The Perfect Trap, page 7
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” Ryan said. "I'm Ryan, and this is Susannah."
“I’d definitely remember meeting you,” Guerra said to her, his eyes ravenously taking in the detective, who was wearing a tight, black top to go with her slacks.
“I guess we’re meeting now, Jon,” she said, holding out her ID and badge. “We’re with the LAPD and we’d like a word.”
Her comments made Guerra immediately force his eyes from her chest to her face.
“What?’ he said, apparently not quite comprehending.
“We want to ask you a few questions about some folks you know,” she told him. “It shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. Do you have a minute for me, Jon?”
“I mean, I guess,” he replied uncertainly. “Am I in trouble or something?”
“Should you be in trouble?” she asked innocently.
Ryan was pleased that she was going with a more playful questioning style than she usually employed. The longer they could keep Guerra from shutting down or calling out for a lawyer, the better chance they had of getting him to let something slip.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Guerra said, his voice low, as if he wasn’t sure he believed his own assertion.
“I’m sure that’s true,” Susannah said. “That’s why I’m also sure you’ll help us out. Do you know Rena Hoffman, Jon?”
Word hadn’t yet gotten out that Hoffman was the second victim, so there was no reason that Guerra should be put on guard by the question. That is, unless he knew something he shouldn’t. Ryan watched his reaction closely, but Guerra was inscrutable as he answered.
“A little, I guess,” he said. “She’s a paralegal here, so I’ve worked with her a few times. We’re not friends or anything. Why?”
“Are you friends with Noemi Benson?” Susannah asked, ignoring his question.
Guerra’s face crinkled up slightly at that one. Ryan wasn’t sure if he was trying to recall or just didn’t like the question.
“The first name sounds kind of familiar,” he conceded, “but I’m not sure where from.”
“Maybe you’ve hung out with her?” Susannah prodded.
His face lit up at that.
“Oh yeah, now I remember,” he said. “There’s a girl named Noemi who’s friends with Astra and Kiley, these two girls from my apartment building. I don't know her last name, but if it's the same person, I know her a little bit.”
His moment of happy recognition faded as he realized the people asking him weren’t there for casual conversation.
“Why?” he asked again.
“Just trying to clear some stuff up,” Ryan told him. ‘Where were you last night, Jon?”
“Are you asking me for an alibi?’ the man asked, “like for a crime? Did something happen to Rena and Noemi?”
“Probably best to just answer our questions right now, Jon,” Susannah said.
“I don’t really like this,” he said. “Maybe I should have one of the firm’s lawyers be here from now on.”
“You could definitely do that, Jon," Susannah said, "but you're not under arrest for anything. We're just trying to clear up a few issues. If you think you’ve done something that necessitates an attorney being present while we chat, that’s certainly a choice you can make. And then we can make this conversation much more formal, like ‘down at the police station’ formal. Or, if you don’t have anything to hide, you can tell us where you were last night.”
Guerra looked from her to Ryan and back again. They both stared at him, blank-faced. He sighed heavily, and Ryan knew that he wasn't going to fight them anymore.
“I was here,” he said, “Until about two in the morning. A couple of lawyers had a trial date this morning and they needed a bunch of files pulled and copied last minute. Then I went straight home. I was back here this morning by nine.”
Ryan looked over at Susannah, who was clearly struggling to hide her frustration. Her face was scrunched up like she’d just eaten a lemon. He leapt in before she said anything more.
“Are there people who can confirm that you were here?” he asked.
“Yes, like a half dozen of them,” Guerra said, slightly more confidently.
“And would you be willing to submit your phone to us to verify your location and movements over the last few days?” he pressed.
“Of course,” Guerra said. “If that means that you guys will leave me alone, I’ll submit whatever you want. I’ll even take a lie detector test.”
“Thank you,” Ryan said, doing his best not to show his disappointment. “That will all be very helpful. I'm going to have you sign a waiver. Just give us a minute, please."
“Hold on,” Guerra asked as Ryan started to turn away. “You never told me, did something happen to Rena or Noemi?”
“I’m afraid we’re not at liberty to discuss it,” Ryan told him, shutting down the matter.
He and Susannah stepped off to the side, where he noticed that she still had the puckered expression from earlier.
“Hey,” he said. “We knew this might not pan out. You can’t let one setback hit you so hard.”
She nodded, though she didn’t respond. It occurred to him that her expression might not be one of frustration, but rather of pain.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, just another leg cramp,” she said unconvincingly. “I think I’m really dehydrated. Maybe I should have gotten an IV at the hospital to up my fluids. I’m going to chug some Gatorade when we leave this place.”
Ryan didn’t respond. Susannah Valentine might be a good detective, but she wasn’t a great liar. She was clearly being bothered by more than just a cramp. He wanted to press her further, but it would have to wait.
They needed to verify Jon Guerra's alibi. And if it bore out, as Ryan anticipated it would, they needed to find a new suspect soon. There was a killer out there somewhere, and they were running out of time to find him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He hoped tonight would go better than the last few had.
As he stared at his naked body in the full-length mirror of his marble-floored bathroom, he tried to stay positive.
After all, it’s not like he wasn’t trying. He was putting forth the effort. He just wasn’t getting the right kind of girls in response.
Women, not girls. Be respectful!
Maybe that was the problem. These days, all it took was some minor verbal slip-up to ruin everything. It was so hard to navigate the world of romance. Sometimes, he felt like he needed a guidebook. And yet he continued to hope that there was someone new out there for him.
As he grabbed his boxers and began to put them on, he couldn’t help but sigh. He certainly wasn’t going to find true love based on his looks. It’s not that he was unattractive. But he knew he wasn’t especially memorable either.
Despite the fancy clothes, the occasional plastic surgery, and the personal trainer, he had to admit that in terms of appearance, he was just ordinary. No amount of planks or protein shakes had removed the softness of his thirty-five-year-old body. The plugs stemmed the tide of baldness but didn’t make his hair an asset. He had to accept that he was, in almost all respects, average.
If he was going to find love, it would be because he hit it off with a woman who understood him. He thought he’d found that once, but he learned the hard way how wrong he was.
Don’t focus on the past. Look forward to the future.
Tonight was a fresh opportunity. It could easily be the start of the rest of a much better life. Of course, lots of people would say his life was already pretty great. He came from an extremely wealthy family. He lived in an impressive house. Some might even call it a mansion. But without someone to share it with, it was all empty and hollow. Life wasn’t worth living if it was devoid of love.
That’s why, after two years of completely shutting down that part of his life, he’d started to dip his toe back into the dating pool. For a short time on Monday night, he thought he might be on the road to finding the love he sought.
The woman—not girl—he met up with was spicy to say the least. There were some fun verbal fireworks. But then she had to go and push too hard. She got too bossy, and worse, too nosy. It was clear that she was fishing, hoping to see if she’d landed a big catch. It was actually offensive, and he let her know that in very direct terms.
Then just last night he tried again and this time, he thought he might have struck gold. This young woman was much more reserved than the first one, which he liked. But eventually she too began drilling into him with scheming, suspicious questions.
She just had to know about his background, his family, his romantic history. It was clear that she had an agenda, even if, when he called her on it, she claimed she was just “curious” and wanted to get to know him. But she didn’t fool him. He knew what she really wanted. And he made it definitively clear to her that he didn’t appreciate her intrusiveness.
It would have been easy to lose faith after that. Two dates, two women that were clearly more interested in his money than in him. It wasn’t a great start, but he refused to let negativity get to him. He knew that under the right circumstances, he could be someone’s Prince Charming. But that required a princess worthy of him.
And tonight, he hoped to finally find her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jessie tried not to get down.
When Ryan and Susannah called in to let them know that Jon Guerra was a dead end, it was definitely a blow. But she reminded herself that it was just an opportunity to pursue other angles. For example, she’d set aside her plan to look into the dating apps both victims used. After the Guerra lead popped up, she thought it was more useful to look into the man's social media history.
But now she returned to the apps, though she was well aware that the sheer volume of potential suspects might be too overwhelming to deal with. Normally she would have asked Jamil to create an algorithm to sift through the data. But the FBI had pulled him away to help on something related to the search for Mark Haddonfield, and she didn't want to distract him from that.
Beth was looking through the victims’ financials, hoping to uncover some overlap between them. So Jessie decided to dive into the world of online dating apps, even though she felt ill-equipped for the job. It turned out that her suspicion was correct.
Even with access to each woman’s profiles, matches, and text exchanges with those potential matches, the sheer number of contacts was difficult to filter through. Noemi Benson and Rena Hoffman, like millions of other women, were on the dating apps Crispy and BeBold. They were also on something called IRL, which touted itself as the anti-app, whatever that meant. Unfortunately, that one wasn't much help, as it only included profiles, lacking any matches or text exchanges that she could follow up on.
She set that one aside and began sifting through the matches on the other two, looking for any overlap. Even one shared hit could prove invaluable. But over the years, Noemi had identified over three hundred potential matches between both apps. Rena was less prodigious, with only eighty. The problem was that the men deemed “matches” on both apps could alter their profiles and on Crispy, they could even tweak their names, making it hard to be sure if a guy was on both of their lists.
She could feel a throbbing start to develop near her right temple and was considering taking a break to go wake up Kat and ask her if she wanted to help when she got a text from Ryan. Now that Rena had been officially identified, he and Susannah were going to visit with her family, who lived in Studio City, about forty-five minutes away.
Jessie stood up and stretched. She was about to step outside Research to get Kat when Beth coughed dramatically from behind her.
“You find something?” Jessie asked, spinning around.
“No,” Beth said, red-faced. “That was just my unsophisticated way of reminding you that you promised Grover Nix you wouldn’t leave Research.”
“Right,” Jessie said. “We wouldn’t want to piss off Grover. How would you feel about helping me out and getting Kat from the conference room?”
“Not a problem,” Beth said, standing up.
“You realize that you’ll have to wake her up and she might be grumpy,” Jessie reminded her.
“I deal with grumpy every day,” Beth replied, nodding at Jamil’s currently empty chair.
“Good point,” she said. “Thanks.”
Once Beth left, Jessie re-locked the door and sat back down. As she waited, she allowed her mind to wander. It immediately went to Hannah. She’d done her best to stay busy in order to keep her little sister out of her head. Otherwise she would end up constantly worrying, wondering if the safe house she was at was secure enough, or if Rufus was on his game.
She wanted to physically shake the thought out of her head but feared the motion might exacerbate the discomfort in her brain. Instead, she blinked forcefully as she aggressively tried to focus on anything else. Pulling out her phone, she stared at the message from Ryan about visiting Rena Hoffman's family.
That’s good. Focus on that.
She felt a hint of jealousy. She wanted to be out there, talking to people. That was where her skills were best put to use, not here in a musty room full of computers, sifting through dating data.
That’s when the idea came to her. Perhaps she could get out there. It occurred to her that no one had gone to talk to Rena Hoffman’s roommate in person yet. They knew that she was the one who’d filed the missing person report when Rena wasn’t home and didn’t respond to calls or texts. The family might know about their daughter’s personal history, but Rena was a twenty-seven-year-old young professional. Her roommate was much more likely to have a bead on how Rena lived her life now.
She punched up the file to get the roommate's name and the apartment address in Lomita. The roommate, Coral Jenkins, was a twenty-six-year-old freelance graphic designer who worked from home. It was perfect. Jessie could talk to her and take a close-up look at how Rena lived at the same time. She just had to get Grover to sign off on her leaving the station.
There was a knock on the door, and she went to answer it. She was about to unlock it when an odd sensation tickled the back of her neck, hinting that this might be a test of some kind.
“Who is it?” she called out.
“It’s Beth,” the researcher answered.
“Are you under duress of any kind?” she asked teasingly.
Dammit, Jessie,” Kat, apparently nearby, blurted out angrily. “You had this poor girl wake me up. Now let me in before I break down the door.”
Jessie opened the door to find a cowed Beth and a seething Kat standing there. Behind them, Gila Jabarin looked bored. But Grover, beside her, had a pleased smile on his face.
“Now you’re finally learning,” he said.
“I knew you were there,” Jessie told him. “I only asked the question to avoid a tongue-lashing from you. And my reward is getting bawled out by this one.”
“You’re lucky that’s all I’m doing,” Kat said huffily as she brushed past her into the room. “Now what’s so pressing that you had Beth rip me out of a delightful dream about potential wedding hors d’oeuvres?”
“Something you’ll never have to worry about again,” Jessie told her, “dating apps.”
She explained the task involving profile matches and watched her friend’s face sink with each successive detail.
“This sounds like punishment to me,” she grumbled, “but I guess I’ll help. Let’s get to it.”
“Actually,” Jessie replied, using her sweetest, most deferential tone, “I was hoping you could handle this solo for a while. I need to explore another angle.”
“What’s that?”
Jessie turned to her bodyguard and flashed what she hoped was a charming grin.
“Grover and I are going to talk to Rena Hoffman’s roommate.”
Grover’s was stone-faced as he responded.
"I'm sorry," he said in his clipped British accent, "but where I'm from, the word 'going' suggests leaving one location to reach a second one. But we both know that you're not supposed to leave Central Station on account of the whole 'serial killer hunting you' situation."
“That is the standard definition of ‘going,” she assured him with a smile. “And here I thought you were just some dumb lunkhead soldier type. But you’ve just shown me that you’re as sharp-witted as you are tough, Mr. Nix. And because of that, I feel quite confident that a little trip won’t be an issue. I can be ready to go in five minutes.”
“You seem to think that being playful will somehow change the situation, Jessie,” he said, not joining in the fun. “But we both know that the minute you step out of this station, the risk to your safety increases substantially.”
Jessie sighed, deciding that the time for cutesiness was over. She’d have to convince him outright.
“It would be substantial if we were going to a biker bar to talk to a roughneck. But we’re going to the gated apartment building of a graphic designer who, according to her driver’s license, is five feet tall and weighs 103 pounds. She’s not exactly a threat. Plus, we’ll be going in your car, with me doing my standard ‘hide in the backseat’ routine. I think we’ll be fine.”
“You can’t determine whether someone is a threat based on their size,” Grover reminded her. “Ash Pierce should have taught you that.”
“And me,” piped in Gila, who admittedly looked far less threatening than she was.
“Listen,” Jessie said, deciding to focus on the key point, “it’s getting well into the afternoon now. This guy might attack again tonight, and we don’t have any solid leads on where to find him.”
Grover looked like he was about to reply, but she cut him off.
"Yes, I know that Beth is looking at the victims' finances. And even though Kat doesn't work for LAPD, she has agreed to pitch in and review these dating sites. But what if they come up empty? The key to linking these women might be at Rena's apartment, and no one has gone there yet. With most of the HSS team in the hospital, we're spread too thin. No one else can get there right now, but I'm available and I know the case. So come with me and keep me safe while I try to get justice for these women."
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