Once Hannah was gone, Jessie retreated to her office. She settled in to try to wrap her head around the case, as she imagined Garland had done so often in this very spot. She glanced at the painting on the wall that hid Garlands safe. She already knew that it only held one thing. Inside was a fireproof lockbox that contained all the material, both paper and digital, on just one case: The Night Hunter.

That was the serial killer who had apparently haunted Garland until his death. Even though the man was believed to have died decades ago in an altercation that almost killed Garland, it was clear that her mentor still had his doubts. Otherwise, why would he have saved every scrap of information on the man and his crimes?

Jessie shook her head in frustration. It served no purpose to think about a serial killer last seen in the prior century. There was a murder just hours ago that shed been tasked to solve. Thats where she needed to keep her focus, so thats where she fixed it. She studied the crime scene photos that Ernie Purcell had texted her. They were mostly useless as evidence since the scene had been cleaned up before the pictures were taken.

Despite that, looking at the dead woman, pale and shirtless, with her neck bent at a grisly angle, was unsettling. She barely looked human. Until now, Millicent Estrada had been an abstraction. But seeing her now, broken and vulnerable, Jessie felt a simultaneous surge of empathy and a burning desire to get justice for her.

She moved on to some online research on Estrada. It wasnt hard to find material. The sheer volume of photos alone was overwhelming. She and Beto were an extremely attractive couple but Millicent was especially stunning.

With long, dark hair that cascaded down in waves and facial features that seemed to have been sculpted by an artist, she had a fierceness that was almost too intense to be called beautiful. Her green eyes were especially compelling, as if they were calculating every person and scenario in real time. For some reason, she reminded Jessie of Arnold Schwarzeneggers cyborg character in The Terminator, who could do threat assessments of every humanoid he came in contact with in nanoseconds.

The pictures only scratched the surface. There were the straight news articles discussing the various cases she and husband Beto had handled, entertainment trade articles about the firms work for their impressive celebrity client list, and finally the tabloid headlines about the couples divorce and how they planned to keep the business running smoothly despite the split.