Page 8 of The Perfect People

“You too, Sergeant,” she replied. “Jessie speaks highly of you.”

“Nice of her to lie on my behalf,” Breem said. “In order to keep the façade going, I suppose my best move would be to fill you in on what we know so far and show you the crime scene. Sound good?”

“Lead the way,” Jessie said.

“We actually don’t know a ton,” he admitted as he started toward the stairs. “Here’s what I can tell you for sure. There was a ruckus during the party earlier in the evening, an altercation of some kind. Multiple folks have mentioned it, but we can’t find any witnesses who actually saw it take place, so we don’t know the nature of what happened, who was involved, or if it was in any way connected to what happened to Shasta Mallory later on. We’re still hoping that when someone wakes up later this morning, they’ll come forward with something useful. But as of now, that’s all we’ve got: something definitely seems to have happened. But we don’t know what, when, or with who.”

He paused briefly to catch his breath as they reached the landing between the first and second floors. After a few seconds, he resumed trudging up the stairs and talking.

“What we do know is that Mallory’s body was found this morning by her personal assistant, who is currently in a guest room on the third floor, still in a very emotional state. She wanted to take something for anxiety, but I told her she had to wait until you had a chance to interview her.”

“We appreciate that,” Jessie said. “We’ll try to get to her quick.”

“Thanks,” Breem replied. “She’s been a handful. Lastly, the coroner hasn’t transported the body yet, so you can get a look at the scene as it was, but his preliminary analysis is pretty straightforward. It looks like she was choked to death. He doesn’t seem too uncertain on the matter.”

They reached the top of the stairs, and all stopped to gather themselves. Jessie used the opportunity to take in the view through the wall-sized, beach-facing window in front of them. From this height, she could see the entirety of the Santa Monica Bay, from the Palos Verdes Peninsula all the way north to Malibu. Just south of that was Santa Monica, where Hannah was already likely settling in at her friend’s beach house right about now.

“You know,” Breem said, pulling her out of her thoughts, “if it was anyone but you handling this, there’d be some hard feelings. When Shasta Mallory’s clients started demanding we bring in HHS, the chief got his back up a little. I think he was mildly insulted. But after we reminded him how effective you were the last time around, he relented pretty quickly.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t just a little happy to pass the buck too?” Susannah asked, with her trademark bluntness. “If this investigation gets screwed up, it’s on us and those pop stars will blame HSS, not his department.”

“That may have played a role too,” Breem acknowledged wryly, leading them to a door at the end of the hall. “This is Shasta Mallory’s bedroom.”

Jessie noted that the door didn’t seem to have any damage indicating that it had been forced open. They stepped inside. Out of the corner of her eye, Jessie could see a body lying on the bed but chose to ignore it for now so she could take in the rest of the room. It had a door leading out to a terrace the size of a bedroom.

In one corner of the bedroom was a Peloton bike. In another was a fireplace surrounded by an easy chair, a love seat, and a small coffee table. None of it looked disturbed. She looked in the bathroom, which was messy, but not unusually so. There was no indication that a struggle had occurred there.

“Nothing out of the ordinary, right?” Susannah said, voicing Jessie’s thoughts.

“Not as far as I can tell.”

“You ready to look at the body?” Susannah asked, well aware of Jessie’s preference to save that for last.

“Yeah.”

They walked over to the bed, where Shasta Mallory was lying on her back. Standing next to the bed was Carl Pugh, the Manhattan Beach deputy coroner, whom Jessie remembered from her previous case. A short, balding man in his late thirties with an unassuming demeanor, he said nothing as she and Susannah looked over the body.

Shasta Mallory’s brown eyes were open wide with red dots where capillaries had burst. There was obvious bruising around her neck, which was exposed. She was wearing a blousy, emerald-green top. The top button had popped off, revealing part of her bra. She had on a pair of loose-fitting, striped, wide-legged trousers. Her brown hair was short and unfussy. Jessie guessed that she was in her mid-forties. Her fingernails were relatively short and didn’t look broken or bloody. It didn’t appear that she’d had the chance to fight back.

Jessie felt a small ache for this woman she didn’t know. How terrified she must have been as she gasped for breaths that wouldn’t come, unable to save herself, perhaps unaware of who was doing this to her or why.

“What can you tell us, Pugh?” she asked quietly, sensing the coroner’s anxiousness.

“Initial evidence suggests strangulation,” he replied without hesitation, “though you don’t need me to draw that conclusion. We’ll confirm officially once we get her back to the office. The grip markings indicate an attack from behind and that gloves were used, probably latex. We’ll do testing but I don’t think we’re going to get lucky with any fingerprints or DNA. I’m estimating time of death between eight and twelve hours ago. We should be able to eventually narrow that down a little, maybe an hour on either side if we’re lucky.”

“So,” Susannah said, looking at her phone, “you’re thinking she was killed sometime between eleven p.m. last night and three a.m. this morning. The party was going that whole time, right?”

“That’s my understanding,” Sergeant Breem said. “It quieted down a fair bit after about one a.m., but patrols told me there were still people drifting in and out as late as four this morning.”

Jessie couldn’t help but wonder what the woman’s life was like that she’d lain here for potentially hours while her own party raged on without anyone noticing her absence or checking on her. Perhaps they could get insights on that front from her assistant.

“Unless you have other questions, I’m okay with them taking her,” she said to Susannah.

“I’m good too,” the detective agreed. “The quicker we get those results, the better data we have to work with. Besides, we should probably talk to that antsy assistant, no?”

“She’s just across the hall,” Breem said.

They left Pugh to wrap up and crossed the hall. Breem knocked on the door softly. When it opened, Jessie had to stifle a gasp.

---