Page 17 of The Perfect People

“No problem,” Breem said. “Your partner is definitely enthusiastic. Just make sure that her enthusiasm is tempered with some caution. Richie Boy can be a handful.”

“Sergeant,” Jessie called back to him as she headed down the stairs, “between Richie Boy and Susannah Valentine, I feel like I’m sitting on a pile of fireworks. I just hope I get there before one of them lights a match.”

CHAPTER NINE

Susannah was itching to go in.

She was tempted to knock on the door of the address belonging to Ilana Owens but knew that Jessie would never let her hear the end of it if she did. So instead, she stood on the Strand by the gate leading to the house and waited as her partner jogged over.

Susannah sensed that she was testing Jessie’s patience. After the rough start to their working relationship several months ago, and their eventual mending of fences, the last thing she wanted was to reopen that fissure by alienating the woman who had inspired her to join HSS in the first place. Jessie Hunt’s fearless takedown of serial killers had convinced Susannah to return to her hometown and pursue a position with the most elite investigative unit in the department. She wanted to work with Jessie, not piss her off.

Yet all morning, despite her best efforts to rein herself in, she’d been giving in to what Jessie diplomatically called her “bull in a china shop” instinct. She’s been exasperated and short with witnesses and law enforcement officials alike. And she thought she knew why.

“Thanks for waiting for me,” Jessie said wryly when she caught up. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Honestly,” Susannah admitted, “I was on the verge of marching up the walk and banging on the door. I had to force myself not to.”

Jessie looked down at her with an apparent mix of amusement and confusion. For a second, it seemed she might let the comment slide, but then, of course, she didn’t.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” the profiler asked. “You’re always a…go-getter, but you’re bringing an extra level of intensity to the job today, more so than in a while. I feel like something’s building up in you and I’m a little worried it’s going to explode if you don’t pull the release valve.”

Susannah sighed. Normally she’d tell her assigned partner to screw off. But Jessie Hunt wasn’t just any partner. She’s been to hell and back multiple times and deserved better than to spend the day working with a half-cocked detective that she wasn’t sure she could count on. Besides, the criminal profiler could read people like books, and she wasn’t going to let this go.

“Fine,” Susannah relented. “Remember how I said I used to come to these blowout parties when I was younger, and that it might prove useful as we investigated the case?”

“Vividly,” Jessie replied.

“Well, that’s the advantage of me having partied here: my experience with this world and the people in it,” she said. “But there’s a disadvantage too.”

“What’s that?” Jessie asked.

“I didn’t really like who I was back then,” Susannah said, looking away from Jessie and focusing on a wave crashing on the beach. “I mentioned that I drank a lot at the time. I also got around a lot, and not in an ‘empowered sexuality’ kind of way. I told you that I was raped a couple of years prior to that. But at that point, I hadn’t really processed it. I was just trying to numb myself to the pain of that memory with booze and sex with guys that I could easily control. It’s not a time in my life that I’m very proud of. And I guess being back here reminds me of being that person and I’ve been trying to avoid her at all costs. Maybe I’m overcompensating a little.”

To her surprise, Jessie smiled and pulled her in for a hug.

“Maybe you are,” the profiler whispered in her ear, “that’s understandable. Personally, I don’t think you need to do any compensating. You should be proud of yourself. I know she is.”

“Who?” Susannah asked.

Jessie broke off the hug and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Nineteen-year-old Susannah,” she said.

“I went by Susie back then.”

“Okay, Susie then,” Jessie said. “Imagine her a decade ago at one of these parties—terrified, full of self-doubt, self-medicating, wounded inside and out, not sure if she would make it. If you told that young woman that ten years later, she would be a badass detective, able to kick the butt of anyone who gave her crap, who walked proudly in her bodacious body, and who regularly brought the worst scum in this city to justice on behalf of the vulnerable, what do you think Susie would have thought of her future self? Do you think she’d have endorsed future Susannah, the one who is standing in front of me right now?”

Susannah felt the beginning of a tear fighting its way to the edge of her eye and fought it back with some aggressive blinking and a shrug.

“Maybe?”

“Now you’re just fishing for compliments,” Jessie said, “and I’m fresh out of them for the afternoon. So what do you say we put your manic, hyper-probing energy to productive use with the first half-decent lead we’ve had today and see if Richie Boy ends up being worth our time?”

“Let’s do it,” Susannah said, opening the gate and letting Jessie go in first.

“From what Breem sent us,” the profiler said, looking at her phone, “it appears that Ilana Owens is divorced too. She got the house. Her ex is a lawyer who moved to Palos Verdes with his new wife about six months ago.”

As they approached the front door, Susannah noted that while the place was nice, it wasn’t anywhere near as extravagant as Shasta Mallory’s. The home was two stories instead of Mallory’s three and even narrower. It looked to be about thirty years old whereas Shasta’s place couldn’t have been more than ten. Instead of a giant courtyard, it had a modest patio.

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