Page 22 of The Perfect Poise

“How can they be sure?” Ryan asked.

“The victim is a famous model named Isabella Moreno, but that’s not all,” Parker explained. “She was stabbed in a public elevator with a hunting knife—they think at least a dozen times.”

Jessie had started to stand up even before Parker finished the sentence. Ryan was getting up too.

“Text us the address,” he said.

Jessie didn’t know what Parker said in response. She had already rushed out of the office by then.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jessie wasn’t prepared for what she found.

She’d been to well over a hundred murder scenes in her short career, but few were this brutal. Perhaps she was lulled into a sense of complacency by the surroundings. The crime had taken place in a small shopping complex called Beverly Gardens in the chichi Beverly Grove neighborhood of L.A., adjacent to Beverly Hills. The sign next to the parking garage entrance listed the businesses on the premises, which included a high-end spa, a handcrafted furniture store, an artisanal cheese and wine shop, and a fashion boutique.

Once they parked and walked toward the elevator, the crime scene folks stepped aside so that Jessie and Ryan could take it in. What they saw was grotesque. Arterial blood spray extended a good ten feet outside of the elevator onto the parking lot’s concrete surface.

Jessie put booties on over her shoes before entering, making sure not to look at the body until she’d had a chance to take in the rest of the elevator. The place looked like a nightmarish version of a Jackson Pollock painting, with red splatter everywhere. The only spots that weren’t covered were the back wall behind the victim and a small section of the floor, where she suspected the attacker had been standing.

Taking deep breaths that filled her nose with an unpleasant rusty scent, Jessie finally looked at the victim. Beth had already given them a biographical rundown on the woman on their way over, along with pictures of the gorgeous young blonde. None of what they’d heard or seen compared with what Jessie saw before her.

Isabella Moreno was an extremely well-known model, equally famous for her runway and fashion shoots as for her lingerie work, including several massively successful calendars. But the person slumped on her back in the corner of the elevator was unrecognizable. She’d been stabbed at least three times in the chest. Her neck had two major slices, one so deep that her head bobbed back, dangerously close to decapitation. Even worse than that, if possible, the attacker had gone at her face with the knife so many times that she barely looked human anymore.

Jessie closed her eyes, counted to five so as to not look spooked, and then stepped out of the elevator and walked several paces away. Ryan followed close behind.

“Are you okay?” he whispered, resting his hand on her shoulder.

“No, I’m not,” she admitted. “I’ve seen some truly terrible things. You know that. But this is the worst in a long while. We’re obviously dealing with a serial killer now, but whoever did this wasn’t just thrill-seeking. There’s a level of hate here that I thought I’d grown numb to. I guess I was wrong. This poor girl.”

“We can have the M.E. and CSU send us their reports,” Ryan said quietly. “There’s no reason to go back in there.”

“Okay,” Jessie agreed without any argument. “You saw the section of floor that was unbloodied, right? We’re assuming that’s where the attacker stood, I gather?”

“That’s a safe assumption,” someone said from behind them.

They turned around to find a small man in his mid-thirties with a dark, tightly shorn hair and a fastidiously trimmed mustache. He saw that he’d startled them.

“Sorry to interject,” he said. “I’m Bryan Kolek, deputy medical examiner. I know we’ve never worked together before, so I wanted to introduce myself.”

“Good to meet you,” Ryan said, shaking his hand. “What can you tell us so far?”

“Nothing you probably didn’t already figure out for yourself,” he conceded. “The cause of death isn’t official yet, but I count at least fourteen separate stab wounds. And you won’t need me to do a full work-up to get the time of death.”

“Why is that?” Jessie asked, her voice shakier than she would have liked.

“I can take that one,” said a uniformed officer behind Kolek. When he stepped to the side, Jessie recognized him as Sergeant Robert Frank, whom they’d worked with before. The man was in his late forties. His belly was fighting his belt and what little hair he had left was more gray than brown. “Sorry to see you both again under these circumstances.”

"That's how it always seems to happen," Ryan noted. "What were you saying about the time of death?"

“Right,” Sergeant Frank said. “We’ve locked it down already. The building manager showed us the video from the elevator camera. The timestamp has the attack occurring at exactly 11:17 this morning.”

Jessie looked at her phone. It was 12:05 now. Isabella Moreno had been dead for less than an hour.

“We also did some preliminary interviews in the complex,” Frank continued. “We found out why Moreno was here. She was meeting with Monica Bertoni, who owns a clothing boutique on the second floor. Apparently, they were friends. Bertoni said that Moreno left at about 11:15.”

“Is she available to talk right now?” Jessie asked.

“Yes,” Sergeant Frank said. “We have an officer with her in the back of the ambulance out front in the main lot. She sent her employees home and closed up for the day, but we figured you’d want to speak with her.”

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