Page 20 of The Perfect Illusion

Jessie said nothing, pondering Cody's odd comment. It was entirely possible that he was pre-warning them about his impending emotional detachment as a way to explain away a suspicious-seeming lack of feeling at his wife's death. But for now, at least, she was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt. And if this "focused detachment" thing really worked, she wondered if it might be a tool she could use to temper her own hard-to-control urges. But that was an issue for another time.

“What do you want to know?” Cody asked.

Brady looked over at Jessie to see if she wanted to start off the questioning. She leaned in to get closer to the phone mic.

“Mr. Cody, this is Jessie Hunt,” she said. “We were hoping you could walk us through what led you to call the police. What made you think something was wrong?’

“Becks and I have a routine when I’m on the road,” he said quietly. His voice became instantly monotonous as he was apparently already using his focused detachment technique. “We always talk about an hour before game time. I find some corner of the locker room and we check in. Then I always call her after the game is over so we can say our goodnights.”

“But not tonight?” Brady prodded.

"It was the same as usual," he answered, his voice as calm as still water on a lake. "The game started at 6:45 P.M., or 4:45 L.A. time. I called her around 3:30, and we talked for ten minutes. The game ended around 7:30 her time, or 5:30 your time. I showered and changed and then did a little press with the beat writers. Then we took the bus back to the hotel and had a team meal. I texted her that I'd call after that was over, and she said she'd be waiting. The meal ended around 11:45 here, or 9:45 for her. I called as soon as I got back to my room. She didn't answer. So I texted. No response. I thought maybe she'd fallen asleep despite our plan to talk. It's happened on occasion."

“So if it wasn’t that uncommon, why did you have concerns?” Jessie wondered.

“I didn’t at first,” Cody said, his voice quavering slightly before returning to the monotone. “I just figured I’d check in on her. We had to move out of our place in Bel Air for some renovations. The house in Cheviot Hills is a rental. And since it doesn’t have the same security as our home, I had a company set up all kind of cameras as an extra precaution. Some are inside the house. So I checked them.”

He paused for a moment, as if gathering himself for what he had to say next. Jessie and Brady waited silently, not wanting to prod him. They didn’t need to. After five seconds, he resumed.

"I saw her on the camera set up in the living room," he said slowly, doing his best to control his tone. "At first I just thought she'd fallen asleep watching TV or something. But then I noticed that she had some kind of crown on her head. That was weird, so I zoomed in on the video. That's when I noticed…the injuries. I called 911 right away."

He stopped at that point. After ten more seconds, it became clear that he was done. Jessie looked over at Brady. She didn't have any more questions for the man right now. Apparently, neither did Brady.

“Okay, thanks for your time, Mr. Cody,” he said softly. “We may have more questions for you once you get back into town, but that’s it for now.”

“Where do I go when I get back?” he asked, sounding like a helpless child. “The police station? A funeral home? I don’t know what to do.”

“We’ll send a police liaison to meet your plane,” Brady told him. “They’ll walk you through next steps. For now, we’ll need to take Becks to the medical examiner’s for an autopsy. The house will be temporarily closed off as a crime scene. By the time you arrive, the liaison will have an action plan to help you get through the next few hours and days. They’ll also ask to get access to your home security footage and Rebecca’s phone.”

“Okay,” Cody said, barely audible. “Thank you.”

“Sorry again for your loss,” Brady said.

The line went dead. It took both of them a few seconds to regroup. Jessie got there first.

“We need to get our hands on that security footage as soon as possible,” she said. “And if they haven’t already, your officers should do a thorough sweep of the house to find out how the killer got in. In the meantime, we need to find any possible connection between these women. Obviously, there’s the pageant angle, which feels pretty strong. But I don’t want to leave any stone unturned.”

“I’m right there with you,” Brady said.

“I was going to call Jamil and ask him to work an all-nighter, assuming he’s not still at the office anyway,” Jessie said. “We’re not going to sleep any time soon either, so I think we should order some coffee. By the morning, we may end up mainlining the stuff.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jessie preferred to wake up to the dawn.

But on this morning, she discovered the first hints of morning sunlight by glancing out the window of the West Los Angeles police station conference room where she and Brady had been holed up all night. She only wished she had more to show for her lack of sleep.

Both Jamil and Beth had agreed to go back into the office without hesitation and had also been up all night. Among the four of them, they gathered the names and contact information for every person in the pageant community that had interacted with both Patricia Hollinger and Rebecca Martinez. There were more than a few.

Including other contestants, judges, organizers coordinators, and other behind-the-scenes personnel, they already had 16 names. And Jessie was sure they were missing a lot. They planned to start setting interviews up with all of them—starting with those who had criminal records—once the hour wasn't so ungodly.

In the meantime, they'd pursued every other angle they could think of. Officers on the scene had pretty quickly found the killer's entry point. A side gate was unlocked, and so was the sliding door from the backyard into the living room. They'd been able to simply waltz in.

The security video that arrived an hour after Kai Cody touched down in L.A. reinforced that fact. They were able to see the exact moment when the killer walked inside: 9:28 P.M.

The murderer was dressed as they had been in the footage outside Patricia Hollinger’s home—in all black, including a bulky, hooded sweatshirt, a mask, and gloves. Their face was completely hidden, at least to the cameras.

And despite the solid quality of the video, the camera placement, in conjunction with the clothes, made it hard to discern the perpetrator’s height or weight. Even when the killer dragged Rebecca’s lifeless body across the living room carpet and lifted her onto the sofa, gauging their size was difficult to impossible.

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