CHAPTER TEN

"Remember not to let her get to you," Jessie warned as she and Ryan made their way to Captain Gaylene Parker's Central Station office.

"I won't," Ryan promised unconvincingly.

"You know she has to be as frustrated as we are," Jessie continued, "and will probably make unreasonable demands because of the pressure she's under. Just let her say her piece, and then we'll get back to work."

"I know, Jessie," he said, sounding irritated already, which wasn't a great sign. "I've been through this before."

She dropped it, not mentioning that the reason she was prepping him was because it hadn't gone so well the last time they were in this situation. She didn't anticipate that this would go much better.

Garrett Leach, their only suspect in the Chloe Baptiste murder, had turned out to be a dead end. His young friend, Tiffany, had enthusiastically and descriptively vouched for his whereabouts the night before. And with GPS data to back it up, he was off the hook.

That meant they were back to being suspect-less over twelve hours into the investigation. It was 11:45 a.m., they had been up much of the night, and even after stopping in to see Jamil and Beth in Research, they still only had a bunch of disconnected names to follow up on, none of whom had a clear motive to harm Chloe.

There were disgruntled employees at her mansion, but even the ones who were vocal about it had been well-compensated for their mistreatment at Chloe's hands. And none of those employees had worked for her for over two years. This crime felt more immediate. They found several artists and gallery owners who felt undercut by Baptiste. But all of her "victims" were wealthy in their own right. No one's career had been derailed.

In the worst case that Jamil could locate, one gallery owner who'd been blackballed by Chloe Baptiste had lost $3 million in sales, dropping his income for that year to $27.2 million. Apparently that kept him just below the unofficial $30 million threshold for UHNW individuals, but at that level of wealth who was counting? Besides, the guy lived in Chicago .

They stopped in front of Captain Parker's office, where her administrative aide, Officer Shaniqua George sat at a small desk.

"I'll let the Captain know you're here," Officer George said. "Why don't you take a seat?"

She nodded at the two folding chairs against the wall of Parker's office. Jessie felt Ryan stiffen next to her, and she knew why. As they sat down, she took his hand in hers and squeezed.

Ryan was clearly thinking back his own time as captain of Central Station and how differently he operated as its leader. He didn't have any administrative aides and most of the time, his office had an open door policy.

But he wasn't in a position to complain about the change. After all, as Jessie made sure not to remind him in moments like this, he'd resigned as captain three months ago. His reasons were myriad, including despising the administrative part of the gig. He hated the paperwork and the constant meetings. But that wasn't all of it.

He also missed being in the field, leading Homicide Special Section, the unit he'd created and led for years. Finally, he'd found—they'd both found—that being Jessie's boss and her husband, was untenable. Yes, he was still the lead detective for HSS, of which she was a member, but that wasn't the same as running an entire station, often having to keep the person he was closest to in the dark about goings-on. Neither of them were great at maintaining the personal and professional boundaries required to make the whole thing work.

He'd only ever taken the captain job in the first place to help out Roy Decker, who had himself been promoted from captain of Central Station to the chief of LAPD in the wake of a scandal. Chief Decker had beseeched Ryan to take over at Central, saying that he needed people he could trust until was more entrenched as chief.

Ryan, to his credit in Jessie's opinion, had waited until his distaste for being captain was finally matched by his confidence that Decker was on solid footing. Only then did he step down, even recommending Parker for the job. She had run Vice at Central, and Ryan had always admired her no-nonsense approach.

Parker's impressive resume was well-known. A forty-four-year old mother of two, she had worked her way up from street officer to an undercover detective with the Vice unit, where she often posed as a prostitute. Eventually she was promoted to head up the unit, which she led for four years before becoming captain at Central. But what neither Jessie nor Ryan knew until they were under her command was that her blunt style also had a component of micro-management that was, to put it mildly, grating.

Jessie had hoped that Parker's supervisory intensity would dissipate once she got more comfortable in the job, but so far that hadn't happened. That created constant tension with those who were used to a more relaxed person in charge. Ryan chafed against it most intensely, but Jessie wasn't immune. And she knew that at least some of the other members of HSS felt similarly.

"You can go in now," Officer George said, snapping Jessie out of her thoughts.

They stepped into the office, which had undergone a complete, and to Jessie's eye, welcome redesign. The walls, which had until recently been covered in forty-year-old peeling wallpaper, had been re-painted. The hard-backed metal chairs for visitors had been replaced with cushioned ones, and the ratty couch along the back wall was gone in favor of a new, plush replacement. Jessie continued to hope that eventually Parker would settle into being captain—as nicely as the physical office had adjusted to the change—and cut them some slack. But the second the captain spoke, Jessie knew that day wouldn't be today.

"I checked in with your Research team while you two were out and about," she said, motioning for them to take seats across from her desk. "Unless something has changed in the last ten minutes, I assume we're still treading water in the Chloe Baptiste case?"

"For the most part, yes," Ryan conceded, keeping any annoyance he felt out of his voice for now. "We're still checking into the finances of Baptiste's husband, Laurent. They're complicated, but we haven't eliminated the possibility that he hired someone to take his wife out. Still, at this point, I'd call that a longshot."

Jessie jumped in to put a more positive spin on the situation.

"We asked Jamil to play out that string, just in case," she said. "But if he doesn't find a smoking gun in the next few hours, we'll have him switch over to Chloe's personal finances. She has a few accounts independent of his, but they're hard to access."

"Why can't Ryerson do that?" Parker asked.

"In theory, she could," Jessie agreed, "although Jamil usually handles the financial deep dives. That's one of his gifts. Besides, Beth is still tracking possible personal connections with Chloe that might pop as being acrimonious. It's all moot for now anyway. We're waiting on a court order to access her accounts since not even Laurent can grant that to us."

Parker sighed as she leaned back in her chair. Jessie sensed what was coming and dreaded it.

"I know you don't want to hear this," the captain said, her own voice rough with exhaustion and frustration, "but the pressure from on high is building. Our old captain and current police chief is really feeling the heat from the media. It used to be his job to protect you from that scrutiny, and I guess that, at least in theory, that's my job now."

"Thanks, Captain," Ryan said even though he knew as well as Jessie that Parker wasn't done.

"But," Parker continued, undeterred, "I don't really see the point of that mindset. You're already well aware that this is a huge story locally, and maybe beyond. I'm not going to pretend that any of us are shielded from that knowledge. It's my belief that we're all better off when we steer into the skid rather than try to avoid it."

"So what's the skid?" Ryan asked, an undesirable edge in his voice.

"The skid is Chief Decker," she answered, unfazed by his tone. "I got my second call from him this morning just fifteen minutes ago. I had to tell him we didn't have anything new. He asked what you guys were pursuing. I said I'd check in with you and get back to him ASAP, as in, steer into the skid. He seems to think you're miracle workers. So tell me, do you see any miracles on the horizon?"

As she processed the question, Jessie felt her own frustration and fatigue getting the best of her. She could see that Ryan felt the same way. He looked like his next remark might cross the line from edgy to insubordinate.

She wanted to stop him but simultaneously felt herself itching to react the same way. She knew HSS's mission was often to manage the highest profile cases involving the best known and wealthiest people in Los Angeles.

But in this moment, she couldn't overcome her anger that the richest, most famous denizens of this town got so much attention at the expense of the downtrodden, those without loved ones, or just everyday, middle-class folks. She'd signed on for this gig, but occasionally she hated it.

Maybe that was because she'd experienced this sort of thing personally. She thought back to her mother, Madeline Thurman, who was murdered by her father right in front of her when she was just six years old. The story had gotten some tabloid attention when it was revealed that Jessie was left alone with her mother's body, tied up in an isolated, snowy Ozark Mountains cabin for three days until hunters happened to find her.

But then interest waned, at least until it was revealed that Jessie's father, Xander Thurman, was the notorious serial killer known as the Ozarks Executioner. Even then, it was his name that lingered in the public consciousness. No one, save for Jessie, remembered Maddie Thurman.

She felt an angry response to the question about forthcoming miracles rising in her throat and feared she could no longer shut it down. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, the intercom buzzed.

"Captain," Officer George said, "I'm sorry to bother you but you have a call."

"I'm in a meeting, Shaniqua," Parker said, irritated.

"You're going to want to take this," George said ominously.

The captain picked up the phone immediately.

"This is Parker," she said gruffly.

She listened silently for several seconds. Jessie watched as her expression quickly morphed from exasperated to horrified to resigned.

"I see," she said. "We're on it."

She hung up and looked at them across the desk. Jessie knew what was coming before a word was spoken.

"There's been another murder," she said. "This time in Beverly Grove. They think it's connected to Baptiste."

"How can they be sure?" Ryan asked.

"The victim is a famous model named Isabella Moreno, but that's not all," Parker explained. "She was stabbed in a public elevator with a hunting knife—they think at least a dozen times."

Jessie had started to stand up even before Parker finished the sentence. Ryan was getting up too.

"Text us the address," he said.

Jessie didn't know what Parker said in response. She had already rushed out of the office by then.