The Perfect Lie
“Oh, that would be Gavin. Gavin Peck.”
“Tell us about Gavin, Chianti,” Jessie said conversationally.
“Okay,” she said, losing the uneasiness almost immediately. “Gavin is a piece of work. He’s built, for sure. I think he’s even won a few weight-lifting competitions. And he’s—what’s the nice way to say it—volatile.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan pressed.
“He’s just super-intense. I used to work out at the gym he goes to and he was always amped up—really high energy. Taylor is high energy too. But in a more controlled way. He tends to fly off the handle.”
“Did he ever fly off the handle with Taylor?” Jessie probed.
“I only saw them together a couple of times and he was never like that with her. But I don’t think he took the breakup very well.”
“Why do you say that?” Ryan asked, giving Chianti his best “I’m really interested in what you have to say” look. She almost melted right in front of him.
“I heard that he came around a couple of times and security had to ask him to leave,” she said, blushing slightly. “I don’t know if that’s true. But it sounds like Gavin. He’s got a stalkerish vibe. Plus, he might have reason to be jealous.”
“Of what?” Jessie wanted to know.
“Not to speak out of school or anything, but Taylor can be kind of flirtatious with her clients.”
Just then, a pale, paunchy thirty-something guy in a sleeveless gray shirt walked by.
“Hi, Chianti,” he said shyly.
“Hey, Brett, we still on for your 11 a.m. session?” she asked, flashing those extra bright teeth.
“Of course.”
“Excellent, sweetie. We’ll keep those biceps buff, okay? See you soon.”
When he left, the smile evaporated and she immediately returned her attention to Jessie.
“Where were we?” she asked.
“You were saying Taylor can be flirtatious,” Jessie reminded her with a straight face.
“Right.”
“Really?” Jessie pushed. “We heard she’s very professional.”
“On the workout floor, sure. But I heard her on the phone, making appointments for private training sessions. Management officially frowns on that so she kept it on the down low. But her tone on those calls was definitely less…professional.”
“Do you think she offers more than just training sessions?” Jessie asked leadingly.
“I couldn’t say,” Chianti replied, shrugging. “I mean, who knows whether she she’s promiscuous or just a tease. Either way, the managers turned a blind eye because so many of her clients are big spenders. They didn’t want to risk losing memberships, you know? But sometimes she didn’t come in for days and no one said a word. If I did that, I’d be dumped fast. In fact, I haven’t seen her in a while. I figured this was just another one of those times. But now you’ve got me worried. Is she okay?”
Jessie glanced at Ryan, letting him know she thought the time was right. He nodded in agreement and stepped in close to Chianti.
“I’m afraid she’s not,” he said quietly. “Taylor is dead.”
Jessie watched Chianti closely as she took in the news. The trainer’s plastic smile immediately disappeared. She looked disbelieving.
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Taylor Jansen was found dead in her apartment this morning,” Ryan said emotionlessly.
Chianti seemed to be processing the information, realizing only now the purpose of all the questions she’d been asked. Her face morphed pretty quickly from shock into something between worry and curiosity.
“Was she murdered? Did Gavin do it?”
There was a lack of empathy in her voice that made Jessie want to punch her. They didn’t have to be friends, but couldn’t the woman at least fake a moment of sorrow? Unfortunately, in Jessie’s experience, her reaction also didn’t suggest guilt.
The hungry, gossipy look on her face and her naked desire to know the inside details both suggested she had none of them already. While Ryan was right that everybody is a suspect, Jessie’s profiling background suggested strongly to her that Chianti wasn’t much of one.
“We don’t have information about the cause of death at this time,” Ryan said, then added reluctantly, “Did Taylor ever strike you as depressed?”
“Oh wow,” Chianti said, her eyes getting wide. “Did she kill herself?”
“Just answer the question please, Ms. Rossellini,” Jessie snapped, losing patience.
Chianti looked mildly hurt but after a moment, she answered.
“No,” she admitted, sounding let down. “Actually, she always seemed pretty even-keeled to me. I never saw her get too high or too low. I’d be really surprised it turned out she did this to herself.”
Jessie tried to hide her own disappointment as well. So far, no one they’d spoken to thought Taylor was a likely candidate to commit suicide. And yet, at least so far, they had no evidence to suggest it was anything else.
“Is there anyone you can think of besides Gavin who might have had animosity toward her—a client maybe?” she asked.
Chianti thought for a moment.
“No one jumps out at me. I didn’t pay that close attention. But her reputation was that clients were generally happy with her. Some of that was because she was a good trainer. Some of it might be for those other reasons I mentioned, not to speak ill of the dead.”
“No, of course not,” Jessie said, the disgust rising in her chest. “Maybe you can wrap up here, Detective Hernandez. I need a bit of air.”
She nodded at Chianti and left abruptly, passing Brett as she left the workout floor. He was leaning against a treadmill, waiting for his not-at-all-flirty trainer to finish talking so he could start his session with her.
Jessie stepped out of the gym, onto the grimy, traffic-choked Hollywood street, where she somehow felt less dirty than she had around Chianti.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jessie tensed up. They were getting close now and she wasn’t sure how she’d react.
After leaving Hollywood, they headed back to the station. This time she had insisted on driving. Her sarcastic explanation to Ryan, who usually drove, was that this wasn’t Driving Miss Daisy and that women were permitted to drive in these parts.
But that wasn’t the real reason. She knew that if she drove, she could take a route that passed the house where her recently orphaned stepsister, Hannah Dorsey, was currently living with a foster family. Logically, she knew the chances that the girl would be outside as they drove past were remote. But she had to at least try.
As she drove, she tried to diminish her rising anxiety by actually paying attention to what Ryan was saying. He was commenting on the austere nature of Taylor’s apartment.
“It makes much more sense that her place was so empty now,” he noted. “If what Chianti said was true, she might have spent days at time at a client’s house, whether for legitimate or sketchy reasons. She’d only need to keep the basics at her place. Maybe she just came back one day, looked around at how depressing the place was, and decided to end it.”
“Maybe,” Jessie considered as she turned right, now only a block from Hannah’s foster home. “But she doesn’t seem the type. I mean, you never know what someone’s dealing with on the inside. But no one mentioned her ever seeming depressed. I think the toxicology report will be determinative.”
“In the interim, we could check with her family for a history of depression or anything else,” Ryan suggested.
“It’s worth a shot,” Jessie said. “But while the EMT at the coffee shop was checking you out, I talked to Vin a bit more. He mentioned that she didn’t have any family in the area and that they were estranged anyway. I guess that soup in the freezer from her mother was an unsuccessful peace offering. I’m not sure how much insight they’ll be able to give us. I think the suicide idea is a red herring.”
“How can you be so sure?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. But don’t you find it suspicious that there was no note or any indication that she was depressed? Or that her window was open?”
“Maybe she liked to keep her place cool after getting home from the gym,” Ryan offered. “It’s a lot cheaper than using the air-conditioning.”
Jessie glanced over at him and could tell that even he didn’t buy the theory.
“Regardless,” he continued, not acknowledging her skepticism, “Hollywood Division is sending us copies of all the evidence they collected. We can go through her client list and see if anyone pops.”
“How did the Hollywood detectives feel about us bigfooting them?” Jessie asked.
“Pretty much as resentful as you’d expect,” he said. “But I was cryptic, said the case might be connected to an ongoing investigation. They didn’t want to risk playing hardball if it meant interfering in something major, so they backed down. Everything should be waiting for us at the station when we get back.”
“Sounds good,” Jessie said, noting the tightness in her throat. She had just turned onto Hannah’s street.
She slowed down to the posted speed limit, happy to use the speed bumps on the road as an excuse. The house was on the left, an unremarkable ranch style home. The front porch had a hammock that was currently unoccupied, which made perfect sense at lunchtime on a weekday. Still, she felt let down.
She didn’t know what she had expected. Even if Hannah had been there, what would she have done? She was expressly prohibited from initiating any contact with the girl by Children’s Family Services, Captain Decker, and, more informally, by her own therapist, Dr. Janice Lemmon.
It was a reasonable request. Only eight weeks ago, the only family the girl had ever known had been slaughtered before her eyes. That was more than enough for any seventeen-year-old to deal with. But how would she handle learning that the man who did it was her birth father? And that the woman who he had tortured within an inch of her life was her half-sister?
Of course, no one could be expected to download all that horror and still function. Was she supposed to just compartmentalize those facts by focusing on studying for her pre-calculus test or finishing Moby Dick? It was crazy to want to engage her.
And yet, Jessie felt a deep yearning to do exactly that. She pushed down the desire as they passed the house. Ryan, who had no clue about its significance, or even that she had a half-sister, seemed oblivious, which she took as a sign that she was doing a solid job of faking it. As she turned onto the next street, she flashed back to her most recent therapy session with Dr. Lemmon, trying to remind herself of what the woman had said.
Janice Lemmon knew what she was talking about and was not someone to be disregarded lightly. Well into her sixties, she might not look imposing with her thick glasses and tight blonde perm. But in addition to being a highly regarded behavioral therapist, she was also a legendary criminal profiler who still occasionally consulted on cases for the LAPD, FBI and other organizations that required top secret security clearance.
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