The Perfect Lie

“I think he’s being mean on purpose,” Hernandez muttered.

“Did you want to finish what you were saying before?” Jessie asked him, wondering if she was pushing too hard.

“Not now,” he replied, losing the lightness in his voice. “Maybe later, when we’re out of the office and everything isn’t so…heightened.”

Jessie nodded in agreement, though she was disappointed. Rather than pout or stay in that unpleasant head space, she turned her attention to the case files in front of her.

Maybe focusing on the minutiae of some murders will clear my head.

She chuckled silently at her own gallows humor as she opened the first file.

It worked. She became so immersed in the details of the cases that almost an hour passed without her noticing the time. It wasn’t until Hernandez tapped her on the shoulder that she looked up and realized it was mid-morning.

“I think I might have found us a case,” he said, holding up a piece of paper provocatively.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to be hunting for new cases,” she replied.

“We’re not,” he admitted. “But there’s no one else here to take it and I think it’s the sort of thing Decker might actually let us take on.”

He held out the paper. Not as reluctantly as she probably should have, Jessie took it. It didn’t take her long to realize why they might have a shot at convincing Decker to let them take it.

The case seemed pretty straightforward. A thirty-year-old woman was found dead in her Hollywood apartment. The young man who first reported finding her was initially held on suspicion when a neighbor reported seeing him enter the apartment through a window. But he asserted he was a co-worker who was checking on her after not hearing from her for two days. There were no obvious signs of violence and the initial impression on the scene was that this was likely a suicide.

“It seems like they have things pretty well in hand. I’m not sure what we can offer….”

“I hear a silent ‘but’ in there,” Hernandez noted, smiling.

Jessie didn’t want to give him the satisfaction but found herself grinning slightly too.

“But… there is a reference to older bruising on her wrists and neck, which might suggest previous abuse. That’s probably worth checking out. And according to her co-worker, she worked as a personal trainer at a high-end fitness club, where she specialized in high-profile clients. It’s possible some of them will make a stink if they think LAPD isn’t putting enough resources into the case.”

“Exactly,” Hernandez said excitedly. “That’s our ‘in,’ Jessie. If I know Decker, he’s not going to risk alienating the hoi polloi if he can avoid it. Assigning a detective from HSS and a celebrated forensic profiler to the case short-circuits that criticism. Plus, it seems pretty ideal for easing us back into the field. There’s no sign of violence. If it was murder, we’re probably talking poisoning or something along those lines. It seems like a largely stabbing-free case.”

“He was pretty adamant that we stick to desks for a while,” Jessie reminded him.

“I think he’ll go for it,” Hernandez insisted. “Besides, he’s so distracted with the gang shooting, he might say yes just to get rid of us. Let’s at least try.”

“I’ll go with you,” Jessie said. “But I’m not making the pitch. If he cuts anyone’s head off, it’s going to be yours.”

“Coward,” he teased.

*

Jessie had to admit that Ryan Hernandez was good.

He barely had to say more than the words “wealthy clients,” “Hollywood,” and “likely suicide” before Decker was ushering them out the door to pursue the case. Those buzzwords hit all their boss’s weak spots: his fear of bad publicity, his ongoing goal not to alienate his supervisors, and his deep desire not to have Detective Hernandez pester him relentlessly.

His only rule was simple.

“If it starts to look like this is a murder and the perpetrator used any kind of force, call me for backup.”

Now, as Hernandez drove them to Hollywood, he looked almost giddy with excitement. So did his foot.

“Careful on the gas there, Earnhardt,” she warned. “I don’t want to get in an accident on the way to the scene.”

She said nothing about their discussion from earlier, deciding to let him bring it up when he was ready. It didn’t take long. After the initial rush of being in a car on the way to crime scene faded, he glanced in her direction.

“So here’s the deal,” he started, his words tumbling out much faster than normal. “I should have reached out to you more often after everything went down. I mean, I did at first obviously. But you were badly hurt and not very chatty, which I completely understand.”

“Do you?” Jessie asked skeptically.

“Of course,” he said as he exited the 101 freeway at Vine Street. “You had to kill your own father. Even if he was a psycho, he was your dad. But I wasn’t sure how to broach that with you. And there was the fact that your psycho dad stabbed me. That wasn’t your fault but I was worried you would think I blamed you. So I was thinking all those things while having my stomach leak blood periodically and being heavily doped up on pain medication and trying keep food down. And right when I thought I was ready to discuss all that in an adult way, my wife formally served me with divorce papers. It was already going to happen. But there was something about getting those legal documents, especially while I was still in the hospital—it kind of wrecked me. I went down this black hole. I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to rehab. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, which is exactly what I should have been doing.”

“I can recommend someone if…”Jessie started to offer.

“Thank you but I’m all set actually,” he interrupted. “Decker finally ordered me to see someone—said I was in danger of not coming back at all if I didn’t get my shit together. So I did. And it helped. But by then, it had been about six weeks since the attack and it felt weird to just call you out of the blue. And to be honest, I wasn’t 100% sure I was okay…psychologically, and I didn’t want to lose it while talking to you seriously for the first time after we both almost died. So I pushed it off some more. And then there’s the other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“You know, our whole ‘friendly co-workers but also friends who sometimes get awkward because maybe there’s something there’ thing? I’m not imagining that, right?”

Jessie took a long beat before responding. Answering this honestly would change things. But he was laying it all out there. It felt gutless not to do the same.

“No, you’re not imagining that.”

He laughed uncomfortably, which turned into a full-on, eye-watering cough.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m just…I was nervous to mention that last part.”

They sat in silence for a minute as he navigated the traffic on Sunset Boulevard, trying to find a spot to park.

“So that’s the deal?” she finally said.

“That’s the deal,” he confirmed as he pulled into a spot.

“You know,” she said gently. “You are nowhere near as cool as I first thought you were.”

“It’s all a front,” he said, half-joking but clearly only half.

“I kind of like it. It makes you more…approachable.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Well, we should probably talk about this a little more,” she replied.

“I think that would be the mature thing to do,” he agreed. “You do mean after we check out the dead body upstairs, right?”