out on the drive up the mountain. They found his car in a ravine about three hundred feet below the road. He was thrown out at some point. The coroner said the car rolled over him. They had to have a closed casket.”
Jessie didn’t respond. Her mind was racing. Was it possible that it was just a coincidence? Was there a reasonable explanation? Next to her Decker was tapping on the keyboard of his phone.
“You’re not contacting anyone, are you?” she asked suddenly.
He looked at her as if she’d insulted his intelligence.
“I’m checking when exactly he died,” he said as he scrolled. “It looks like it was April 21st, 2017. When was the interview again?”
“April 19th,” Jessie said. “He died two days after this recording was made. He was killed over it, wasn’t he?”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Decker said. “But it doesn’t look good.”
“And we have no idea who this girl Marla is,” Jessie continued. “She could be dead too for all we know. How can we find out without revealing what we know?”
“Hunt, listen to me,” he said, his voice cool. “The first thing we have to do is stay calm. Getting agitated doesn’t do us any good.”
“Excellent,” she said, unable to rein in her sarcasm. “Staying calm here. Definitely not letting myself get freaked out that a billionaire media mogul may also be a pedophile involved in sex trafficking who possibly had a cop killed to keep it quiet, independent of being a suspect in a current murder investigation.”
“Not the best effort I’ve ever seen on the calm front,” Decker replied. “Don’t jump the gun. Don’t make assumptions. This looks bad but we never actually heard Otis linked to a crime on that tape. It cut off before we got anything concrete. And we have no idea who this Marla is. It could all be a scam to blackmail Otis.”
Jessie looked at him incredulously.
“Do you really believe any of that?” she asked.
“No. But I have to be open to the possibility that there’s an innocent explanation for all this. Tunnel vision is our enemy, Hunt. See the whole field.”
She couldn’t contain her frustration.
“Okay, Coach. Then what’s the next play?”
He let her tone slide.
“I’m taking this to Parker,” he said.
Gaylene Parker ran Central Station’s Vice unit. Jessie had worked with her on several occasions on cases that involved sex crimes. She had always seemed like a competent straight shooter, but this wasn’t any old case.
“Are you sure—?” she began.
“I trust her implicitly,” he said before she finished the thought. “I’ve known her for a decade and she’s the best there is. I’ll go only to her to keep the circle tight, no other detectives from the unit.”
“That’s fine,” Jessie said. “But I can’t tell her where the audio came from either. Now I know why my source was so worried. They must have found out what happened to Shore.”
“I’ll be very discreet,” Decker assured her. “I won’t even say it came from you if you don’t want.”
Jessie thought he was being eminently reasonable, so she decided to try one more long shot.
“Maybe we just bring Otis in on the pretext of talking about the Estrada case, then mention this in passing to see how he reacts.”
He looked at her like he shouldn’t even have to dignify that.
“Come on, Hunt,” he said. “You know better than that. Bringing him in now would be the worst possible move. We have nothing on him for this. We don’t even have a victim. And unless you’re holding out on me, you don’t have anything on him yet in the Estrada murder either. We’re probably only going to get one shot at this guy before his phalanx of lawyers closes ranks. We need to have all our ducks in a row when we make our move. We have to be methodical—no mistakes.”
Jessie knew he was right. But she couldn’t stop the connections from forming in her mind, even if there was no proof to bear them out.
“What if the cases are connected, Captain? What if Millicent Estrada was killed because she knew about this? Maybe the broken neck and missing top are just designed to throw us off and make us think there’s a sex component.”
Decker closed her laptop for her and put the thumb drive in his pocket, a sign that he considered this conversation over.
“Maybe all that’s true, Hunt. But spinning theories doesn’t do us much good. You have to prove it. So go out there and do your job.