Page 2 of The Perfect Poise

Jessie’s younger half-sister, Hannah, had just returned to college at UC Irvine last week, after finishing winter break. Hannah appeared to be doing well, all things considered. But Jessie could tell that her sister was keeping something from her. She wasn’t inclined to push the issue, considering that Hannah seemed to be adapting to college, even making the Dean’s List in her first semester as an eighteen-year-old freshman. But a low-simmering concern for her was always present in Jessie’s subconscious.

As if that wasn’t enough, there was the ongoing issue that neither she nor Ryan had addressed since the start of the new year: kids. Ryan had lately expressed an interest in having them. Jessie, for reasons she’d shared with him privately and in couples’ therapy, wasn’t totally on board with the idea. He’d stopped pursuing the matter for the time being. And while she appreciated his restraint, she knew that it was still eating at him. Until she gave him a definitive answer one way or another, the topic would always be a source of silent conflict between them.

“It’s really wild, don’t you think?” Mickey asked, looking directly at her.

Since Jessie had no idea what he’d said just prior to that, she busted out a line she’d learned from a comedian who claimed it was a perfect non-responsive response.

“Can you believe it?” she replied, feigning amazement.

“Right,” he agreed happily, before launching back into something about the NBA salary cap. She smiled politely as she took another bite of dessert and returned to her own concerns, most notably, Haddonfield.

Mark Haddonfield had once been a student at UCLA when Jessie taught a criminal profiling seminar there. But when the extremely unstable young man couldn’t get into her class, his already fragile psyche was bruised beyond repair and he began to view Jessie, once his hero, as the cause of his disintegrating life.

He took his fury out on people that Jessie had previously rescued from serial killers, becoming one himself as he murdered them using the same methods that the original killers had. Eventually he came after Jessie too.

With help, Jessie eventually captured him. Unfortunately, Haddonfield had managed to post a manifesto online, calling on potential followers to pick up where he’d left off, and take out the people closest to Jessie. It was one of those acolytes who had shot Mitch when he dived in front of Kat to protect her. Soon thereafter, another acolyte went after Jessie’s psychiatrist, Dr. Janice Lemmon. The older woman had survived, but Jessie had enough.

She made a deal with Haddonfield. If he retracted his manifesto, she promised to bring cases to him periodically, letting him “consult” with her from behind bars. His dream had always been to become her protégé. And if letting him see an occasional case file allowed him to maintain that illusion while keeping her friends and family safe, it felt like a small price to pay.

Haddonfield had lived up to his end of the bargain, recording a video that called on his followers to end their hunt. It was posted online immediately. And in the weeks since, there had been no new attacks. But so far, Jessie hadn’t brought any cases to Haddonfield to review.

There were legitimate reasons to hold back. No case had felt worth the effort yet. Plus, she worried that if word got out about their agreement, there might be blowback, not just from the media and families of Haddonfield’s victims, but from Kat, who could resent her working with the man largely responsible for Mitch’s death.

But she had to visit him soon. If Haddonfield felt like she had played him, she had no doubt that he'd find a way to sic his dogs on her again. And once he felt that she'd betrayed his trust, it was unlikely that he'd call them off a second time.

“Jessie, what’s up with that whole Costabile thing?” Mickey asked, snapping her out of her reverie.

“Mickey, no,” Karen groaned, clearly embarrassed by her husband’s question.

"What?" he said. "It was all over the news. Sorry. I didn't know it was off-limits."

“It’s not, Mickey,” Jessie said. “I think Karen’s just being protective because it was an intense situation, but that’s okay. What do you want to know?”

Mickey was referring to Hank Costabile, a former LAPD sergeant who’d been busted two years ago for corruption, as well as for trying to have Jessie killed when she found out about it. He’d served eighteen months in prison before being released due to a prosecutorial error at trial. But instead of enjoying his second lease on life, the guy chose to use his freedom to come after Jessie again.

“Well, for starters, Ryan’s not getting charged, right?” Mickey wanted to know

“No,” Ryan assured him. “I was cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident.”

Jessie silently noted that while that was the official answer, and it was technically accurate, it didn’t convey the entirety of the situation. For example, it didn’t include the fact that as Jessie had leapt onto a car to escape Costabile, who was chasing her with a knife, Ryan had slammed his vehicle into the one that the corrupt cop was standing on, sending him flying thirty feet into a chain-link fence.

Nor did his answer address the reason Ryan was investigated in the first place, which was the severe damage to Costabile’s face, a result of at least a dozen punches Ryan delivered once he got up and close with the former cop. Both Jessie and Ryan had testified to the L.A. Police Commission’s Office of the Inspector General that Costabile had been combative during his arrest, requiring extreme force. Because there was no surveillance video to contradict their claim and the board wasn’t inclined to look into the matter that closely, that was the end of it.

Of course, it wasn't the end of it for them. Jessie had seen the unrelenting fury with which Ryan had beaten Costabile. She also recalled how, for the longest time, she hadn't told him to stop.

Normally mild-mannered, with warm brown eyes and a sweet smile highlighted by impressive dimples, he was like a wild man that night. He used every inch of his well-muscled, two-hundred-pound, six-foot-tall body to pummel Costabile into submission.

And the dark truth was, watching her husband do that to the man who’d threatened her life had awakened something that had been dormant in her for a long time, something she’d thought she’d finally learned to channel into a purely altruistic alternative.

She thought that she’d fully redirected her ferocious, bloodthirsty desire for vengeance, a trait she and her sister had both inherited from their shared serial killer father, into a passion for justice. But as she watched gleefully while Ryan nearly killed Hank Costabile with his bare hands, she realized that she wasn’t quite as evolved as she thought she was.

“And you guys are both okay?” Mickey asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

"More or less," Jessie told him. "It's never fun to have a human wrecking ball charge at you with a switchblade. But we're at dinner with you guys, and he's still laid up in the hospital, so I'll take it."

“It wasn’t just him, right?” Mickey confirmed. “There were people helping him?”

“That’s correct,” Ryan volunteered to take some of the pressure off her to answer every question. “A guard at the prison that Jessie was visiting just before the attack tipped him off to her location. And the desk sergeant at Central Station, a guy named Crowley, was feeding Costabile real-time information on her status. Luckily we discovered both their involvement, although we suspect there may be others too.”

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