The Perfect Block

“I’m saying that if you deal with the emotions ahead of time, it might not be so overwhelming when you’re actually in the room.”

“Easier said than done,” Jessie said.

“Everything is easier said than done,” Dr. Lemmon replied. “Let’s table that for now and move on to your pending divorce. How are things going on that front?”

“The house is in escrow. So I’m hoping that gets finished without complications. My attorney says that my request for an expedited divorce was approved and that it should be final before the end of year. There is a bonus on that front—because California is a community property state, I get half the assets of my murdering spouse. He gets half of mine too, despite going on trial for nine major felonies early next year. But considering I was a student until a few weeks ago, that doesn’t amount to much.”

“Okay, how do you feel about all that?”

“I feel good about the money. I’d say I more than earned it. Did you know I used the health insurance from his job to pay for the injury I got from him stabbing me with a fireplace poker? There’s something poetic about that. Otherwise, I’ll be glad when it’s all over. I mostly just want to move on and try to forget that I spent nearly a decade of my life with a sociopath and never realized it.”

“You think you should have known?” Dr. Lemmon asked.

“I am trying to become a professional criminal profiler, Doctor. How good can I be when I didn’t notice the criminal behavior of my own husband?”

“We’ve talked about this, Jessie. It’s often difficult for even the best profilers to identify illicit behavior in those close to them. Often professional distance is required to see what’s really going on.”

“I gather you speak from personal experience?” Jessie asked.

Janice Lemmon, in addition to being a behavioral therapist, was a highly regarded criminal consultant who used to work full time for the LAPD. She still offered her services on occasion.

Lemmon had used her considerable string-pulling influence to get Jessie permission to visit the state hospital in Norwalk so she could interview serial killer Bolton Crutchfield as part of her graduate work. And Jessie suspected that the doctor had also played an integral part in her being accepted to the FBI’s vaunted National Academy program, which typically only took seasoned local investigators, not recent graduates with almost no practical experience.

“I do,” Dr. Lemmon said. “But we can save that for another time. Would you like to discuss how you feel about being played by your husband?”

“I wouldn’t say I was totally played. After all, because of me, he’s in prison and three people who would otherwise be dead, including myself, are walking around. Don’t I get any credit for that? After all, I did eventually figure it out. I don’t think the cops ever would have.”

“That’s a fair point. I assume from your snark that you’d rather move on. Shall we discuss your father?”

“Really?” Jessie asked, incredulous. “Do we have to go there next? Can’t we just talk about my apartment troubles?”

“I gather they’re related. After all, isn’t the reason your roommate can’t get any sleep because you have scream-inducing nightmares?”

“You don’t play fair, Doctor.”

“I’m only working from things you tell me, Jessie. If you didn’t want me to know, you wouldn’t have mentioned it. Can I assume the dreams are related to your mother’s murder at the hands of your father?”

“Yep,” Jessie answered, keeping her tone overly jaunty. “The Ozarks Executioner may have gone underground but he’s still got one victim very much in his clutches.”

“Have the nightmares gotten worse since we last met?” Dr. Lemmon asked.

“I wouldn’t say worse,” Jessie corrected. “They’ve been pretty much at the same level of terrifyingly awful.”

“But they got dramatically more frequent and intense once you got the message, correct?”

“I assume we’re talking about the message Bolton Crutchfield passed along to me revealing that he’s been in contact with my father, who would very much like to find me.”

“That’s the message we’re talking about.”

“Then yes, that’s around the time they got worse,” Jessie answered.

“Setting aside the dreams for a moment,” Dr. Lemmon said, “I wanted to reiterate what I I’ve told you previously.”

“Yes, Doctor, I haven’t forgotten. In your capacity as an advisor to the Department of State Hospitals, Non-Rehabilitative Division, you’ve consulted with the security team at the hospital to ensure that Bolton Crutchfield doesn’t have access to any unauthorized outside personnel. There is no way for him to communicate with my father to let him know my new identity.”

“How many times have I said that?” Dr. Lemmon asked. “It must have been a few for you to have it memorized.”

“Let’s just say more than once. Besides, I’ve become friendly with the head of security at the NRD facility, Kat Gentry, and she told me basically the same thing—they’ve updated their procedures to ensure that Crutchfield has no communication with the outside world.”

“And yet you don’t sound convinced,” Dr. Lemmon noted.

“Would you be?” Jessie countered. “If your dad was a serial killer known to the world as the Ozarks Executioner and you’d personally seen him eviscerate his victims and he was never caught, would your mind be set at ease by a few platitudes?”

“I admit I’d probably be a bit skeptical. But I’m not sure how productive it is to dwell on something you can’t control.”

“I was meaning to broach that with you, Dr. Lemmon,” Jessie said, dropping the sarcasm now that she had a genuine request. “Are we sure I don’t have any control over the situation? It seems that Bolton Crutchfield knows a fair bit about what my father has been up to in recent years. And Bolton…enjoys my company. I was thinking another visit to chat with him might be in order. Who knows what he might reveal?”

Dr. Lemmon took a deep breath as she considered the proposal.

“I’m not sure playing mind games with a notorious serial killer is the best next step for your emotional well-being, Jessie.”

“You know what would be great for my emotional well-being, Doctor?” Jessie said, feeling her frustration rise despite her best efforts. “Not fearing that my psycho dad is going to jump out from around a corner and get all stabby on me.”

“Jessie, if just talking to me about this gets you so riled up, what’s going to happen when Crutchfield starts pushing your buttons?”

“It’s not the same. I don’t have to censor myself around you. With him I’m a different person. I’m professional,” Jessie said, making sure her tone was more measured now. “I’m tired of being a victim and this is something tangible I can do to change the dynamic. Will you just consider it? I know that your recommendation is pretty much a golden ticket in this town.”

Dr. Lemmon stared at her for a few seconds from behind her thick glasses, her eyes boring into her.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she finally said. “Speaking of golden tickets, have you formally accepted the FBI’s National Academy invitation yet?”

“Not yet. I’m still weighing my options.”

“I think you could learn a lot there, Jessie. And it wouldn’t hurt to have it on your résumé when you’re trying to get work out here. I worry that passing on it might be a form of self-sabotage.”

“It’s not that,” Jessie assured her. “I know it’s a great opportunity. I’m just not sure this is the ideal time for me to up and move across the country for almost three months. My whole world is in flux right now.”

She tried to keep the agitation out of her voice but could hear it creeping in. Clearly Dr. Lemmon did too because she shifted gears.

“Okay. Now that we’ve gotten a big picture view of how things are going, I’d like to dig a little deeper on a few subjects. If I recall, your adoptive father came out here recently to help get you squared away. I want to get into how that went momentarily. But first, let’s discuss how you’re recovering physically. I understand you just had your last physical therapy session. How was that?”

The next forty-five minutes made Jessie feel like a tree having its bark peeled back. When it was over, she was happy to leave, even if it meant her next stop was getting checked to reconfirm she could have kids in the future. After nearly an hour of Dr. Lemmon poking and prodding her psyche, she figured getting her body poked and prodded would be a breeze. She was wrong.

*

It wasn’t so much the poking that set her off. It was the aftermath. The appointment itself was pretty uneventful. Jessie’s doctor confirmed that she hadn’t suffered any permanent damage and assured her that she should be able to conceive in the future. She also gave the all-clear to resume sexual activity, a notion that had genuinely not crossed Jessie’s mind since Kyle attacked her. The doctor said that barring something unexpected, she should return for a follow-up in six months.

It was only when she was in the elevator on the way down to the parking garage that she lost it. She wasn’t completely sure why but she felt like she was falling into a dark hole in the ground. She ran to the car and sat in the driver’s seat, letting the heaving sobs wrack her body.

And then, in the middle of the tears, she got it. Something about the finality of the appointment had hit her hard. She didn’t have to come back for six months. It would be a normal visit. The pregnancy stage of her life was, for the foreseeable future, over.

She could almost feel the emotional door slam shut and it was jarring. On top of her marriage ending in the most shocking way possible and learning that the murderous father she thought she’d put in the past was back in her present, the realization that she’d had a living being inside her and now she didn’t was too much to bear.

She peeled out of the parking garage, her vision blurred by tear-stained eyes. She didn’t care. She found herself pressing down hard on the accelerator as she roared south on Robertson. It was early afternoon and there wasn’t much traffic. Still, she weaved wildly in and out of lanes.

Ahead of her, at a stoplight, she saw a large moving truck. She hit the gas hard and felt her neck snap back as she accelerated. The speed limit was thirty-five, but she was at forty-five, fifty-five, passing sixty. She was sure that if she hit that truck hard enough, all her pain would vanish in an instant.

She glanced to her left and as she whizzed by, she saw a mother walking along the sidewalk with her toddler son. The thought of that little boy being witness to a mass of crumpled metal, blistering fire, and charred remains snapped her out of it.

Jessie hit the brakes hard, squealing to a stop only feet from the back of the truck. She pulled into the gas station parking lot to her right, parked, and turned off the car. She was breathing heavily and adrenaline coursed through her body, making her fingers and toes tingle to the point of discomfort.

After about five minutes sitting there motionless with her eyes closed, her chest stopped heaving and her breathing returned to normal. She heard a buzzing and opened her eyes. It was her phone. The caller ID said it was Detective Ryan Hernandez of the LAPD. He’d spoken to her criminology class last semester, where she’d impressed him with how she’d solved a sample case he presented to the class. He’d also visited her in the hospital after Kyle tried to kill her.

“Hello, hello,” Jessie said out loud to herself, making sure her voice sounded normal. Close enough. She answered the call.

“This is Jessie.”

“Hi, Ms. Hunt. This is Detective Ryan Hernandez calling. Do you remember me?”

“Of course,” she said, pleased that she sounded like her usual self. “What’s up?”

“I know you graduated recently,” he said, his voice sounding more hesitant than she remembered. “Have you secured a position yet?”

“Not yet,” she answered. “I’m weighing my options right now.”

“In that case, I’d like to talk to you about a job.”

CHAPTER FOUR

An hour later, Jessie was sitting in the reception area of the Central Community Police Station of the Los Angeles Police Department, or as it was more commonly called, Downtown Division, where she was waiting for Detective Hernandez to come out to meet her. She expressly refused to think about what happened with the near crash. It was too much to process at the moment. Instead, she focused on what was about to happen.

Hernandez had been cagey on the call, telling her he couldn’t go into detail—just that a junior position was opening up and he’d thought of her. He asked her to come in to discuss it in person as he wanted to gauge her interest before mentioning her to the higher-ups.

While Jessie waited, she tried to recall what she knew about Hernandez. She had met him earlier that fall when he’d visited her master’s program forensic psychology class to discuss the practical applications of profiling. It turned out that when he was a beat cop, he’d been instrumental in catching Bolton Crutchfield.

In the class, he’d presented an elaborate murder case to the students and asked if anyone could determine the perpetrator and the motive. Only Jessie had figured it out. In fact, Hernandez had said she was only the second student ever to solve the case.

The next time she saw him was in the hospital when she was recovering from Kyle’s attack. She was still a bit drugged up at the time, so her memory was a little hazy.

He had only been there in the first place because she’d called him, suspicious about Kyle’s background before she’d met him at age eighteen, hoping to get any leads he could offer. She’d left a voicemail with the detective and when he couldn’t reach her after multiple calls back—primarily because her husband had tied her up in their house—he’d tracked her cell and found she was in the hospital.

When he visited, he’d been helpful, walking her through the state of the pending case against Kyle. But he’d also quite clearly been suspicious (with good reason) that Jessie hadn’t done all she could to come clean after Kyle killed Natalia Urgova.

It was true. After Kyle had persuaded Jessie that she had killed Natalia herself in a drunken rage that she couldn’t remember, he’d offered to cover up the crime by dumping the woman’s body at sea. Despite her misgivings at the time, Jessie hadn’t been forceful about going to the police to confess. It was something she regretted to this day.

Hernandez had sussed that out but as far as she knew, never said anything about it to anyone after that. Some small part of her feared that was the real reason he’d called her here today and that the job was just a pretense to get her in the station. She figured that if he took her to an interrogation room, she’d know which way things were headed.

After a few minutes, he came out to greet her. He was much as she remembered him, about thirty, well-built but not overly imposing. At about six feet tall and a little under 200 pounds, he was clearly in good shape. It was only as he got closer that she remembered how ripped he was.

He had short black hair, brown eyes, and a wide, warm smile that probably even made suspects feel at ease. She wondered if he cultivated it for that very reason. She saw the wedding band on his left hand and remembered that he was married but had no kids.

“Thanks for coming in, Ms. Hunt,” he said, extending his hand.

“Please call me Jessie,” she said.

“Okay, Jessie. Let’s go to my desk and I’ll fill you in on what I had in mind.”

Jessie felt a stronger than expected surge of relief when he didn’t suggest the interrogation room but managed to avoid making it obvious. As she followed him back to the bullpen, he talked softly.

“I’ve been keeping up with your case,” he admitted. “Or more accurately, your husband’s case.”

“Soon to be ex,” she noted.

“Right. I heard that too. No plans to stick it out with the guy who tried to frame you for murder and then kill you, huh? No loyalty these days.”

He grinned to let her know he was kidding. Jessie couldn’t help but be impressed by a guy willing to make a crack about a murder to the person who was almost murdered.

“The guilt is overwhelming,” she said, playing along.

“I’ll bet. I’ve got to say, it’s not looking good for your soon-to-be former hubby. Even if prosecutors don’t seek the death penalty, I doubt he’s ever getting out.”

“From your lips…” Jessie muttered, not needing to finish the sentence.

“Let’s move to a happier subject, shall we?” Hernandez suggested. “As you may or may not recall from my visit to your classroom, I work for a special unit in Robbery-Homicide. It’s called Homicide Special Section, or HSS for short. We specialize in high-profile cases—the kinds that generate lots of media interest or public scrutiny. That might include arsons, murders with multiple victims, murders of notable individuals, and of course, serial killers.”

“Like Bolton Crutchfield, the guy you helped capture.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Our unit also employs profilers. They’re not exclusive to us. The whole department has access to them but we have priority. You may have heard of our senior profiler, Garland Moses.”

Jessie nodded. Moses was a legend in the profiling community. A former FBI agent, he’d relocated to the West Coast to retire in the late 1990s after spending decades bouncing around the country hunting serial killers. But the LAPD had made him an offer and he agreed to work as a consultant. He was paid by the department but wasn’t an official employee, so he could come and go as he chose.

He was over seventy years old now but still showed up to work just about every day. And at least three or four times a year, Jessie read a story of him cracking a case no one else could nail down. He supposedly had an office on the second floor of this building in what was said to be a converted broom closet.

“Am I going to meet him?” Jessie asked, trying to keep her enthusiasm in check.

“Not today,” Hernandez said. “Maybe if you take the job and have settled in for a while, I’ll introduce you. He’s a little on the crusty side.”

Jessie knew Hernandez was being diplomatic. Garland Moses had a reputation for being a taciturn, short-tempered asshole. If he wasn’t great at catching murderers, he’d probably be unemployable.

“So Moses is kind of the department’s profiler emeritus,” Hernandez continued. “He only shows his face for really big cases. The department has a number of other staff and freelance profilers it uses for less celebrated cases. Unfortunately, our junior profiler, Josh Caster, tendered his resignation yesterday.”

“Why?”

“Officially?” Hernandez said. “He wanted to relocate to a more family-friendly area. He has a wife and two kids he never got to see. So he accepted a position up in Santa Barbara.”

“And unofficially?”

“He couldn’t hack it anymore. He worked robbery-homicide a half dozen years, went to the FBI’s training program, came back all gung ho and really pushed hard as a profiler for two years after that. Then he just hit a wall.”

“What do you mean?” Jessie asked.

“This is an ugly business, Jessie. I feel like I don’t need to tell you that, with what happened with your husband. But it’s one thing to have a brush with violence or death. It’s another to face it every day, to see the foul things human beings can do to each other. It’s hard to keep your humanity under the onslaught of that stuff. It grinds you down. If you don’t have somewhere to put it at the end of the day, it can really mess you up. That’s something to think about as you consider my proposal.”

Jessie decided now wasn’t the time to tell Detective Hernandez that her experience with Kyle wasn’t the first time she’d seen death close up. She wasn’t sure if watching her father murder multiple people as a child, including her own mother, might hurt her job prospects.

“What exactly is your proposal?” she asked, steering clear of the topic entirely.

They had reached Hernandez’s desk. He motioned for her to sit down across from him as he continued.

“Replacing Caster, at least on an interim basis. The department isn’t ready to hire a new full-time profiler just yet. They put a lot of resources into Caster and they feel burned. They want to do a big candidate search before hiring his permanent replacement. In the meantime, they’re looking for someone junior, who won’t mind not being a full-time hire and won’t mind being underpaid.”

“That’s sure to reel in top applicants,” Jessie said.

“Agreed. That’s my fear—that in the interest of keeping costs low, they’ll go with someone who doesn’t have the chops. Me? I’d rather try someone who might be green but has talent rather than a hack who can’t profile worth a damn.”

“You think I have talent?” Jessie asked, hoping she didn’t sound like she was fishing for a compliment.

“I think you have potential. You showed that in the classroom scenario. I respect your professor in the class, Warren Hosta. And he tells me you have real talent. He wouldn’t get specific but he indicated that you’d been granted permission to interview a high-value inmate and that you’d established a rapport that might prove fruitful in the future. The fact that he couldn’t read me in on something a fresh-scrubbed master’s graduate is doing suggests you’re not as untested as you seem. Plus, you managed to uncover your husband’s elaborate murder plot and not get killed in the process. That’s nothing to sneeze at. I also know you were accepted into the FBI’s National Academy without any law enforcement experience. That almost never happens. So I’m willing to take a flyer on you and throw your name into the mix. Assuming you’re interested. Are you interested?”

CHAPTER FIVE

“So you’re not doing the FBI thing?” Lacy asked incredulously as she took another sip of wine.

They were sitting on the couch, halfway through a bottle of red and devouring the Chinese food that had just been delivered. It was after 8 p.m. and Jessie was exhausted from the longest day she could remember in months.

“I’m still going to do it, just not now. They gave me a one-time deferment. I can join with another Academy class, as long as I attend at some time in the next six months. Otherwise I have to reapply. Since I was lucky to get in this time, that pretty much guarantees I’ll be going soon.”

“And you’re bailing to do grunt work for the LAPD?” Lacy asked, disbelieving.

“Once again, not bailing,” Jessie pointed out, taking a big glug from her own glass, “just delaying. I was already on the fence with everything going on with the house sale and my physical recovery. This was just the clincher. Besides, it sounds cool!”

“No it doesn’t,” Lacy said. “It sounds totally boring. Even your detective buddy said you’d be doing routine tasks and handling the low-profile cases no one else wanted to take on.”

“At first. But once I’ve got a bit of experience I’m sure they’ll throw me on something more interesting. This is Los Angeles, Lace. They’re not going to be able to keep the crazy away from me.”

*

Two weeks later, as the patrol car dropped Jessie off a block from the crime scene, she thanked the officers and headed for the alley where she saw police tape already up. As she crossed the street, avoiding the drivers who seemed more intent on hitting than avoiding her, it occurred to her that this would be her first murder case.

Looking back on her brief time at Central Station, she realized that she’d been wrong to think they couldn’t keep the crazy away from her. Somehow, at least so far, they had. In fact, most of her time these days was spent in the station, going through open cases to make sure the paperwork Josh Caster had filed before he left was up to date. It was drudgery.

It didn’t help that Central Station felt like a busy bus station. The main bullpen area was massive. People swarmed around her all the time and she was never quite sure if they were staff, civilians, or suspects. She had to repeatedly move desks as profilers without the “interim” tag used their seniority to lay claim to work stations they preferred. No matter where she ended up, Jessie always seemed to be situated right below a flickering fluorescent light.

But not today. Stepping into the alley just off East 4th Street, she saw Detective Hernandez at the far end and hoped this case would be different from the others she’d been assigned so far. For each of those, she’d shadowed detectives but wasn’t asked for her opinion. There wasn’t much need for it anyway.