Barney squinted as he leaned in to get a better look.
“I don’t know that one,” he said. “She’s not bad, although she looks like she’s getting a little long in the tooth.”
“She was thirty-one. And you do understand that you’re talking about a dead woman, right?” Jessie reminded him. “You don’t seem to have an ounce of compassion about that.”
“Why should I care?” Barney demanded. “I don’t know her.”
“Are you sure about that, Barney?” Ryan asked, dropping the formality. “Because you sold your house to her last year.”
“What?” Hemsley replied, less annoyed by Ryan’s first name dig than he’d been earlier. “I sold my house to some oil and gas goober from Louisiana, name of Barber or something. He would have paid twice my asking price but I wanted to screw the Homeowners Association by lowering the property value. Plus, he was a real wannabe. I figured he’d annoy all the snooty locals real good.”
“That ‘wannabe’ was Garth Barton and this is his wife, Priscilla,” Ryan told him.
“Okay,” Barney said after looking again. “I never met her, only the husband. I’m sure she was just as annoying as him.”
“Did you find her annoying when you passed by her place and the Bloom house to see your nearby client?” Ryan asked. “Did you tell Kelly Martindale she was a hottie when you visited the two clients you had less than a block from Carl Landingham’s place?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” Barney insisted, though he seemed less forceful than he had been earlier. “I meet my clients at the office, not their homes.”
“Always, Mr. Hemsley?” Jessie pressed. “Do you want to lock yourself into that statement? Because we can check your phone data against the dates of these meetings and if they don’t match up, you could be in some real trouble.”
“Ms. Hunt,” Giles Orlean said, sounding huffy. “I think we’ve had just about enough of these scurrilous allegations.”
“Mr. Hemsley,” Jessie said flatly, ignoring Orlean, “both those women were murdered within walking distance of your office, as was an LAPD profiler. You had multiple clients in the immediate vicinity of the murder scenes. You have personal connections to both female victims and no firm alibi for any of the times of death. You can see why this is a problem, can’t you?”
Barney Hemsley looked at her as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Maybe for you. But not for me. I didn’t kill anyone and I’m getting my legal assistance pro bono, so this is just an evening’s entertainment, as far as I’m concerned.”
Ryan and Jessie looked at Orlean, confused. Red-faced, he explained.
“Barnard represented me in my divorce,” he said sheepishly. “He did it gratis…”
“Because his wife was such a bitch,” Barney interjected.
“And I said that if he ever got into a criminal scrape,” Orlean concluded, “I would do the same for him.”
“Well then,” Ryan said, “it’s lucky there are no formal charges yet, Barney, because this could get really expensive otherwise. We haven’t even gotten to the pantyhose.”
“What pantyhose?” Barney demanded.
“The ones found around both female victims’ throats, the same brand that Brandee says you bought multiple pairs of for her.”
“Whatever, man,” Barney said dismissively, though a hint of uneasiness had crept into his voice. “I don’t pay attention to pantyhose brands. She wanted them. I bought them. Pretty cheap way to keep her happy and compliant, if you ask me. And what about the profiler, did he get ‘hosed’ to death too?”
He chuckled at his own joke. Jessie had a flash of Garland lying on the ground, old and weak, his body broken and his brilliant mind forever gone. Her stomach turned over even as her heart started beating double time. She leaned in close so that their noses were almost touching and growled at him.
“That profiler was my friend, you sick bastard. And if you’re responsible for his death, I’m going to make sure you burn for it.”
Hemsley laughed.
Jessie suddenly felt her blood rush faster. Her cheeks flushed and for the briefest of seconds, her vision got cloudy. She felt a blind fury come over her and made no attempt to fight it.
She was just raising her arm to clutch the man’s throat when she felt Ryan’s arms wrap around her chest, physically lifting her up and carrying her back several feet. She struggled to shake free but his grip was unbreakable. Orlean stood in front of his client, trying to reduce the tension