CHAPTER THIRTY

She let Ryan drive back downtown.

They were still in the hills, but she felt confident that he wouldn't push the speed limit as they traversed the twisting roads. They were approaching the base of the hills when a call came in. It was Cutter. She put him on speaker.

"What have you got, Sergeant?" she asked, trying to sound more chipper than she felt.

"You asked for any new updates," he said. "I've got Dr. Roone on the other line, and he says he has one for you. Can I conference him in?"

"Go for it," she said excitedly, pulling the Ziploc-bagged hair from the glove compartment as if that might somehow impact the results they got.

"Okay, doctor," Cutter said a moment later, "you're on with Detective Hernandez and Ms. Hunt."

"All right," Roone replied, his voice gravelly and tired-sounding. "I"m sorry we haven"t been able to meet in person, but I"m glad we can touch base now."

"Don't worry about it, doctor," Ryan told him. "What have you got for us?"

"I'll get straight to the point," he said. "Apparently, that hair embedded in Chloe Henshall"s neck tissue was from a dog."

Jessie felt herself deflate at the words. As she tossed the plastic bag back in the glove compartment, Ryan said what she was thinking.

"Thanks for the info, but I'm not sure how much that helps us. We already know she had a dog. This tidbit doesn't really change the game."

"I understand," Roone said. "I just thought you should know. Sorry, I couldn"t give you more."

"Thanks anyway," Jessie told him. "Please don't hesitate to call if you have other updates. Even if they seem unimportant, they could be valuable. Same for you, Sergeant Cutter."

"Of course," Cutter said. She could hear the disappointment in his voice too.

She hung up as they arrived at a long light at the bottom of Beachwood Drive where it intersected with Franklin Avenue. She sat silently in the passenger seat while Ryan did the same beside her. In the back, Emilio Vega spoke up softly.

"Does that help me?" he asked. "I don't even have a dog."

"Please, Mr. Vega," Ryan said irritably. "We can litigate all this back at the station."

Jessie was slightly annoyed by the man too, but something he said caused an odd sensation in her. She couldn't define it. It reminded her of those times when she'd leave her house, sensing that she was forgetting something but not sure what it was.

She closed her eyes, shutting out the brake lights of the cars in front of them and the whoosh of vehicles passing them as they went back up into the hills. What was bothering her? She cast her mind back to the last crime scene at the Henshall house, following the mental map of the place that she'd created.

Then her thoughts stopped, fixing on one that hovered, like a ghost, just out of her field of corporeal vision. The thought was about a door. As she recalled, by the time they arrived at the scene, the door connecting the living room—where Chloe was killed—to the kitchen was open. But Sean Henshall had told them that when he got home, Missy the dog was stuck in the kitchen, with the door to the living room closed.

If Missy was locked in the kitchen, how did her hair get on Chloe's neck? The easy answers were either that Chloe had either played with the dog earlier, gotten a hair on her hand, and then rubbed her own neck, leaving the trace hair on her skin, or that she'd simply picked Missy up and nuzzled her. Both were possible. But that conclusion made an assumption, and Jessie knew the danger of assuming too much.

She opened her eyes and pulled out her phone, scrolling to photos of the Henshall crime scene and to Missy specifically. The little white poodle was in the arms of Sean Henshall, who seemed to be clutching at her for comfort. The photo reminded her of another one that she'd seen recently and dismissed.

As quickly as her fingers would allow, she exited her camera roll and clicked onto the police report from Erin Podemski's house. Then she pulled up the photos from that scene, scanning through them until she found the one she wanted. She clicked on it and zoomed in. Sure enough, her memory was right. She immediately called Dr. Roone back.

"This is Jessie Hunt again," she said without any greeting, "can you describe the dog hair you found in Chloe Henshall's neck tissue?"

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Like the breed? I don't know that yet."

"No," she told him, "just the basics: color? Style? Specifically, is the hair white and curly?"

"Definitely not," he said. "It's darker, black or brown. And it's straight."

"So it wouldn't have come from a white poodle?"

"Definitely not," he assured her.

"Thanks," Jessie said, a charge of electricity coursing through her. "Please let me know when you get something definitive."

She hung up without waiting for a response and pulled up another phone number.

"What"s going on?" Ryan asked as the light turned green, and he began moving.

"Can you pull over?" she asked.

Ryan seemed to sense that she was on to something and, without another word, eased into the nearby parking lot of a cheap motel. Jessie found the number she was looking for and dialed. After two rings, she heard a voice.

"This is Nikki," said Erin Podemski's personal assistant.

"Nikki, this is Jessie Hunt. Does Erin have a dog?"

"Oh, hi, Ms. Hunt," Nikki said, taken aback. "Um, no, she doesn't."

"I'm looking at a photo from the mantle in her living room and in it, she's kneeling next to a dog. It looks like a border collie, maybe?"

"Oh yeah," Nikki replied. "That's Max. He was her dog, but he died a few months before I started working for her. Cancer, I think."

"Do you know if Erin ever used a dog walker or a pet therapist for Max?"

"I don't," Nikki said. "Erin didn't like to talk about Max very much. Every time he came up, she'd cry. It was still pretty raw for her, I guess. But I still have access to her checking account records. I could look back to before he died and see."

"That would be great."

"Now?" Nikki asked, surprised.

"Yes, please," Jessie said firmly.

"Okay, just give me a minute to pull them up."

Jessie, Ryan, and Emilio Vega sat silently in the car, waiting. Finally, Vega spoke up hesitantly.

"Can I say something?"

Ryan looked annoyed, but Jessie figured the guy wouldn't volunteer anything at this point unless it was important.

"Go ahead."

"I remember that some guy walked her dog from time to time," he said. "I wasn't really paying close attention because I was working, but I think I assumed he was a boyfriend, because one day the dog was gone, and I never saw the guy after that. But I guess if the guy was a dog walker and the dog died, that would explain why he stopped coming around."

"Can you describe him?" Jessie asked.

"Nah," Vega said. "It was a long time ago. I mean, he was white, and I think he had dark hair, although he always wore a baseball cap. He was real friendly though, always said ‘hi' and ‘how's it going?'"

"I found something," Nikki said over the speaker. "Up until five months ago, I see regular Venmo payments to something called Waggy Walks. There are dozens of them."

"Is there a person's name listed?" Jessie asked.

"I don't see one."

"Okay, thanks Nikki," Jessie said. "We'll be in touch if we have more questions."

She hung up and tried to search for Waggy Walks on her phone, but nothing would load.

"I can't get an internet connection," she muttered in frustration.

"Yeah, this area has terrible reception," Vega said. "I have that problem all the time."

Jessie gave up and called Jamil. "Hey," she said urgently the second he answered. "I'm having connectivity issues with my phone. Can you look up a company called Waggy Walks and tell me who owns it?"

"I don't need to look it up, Ms. Hunt," Jamil replied, unfazed by the intensity of her request. "We've already done that. It belongs to Charlie Warner, the dog walker for the Ashes and the Henshalls."

Jessie felt a surge of adrenaline course through her system.

"Yeah, well, it looks like he used to be Erin Podemski's dog walker too, at least until five months ago," she told him. "Wasn"t he supposed to come in for an interview this afternoon?"

"He did," Sam Goodwin called out from what sounded like the other side of the room. "I talked to him for a half hour."

"And?" Jessie demanded more forcefully than she'd intended.

"He was very forthcoming," Goodwin answered, sounding suddenly uncertain. "He acknowledged walking dogs for the Ashes and Henshalls and gave us his alibis for each murder. We were going to follow up later, but for now, we didn't see any reason to keep him here. We were prioritizing suspects who had yet to come in or get back to us."

"Did he ever mention that he used to walk Erin Podemski's dog?" Ryan asked.

"He did not," Goodwin conceded.

"How long ago did he leave?" Jessie wanted to know.

"Maybe forty five minutes?" Goodwin said.

Jessie turned to Ryan. "Even in rush hour traffic, he could be back up in the hills by now."

Ryan opened his mouth, but before he could reply, they both heard a loud gasp.

"What is it?" Jessie asked.

"This is Beth," the junior researcher said. "As you all were talking, I went back to the Waggy Walks website. As you'd expect, there are lots of photos of Warner with dogs. But I noticed something else: in several of them, he's holding what looks like a leather leash."

There was a long stretch of silence that Jessie finally broke.

"Can you guys locate his current location using his phone?"

"I can," Jamil said, "but it might take a little while. If he"s planning another attack right now, it might be too late. Of course, there is another alternative."

"What?" Jessie asked.

"I could hack into his website. People are able to book walks through it and I could try to access his internal database to see if he's currently on a job."

Jessie looked over at Ryan, who spoke slowly but without hesitation. "Take us off speaker, Jamil."

A moment later the head researcher replied, "you're off."

"Do it," Ryan told him. "Let us know as soon as you have something."

"Will do," Jamil replied immediately. They all knew the move was on the edge of legality, but if it saved a life, Jessie doubted anyone would lose sleep over it.

Once they hung up, she offered her own suggestion. "Let's go back up the hill. All of our victims lived within a mile of each other. The next intended victim probably does too. I'd rather be close by when Jamil comes up with something."

"Okay," Ryan said, putting the car in drive. "Can I punch the gas this time?"

Jessie gritted her teeth and nodded.