The Perfect Lie. Блейк Пирс

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СКАЧАТЬ looked at each other, unsure what to do. He started to get out of his seat when Decker shut him down.

      “Don’t even think about it, Hernandez. You’re not getting anywhere near this thing.”

      Hernandez slumped back down in his chair. They watched the action around the station with jealous interest. After a few minutes, things quieted down and then remaining staff went back to work. Seemingly only moments ago, the bullpen had been bustling with activity, filled with well over fifty people. Now it was a ghost town. Including Jessie and Hernandez, there were fewer than ten left.

      Suddenly Jessie heard a loud thud. She looked over to see that Captain Decker had dropped a half dozen thick files on her desk.

      “These are the cases I want you to review,” he said. “I had hoped to go over them with you but obviously I’m going to be busy for the next few hours.”

      “Any updates on the shooting?” she asked him.

      “The shooting has stopped. Everyone scattered once our cars arrived. We’re up to six fatalities, all from rival gangs. Another dozen or so are injured. We’ve got about thirty officers and a dozen detectives canvassing the area. And that doesn’t even include SWAT.”

      “What about me?” Hernandez asked. “How can I help, Captain?”

      “You can follow up on your colleagues’ cases until they get back. I’m sure they’ll be very appreciative. I’ve got to get back to this gang thing now.”

      He hurried back to his office, leaving the two of them alone except for the mounds of paperwork.

      “I think he’s being mean on purpose,” Hernandez muttered.

      “Did you want to finish what you were saying before?” Jessie asked him, wondering if she was pushing too hard.

      “Not now,” he replied, losing the lightness in his voice. “Maybe later, when we’re out of the office and everything isn’t so…heightened.”

      Jessie nodded in agreement, though she was disappointed. Rather than pout or stay in that unpleasant head space, she turned her attention to the case files in front of her.

      Maybe focusing on the minutiae of some murders will clear my head.

      She chuckled silently at her own gallows humor as she opened the first file.

      It worked. She became so immersed in the details of the cases that almost an hour passed without her noticing the time. It wasn’t until Hernandez tapped her on the shoulder that she looked up and realized it was mid-morning.

      “I think I might have found us a case,” he said, holding up a piece of paper provocatively.

      “I thought we weren’t supposed to be hunting for new cases,” she replied.

      “We’re not,” he admitted. “But there’s no one else here to take it and I think it’s the sort of thing Decker might actually let us take on.”

      He held out the paper. Not as reluctantly as she probably should have, Jessie took it. It didn’t take her long to realize why they might have a shot at convincing Decker to let them take it.

      The case seemed pretty straightforward. A thirty-year-old woman was found dead in her Hollywood apartment. The young man who first reported finding her was initially held on suspicion when a neighbor reported seeing him enter the apartment through a window. But he asserted he was a co-worker who was checking on her after not hearing from her for two days. There were no obvious signs of violence and the initial impression on the scene was that this was likely a suicide.

      “It seems like they have things pretty well in hand. I’m not sure what we can offer….”

      “I hear a silent ‘but’ in there,” Hernandez noted, smiling.

      Jessie didn’t want to give him the satisfaction but found herself grinning slightly too.

      “But… there is a reference to older bruising on her wrists and neck, which might suggest previous abuse. That’s probably worth checking out. And according to her co-worker, she worked as a personal trainer at a high-end fitness club, where she specialized in high-profile clients. It’s possible some of them will make a stink if they think LAPD isn’t putting enough resources into the case.”

      “Exactly,” Hernandez said excitedly. “That’s our ‘in,’ Jessie. If I know Decker, he’s not going to risk alienating the hoi polloi if he can avoid it. Assigning a detective from HSS and a celebrated forensic profiler to the case short-circuits that criticism. Plus, it seems pretty ideal for easing us back into the field. There’s no sign of violence. If it was murder, we’re probably talking poisoning or something along those lines. It seems like a largely stabbing-free case.”

      “He was pretty adamant that we stick to desks for a while,” Jessie reminded him.

      “I think he’ll go for it,” Hernandez insisted. “Besides, he’s so distracted with the gang shooting, he might say yes just to get rid of us. Let’s at least try.”

      “I’ll go with you,” Jessie said. “But I’m not making the pitch. If he cuts anyone’s head off, it’s going to be yours.”

      “Coward,” he teased.

*

      Jessie had to admit that Ryan Hernandez was good.

      He barely had to say more than the words “wealthy clients,” “Hollywood,” and “likely suicide” before Decker was ushering them out the door to pursue the case. Those buzzwords hit all their boss’s weak spots: his fear of bad publicity, his ongoing goal not to alienate his supervisors, and his deep desire not to have Detective Hernandez pester him relentlessly.

      His only rule was simple.

      “If it starts to look like this is a murder and the perpetrator used any kind of force, call me for backup.”

      Now, as Hernandez drove them to Hollywood, he looked almost giddy with excitement. So did his foot.

      “Careful on the gas there, Earnhardt,” she warned. “I don’t want to get in an accident on the way to the scene.”

      She said nothing about their discussion from earlier, deciding to let him bring it up when he was ready. It didn’t take long. After the initial rush of being in a car on the way to crime scene faded, he glanced in her direction.

      “So here’s the deal,” he started, his words tumbling out much faster than normal. “I should have reached out to you more often after everything went down. I mean, I did at first obviously. But you were badly hurt and not very chatty, which I completely understand.”

      “Do you?” Jessie asked skeptically.

      “Of course,” he said as he exited the 101 freeway at Vine Street. “You had to kill your own father. Even if he was a psycho, he was your dad. But I wasn’t sure how to broach that with you. And there was the fact that your psycho dad stabbed me. That wasn’t your fault but I was worried you would think I blamed you. So I was thinking all those things while having my stomach leak blood periodically and being heavily doped up on pain medication and trying keep food down. And right when I thought I was ready to discuss all that in an adult way, my wife formally served me with divorce papers. It was already going to happen. But there was something about getting those legal documents, especially while СКАЧАТЬ