical “I can’t say anything this early in the process” line, but the request was so basic that even she knew she couldn’t get away with that kind of claim. Her shoulders slumped and with a look of resignation on her face, she answered, “I arrived on the scene just after 8 a.m.,” she said. “CSU was already hard at work. Based on my initial data, I’d peg the time of death as less than two hours prior to that, but my understanding is that your security system data may prove more useful than that.”
“If it bears out, it looks like she was killed between 6:44 and 6:49,” Sam said.
“Well, that’s certainly within my two-hour window,” Gallagher said tartly.
“And the method of death?” Jessie asked, choosing to ignore the M.E.’s tone. “Is strangling accurate?”
“As always, I can’t be definitive until after the autopsy,” Gallagher said, “but it’s a solid guess. Bruising around the neck is consistent with that, as is the petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes. I should know more in a few hours. Can I go?”
Jessie waved her arms elaborately, like a matador inviting a bull to pass by. She got what she needed, and there was no need to keep Gallagher around any longer, especially in this mood.
“Is she always like that?” Sam asked, once she had left.
Brunson grunted softly under his breath but said nothing, letting Jessie explain.
“She’s always testy,” Jessie told the detective. “But she was in rare form today. Let’s not let that distract us.”
“From what?” Sam asked.
Jessie pointed at the two members of the crime scene unit crew who were standing patiently in the corner of the breakfast room with a body bag.
“They’re done with their work,” she said. “Once we’ve looked at the body, they can take her, so let’s get to it.”
Sergeant Brunson waved off the officer by the sliding glass door and stayed where he was as Jessie and Sam walked around the breakfast room table to get a clear view of Kim Carrigan. No one was within fifteen feet of them.
Jessie closed her eyes for a few seconds, then opened them quickly, trying to picture the moment when Kim Carrigan realized she was in danger and tried to save herself. She looked at the woman, lying on the floor, wearing boxer shorts and a Weezer t-shirt. A robe was still half draped over one shoulder. She had a single slipper on one foot. The other was in the kitchen by the coffee machine.
Kim was an attractive woman with angular features, longish, dirty-blonde hair, and hazel eyes that were currently dotted with red. She was on the shorter side and looked to be in good shape, though not a maniac about it like some folks who lived around here. There were no obvious signs of plastic surgery.
Jessie knelt down beside her and moved her robe over so that it covered her exposed legs. It didn’t impact the evidence as CSU had already done their work, and there was no harm in giving the woman a little dignity. Jessie hoped that wasn’t all she could provide her with. Kim Carrigan had lost any chance at a future, but there was still an opportunity to get her justice.
She took note of the cordless phone shattered on the ground near Carrigan’s feet and wondered if Kim had used it to try to call for help and lost her grip. Or maybe she’d attempted to use it as a weapon to smash her assailant with. Then she glanced at the broken glass and coffee on the ground nearby and the plastic carafe handle still gripped in the woman’s hand.
“You think she was pouring coffee when she was attacked?” Sam asked.
“No,” Jessie said. “There’s no mug out on this counter or anywhere else. Plus, she’s nowhere near the coffee machine, and she’s still holding the carafe handle. I think she tried to use the carafe to defend herself. She must have hit her attacker with it, sending the glass and coffee across the room. I see some as far away as the far wall. She fought hard with what she had until she couldn’t fight anymore.”
She looked up at Sam, whose face was deathly white.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m still adjusting,” he admitted. “I used to deal with cases that involved human exploitation. It was horrible but most of the victims had been suffering for a while by the time we got to them. I haven’t gotten used to victims who wake up one morning, slide into their slippers to get their coffee thinking it’s a normal day, and end up lying cold on the floor minutes later with a coffee pot handle in their hand.”
“Good,” Jessie said forcefully, standing up. “Don’t ever get used to it. That’s what keeps you sharp.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked, slightly taken aback by the intensity of her tone.
“Kim Carrigan isn’t just a case file,” Jessie reminded him. “She’s a woman who liked coffee and Weezer; a woman who had a husband who had to find her like this. As raw as you feel, imagine what he’s going through and hold on to that, because we’re going to talk to him right now.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Jessie stayed a few steps behind the others.
As she and Sam followed Sergeant Brunson, who led them down the hallway they had yet to pass through, she took a moment to compose herself. Her words to Sam Goodwin had a twin purpose: to give him a reality check and maybe to inspire him a little.
But they’d also gotten her a bit riled up, and that was no way to be when meeting with the spouse of the deceased. She needed to calm herself before coming face to face with the victim’s husband, especially when he was a news anchor who, despite his grief, would be more on guard than most.
The hallway floor was hardwood and creaked softly as they passed a guest room and stopped at a closed door. At the end of the hall was an open door that Jessie surmised led to the Carrigans’ bedroom. Jessie tried not to think about how Kim Carrigan would never rest her head in there again. Brunson knocked softly on the office door, before opening it and muttering something. Then he turned to Jessie and Sam.
“He’s in there with a support officer,” he said. “You good?”
Jessie looked over at Sam. He nodded. “We’re good,” he said.
They stepped inside. The lights were on but dimmed. Gregory Carrigan wasn’t seated at his desk but on a small loveseat off to the side. He was sprawled out, and his head was sitting in his hand, which was resting on the arm of the seat. He didn’t look up when they entered.
The support officer, an older man with thinning hair and a sour bearing that suggested he might not be great at offering support was sitting in the single chair opposite Carrigan’s desk with a weary expression. He started to get up to leave, but Jessie motioned for him to stay. She wanted to keep any familiar face around, even if it was only recently familiar and not especially comforting.
Carrigan’s office was smaller and less self-absorbed than one might have expected from a news anchor. There were a few local Emmys shoved in the back corner of a corner shelf and two framed photos on the wall.
Upon closer inspection, Jessie realized that Carrigan wasn’t serving in a reportorial capacity in either one. In the first, he and Kim were posing in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. In the other, they were at Dodger Stadium, standing giddily alongside legendary announcer Vin Scully. Otherwise, there were no indications that he was a media figure or even from Los Angeles. Everything else in the office, from the books to the pictures to the tchotchkes on the desk, could have belonged to an accountant in Toledo.
“Mr. Carrigan,” Sam said, his voice somehow equally determined and sympathetic, “I’m Detective Sam Goodwin from LAPD’s Homicide Special Section. I’m here with our criminal profiler, Jessie Hunt. We’re here to investigate your wife’s death.”
At the mention of Jessie’s name, Carrigan looked up. Jessie, who wasn’t a regular viewer of local news, was still well aware of him. He was good-looking in an unintimidating way, with a big forehead, slightly oversized ears, thick, wavy, brown hair, and big eyes that were the same hazel color as his wife’s.
Normally, he also had a winning smile to go with all that but not today. He stared at Jessie impassively for a second, though with obvious recognition. Then he lowered his head again. When he spoke, his voice was soft and low, and he sounded like he was reciting words from a textbook.
“Homicide Special Section is an elite unit that specializes in cases that have high profiles or intense media scrutiny, often involving multiple victims and serial killers,” he muttered, before looking up again and clearing his throat. “I’m assuming that there is no serial killer component and that HSS is here because the victim was married to someone with a ‘high profile’ and that this case will likely generate ‘intense media scrutiny?’”
“That’s correct,” Jessie answered, seeing no reason not to be forthright.
“And is there any particular reason for your involvement, Ms. Hunt?” Carrigan asked, with a slight edge in his voice. “It wouldn’t be because Interim Police Chief Decker is, at this very moment, defending his record in regard to Operation Z and might want his top profiler on a potentially explosive case to ensure that it doesn’t cause him more political headaches?”
“Mr. Carrigan,” Jessie said, taking a step forward and staring at the man with unblinking eyes, “I’m going to be straight with you. My job is to go where I’m told, to catch killers, and close cases. But off the record, it would be pretty naïve of me to suggest that your theory is ridiculous.”
“We’re off the record?” Carrigan said, his eyebrows raised.
Jessie ignored his comment and pressed ahead, making sure to keep her tone politely professional despite his challenge. “Luckily, I don’t have to worry about the politics involved. All I have to do is find out what happened to Kim. And I’m assuming that because of what you do for a living, you know my track record when it comes to this sort of thing. I’m also assuming that when you set aside the reporter in you for a second, you’ll be glad that I was assigned—for whatever reason—to Kim’s case.” She stopped for a moment, long enough for her heart to soften her words. “I’m sorry that she was taken from you. I’m sorry your life with her—and the future you had planned—was stolen from you. You know better than most that I genuinely understand what that feels like. And I’m here, along with Detective Goodwin, to catch the person who did this to you. But to do that, we could really use your help. Can you help us, Greg?”
She watched him closely as she waited for his response. At first, his face retained the same emotionless expression from when they’d first entered the office, but after a few seconds, his steely reserve seemed to melt away. His jaw softened, and his eyes began to glisten.
“I’ve reported on so many of these stories,” he said, his voice raw with emotion. “I never thought that I’d be living one of them. I know it’s cliché to say it, but I never thought this would happen to me, to us.”
Sam, who had been leaning against the door, stood straighter at that comment. Jessie could tell he wanted to ask something but didn’t want to interrupt the connection that she’d developed with Carrigan. She tried to hint that it was okay.
“No one ever does,” she said softly. “That’s why we’re here—to ask the questions you would never think to because you’re just not in that headspace, right Detective Goodwin?”
“Right,” Sam said, pausing for a second before registering that she was giving him an opening. “For example, Mr. Carrigan, you said you never thought this would happen to you. But we really need you to think—have you had any negative experiences lately? Maybe a viewer who called in upset about a story you did? Or the subject of a piece who threatened you after the fact?”
Carrigan thought for a second, then shook his head.
“I can’t recall anything lately,” he said. “I used to get some hate e-mails back when I worked the evening and late-night newscasts. They were heavily ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’ But since I moved to middays and afternoons last year, that really dropped off. We do a lot more human-interest stuff during the daytime. I can’t recall the last time I heard anything more negative than ‘I wish that piece was longer’ or ‘that recipe was harder to make than it seemed with your chef.’ It's been almost exclusively positive.”
Sam nodded sympathetically. “I know you’ve gone over this already, but do you mind if we review the timeline of events from this morning again?”
Carrigan agreed to. As he went over his description of his moment-to-moment movements, which matched up with Sergeant Brunson’s notes from earlier, Jessie had a thought about another possible motive. She waited until Sam was done to broach it.
“Mr. Carrigan,” she said, “you told us that you don’t believe anyone wanted to hurt you, but what about Kim? Did she mention any recent arguments with co-workers? An altercation at the supermarket? An online dispute that got out of hand perhaps?”
He shook his head far more vehemently than he had when asked about any conflicts of his own.
“No way,” he said emphatically. “If you knew Kim, you’d understand that she just wasn’t that way. Everyone loved her. She didn’t get into arguments in supermarkets or online or anywhere else like that. And her co-workers adored her.”
“What did she do?” Sam asked.
“She was a special education teacher at a public elementary school,” he told them, a smile breaking across his face at the thought of it. “She didn’t really need the job anymore. We’ve been doing pretty well for the last few years. But she was committed to the work, and she cared about the children so much. She’d been there for seven years and loved seeing how much these kids could develop from kindergarten to fifth grade. It defined her and—”
He stopped suddenly.
“What?” Jessie asked.
“I just realized that I haven’t called the school to tell them,” he said. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“We’ll take care of that, Mr. Carrigan,” Sergeant Brunson said quietly. “We’ll give them the information they need. You can call them with a more personal message when you feel up to it.”
Carrigan nodded again. He seemed on the verge of fading off into his own thoughts. Jessie tried to pull him back. “Did anyone other than you or Kim have access to your security code?” she asked.
“No,” he said, eager to focus on a specific question. “We never had anyone house-sit. We don’t have pets, so there was no pet-sitter to give it to. We rarely had people stay with us and never gave them the code.”
Jessie looked over at Sam to see if he had any more questions. He shook his head that he didn’t. She nodded that he should wrap up.
“Okay, listen, Mr. Carrigan,” he said, with an impressive reassurance in his voice, “we promise to do our best for Kim. We’re going to follow up on every lead and see where they take us. We’ll keep you informed as best as we can. That’s our job. Your job is to take care of yourself. That’s not easy. But the support officer here has resources available to you that may help.”
Jessie, less than confident that the sour-faced officer would be much help, decided to offer her two cents.
“Mr. Carrigan—Greg,” she added, getting his full attention with the first name. “I’m going to give you some unofficial advice that you won’t find in the brochures but that I’ve learned the hard way. You’re a public figure. This story is going to be catnip to people. There are already TV trucks camped out in front of your house, maybe even from your own station. If you haven’t gotten calls from your producers, you will soon. They will pressure you to go on the air, to tell your story, to make it personal. After this first wave of grief, you may even have the urge to pursue the case on your own, to use those reporter’s instincts to get justice for Kim. Ignore all that.”
“What?”
“Don’t go on the air. Don’t take those calls from your producers. Don’t take calls from any ‘work’ friends for the next forty-eight hours. They won’t mean to use what you say for a story, but in the end, they won’t be able to help it. Other than calling human resources to say you’re taking some personal time, go silent. Anything else you say will get turned into tabloid fodder. Don’t mention HSS’s involvement in the case. Don’t mention me. That will only jack up media interest. Plus, the more press attention this gets, the more that helps the perpetrator. The less the killer knows about our investigation, the more likely we are to catch them. It’s going to be hard, but the best thing you can do right now is stay quiet, unless you’re talking to us. Can you do that?”
“I can try,” he said hesitantly.
“Please do,” she said. “In fact, if you have a beach house or a mountain cabin, I’d stay there for a few days. Just make sure to give us the address and remain reachable.”
They left him in the study and returned to the kitchen, where they found that Kim’s body had been removed, as had the glass debris and the coffee. If someone walked into this room now, they’d never know that a murder had been committed here.
Jessie heard a small cough behind them and turned around. Sergeant Brunson was standing behind them. Something about the anticipatory tension of his posture told her that he had news.
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