Page 44 of The Perfect Poise

She was as surprised to say it as he seemed to be to hear it. She had assumed that this would be a perfunctory meeting that might help her reconfigure how she looked at things. But it had turned out to be much more. She didn’t just have a fresh perspective now, she had renewed hope that she could solve this thing. Who would have thought that hope would come from a guy who tried to kill her?

“You’re welcome, Jessie,” he said.

A shiver ran up her spine as she realized this was the first time he’d ever called her by her first name. She stood up and grabbed the file.

"Please don't take offense," she said, "but I've really got to go. This case is obviously a high priority."

“I totally understand,” he said, more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. “And you should go. Based on what I saw in those photos, whoever did this is going to kill again, if they haven’t already.”

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Jessie’s head was swimming as she jogged out of Twin Towers to the street where Ryan was waiting for her. As she reached the sidewalk, she realized that this was nearly the exact spot where Hank Costabile had tried to kill her just over three weeks ago. She was trying to wrap her head around that when a horn honked, making her jump slightly.

She looked in the direction of the sound and saw Ryan waiting in the car across the street. He was waving at her frantically. She hurried across the street, dodging cars that honked at her angrily. When she arrived, he looked beyond agitated.

“What?” she asked apprehensively.

“You forgot to turn your phone back on when you got out of there,” he said. “I’ve been texting and calling for the last five minutes. I was about to come up there.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I just got a call from Parker. There’s been another murder.”

***

Jessie couldn’t believe the chaos.

When they arrived at Fiona Greene’s Beverly Hills mansion, there were so many police vehicles that they had to dart and weave just to get to the main gate.

They had already gotten the basic background on the situation from Jamil and Beth on the way over. Apparently, Greene, 35, was married to the CEO of a huge global investment bank. Prior to that, she ran a successful Rodeo Drive purse boutique. All they knew about her death so far was that she’d been killed in her garage, stabbed multiple times with a hunting knife.

As they stopped at the gate, Ryan flashed his badge to the officer standing in the middle of the driveway. He stepped to the side and waved them through. As Ryan drove slowly up the long, winding private road leading to the house, Jessie had a thought.

“Whoever did this likely had inside knowledge about the house,” she suggested.

“Why do you say that?” Ryan asked as he rounded a grove of trees. The mansion, a plantation-style monstrosity, loomed in the distance.

“The front gate and outer walls of the property are easily a dozen feet high with electrified netting and metal spikes at the top,” she said. “It would be pretty hard to scale. To get in, they’d likely need the code to the gate entry keypad.”

“You don’t think they could have just snuck in when someone entered or left through the gate?”

“I suppose it’s possible,” Jessie conceded, “but there’s no place to hide anywhere near the entrance. It’s exposed for fifty feet in either direction. I would think that someone dressed in all black with a ski mask on would be noticed.”

“Maybe they dressed normally and changed once they got on the property,” he countered.

“Unlikely,” Jessie said. “There were multiple security cameras on those walls. They wouldn’t have wanted to be identified.”

“They could have worn a disguise,” he offered.

"Maybe," Jessie conceded as they pulled up into the circular drive in front of the main doors.

A uniformed officer immediately approached them. From his graying hair, weary face, and confident manner, she suspected he was in charge.

“Hi,” he said as they got out of the car. “I recognized you both as you were arriving. I’m Sergeant Jack Cole, Beverly Hills Police Department. I’ve been maintaining the scene until you could get here.”

“Good to meet you, Sergeant,” Ryan said. “So I gather that there are no jurisdictional issues?”

“No,” Cole answered. “When BHPD learned that this incident fit the profile of the other murders that HSS has been investigating, the higher-ups decided to hand it off. We don’t need a turf war with a serial killer on the loose.”

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