“So, you’re confirming that she is part of the team working this case?”the male reporter said, self-satisfied.
Jessie decided to tune out the rest of the press conference.If she wasn’t going to be up there helping answer the questions, then what was the point of staying here and torturing herself?She walked down the corridor and stepped into a tiny office that barely had room for a desk.It wasn’t much but it was quiet and it was empty.That’s all she really needed right now.
She sat down and thought about the status of the case.In Fresno at this very moment, there was a woman in Allyson Rhodes’s house.But it wasn’t Allyson.A female police officer who looked like her was wearing one of her outfits and walking around the home with the lights on low and the blinds open.At least three undercover vehicles were parked nearby, with a half dozen cops watching the house.Two more were inside the home, out of sight.
The hope was that the killer, unaware that Rhodes had been relocated to a safe house, would arrive after driving there from Santa Cruz, and make their move.If things broke the right way, Jessie wondered if they might have their killer in custody before dinnertime.She wasn’t holding her breath.
Deep down, she doubted that their killer would make that mistake.And something didn’t sit right with her anyway.She felt like they were missing an important detail and revisited the idea that Mannix might be behind this, having hired someone.It seemed unlikely, especially since Jamil and Beth had found nothing in the man’s financials that suggested he’d made any suspicious payments that couldn’t be explained by spending on his “wives.”There were no strange lump sum withdrawals or payouts that might typically be associated with hiring a contract killer.But that didn’t mean he hadn’t found a way.
She tried to set all the theorizing aside and focus on what might happen next.Assuming their killer knew that Allyson Rhodes was off the board, unreachable, where would they go next?Who would they target?
As if in answer to her question, her phone rang.It was Jamil.
“What’s up?”she asked.
“I’m embarrassed that we’re only telling you this now, Ms.Hunt,” the young researcher said, sounding ashamed.
She had no idea what he was talking about.“Telling me what?”
“Focus on the facts, Jamil,” Beth said.“Save the self-flagellation for later.”
“Yes, facts please,” Jessie requested anxiously.
“We got a call from a woman on the hotline number,” Jamil explained.
“Okay.From who?”
“From a friend of Jason Mannix’s ex-wife.His real one.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
It was hard to concentrate with the noise of the jail but Dallas Henry did his best to shut everything out.He felt an itch in the back of his brain, one that he couldn’t scratch.
Something about the letter he was holding in his hands made him feel like he was overlooking a key aspect that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.As he lay on the bottom bunk in his cell at L.A.’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility, where he was awaiting trial for two attempted murders, Dallas studied the one-page note more closely.
On the surface, the letter was like many of the others he’d received in recent weeks.It praised him for his failed effort to make an example of Hannah Dorsey by torturing and killing her in the Santa Monica Mountains.For the fans who wrote him, the attempt was what mattered.The fact that Hannah had escaped and he ended up with bullet holes in his leg and backside, courtesy of her sister, Jessie Hunt, was secondary.He had taken a stand in the fight for men’s rights and was now viewed by many as a martyr for the cause.
This note commended him for that, just like so many of the others.But the language was different: more formal, less angry, without misspellings or run-on rants.Whoever had written it didn’t want it dismissed because of chicken-scratch handwriting or incoherent tangents.But it wasn’t just that.The phrasing wassofamiliar.
When he finally figured it out, he shot up in his bunk, banging the top his head on the metal mattress plank for the bed above.
“What the hell, Henry?”demanded Marvin, his cellmate, a middle-aged, heavyset former rideshare driver who had been convicted of drugging and raping a high school student and was awaiting transfer from the jail to a prison in central California.
Dallas wasn’t inclined to explain himself to this guy.He had no problem with punishing a teenage girl.That’s exactly what he’d set out to do.But Marvin wasn’t trying to make a political point with his actions.He was just getting his rocks off.
Dallas ignored him and focused more intently on the wording of the letter.He was sure of it now.The writer was using the same language style as Dallas’s favorite author, a prominent men’s advocate who had written one of the bibles of the movement.Now that he looked more closely, he noted that some of the author’s favorite words and phrases peppered the letter.
The author often used the term “vessel” to describe young women, meaning that their only true value was as a vessel for the imminent birth of brave young men, whom he called “future warriors,” a term the letter-writer also used.
But these revelations were secondary to what he uncovered next.The men’s rights author had often talked about how his favorite number was 8, which represented infinity.That was the time period he asserted that men would rule the earth:now and forever, until infinity.Armed with that recollection, Dallas tried something.
He started counting every eighth letter in the note, regardless of where it was in a word or sentence.He didn’t want to write anything down or circle the letters.That might tip off the guards if they searched his cell.So, the process took him a bit longer than he would have liked.But when he was done, the message was clear.It read:you are not forgotten/ will finish what you started/ waiting until they get comfortable/ will strike then/ will make it painful/ patience.
Dallas smiled.Now that he’d cracked the code, the knowledge that someone out there had his back filled him with joy.His supporter was clearly smart and careful.And soon enough, this other man would do what Dallas could not: make Hannah Dorsey and the women she loved pay.He couldn’t wait
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Jessie squinted in the late afternoon sun, trying to stay focused on the job at hand.
