“He’s getting much better,” Karen pointed out. “My dry cleaning bill can attest to that. So you just wanted the pleasure of my company?”
Jessie relented.
“Well, I’ll admit that in addition to your expertise in the industry and your charm, my choices were limited. Because of our engagement, Decker’s not letting me work with Ryan until he gets the okay from HR. And my other options were Nettles, who doesn’t have the most delicate touch, or Valentine, who I worry might bail on the investigation to start her own modeling career.”
“That seems a bit harsh,” Karen said. “”She’s a little abrasive, but she’s pretty good at what she does. I think she’s just trying too hard.”
Jessie shrugged.
“Maybe,” she replied. “That’s what Callum Reid told me too before he retired. He asked me to give her a chance. But I get the sense that if I fell asleep in the break room, she might slit my throat and keep walking.”
“Wow,” Karen said as she passed the famous Book Soup bookstore and the infamous Viper Room nightclub, “I guess it’s true what they say about good profilers.”
“What do they say?” Jessie wondered.
“That it’s a fine line between genius and paranoia.”
She pulled off Sunset Boulevard onto Larrabee Street and then into the hotel valet entrance. There were several police cars, an ambulance, a forensics truck, and a coroner’s van off to the left. Karen found a spot next to them and they got out.
Just as Jessie opened her door, a gust of bitterly cold wind slammed into them. She hurriedly zipped up her coat. It was still in the mid-forties and the high temperature wasn’t supposed to climb much above fifty today. So much for sunny L.A.
Jessie watched impatiently as the detective tucked in her button-down shirt, adjusted her slacks, and checked the professional ponytail that secured her dirty blonde hair before finally putting on her own jacket. In her late thirties, Karen Bray was the picture of self-effacing professionalism. Petite and polite, she tended to blend in, which made it easy to underestimate her. Jessie knew that to be a mistake.
They made their way to the main entrance automatic doors, where an officer was waiting. After they showed their IDs, he directed them to the bank of elevators that led to the tenth floor. After having seen so many, Jessie typically didn’t blink at the ostentatious opulence of hotels like this. The outside of the Buckingham was actually fairly restrained, with painted tans and grays and curlicue stonework finishes. The inside was a different matter.
But she was almost blinded by the glimmering glass of the dozens of chandeliers as she walked into the entrance hall. All the walls were mirrored, which made the place look bigger but also somehow like a circus funhouse. The furniture in the expansive lobby was comprised of lavender couches, pink loveseats, and sky blue easy chairs.
Both bars, on either side of the lobby, were open, even though it wasn’t yet 9 a.m. One of them continued the dreamy, pastel energy of the lobby with its look, while the other one went for more of a brooding vibe, with gray, black onyx, and ivory dominating the décor.
They reached the elevators, where a second officer checked their IDs and sent them to the tenth floor. Once they arrived, a third officer did another check before pointing them to the proper suite door, 1002, where one final duty officer gave them the once over before letting them enter.
“Who’s in charge?” Bray asked him.
“Sergeant Ziegler,” he said, pointing to a thickset woman in her mid-forties standing in front of a couch near the window. “She’s been waiting for you.”
As they walked over, Jessie took in the suite. It was impressive, certainly not the sort of place an “aspiring” actress could afford on her own. Either both her modeling and influencing careers were going extremely well, or she had a benefactor.
A separate door led to the bedroom, which she couldn’t see much of from where she stood. But the living room was expansive, with floor to ceiling windows, an oak dining table, a sitting area with the large sofa where Sergeant Ziegler now stood, a wet bar, and a balcony that looked out over the Strip and the Hollywood Hills.
Jessie couldn’t see where the victim was, but considering that multiple forensics and coroner’s office personnel were on the other side of the sofa, one of them taking photos, she could guess. They approached Sergeant Ziegler, who looked like she could handle herself.
As tall as Jessie but with an extra forty pounds, she had a bit of a paunch but also broad shoulders that suggested she worked out in order to keep arrests manageable. Her brown hair was cut short enough that it wouldn’t get in the way during a chase or an altercation.
“Sergeant Ziegler?” Karen said, “I’m Detective Karen Bray out of HSS over at Central Station. This is our profiler, Jessie Hun—.”
“I’m familiar,” Ziegler cut her off, her voice raspy. Jessie prepared herself for a snarky quip about being a media darling. “You do good work, Hunt. Call me Rhonda.”
Relief flowed through her.
“Nice to meet you, Rhonda. Please, call me Jessie. What have we got here?”
Rhonda sighed.
“What we’ve got is a damn shame. Victim is Addison Rutherford, twenty-four. She’d been staying here since Wednesday, was scheduled to check out on Sunday. Preliminary time of death is last night between 9 p.m. and midnight. She was found by the housekeeper this morning around 8 a.m., after which she called her manager. He called the hotel manager. He called us. We called you.”
“What made you think it was right for our unit?” Jessie asked.
“It was funny, actually. One of the younger officers recognized her, said she’s all over TikTok and Instagram. Apparently she’s a model and one of those social media influencers. We remembered that you solved the murder of that big-time influencer a little while back and thought this was right up your alley.”
“Got it,” Jessie said. “Shall we take a look at the body?”
Ziegler looked at the collection of folks scurrying around behind the couch.
“You guys almost done?” she asked them.
“Give us a second and we’ll make room,” said a tall, skinny guy with blond hair who looked to be pulling fingerprints.
“Are you finding a lot of those?” Karen asked him.
“Almost too many to keep track of,” he said. “I don’t know if that means she had a lot of visitors or that they just don’t clean this place up as well as you’d expect for somewhere so fancy. The interesting thing is that there is one item that has been wiped entirely clean of prints.”
“What’s that?” Karen asked.
“The table lamp that we’re almost certain is the murder weapon,” he said pointing at something just out of sight on the ground.
Jessie and Karen moved over and saw the lamp lying bagged on the carpet. It had a cream circular cover over the bulb and a silver base that looked heavy. To the naked eye, it was pristine—no smudges and certainly no blood.
“We’ll check for DNA,” the guy said. “Unless the killer wiped it down with bleach, we should find some evidence of blood. The indentation in her skull matches the base perfectly.”
He nodded to his right. Jessie and Karen stepped in that direction to find Addison Rutherford lying on the carpet. She wore a black mini dress, and even in death, it suited her. She looked to be about five-foot-four, with a curvy but still athletic physique. She wasn’t wearing shoes.