Page 20 of The Perfect Crime

“We won’t get anything useful out of him right now,” she said, “let’s wait until he’s more coherent.Besides, we’ve got a lot of work to do around here.”

“CSU and the medical examiner are both arriving soon,” Warnes said, “Maybe they’ll be able to offer some answers that Mr.Vega can’t yet.”

“Maybe,” Jessie said, “But there’s one thing we already know.”

“What’s that?”Warnes asked.

“Based on what Mr.Maltin told us, we’re dealing with same killer from last night,” she answered.“That means we’ve got a serial killer on our hands, and I don’t think he’s going to stop anytime soon.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jessie’s back was killing her.

She and Ryan had spent the last couple of hours at the hospital, waiting for an all-clear from the emergency room doctor so that they could talk to Marcus Vega.She'd briefly drifted off while lying on the row of chairs and somehow bent herself into an awkward position while she slept.Now, it felt like someone had taken a hammer to her spine.

She sat up and glanced out the window.The first rays of morning sun were appearing in the distance.The clock on the wall said that it was 6:53 a.m.She looked around for Ryan, who was nowhere in sight.She was about to text him when he pushed through a double door across the waiting room with a coffee cup in each hand.

“My knight in shining armor,” she said as he handed one over.“Is this medium roast, dark roast, or Tylenol-infused, because I could really use that last one right now.I tweaked my back something awful.”

“I’m afraid it’s just standard hospital cafeteria coffee,” he told her, “but you may be in the right place to ask for some medication.”

“If it doesn’t settle down, I might,” she replied.“For now, I’ll make do with information.Did anything new come in while I was zonked out?”

“A little,” he said, sitting down next to her.“Your new best friend, Dr.Amelia Roth, tested Elena Vega’s blood sample.She found the same poison that was used on James Whitaker.So that’s official.”

“Not a surprise,” Jessie said, “but good to know.”

"Right," Ryan said, "and Jamil used the time of their neighbor's 911 call, along with security camera footage from the Vega home to calculate approximately how long it took for the poison to kill her.He said the footage showed them arriving home around six.By the way, it also showed the killer sneaking through the open driveway gate and entering the house right after Marcus Vega carried his wife inside.The man in black left the house at 7:35 p.m.So the time from when she was probably poisoned until she died fits that two-hour window that Dr.Roth estimated."

“Could Jamil give any more detail on the killer based on the video footage?”Jessie asked.

“Not yet,” Ryan said.“He says that everything reinforces that it’s a male, but because of the angle of the exterior camera and the darkness, it’s difficult to gauge height or weight.But he’s still working on it.”

“What about his car?”Jessie wondered.“He must have followed the Vegas from wherever he poisoned her.Was there any camera footage of what he drove?”

“Beth was working on that,” Ryan said.“She’s gotten permission to review footage from other houses on the street, but she’s not optimistic.Because most of those homes are set so far back, they don’t generally have views of the street from their front doors.We’re going to have to get lucky.”

“I won’t hold my breath,” Jessie said.

Just then, a nurse walked through the door and approached them.

“Mr.Vega is awake and lucid now,” she said.“If you’d like to speak with him, I can take you back.”

***

Marcus Vega, understandably, was in rough shape.

Jessie had seen pictures of him in the house and that man—suave-looking with black hair and olive skin—was almost unrecognizable as the same person.His hair was disheveled, his eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and he had an ashen pallor.His hospital bed was at a forty-five-degree angle, and he had an IV in his left arm.

“Mr.Vega,” Ryan began.“I’m Detective Hernandez with the Los Angeles Police Department.This is Jessie Hunt.First of all, we’re terribly sorry for your loss.”

"Thank you," Vega said hoarsely."I mean, I don't know what I'm supposed to say.My brain keeps telling me that I have to accept this, but it's not really working."

“This is an almost impossible situation to be in,” Jessie said.“We can’t pretend to know the right thing to tell you right now.But what wecando is try to catch the man responsible for your wife’s death.That’s why we’re here.We’re hoping that, as painful as it might be, you could walk us through what happened last night while it’s still fresh for you.It’s possible that some detail that might seem unimportant to you could be what helps us find this man and stop him before he does the same thing to someone else.”

“Someone else?”Vega replied in disbelief.

“Yes,” Ryan said.“Your wife is the second victim that we’re aware of.An almost identical incident occurred two nights ago.We fear that the perpetrator might be planning to do the same thing again tonight.We’re hoping to prevent that.”

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