I dont care, Captain. Its a goddamn crime scene. Were entitled to access. Who the hell ever heard of a private citizen being able to prevent law enforcement from investigating the site of a murder? I know the guy is powerful, but the stay is ridiculous on its face. Shame the judge. Go to the press. Do whatever you have to do, but I want access to that house. Theres something fishy going on there and I shouldnt have to fake being a pool girl to prove it.

Ill see what I can do, he said noncommittally, purposefully not asking about the pool ruse.

No excuses, Captain, she said more directly than shed ever spoken to him before. You owe me.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Jessie seethed silently.

Even though Karen Bray didnt know her very well, she clearly had the good sense to realize that Jessie wasnt in a chatty mood just now. So she silently drove to Percy Avalons house, leaving Jessie alone with her thoughts.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldnt get Jasper Otis out of her head. His smarmy, smiling face kept popping up like a billionaire whack-a-mole.

Though she couldnt prove it, he was almost certainly behind the Vice locker break-in. That meant hed effectively quashed the only evidence that he might be a sex-trafficking pedophile. And now he was in the process of quashing a murder investigation.

Hed prevented them from executing a search warrant. In addition, multiple people had apparently come forward in the last day, volunteering to be witnesses who could verify that Otis was around them at the time of the murder. There were so many, in fact, that it seemed the man was rubbing Jessies nose in it. Either he was lucky to have so many friends around or he paid very well for alibis.

There was no camera evidence tying him to the scene of the murder because there were no working cameras in his personal residence, the area where they could actually prove useful. There was no GPS data available because his whole estate was blanketed in a dampening net. A call to Len Fustos, the medical examiner, had confirmed what shed fearedbecause of the shower water and the unprecedented disturbance and cleaning of the murder scene, there was no useful DNA or fingerprint evidence. They had nothing on the guy. Not a thing.

Her phone alarm buzzed, pulling her out of her pity fest. It was a reminder to call Nurse Patty to see how Ryan was faring. The fact that she wasnt there to make that determination for herself left a lump of powerful regret in her throat, one she swallowed down hard as she called. Patty picked up the first ring.

Hows it going? Jessie asked.

Not too bad, Patty said. His appetite has been solid and he really pushed hard during rehabilitative therapy. They went for an hour, double what the therapist usually starts out with.