Page 47 of The Perfect People

“Jessie knows all this, Beth,” Jamil muttered impatiently.

“She said I could take my time,” Beth objected. “Don’t ruin this for me just because you’re in a sour mood, Jay.”

Jessie bit her tongue. She had never heard Beth refer to Jamil, who was technically her supervisor, as “Jay” before, nor talk to him so sharply. She wondered what was up with that.

“Sorry,” he said quietly.

“You’re forgiven,” Beth whispered back, before returning to her normal voice. “Anyway, these other killers weren’t intentionally pursuing multiple victims. In some instances the next target was just inconveniently in their way or was someone they feared might rat them out in the future. Regardless, we calculated who each of those potential victims was and came up with a total of one hundred fourteen people who were at risk of being killed if you hadn’t caught the murderer in time.”

“I didn’t realize it was that many,” Jessie said in quiet amazement.

“Yeah, that’s a lot of people you saved, Jessie,” Beth replied, “and that’s not even counting all the people in that movie theater last April who weren’t killed because you uncovered Zoe Bradway’s plan to poison their popcorn. We don’t know their names because they all ran out of the theater complex in a panic. That was hundreds of people. But we do know the names ofthesehundred fourteen people. And that’s what I’m getting at. I just got off the phone with the last of them. Between Jamil and I, we have contacted and warned every single one of them, as you requested.”

For a moment, Jessie couldn’t find the words to respond. After swallowing the lump in her throat, she did her best.

“That’s incredible,” she said, standing up again. Suddenly she was very glad that she was all alone in the small MBPD women’s locker room. “You should be so proud of yourselves. That’s an amazing accomplishment, one I wasn’t sure was even capable of being achieved. Thank you guys so much. It lifts a huge weight off my mind.”

“I’m only sorry we couldn’t do more,” Beth said. “Obviously all we could do was tell folks to be on guard, not take unnecessary risks, try to stay in group settings, that kind of thing, until we get this resolved.”

Jamil spoke up at that point.

“We did also tell them that if they felt unsafe, they should reach out to the department or go to a police station. Some of them asked for officer check-ins, but we told them that resources were just too limited right now. Beth was great about reminding them that they still need to live their lives, just with a little more awareness. She’s much better at public-facing interactions than I am.”

“You don’t say,” Jessie teased before adding, “It sounds like you both did great work. You should give each other a pat on the back, or a neck massage, or something.”

The lack of a response from either of them told her she’d hit a nerve. Just then, Officer Carrie Shaw walked into the dressing room, giving her the perfect excuse to extricate herself from the uncomfortable situation she’d created.

“Hey, guys, I’ve got to deal with something here, but you let me know if anything else pops, okay? Great. Bye!”

“That sounded awkward,” Shaw said as she came over, opened a locker, and began to undress. “It reminded me of one of those painful high school phone calls I had with the guy I accidentally revealed I had a crush on.”

“Yeah,” Jessie said, “I think I may have stirred up a situation like that and left other people to deal with the emotional fallout. It’s quite possible that I’m Cupid, if Cupid was terrible at his job.”

“Good thing you’re pretty decent at your day job then,” Shaw said, looking completely exhausted as she peeled off her uniform, baring the small, lean figure that Jessie knew was capable of unexpected physical strength under duress.

“Not so great at it today, actually,” she conceded. “None of our leads have panned out. I was thinking of just going back to Nicole Boyce’s house in the hope that it might trigger something useful for me, but I’m worried that I might get spotted by the press after what you said earlier.”

Shaw grabbed a sundress off a hanger in her locker and ran her hand along it to smooth out a wrinkle.

“It would be a risk,” she warned.

“What would be a risk?” Susannah asked, as she emerged from the showers, drying herself off with a towel flung over her shoulder, but otherwise completely nude.

“Going to the Boyce house,” Shaw said, quickly looking away as her cheeks turned bright red. “There are at least three camera crews posted out there with reporters doing standups every hour or so. It’d be hard for you to get back inside without being seen.”

“Is that even the best use of our time?” Susannah asked, oblivious to the rookie cop’s discomfort as she turned around and reached into her backpack for the clothes she’d brought with her. “Shouldn’t we be focusing on where he’ll hit next rather than where he’s already been?”

Jessie couldn’t help but ache slightly as she watched Carrie Shaw do her best not to stare, open-mouthed, at Susannah. The young officer tore her eyes away, and instead looked down at her own far less curvaceous form, before hurriedly throwing on her sundress.

“What do you think, Carrie?” Jessie asked with a supportive smile, using the officer’s first name to try to redirect her attention away from whatever insecurity she was feeling. “Should we be concentrating our attention on the house parties tonight?”

“Um, that’s going to be hard,” Shaw said, trying to focus on the question. “There are going to be a lot of them.”

Susannah, now in a bra and underwear, turned back around.

“You’re younger than either of us,” she said to Shaw, “in addition to being local, so tell me if I’m way off base here, but when I used to crash parties here a decade ago, we would always look for the big ones, sure. But we’d also try to scope out the ones with the least security and the easiest access. You know, the ones that were the friendliest to party crashers. I’m wondering if maybe our suspect is looking for the same thing—a party he can slip into unnoticed, and where, if he attacks someone, he’s not going to get taken out by hired pros. What do you think, Shaw?”

The young officer seemed to have found her bearings again. Her cheeks had returned to their normal color, and she had regained most of her confidence.

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