Page 28 of The Perfect Crime

Something about the way he acknowledged that Forrester was still a credible suspect, even after they'd made no headway with him, comforted Jessie.Ryan wasn't the type to have officers assigned to watch someone just to assuage her.He clearly had his doubts about the guy, too.

Just knowing that calmed her down a bit.And the second she felt a bit of the tension escape her body, she found that she could think more clearly and make concessions that she couldn’t have even two minutes earlier.

“I will say that Forrester doesn’t seem like the type to kill people that he despised by prolonged poisoning,” she said.“He strikes me as more of the stabby-shooty type.”

“If it was him, maybe that’s why he went that way,” Ryan countered.“He knows what kind of reputation he has.Could he be trying to use an unexpected method of murder as a way to throw suspicion off himself?”

“That would be pretty clever,” Jessie said.“I don’t know if he has it in him.Then again, the guy was still showing active animosity toward Marcus Vega even after he ‘learned’ that the man’s wife had been killed.That indicates that he either has zero impulse control or he wanted us to be having this conversation—to make us question whether any man being questioned about a murder would express such antipathy to the victim.”

“So he’s either too explosive to have pulled this off,” Jamil mused, “or that’s the impression he wants to give.”

“That’s not the only thing that gives me pause,” Jessie said.“I can’t but think that even if Forrester was wearing a ski mask when he invaded the home, Marcus Vega would have eventually recognized him while sitting in their living room for hours.He’s a big guy.And they’d had enough conversations that Vega would have surely recognized his voice.”

“I don’t know, Jessie,” Ryan said.“The man’s wife was dying right in front of him.He might not have been that focused on the physical characteristics of the person responsible.”

Jessie couldn’t deny that.When people were in high-tension situations, their ability to notice details or retain them later was often questionable.

“I may have found something,” Jamil said, pulling Jessie out of her thoughts.

Jessie, Ryan, and Beth all stopped what they were doing.When Jamil found something, it was usually important.

“We’re all ears,” Beth told him.

"When Ms.Hunt pointed out that Vega might recognize Forrester's voice, a thought popped into my head.Have you ever seen the movieThrow Momma from the Train?”he asked.

“You mean the movie based on the Hitchcock film,Strangers on a Train?”Jessie teased.But even before she’d finished talking, she sensed where the brilliant, young researcher might be headed with this.

"Oh right, that's the old-timey movie they reference," Jamil said."Well, in the movie I saw, this guy wants his writing teacher to kill his mother and offers to kill the guy's ex-wife.That way, they both have alibis for the murder they might actually be suspected of."

“Where is this headed?”Beth asked, confused.

“Let me guess,” Jessie ventured, “you’ve been looking for potential connections between Daniel Forrester and the man who had a grudge against the first victim, James Whitaker—Dr.Ethan Blackwell.”

“That’s right,” Jamil said, “and I found one.”

“What?”Ryan asked excitedly.

“Two years ago, Forrester had an emergency appendectomy,” Jamil said.“Guess who the anesthesiologist for the procedure was?”

“Really?”Beth asked.“It was Blackwell?”

“It’s right here in the file,” Jamil said with a shy smile.

“So the idea is that Forrester killed James Whitaker for Blackwell and Blackwell killed Elena Vega for Forrester?”Ryan asked.

“It’s just a theory,” Jamil cautioned.

“It’s not crazy,” Jessie conceded.“I could see Forrester wanting Elena Vega killed instead of Marcus just to make the man watch her die and suffer more.”

“And it would explain why neither victim’s spouse could ID the person in the mask,” Ryan acknowledged, “they might never have seen them before.”

“And it would give each killer an airtight alibi for the murder that he could be connected to,” Beth added.

Jessie agreed that there was promise in the hypothesis, but she did have some reservations.She tried to raise them diplomatically.

“That’s great work, Jamil” she said, before noting a caveat that she hoped wouldn’t dim his pride.“I know that when I had my brain surgery last fall, the anesthesiologist introduced himself before the procedure.But if this was an emergency situation, can we even be sure there was time for that sort of thing?”

“I’ll try to find out,” Jamil said, undaunted.

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