Jessie hoped he’d use more diplomatic language when they arrived at Maines’s Hancock Park home to deliver the bad news to his wife, Margo. As he navigated the mid-morning traffic, Jessie’s thoughts returned, despite her best efforts, to Hannah.

She wondered if Garland Moses was having any success determining how the investigation was going. Did the FBI have any leads on Bolton Crutchfield’s possible whereabouts? Was Hannah safe? She was tempted to text him to ask and actually pulled out her phone before reminding herself it was a terrible idea.

First, it had only been a couple of hours since she’d met with him. Garland Moses might be the most decorated profiler in the country, but even he wasn’t a superhero. Besides, if he had information, he would surely let her know. Radio silence likely meant there was nothing worth sharing.

Second, they’d agreed to only communicate verbally. Even though Captain Decker hadn’t yet formally forbidden her from getting involved in the case, it was only a matter of time. Any record that showed she’d tried to get around that directive could put her career at risk and, as Garland had said, mess up her “sweet gig.”

Still, it gnawed at her. Here she was, investigating the death of a man who clearly had several skeletons in his closet. Meanwhile, an innocent young girl was being held captive by a serial killer, simply because she shared the same DNA as another serial killer.

The frustration rose in her chest and it was all she could do to swallow it back down.

Garland Moses better find something soon. Because I don’t know how much longer I can hold this in before it boils over.

*

When they pulled up to Gordon Maines’s mansion in Hancock Park, Jessie wasn’t surprised.

She already knew they were dealing with a man who was willing to book a $400 hotel room to cheat on his wife; a man who apparently had a credit card associated with a bogus company, a likely sign that his finances were sketchy too. And he apparently lived in a home no civil servant could afford unless he inherited it.

As they walked up the steps to the front door, Jessie reminded herself not to take her distaste for the victim out on his wife, who might think her husband hung the moon and was about to learn otherwise. Ryan rang the bell and they waited, both apprehensive about what was to come.

The door was opened by a petite, trim woman in her late forties. She was dressed in a tan business suit and her blonde hair was tied up in a bun. Despite her professional appearance, Jessie could tell she was in bad shape.

She had shadows under her eyes that couldn’t be masked, even with heavy makeup, despite a valiant attempt. The eyes themselves were red, a sign of anything from lack of sleep to crying to drug use. None of the choices indicated anything good. She had a long run in her right stocking, which she apparently hadn’t noticed, suggesting her thoughts were elsewhere.

“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice scratchy.

“Hi, are you Margo Maines?” Jessie asked gently.

“Yes,” she said warily. “What’s this about?”

Jessie looked at Ryan, who appeared ready to deliver the news they knew would break her. She’d seen him do it many times before and saw the same reaction now, a stiffening of his spine, as if preparing himself to accept the emotional blowback he was about to get. Suddenly, a wave of empathy rushed over her at the thought of how many times he’d been in this situation in his career. She felt a powerful urge to shield him from it this time and stepped forward slightly.

“We’re from the Los Angeles Police Department,” she said before he could get a word out. “I’m Jessie Hunt and this is Detective Ryan Hernandez. I’m afraid we have some bad news for you, Mrs. Maines.”

Margaret Maines, or “Margo” as she was called in her husband’s bio on the city website, seemed to know what was coming. She lowered her head as she reached out and gripped the doorframe. Ryan inched forward slightly just in case she collapsed.

Luckily, it wasn’t necessary. She looked back up at them with a resolve that Jessie admired, though it appeared fragile.

“Let’s go inside,” Mrs. Maines said. “I think I’d like to sit down before you tell me anything else.”

Jessie and Ryan followed her into the living room, where she sat on the loveseat and motioned for them to take the adjoining couch. Once they were all settled, she looked at them both and nodded.

“Go ahead,” she said resignedly.

Jessie continued, not looking at Ryan to see if he was okay with her taking point.

“I’m afraid your husband has died, Mrs. Maines. His body was found this morning at a downtown hotel. His identity was recently confirmed.”

Mrs. Maines nodded, took a deep gulp of air, and reached for a tissue. As she dabbed at her eyes, she replied.

“I knew something was wrong. He never came home last night. Sometimes he works very late. But he always calls. And he didn’t pick up any of mine. I actually thought about calling the police. But then I pictured him sleeping in his office with his phone on silent or with a dead battery. I didn’t want to overreact. I called the office this morning and they said he hadn’t come in yet. I knew something was wrong. I was this close to calling.”

“Why didn’t you?” Jessie asked, keeping her tone non-accusatory.

“Gordon was very particular. He hated bad press. I could hear his voice in my head saying, ‘If you call the police, it’ll end up in the papers. It’ll be on the news. My opponent in the next election will turn it into something nefarious no matter how innocent. There’s no room for public relations mistakes in modern politics.’ He was very big on avoiding bad press. Now I wonder if I could have prevented this by calling.”

Jessie thought it was ironic that a guy who was concerned about PR was apparently carrying on some kind of tryst and bankrolling it with what appeared to be a slush fund. But she kept that to herself.

“Don’t blame yourself, Mrs. Maines,” Ryan said. “From what we can tell so far, it looks like your husband died last night. No call you could have made would have saved him.”

She seemed to take some small solace from that, sighing deeply with something approximating relief. She appeared to be debating whether to ask her next question but finally just spit it out.

“How did it happen?”

Jessie, feeling only slightly cowardly, determined that Ryan’s years of experience on the job might come in handy for this one and decided to let him answer.

“Maybe we save the details for another time, Mrs. Maines,” he suggested gently.

The broken look on the woman’s face was quickly replaced with a combination of irritation and resolution.

“Tell me the truth, Detective. It’s clearly not just natural causes. I’m going to find out sooner or later. And I’d rather hear it first in the privacy of my own home than in some cold morgue surrounded by a group of strangers. I’ll take two strangers over ten any day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You’re correct. It wasn’t natural causes. I’m afraid he was strangled to death. The circumstances surrounding his murder are somewhat… salacious. Shall I go on?”

“Please,” Mrs. Maines insisted, her voice flat.

“It appears that he was at the hotel for a rendezvous with an as-yet-unknown woman. We don’t know her motive. We just know that he was likely drugged, then robbed and strangled.”

Jessie watched as the woman’s face hardened. She felt a twinge of anxiety as she wondered whether Margo Maines was going to blow up or break down. It turned out to be neither.

“I’m quite confident it was a drugging and robbery,” she insisted crisply as she sat up straight. “There is no way Gordon would have gone willingly to a hotel room with some woman unless his clarity had been altered.”

Jessie remembered the footage of the bar, in which Gordon had happily flirted for a half hour before going to book a hotel room, all without being slipped a thing. She wondered if she should burst his wife’s bubble of certainty but decided that wasn’t her job.

Another moment of moral cowardice.

“In any case,” Ryan said in a “moving on” voice, clearly not wanting to challenge her either, “even though we have confirmation it’s him, we’ll need someone to come down to the medical examiner’s office to formally identify the body. If you’d rather one of his staffers do that, we can accommodate your wishes.”

“No, I’ll do it,” she said.

“Thank you,” Ryan said. “There is one other thing. We don’t have many leads on the woman we suspect of killing your husband. But she did take all of his credit cards and identification.”

“What about his watch?” Mrs. Maines interrupted.

“What watch?” Ryan asked.

“He had a Rolex watch with his initials inscribed on the back.”

“We didn’t find it at the scene,” Ryan said. “But we’ll add it to the list of missing items.”

“I gave him that watch for our tenth anniversary,” she said, her thoughts clearly drifting back to that moment.

Jessie had an idea but decided to put a button in it for now. Reluctantly, Ryan pulled Maines back into the present.

“We’ll do our best to recover it, ma’am,” he assured her. “But regarding the credit cards, rather than cancelling them, we were hoping to track them in the hopes that we could catch her in the act of using one. She might also try to forge any number of documents using his ID. Would you give us permission to review his transactions and financial data to see if there are any anomalies?”

Mrs. Maines cast a skeptical eye at him, clearly aware that his request likely had an ulterior motive.

“That seems broad,” she noted.

“It is,” he admitted. “We want to cast as wide a net as possible so we don’t miss anything. We can get a court order if need be. But that takes time and I worry she might slip through our fingers in the interim. But if you sign the releases now, we can get started immediately.”

Mrs. Maines still looked somewhat unconvinced. But the way Ryan had framed it, saying no would look like she was hampering the investigation of her husband’s murder. After a moment it became clear that she’d decided that whatever skeletons she suspected he was hiding would ultimately have to take a backseat to catching his killer.

“Give me the papers,” she said roughly.

Ryan, who already had the envelope waiting, handed them over. Jessie saw him fighting the urge to smile and had to fight her own urge to kick him.

He was lucky that Margo Maines didn’t know his expressions as well as she did. New widows don’t usually appreciate self-satisfied smirks.