Page 21 of The Perfect Revenge
“Eleanor found her on her stomach,” Balmorra whispered quietly.“She rolled her onto her back to check on her before she realized she was dead.”
Jessie looked down at the woman.She was an attractive blonde in her mid-thirties.Her wavy hair looked like it had been recently styled.She was tall and tan, both of which were accentuated by the form-fitting dress she wore.Her blue eyes were vacant.
Jessie pictured Maggie’s mother walking in and finding her like this.She imagined the pain the woman must have felt in the moment when she realized that the girl she’d given birth to and raised was gone forever.Then Jessie thought of the little boy happily watching a movie, oblivious to the fact that his mother’s life was being snuffed out just one room over.
She felt a familiar ferocity rising in her gut, that desire to inflict wrathful punishment on whoever had done this.Pretending everything was fine, she knelt down next to the body as if studying it more closely.Everyone took another step back to let her concentrate.
But instead of focusing on the human evidence in front of her, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.This was the kind of moment she’d spent two months in Italy preparing for.She briefly considered trying some box breathing or a visualization technique.But she could feel that those wouldn’t work.
Instead, she recalled the method she’d learned of in passing from baseball player Kai Cody.She thought of how he would focus on the tiniest detail of his game situation in order to shut out the nerves or anxiety that might otherwise interfere with his job on the field.She’d employed the technique in her last case with some success and decided to give it another shot.But what detail could she focus on?
She opened her eyes again.Then she noticed that she was staring right at it.From where she knelt, she had a clear view of the thumbnail-sized bruise on Maggie Caldwell's neck where a needle had been jammed in.The area around the puncture wound was a mix of purple and blue, like a sick variation on the changing colors of the sky as the sun set.
The comparison made her glance up.From here, she could actually see the sun falling behind the ocean in the distance.The colors danced above the horizon: a hint of purple, currently overwhelmed by pinks, oranges, and yellows.In mere minutes, the combination would be inverted, and the darker hues would win out.
“Jessie?”
She looked up to see Susannah staring down at her.She stood up, noticing that the passion in her belly, while not completely gone, had faded substantially.
“Sorry, I was just running some scenarios in my head,” she lied.“Let’s get down to business.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jessie noted the harsh beauty of the moment.
The last time she'd seen the sun, it was as it set over the Pacific at a crime scene.Now she was watching the dawn emerge from behind the hills to the east.But instead of kneeling over a dead body in Malibu, she was sitting on a bench near the back entrance of the West L.A.police station.
It was her first time outside since she and Susannah had returned here after leaving the crime scene around 11 p.m.last night.That meant that they'd been grinding away at the case for over seven hours, with just a brief half hour window to nap.
In some ways, that time had been productive.Detective Balmorra's Sheriff's Department colleagues had met Teddy Borowitz at the airport gate after his flight from San Francisco arrived and confirmed with the flight attendants that he had been on board.
The medical examiner handling Maggie Caldwell's body provided preliminary confirmation that she, like Veronica Sterling, had died of a massive dose of Propofol, likely injected in the neck.He also gave the approximate time of death as between 4 p.m.and 6 p.m., which matched what they'd learned from Eleanor and Devon Caldwell.
Unfortunately, that was where the positive news stopped.So far—at least according to Jamil and Beth, who had also worked through the night—there was no indication that the victims knew each other or had any connections in common.There was also no sign that Teddy Borowitz knew Veronica Sterling, which was another blow to the idea of him as a suspect.And to top it off, Jamil found no financial maneuvering that might suggest Borowitz had hired someone to take out his wife.
Despite the lack of personal connections between the women, Jessie noted that they were some similarities.They'd both been married to powerful men.One still was.Both women lived extremely comfortable lives in wealthy areas of town.And both had one young child.
But alone, that wasn't much to go on.That description fit thousands of other women in L.A., and even though both women lived on the west side of town, Malibu and Brentwood weren't exactly close.To drive from the Sterling mansion to Caldwell's beach house would take half an hour, even without traffic.There had to be some other link that the women shared.
“Hey.”Susannah poked her head out of the back door of the station.
“Hey.What’s up?”
“Is your phone on silent?”
“Yeah,” Jessie said, pulling it out of her pocket.“I just wanted a couple of minutes of uninterrupted solitude.”
“I understand.But it looks like that’s the moment when Jamil decided to reach out.He’s been calling you.He thinks he might have something.Should I put him on speaker?”
“Sure,” Jessie said, sliding over on the bench and motioning for her partner to take a seat.Susannah did just that as she pushed a button on her phone.
“I found her, Jamil,” she said.“You’re on speaker with both of us now.Go ahead.”
“Okay.”Jamil’s voice had none of the exhaustion that was infiltrating Jessie’s and Susannah’s.“Because of some bureaucratic hurdles, I wasn’t able to uncover this until just recently, but I have found a connection between your two victims.”
Jessie perked up.“What?”
“They both sought fertility treatments in the past.”
