CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

As they pulled up to Julian Crest's private West Hollywood gym, Jessie scanned their surroundings.

They were on a bustling stretch of Sunset Boulevard just east of San Vicente Boulevard that was populated by chic cafes, upscale boutiques, and all kinds of specialty services. This wasn't cheap real estate and the gym's location suggested that Crest was doing well.

They already knew that he was here. Beth had learned that he did an online workout on Tuesdays that ran from 1:30-2:30. It was 2:28 now so they should be able to talk as soon as he finished. Ryan parked in a loading zone across the street from the gym, Crest Fitness, and called Jamil.

"We're here," he said over speaker. "We need whatever you have on this guy before we go in to see him."

"Right," Jamil said, sounding a little harried. "I'm still hunting up some background info, so I'm going to hand you off to Beth. She's got a mini bio on him that might help."

"Okay," Beth said, picking up where her supervisor left off, "Julian is 37 years old. He's been a certified trainer since he was 25. Looks like he did the standard thing, working out of a chain gym until about seven years ago. That's when he transitioned into doing a lot of YouTube workouts. They took off, maybe because he's talented, but possibly also because he's good looking and does these workouts shirtless. After two years of that, he had enough subscribers that he opened his own place, Crest Fitness. It has the studio he uses for his videos. He also does private training sessions there as well."

"So he's doing okay for himself," Ryan note.

"He's nowhere near that ultra-high-net-worth crowd," Beth answered, "but yeah, he's doing just fine. From what we've found, he made about $4 million last year."

"Okay," Jessie said, "so he's UNHW-adjacent. I wonder if that created some envy."

"Ooh," Beth said with more excitement than Jessie expected, "I just found something else."

"What?" Ryan asked .

"We just got access to a partial client list," she replied. "Both Chloe Baptiste and Isabella Moreno are on it. It's not clear if they're still active clients or from a while back, but Julian Crest trained both of them at some point."

"That's extremely promising," Ryan said. "I think we've got something to work with there."

He started to open his door, but Jessie wasn't done.

"What about the statutory rape charge?" she asked. "How did that all shake out?"

"I can answer that one," Jamil said. "I've been poring over his record. Six years ago, when he was doing these videos but before he opened the gym, he got involved with the daughter of a client he did in-home training with. She was seventeen at the time. He was thirty-one. Apparently, the father found some photos she'd sent to Crest and went to his house with a baseball bat. He got in a couple of good blows before the cops arrived and broke it up. Both men were charged. But just before trial, the girl refused to testify—recanted actually—said nothing had happened between them."

"What happened to cause the change of heart?" Jessie asked.

"I'm not sure there ever was one," Jamil said. "In her initial statement, the girl said that the two of them were in love. Reading between the lines, I think her father demanded that she testify against her wishes. But when she turned 18, she changed her tune. There was nothing the prosecutors could do. In fact, they were getting set to pursue the assault case against the father when Crest said he'd refuse to testify in that one if the family dropped the civil suit they had against him. So they did, and everybody walked away."

"So just to be clear," Ryan said. "The father dropped a lawsuit against the guy who slept with his underage daughter in order to get clear of an assault charge."

"That's right, Jamil said. "No one in this story covered themselves in glory."

"Any other legal issues?" Jessie asked, too disgusted to continue down that road.

"Some minor scrapes," Jamil said. "Crest was charged with refusal to disperse when police shut down a club that got busted for exceeding the fire marshal's maximum occupancy limit. He wouldn't leave the VIP room and talked back to officers. It's not a surprise. He's pretty full of himself. "

"How do you know that?" Jessie asked. Beth sounded pretty definitive.

"Um, I didn't want to mention it," the researcher said, seemingly almost blushing over the phone, "but I used to watch some of his videos."

"Come on, Beth," Jamil baited playfully. "Tell the whole truth."

"Okay, fine. I subscribed to his channel for a while," she said quickly, "but I stopped after a few months. He has this arrogant, self-congratulatory vibe that's really off-putting."

"Well," Ryan said, "this is all very useful information. We're going to go talk to him now. And Beth, if we don't arrest him for murder, we'll tell him you said ‘hi.'"

That comment was greeted with a dial tone.

"I don't think she appreciated that," Jessie said.