CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Jesse Perry was a sight, Ella thought, but inside the holding cells at the precinct, he looked like a man with absolutely nothing left to live for.
He’d passed out in the car on the way here, then it had taken an army of police officers to bring him in. Not because of his reluctance, but because he sandbagged them the entire journey. They’d basically had to lift him off the ground and carry him inside, and he still didn’t wake up when they threw him in the cells. Ella worried for a second that he might be dead, but then the man coughed his lungs up.
Jesse Perry began to rouse on the bench. He stumbled to the side, then propped himself up with his hands. He crawled against the wall, then toppled backward.
“Wow,” said Paige. “Too drunk to stand up.”
Ella had watched Jesse closely since they’d gotten him in the car. He’d passed out within minutes of them driving, like an over-tired baby. By her math, that meant Jesse must have been drinking for over an hour before they got there.
And that little nugget of information skewed her timeline.
If he was too drunk to stand up, he might be too drunk to have committed murder, Ella thought.
The prospect of innocence invoked a dreadful sickening feeling, but if he was their man, everything would match up.
Ella watched Jesse roll around in a mental fog, somehow both asleep and awake at the same time. She tried to picture these murders with Jesse at the helm, seeing them through his eyes, piecing everything together.
He was not a nimble creature, nor was he the slickest of movers. That might have been the drink’s fault, but judging by his stocky figure, Jesse would have had a difficult time navigating the crime scenes as seamlessly as he did, especially Teri Harper’s attic.
Ella didn’t like where her brain was taking her but it was a necessary journey. Uncovering guilt was an exercise in deduction and probability. She didn’t want to go down this road, but better now than later.
“Ella, are you alright? You’ve been staring at him like you’re in love with him.”
She blinked herself back into the room. “Just thinking. Bear with me.”
Jesse scratched his beard with an irritating scrape, like he was rubbing sandpaper against his chin. According to eyewitness accounts, their unsub was a short, twenty-something man with short black hair. No facial hair. And if Jesse had committed these murders, wouldn’t there have been beard hairs at the crime scene? If any of these women struggled, the first place they’d reach was their attacker’s face. How likely was it Jesse cleaned these crime scenes after he was done?
She thought back to Jesse’s house. That shabby, neglected mess he called a home. Ella understood what a depressed mind was capable of, but their unsub was meticulous and compulsive. He craved order, method, symmetry. They were dealing with someone who utilized a complex mathematical sequence as part of his ritual, someone who obsessed and studied his victims to levels of neuroses non-sociopaths couldn’t comprehend. Every move he made was purposeful and calculated. His home life would reflect this, depressed or not.
Then Jesse scratched his beard again, and Ella fixated on his hands.
He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
She knew grieved spouses and always they kept their wedding rings on until they met someone new. And if Jesse was committing these crimes to avenge or recreate his wife in some way, he’d wear the ring while he did it. It was a relic of her life, and he’d want it as close to the resurrection site as possible.
Chief Reed entered the holding cell corridor, smiles all around. He held up his hand for a high five and Paige repaid the gesture.
“Great work, ladies. How’d you bag this little gem?” he asked.
“A little investigative work,” Paige said. “Simple as that.”
“Well, we’ve struck gold in his house. Got a few officers there right now. We checked his computer, found that he’d sent flowers to Teri Harper’s apartment a few weeks ago. Could have been testing the waters. None of his neighbors have seen him in weeks so no one can vouch for his whereabouts.”
“Guys, I’m not so sure about this,” she said, the doubts creeping in.
“What?” Reed said with a smirk. “History of violence. Wife who died under the knife. A connection to one of the victims. All we need is one piece of DNA evidence that links him to the murders and he’s going away for life.”
“Come on, Ella, you can’t argue with the evidence.”
“But I can argue with the lack of evidence. His vehicle is different than the one he drove to Kate Sutton’s apartment. I’m assuming they found no traces of blood in the trunk. What about the fact he doesn’t look anything like the eyewitness statements mentioned?”
“You can’t trust eyewitness accounts. They’re notoriously unreliable,” Reed said.
“True, but I’m still beginning to think we’ve missed something here.”
They’d moved so fast, from discovery to arrest, that Ella hadn’t stopped to consider their actions. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, she was beginning to think more clearly. Jesse Perry had issues: anger issues, mental trauma, unaddressed grief, depression, alcoholism.