The Perfect Ruse, page 7
“Come in,” she said in a hushed voice. “I’m Marilyn, a friend of the family. I’ll put you in one of the front sitting rooms away from the children. Then I’ll get Sean. Follow me.”
Once inside, Jessie saw the alarm panel on the wall across from the door and wondered if that was the same one the killer had used to de-activate the system when he first came in the house. Before she could point it out to Sam, Marilyn was leading them down a long hallway, past several rooms, one of which housed a grand piano.
In the distance, Jessie could hear the squeals of multiple children, maybe as many as half a dozen. As they moved down the hall, they passed a series of family portraits showing the Hills over the years. The first was an engagement photo, then a wedding picture, then a portrait with a baby, and so on.
Jessie lost track of the number as they passed each one, but there were easily more than ten. By the last one, the older child, a boy, looked to be about eight, and the younger one, a girl, to be around five. She could see how their features matched their parents. The boy had his father’s reluctant smile and gray eyes, and the little girl had the same shade of blue in her eyes as her mom.
Jessie knew that their mother was thirty-five when she died but seeing her dead body in photos was far different than watching her age over a decade in lovingly curated portraits. It was like walking through a mini time machine, seeing Eleanor Hill go from a wide-eyed newlywed with long, brown hair and an unfurrowed brow to a still lovely, but perhaps more weary, now shorter-haired, tired-eyed woman who was fighting to hold back the furrow. Just that short walk made Jessie feel the family’s ache and stirred her desire to find some justice for the woman staring back at her.
Marilyn finally stopped at a small alcove that was easy to miss. It had just a loveseat and one leather chair. It was clear why she’d led them there. She must have hoped that in such an easily hidden spot, they wouldn’t be noticed by the kids or anyone else for that matter. Jessie didn’t mind.
“I’ll get Sean and be right back,” Marilyn said.
Jessie sat down on the loveseat. Sam looked unsure whether to join her.
“It’s okay, Detective,” she said. “When Hill arrives, he’s probably going to want the chair opposite us.”
Sam nodded and was just about to join her when a little kid tore around the corner, slammed face-first into his backside, and plopped onto the ground. It was a boy of about seven. He looked briefly stunned. Jessie thought he might be about to cry, but he popped right up, scurried behind the loveseat, put his finger to his lips, and gave them both an elaborate “shush!”
“What the—?” Sam started to ask.
“Ready or not, here I come!” came another young female voice from another room, making it clear what was going on.
They could hear squeals and giggles from nearby rooms, and soon the little boy behind the loveseat found it hard to contain his own snickers. The sound of them echoed from the alcove out into the hall, and within seconds, a head peeked around the corner. With her brown hair and blue eyes, Jessie recognized the little girl from the portraits. She looked at Sam standing awkwardly in front of her, then at Jessie, and was seemingly untroubled by their presence. She knelt down, peered below the loveseat, smiled, and then stood up again.
“I recognize your socks, Jaden Moran,” she said in a schoolmarm-y tone. “You’re out!”
“Oh man,” Jaden said, standing up.
“Go back to home base,” the girl said. “I still have three more people to catch.”
As Jaden shuffled out, the girl fixed her attention on Jessie.
“I know who you are,” she said confidently. “I’ve seen you on the TV.”
“Hi, my name’s Jessie. This is my friend, Sam.”
“I’m Charlotte,” the little girl said. “Are you here to talk to my daddy about my mommy? She died and went to heaven while we were in Temecula.”
Jessie fought to push words past the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. “We are,” she said.
“That’s what I see you doing on the TV,” Charlotte said, “helping with people who died. My mommy was watching you too. She said that they call this the City of Angels, and that you are one of its angels.”
All at once, Jessie found that she couldn’t speak. She knew that if she tried, only sobs would escape her lips, so she looked desperately over at Sam for help. He seemed to understand and turned back to Charlotte.
“Your mommy sounds like she was a very nice lady,” he said quietly.
Before he could continue, a phalanx of kids rounded the corner, apparently alerted to the presence of new people by Jaden Moran. They began peppering Sam with questions. Jessie recognized one of them, standing silently toward the back, as Charlotte’s older brother, Charlie.
He reminded Jessie of another boy, though she couldn’t remember who. Then it hit her. With his black hair and sad, shy smile, he looked like he could have been related to another son of a fallen parent, Eli Reid, Callum Reid’s younger child.
She pictured the other boy back at the ceremony to honor his dead father, trying to put on a brave face for his mother and sister as they were awarded Callum’s posthumous Medal of Valor, which was somehow supposed to substitute for losing his dad. She remembered Eli trying his hardest to hold it together even as his older sister, Harley, couldn’t bear to look up. She remembered looking over at Hannah at one point during the ceremony, seeing tears in her little sister’s eyes, and realizing for the first time just how much Callum’s death—sacrificing himself to save countless others— had affected her too.
They had all lost their parents young. Jessie had. Hannah had. Now, so had the children of Eleanor Hill. But at least these two kids had one parent left and apparently unlimited financial resources at their disposal.
Yes, the Reid children had their mother, Tanya, but they didn’t live in Hancock Park in a giant Tudor mansion. Their mom was a legal secretary, and their father, even before his death, was a retired cop. Their future was anything but certain. That ate at Jessie.
Marilyn re-appeared to save Sam. This time, she was accompanied by Sean Hill, who was only somewhat recognizable as the man from the portraits. He had the same black hair and gray eyes, the same square jaw and sharp nose, but he looked gaunt and haunted. His jeans seemed to cling to his waist for dear life, and his sweatshirt looked like it might consume him. Though she doubted the most recent family portrait was more than six months old, he looked like he’d aged five years since then.
“Kids, out!” Marilyn instructed forcefully. “Adults are talking in here.”
The children scurried out, all except for Charlotte, who moved over to her father as he settled into the leather chair opposite them.
“Look, Daddy,” she said, taking his hand in hers, “it’s the angel Mommy talked about from the TV.”
“Yes, sweetie,” Hill said softly, giving his daughter a kiss on the forehead before Marilyn escorted her out as well.
Once the voices had faded into the distance, Sam spoke, “We’re sorry to bother you at such a difficult time, especially after you’ve already spoken to our colleagues,” he said, “but we just had a few more questions for you. We’ll try to keep them brief.”
“Was Ellie murdered?” Hill asked abruptly.
“I’m sorry?” Sam said. “What makes you ask that?”
Hill sighed heavily. “I have to ask,” he said, his voice raspy from exhaustion. “My housekeeper has been crying for the last two days, insisting that someone was in the house, and no one will take her seriously. The police report by your so-called colleagues says Ellie was sloppy drunk when she hasn’t had more than three glasses of wine at one time since college. And now, I’m sitting across from a criminal profiler who handles serial killer cases when I was told my wife’s death was an accident. So, it would be weird not to ask the question, right?”
Sam looked over at Jessie, not sure how she wanted to proceed. She had insisted before they came in the house that they not reveal that they suspected foul play, but Hill seemed to have figured them out before they’d asked a single question.
For the first time today, Jessie briefly wished she’d been paired with a different partner. Though her concussion issues hadn’t been a major problem so far today, she was still reeling from the whole “angel” thing, coupled with the echoes of guilt about Callum Reid’s fatherless children. It would be nice to have a partner who could take point in a moment like this. But that wasn’t possible, so she did it.
“Mr. Hill,” she said, leaning forward, “the truth is that we just don’t know. Initially, your wife’s death did seem like an accident. But Detective Goodwin and I are investigating a murder that has some suspicious similarities to what happened to her. We can’t get into all the details, but it involves an alarm system deactivated by someone other than a family member, and a victim who was killed when the murderer knew she would be alone in the house. With that context, your housekeeper’s statement, and some other information we’ve gleaned, we wanted to revisit the circumstances of Ellie’s death. It may not ultimately lead to anything. But just in case, can you tell us: is there anyone who might have wanted to hurt her? Had she mentioned feeling unsafe lately? That she felt as if she was being followed? Anything out of the ordinary?”
Hill shook his head. “None of that,” he insisted. “Everything seemed normal. And I can guarantee you that if she was concerned, she wouldn’t have wanted to spend the night at home alone. She would have come with us to my sister’s. Hell, we only moved to L.A. six months ago. She barely had time to even get a sense of what she should be scared of.”
“Is it possible that anyone has a vendetta against you?” Sam asked.
“Never say never,” Hill conceded, “but I do international corporate mergers. It’s lucrative, but it’s pretty dry stuff. Plus, I’m part of a team of five that’s part of a larger group of thirty within a 300-person firm. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would target me individually or how harming Ellie would accomplish that. My last major merger wrapped up three weeks ago, and my team was only in the early stages of prepping the next one.”
Charlotte stepped into the alcove again. She had a worried look on her face.
“Daddy,” she said, “I’m sorry to bother your talking, but Charlie threw up again. He ran to his room. I think he might need you.”
Hill’s face briefly contorted in anguish before he got control of it.
“Okay sweetie, thanks,” he said, scooping her up in his arms as he addressed Jessie and Sam. “I’ve got to deal with this. He’s having a really rough time. If you have other questions, call me. And if you get definitive confirmation that this was … intentional, please give me a heads up. I want to know that. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
And then he was gone. Sam and Jessie stood up.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Jessie stepped out of the alcove and looked down the long hallway toward the front door. It was easily fifty yards away.
“I don’t think I can prove anything yet,” she said. “But Ellie Hill doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who ever came close to getting shit-faced enough to topple down a flight of stairs.”
Sam nodded in agreement. “And this doesn’t feel like the kind of home that one invades on a whim, without prior knowledge about how to access it,” he said.
Jessie didn’t want to get ahead of herself, but she had done this job long enough to sense where things were going.
“We’ll need to wait for Dr. Gallagher’s skin analysis to draw any firm conclusions,” she said. “Two things might be possible at the same time: Ellie Hill’s death may have been an accident, but it feels like the accident interrupted a murder in progress. Now, we just need to find the murderer.”
CHAPTER NINE
Sam tried not to let himself get overwhelmed.
As he drove back to the station from the Hill mansion, he listened as Jessie told Jamil and Beth the parameters she wanted included in a search for potential suspects.
“We need someone who moved to the area recently,” she said. “Let’s make it in the last six months and within a three-mile radius of both homes. We’re likely talking male, but don’t rule out women. They should have some history of work in technology, security, maybe an electrician—that universe. And their record should include a history of violence or at the very least, stalking, peeping, that kind of thing.”
By the time they arrived at the HSS research office fifteen minutes later, a list of potential suspects was waiting for them. Unfortunately, it was twenty-three people long. That was when the sense of getting overwhelmed started to kick in. He was still getting used to the different pace from vice. Things could get intense there, too, but there wasn’t the constant sense that even reviewing paperwork was a life and death endeavor that required uninterrupted focus.
But he pretended that he was fine and quickly agreed when Jessie recommended that they split up the list. Once that was done, they began to methodically make their way through it. A half hour into the process, they got a call from Dr. Gallagher confirming what they’d already suspected: the indentations on the skin of Eleanor Hill’s upper arm matched the indentations on Kim Carrigan’s skin.
“They were both made with the same brand of glove,” Gallagher told them over speaker.
“Which strongly suggests that they were killed by the same person,” Jessie noted. “The odds that two women in the same neighborhood had their security systems disabled and were attacked by different people wearing the same brand of gloves, in June in Los Angeles, seem pretty remote, don’t you think?”
“I do,” Gallagher agreed. “Unfortunately, that’s as much help as the gloves will offer. I checked, and that brand is sold in pretty much every department store in Southern California.”
“That’s okay,” Jessie said, impressively undeterred. “At least now we definitively know we’re dealing with a two-time killer. That’s a person with a pattern. And patterns can be predicted, which means we have a shot at stopping them before they kill again.”
“Should we reach out to Sean Hill?” he asked once they’d hung up with Gallagher. “He wanted to know when we knew something definitive.”
“I’d like to hold off for now,” Jessie replied. “Right now, all we can tell him is that his wife’s death wasn’t a true accident, and that the person responsible is still out there. With a little luck, maybe when we call him, it will be to tell him we have that person in custody.”
Sam wished he could be as optimistic. As he pored over the potential suspects, he worried that he was missing something important. It took a while to definitively eliminate someone on the list, whether by verifying that they were back in prison, had moved away, or were simply working the night shift at the time of the murder.
They had gone through eighteen of the suspects when he came across the first one that he couldn’t conclusively eliminate. His name was Jacob Greeley.
Thirty-eight years old, Greeley was a temporary street lighting technician for the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting, contracted out by the city through a hiring firm. His work history listed time as an electrician and, briefly, working for a security company installing alarm panels. Those jobs had been back east in North Carolina, where he’d lived until moving here four months ago.
The substation that Greeley worked out of was in the mid-Wilshire district, which regularly serviced Hancock Park. He lived on North Las Palmas Avenue in Hollywood, which was just a few blocks north of the Carrigans’ place, although once one crossed the dividing line of Melrose Avenue, the level of luxury dropped precipitously.
Sam also noted that Greeley had conveniently left off his resume what Jamil and Beth had not missed in their research: his criminal record. Back in North Carolina, he had several convictions for assault, one in a bar and another in a football stadium parking lot. But the one that got him sentenced to real time was for beating up his live-in girlfriend. She ended up in the hospital, and he ended up in prison, where he served fourteen months. After his release, he spent three years on probation. The day that ended, he moved to California.
“Take a look at this,” Sam said, sliding Greeley’s file over to Jessie.
She scanned it quickly, then looked up. “This is the best hit I’ve seen yet,” she noted. “Nothing I’ve reviewed has come close. Great catch. Let’s see if any of these last four on the list have potential. But at least we know we have one person we can visit.”
Sam knew he was the lead detective on the case but couldn’t help feeling a little kick of giddiness at getting an “attaboy” from Jessie Hunt. For much of the morning, she’s seemed a little distant, in her own head, and he’d been starting to wonder if it had something to do with him. But getting her unadulterated praise for his work smoothed over all that insecurity.
He felt a little silly needing it in the first place. After all, he was a thirty-three-year-old man, older than Hunt herself. He’d been on the force for over a decade. She’d been a criminal profiler, and often a part-time consultant at that, for barely two years. And yet he still found himself looking up to her, seeking her approval, hoping that his interrogation methods and investigative analysis met her rigorous standards.
It was all a little ridiculous, and yet he couldn’t help himself. After all, she’d earned the respect she got. This was a woman who had survived more horrors in her first thirty years than most people could endure in ten lifetimes. Sam remembered when he first read about her, wondering how she wasn’t permanently institutionalized.
It was bad enough that when she was six years old, her father, who was secretly a serial killer, murdered her mother in front of her in a remote, snowed-in cabin in the Ozarks. But then he’d left her there, tied up, alone with the body, where she was trapped for three days before two hunters found her.
That alone would be enough to do in most people. But years later, she ended up unknowingly marrying a sociopath who surreptitiously poisoned her when he discovered she was pregnant because he “wasn’t ready” to be a parent, causing a miscarriage. She only learned that fact later, when she uncovered the other crimes he was responsible for, including murdering his secret mistress and trying to frame Jessie for it. And then, when Jessie uncovered his plan, trying to kill her as well. Luckily, she outwitted him, and he ended up in prison.
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