CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jessie wasn't prepared for what she found.

She'd been to well over a hundred murder scenes in her short career, but few were this brutal. Perhaps she was lulled into a sense of complacency by the surroundings. The crime had taken place in a small shopping complex called Beverly Gardens in the chichi Beverly Grove neighborhood of L.A., adjacent to Beverly Hills. The sign next to the parking garage entrance listed the businesses on the premises, which included a high-end spa, a handcrafted furniture store, an artisanal cheese and wine shop, and a fashion boutique.

Once they parked and walked toward the elevator, the crime scene folks stepped aside so that Jessie and Ryan could take it in. What they saw was grotesque. Arterial blood spray extended a good ten feet outside of the elevator onto the parking lot's concrete surface.

Jessie put booties on over her shoes before entering, making sure not to look at the body until she'd had a chance to take in the rest of the elevator. The place looked like a nightmarish version of a Jackson Pollock painting, with red splatter everywhere. The only spots that weren't covered were the back wall behind the victim and a small section of the floor, where she suspected the attacker had been standing.

Taking deep breaths that filled her nose with an unpleasant rusty scent, Jessie finally looked at the victim. Beth had already given them a biographical rundown on the woman on their way over, along with pictures of the gorgeous young blonde. None of what they'd heard or seen compared with what Jessie saw before her.

Isabella Moreno was an extremely well-known model, equally famous for her runway and fashion shoots as for her lingerie work, including several massively successful calendars. But the person slumped on her back in the corner of the elevator was unrecognizable. She'd been stabbed at least three times in the chest. Her neck had two major slices, one so deep that her head bobbed back, dangerously close to decapitation. Even worse than that, if possible, the attacker had gone at her face with the knife so many times that she barely looked human anymore .

Jessie closed her eyes, counted to five so as to not look spooked, and then stepped out of the elevator and walked several paces away. Ryan followed close behind.

"Are you okay?" he whispered, resting his hand on her shoulder.

"No, I'm not," she admitted. "I've seen some truly terrible things. You know that. But this is the worst in a long while. We're obviously dealing with a serial killer now, but whoever did this wasn't just thrill-seeking. There's a level of hate here that I thought I'd grown numb to. I guess I was wrong. This poor girl."

"We can have the M.E. and CSU send us their reports," Ryan said quietly. "There's no reason to go back in there."

"Okay," Jessie agreed without any argument. "You saw the section of floor that was unbloodied, right? We're assuming that's where the attacker stood, I gather?"

"That's a safe assumption," someone said from behind them.

They turned around to find a small man in his mid-thirties with a dark, tightly shorn hair and a fastidiously trimmed mustache. He saw that he'd startled them.

"Sorry to interject," he said. "I'm Bryan Kolek, deputy medical examiner. I know we've never worked together before, so I wanted to introduce myself."

"Good to meet you," Ryan said, shaking his hand. "What can you tell us so far?"

"Nothing you probably didn't already figure out for yourself," he conceded. "The cause of death isn't official yet, but I count at least fourteen separate stab wounds. And you won't need me to do a full work-up to get the time of death."

"Why is that?" Jessie asked, her voice shakier than she would have liked.

"I can take that one," said a uniformed officer behind Kolek. When he stepped to the side, Jessie recognized him as Sergeant Robert Frank, whom they'd worked with before. The man was in his late forties. His belly was fighting his belt and what little hair he had left was more gray than brown. "Sorry to see you both again under these circumstances."

"That's how it always seems to happen," Ryan noted. "What were you saying about the time of death?"

"Right," Sergeant Frank said. "We've locked it down already. The building manager showed us the video from the elevator camera. The timestamp has the attack occurring at exactly 11:17 this morning. "

Jessie looked at her phone. It was 12:05 now. Isabella Moreno had been dead for less than an hour.

"We also did some preliminary interviews in the complex," Frank continued. "We found out why Moreno was here. She was meeting with Monica Bertoni, who owns a clothing boutique on the second floor. Apparently, they were friends. Bertoni said that Moreno left at about 11:15."

"Is she available to talk right now?" Jessie asked.

"Yes," Sergeant Frank said. "We have an officer with her in the back of the ambulance out front in the main lot. She sent her employees home and closed up for the day, but we figured you'd want to speak with her."

"Can you take us to her?" Ryan asked.

"Of course," Frank said before adding unnecessarily, "let's take the stairs."

"Is she okay?" Jessie asked as they made their way up to the first floor.

"I think so," Frank answered. "She was pretty shaken up and got quite distraught when I started asking questions, so the EMTs took her to the ambulance. They gave her some oxygen because she was hyperventilating. She was calmer when I left."

They reached the top of the stairs and headed over to the back of the ambulance. Sergeant Frank knocked on the door and a young, muscular EMT with longish blond who looked more like a surfer than a medical professional opened it.

"Hey Jaz," Sergeant Frank said, before looking over at the young woman, who was lying on the stretcher, "I have some investigators who'd like to talk to Ms. Bertoni."

"Are you up for that?" Jaz asked the woman, as if he could stop them if he wanted.

She nodded and, with his help, slowly eased herself up to a seated position. Jessie studied the woman. Monica Bertoni had dark pixie-cut hair and sharp angular features. Her brown eyes were puffy from crying and her skin had a paleness that Jessie suspected wasn't typical for her most of the time. She looked to be in her early thirties.

"Hi Monica," she said, "is it okay if I call you Monica?"

The woman nodded weakly.

"Thanks," Jessie said, climbing into the ambulance and kneeling by the stretcher. "My name is Jessie, and this is Detective Hernandez. "

"I recognize you," Monica said hoarsely. "That's why I'm okay to talk. You're Jessie Hunt, the one who caught all those killers."

"With a lot of help," Jessie said, moving quickly past her celebrity status, "and we want to do the same for Isabella—catch her killer. Can you tell us why she was here seeing you?"

"Yeah," Monica said, "she was hoping to move beyond modeling by starting her own fashion line. She asked if she could practice pitch me on her presentation to the major designers that she was hoping to generate interest from."

"How did it go?" Jessie asked, trying to ease the woman into the questioning.

"Pretty well," Monica said, offering a wan smile at the memory. "She was nervous at first but got better. She left the clothes here, and we agreed that she'd run through the whole thing again on Thursday. We were going to tape that go-round to pick it apart. She really wanted it to be perfect. She thought that this could be her way to transition out of modeling altogether."

"She didn't like it?" Ryan asked.

"I think she'd outgrown it," Monica said. "Izzie was really smart, got a BFA in Fashion Design from the Parsons School. But nobody took her seriously, partly because she's super-hot, and also because of her father being so rich. I mean, she had so much money that she could have just hung out on her yacht and popped bon-bons all day, but she was really ambitious. She wanted to make her mark."

That description of her wealth matched what Beth had told them on the drive over. Apparently her father was worth billions, and she had a couple of hundred million to her name as well. That would plant her squarely in the same ultra-high-net-worth community as Chloe Baptiste. Jessie couldn't help but wonder if there was a connection there that might be relevant. Then again, maybe it wasn't as complicated as that label. In basic terms, these were both super-rich, well-known women. That might be the link all by itself.

"Did she travel in those circles a lot?" she wondered, "you know, the crazy rich, yacht-loving, bon-bon eating crowd?"

Monica shrugged.

"Sure," she said, "some of the time. But not always. I may have my own boutique and fashion line, but I'm certainly not swimming in that pool, and we were pretty tight. Weirdly, I don't think she cared about money that much. I guess that can happen when you have so much of it. But she would cut people loose if they were too materialistic. I mean, that's what she did with Marcus."

"Who's Marcus?" Ryan asked.

"Marcus Blackwell," Monica said. "He's her ex."

Jessie recognized the name immediately. Marcus Blackwell was a self-made tech billionaire who had moved to L.A. from the Bay Area a couple of years ago. But he wasn't just known for owning the mega-company called BEING, whose holdings included multiple hugely popular websites and social media platforms. He was also notorious for his anger management issues, having assaulted a waiter after a few too many drinks at a restaurant and for ramming his Ferrari into the car of an actor who had once called him a scourge on society.

"So ending things was her decision?" Jessie asked.

"Yeah, she dumped him hard," Monica recalled. "She told me that he looked stunned. No one had talked to him in that way in forever."

"What exactly did she say?" Ryan asked, as if he was simply interested in the gossip and not fishing for a motive for murder.

"She told him that it wasn't the fact that he was twice her age that put her off. It was that he judged people like property, assessing their value based on their looks or their income. She told him he was the most shallow man she'd ever met, and considering who she knew, that was saying a lot."

"Wow," Jessie said. "How did he take that?"

"Not well," Monica told her. "Izzie said that he started throwing stuff. He smashed a glass window in his penthouse condo with some ancient sculpture from the Middle East or something. She said she high-tailed it out of there because she was so scared—oh my god, you don't think this was him, do you?"

"We have to follow every lead," Ryan said, before making sure to add, "but there's a big difference between getting angry and throwing some stuff and committing murder. Best not to jump to conclusions."

"Just for the record," Jessie asked casually, "when did Isabella break up with him?"

"About a week ago, I think" she said. "It hasn't hit the tabloids yet, but Izzie was worried that once it did, that would hurt her chances with these designers."

"Thanks so much, Monica," Jessie said, squeezing the woman's hand. "You've been really helpful. Now, you should let Jaz take you to get checked out. I just have one request."

"Anything," Monica said, her eyes welling up .

"Please don't share what you've told us with anyone else until we give you the all clear. When it comes to investigations like this, the element of surprise can be very helpful. We don't need any potential suspects getting a heads up that we're coming."

"I understand," Monica said.

"Just as I'm sure Jaz does," Ryan said, casting a wary eye at the EMT.

"My lips are sealed, man," the guy said, brushing his long locks out of his eyes. "After hearing all this crap, I don't want any part of that world."

"Good man, Jaz," Ryan said, patting him on the back before helping Jessie out of the ambulance.

Once the doors closed, he turned to Jessie.

"I assume we're thinking the same thing," he said.

"Yep, time to pay Marcus Blackwell a visit."

"It's not going to be easy to get in to see a guy like that right away," Ryan warned.

"We'll cross that bridge once we find him," she replied. "Remember, whoever did this is probably taking a Silkwood shower right now to get all of Isabella Moreno's blood off them. I don't intend to give them any extra time. So let's find this guy. And if he puts up a fuss when we do, there'll be hell to pay."