Page 49 of The Perfect Betrayal

The words had barely left his mouth before he smashed the door open. The lights were off. Riddell rolled into the unit, going one direction. Jessie followed suit, going the other way. They both crouched low, listening for any movement or words, but there was only silence.

Using the light from the hallway, Riddell indicated for Jessie to check the kitchen nook off to the left while he approached the open bedroom door. She scurried around the corner, then popped up and leapt to the right as she scanned the kitchen. It was empty.

Riddell was at the bedroom door. He reached out and flicked on the light before diving in. Jessie started to follow but noticed that the bathroom door was closed. She sidled over to it and waited for word from Riddell. It came a few seconds later.

“Clear,” he said.

Hearing that, she kicked in the bathroom door. It shot open without resistance. She dropped to her knees and peeked in. There was no one there. Then she heard a sound from the hall and spun to her left, aiming her gun at a silhouetted figure in the doorway. Her finger was just starting to squeeze the trigger when she noted that the figure was heavyset and seemingly bald, a far cry from Monica Silver.

“What the hell?” the man demanded.

“Put your hands above your head,” she ordered. “This is the LAPD and Sheriff’s department.”

The man’s hands immediately shot in the air.

“Lie down on your stomach,” Riddell instructed. He was now standing in the bedroom doorway, his weapon also trained on the man. The chunky fellow obeyed immediately, and Riddell hurried over to search him. While he did that, Jessie moved to the bedroom and looked in.

The bed was made, and the room was generally tidy. There was no obvious visual indication of the kind of chaos in Monica’s life that had marked her sister’s. Jessie wandered over to the sliding closet door that was off its track, likely a result of Riddell slamming it open. At the far end, on the built-in shelf, she noticed something that the detective must have missed in his haste.

Four mannequin heads rested on the shelf next to each other. They each had wigs on them. One was blonde. Another dark black. A third was a lighter brown. The fourth was uncovered. Jessie moved over to that side of the closet to get a closer look.

The blonde wig generally matched her memory of the hair length of the bikini-clad woman in the security footage with Daran Peterson. The uncovered head had one word scrawled in red marker at the base: red. She turned and left the bedroom.

“The guy is just a neighbor,” said Riddell, who now had the man sitting on the floor against the hallway wall. “I was about to question him about Silver.”

“Okay,” Jessie said. “But we may have a more pressing concern.”

“What?”

“There are a bunch of wigs in her closet,” she explained, “and at least one of them looks like what she was wearing with Peterson. But the bigger issue is that there’s one missing. I think it’s for a redhead. She might already be out there hunting down Cisco.”

Before Riddell could reply, his phone rang.

“It’s the deputy watching Joel Cisco’s house,” he said, picking up. “What’s going on?”

“We’re at the front door,” the deputy said, “Mrs. Cisco replied to us, but has refused to open the door. We’ve been here for ten minutes, but she’s not budging. She says she may have to call a lawyer.”

They didn’t have time for this, and Jessie had lost her patience.

“Can you make this a video call?” Jessie asked as she walked over.

“Yes, ma’am,” the deputy said and did so. He appeared on the screen.

“Turn your phone around and hold your screen up to the peephole,” she instructed, motioning for Riddell to point his phone at her. “Then tell Mrs. Cisco to look through the hole.”

The deputy did as he was told. A moment later, Jessie could hear a female voice speak.

“I said I don’t want to talk.”

“Then just listen,” Jessie said loudly. “Mrs. Cisco, my name is Jessie Hunt. I’m a criminal profiler with the LAPD. I’m working with the Sheriff's Department on a case. My guess is that you’re concerned that all this has something to do with allegations about your husband’s work as a financial advisor. But I want to assure that it doesn’t. This is about his safety.”

“What does that mean?” Cisco asked from behind the door. This was no way to conduct an interview.

“I’ll explain,” she answered, “but first, like I said, my name is Jessie. What’s your first name?”

“Lana,” the woman answered reluctantly, “what did you mean about Joel’s safety?”

"Lana, I need you to open the door so we can talk for real," she said. "I promise that no one is going to barge into your home. I just want to do this face-to-face."

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