Page 31 of The Perfect People

“How often does he do this?” Susannah asked.

“At least a couple of times a month,” Timms said. “We may as well take him in tonight, just in case. But—and I don’t want to overstep here—I’m extremely skeptical that he’s your man.”

“Why is that?” Jessie asked, already in agreement but curious to hear Timms’ reasoning.

“Well,” he said, “even at a party as crazy as the one last night, I’m pretty sure Red Henry would have attracted attention if he had walked in. The man doesn’t look like her kind of guest, and he doesn’t exactly smell like a field of daisies either, you know?”

“It’s a good point,” she said. “Let’s have Trey Killian come down and take a peek at him. If he doesn’t recognize him, you can take him in for the night, but obviously don’t actually charge him with anything connected to the case. The second that word gets out that someone is in custody on anything related to Mallory’s death, even if it’s on a technicality, this thing will blow up, especially with Chantilly Mace on the war path.”

“It’s not just her,” Susannah noted. “I checked. Jelly has over a million followers on some of her feeds.”

They brought Killian down to the bar’s side entrance, where he immediately shook his head upon seeing Red Henry.

“The guy who attacked Shasta was a lot younger and stronger,” he said. “Not to be rude, but this gentleman doesn’t look like he would have survived one punch from the big guy I told you about.”

“Okay,” Susannah said, visibly shaking despite the warm weather, “here’s what going to happen, assuming everyone’s on board. Officer Timms, you are going to escort Mr. Killian and Red Henry back to the station, where Henry can get his dinner and cot but otherwise be kept off the radar. Our witness here can give a detailed description of Shasta’s attacker to your best police sketch artist. Once that’s done, please have that sent to both me and Ms. Hunt. At that point, after giving you his contact information, Mr. Killian is free to go. Sound good?”

“Sure,” Timms said. “What will you be doing?”

“I’m glad you asked,” she said, with just the slightest edge in her voice. “You may have noticed that the sun is close to setting, at which point these damp, salty, sand-covered clothes will go from uncomfortable to unbearable. Unless she objects, L.A.’s best known criminal profiler and I will be hitching a ride in one of your squad cars back to Shasta Mallory’s place, where my vehicle is parked. Then we will be braving rush hour traffic in said damp clothes back downtown to our station to update our boss on the status of this case, which is basically, ‘we got nothing.’ Then, if we are lucky, we’ll get to go to our respective homes to rest and regroup before seeing you bright and early tomorrow morning to start fresh, when we’ll hopefully have more luck than we did today. That, Officer Timms, is what we will be doing. Did I get anything wrong, Jessie?”

“That sounds about right to me,” Jessie said. “Sorry to leave you with the dirty work, Timms, but I can already feel the chafing, and I’m not loving it.”

Timms held up his hands in surrender, clearly hoping she wouldn’t elaborate.

“That was pretty good,” Susannah whispered as they waddled up the steep alley. “I didn’t know the word ‘chafing’ held such power. You really amped it up there.”

“I only wish I was exaggerating.” Jessie winced.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“How’s she doing?” Ryan asked.

Jessie, who had been lying on the living room couch with her head in his lap, sat upright and looked at her husband. She had just hung up after talking with Kat, and the expression on Ryan’s face indicated that he was more than a little concerned.

“You heard my side of the conversation,” she said, surprised at the question. “Couldn’t you tell?”

“Jessie, you’re pretty good at hiding your emotions,” he said. “So if you thought that Kat was struggling, you wouldn’t let her know that you had those doubts. And if you could keep them from her, you might be able to keep them from me too. So I thought I’d just ask directly: how do you think she’s doing?”

Jessie had to concede that he was right. She was adept at concealing when she thought something was awry. It was a skill she had developed so she didn’t tip off suspects that she was on to them. But in this case, there was no deception involved.

“Kat’s good,” she said. “According to her, technically she’s fully recovered from all the injuries. She can breathe clearly through the broken nose now. The fractured kneecap has fully healed, as have all the stab wounds. She said there’s still a twinge in the right shoulder when she raises it above her head, but it doesn’t prevent her from achieving full range of motion.”

“So she’s still on track to come back next week?” Ryan reconfirmed.

“She and Mitch are bringing all her stuff down from Lake Arrowhead in his pickup on Monday. She still intends to reopen Gentry Investigations on Tuesday. In fact, she reminded me of Hannah’s offer to squeeze in a few days of interning before she started focusing exclusively on getting ready to start college. She wanted to know if she was still up for it.”

“What did you say to that?” he asked curiously.

“I know that Hannah is still onboard, but I promised I’d reconfirm that when I called her, which I was planning to do right now.”

“Before you do that, do you have any more updates for me on the Mallory case?” he asked. “Chief Decker was asking.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I told you about Trey Killian, the witness who provided the description for the sketch artist. We had that sent to Jamil, who put it in the database. I’m not optimistic that we’ll get a match though. The look of the guy in the sketch is so weird, it’s almost like he was wearing a disguise to throw people off.”

“That suggests that the initial attack might have been premeditated, right?” Ryan noted. “If he thought far enough ahead to put on a disguise?”

“Possibly,” Jessie agreed. “But why attack her in public if he knew he could come back later to do it in private?”

---