And then, as she started to hear the rumbling of the train approaching the station, she saw them: two bare feet amid a tightly clustered sea of shoes about 25 feet ahead of her on the right side of the platform. Jessie stood up.
Rather than approach Martinez directly, she moved to the left side of the platform, which was less crowded without a train arriving soon. She pretended to look in that direction, acting as if she had no clue, in case Martinez had eyes on her.
She unsnapped her holster as she got closer. By the time she was almost parallel with the woman, the train was pulling into the station. People shuffled in that direction like one living organism. Out of the corner of her eye, Jessie saw Martinez scurry along, trying to stay hidden in the pack.
Only when the crowd stopped moving entirely, as the doors opened and folks waited for people to exit the train, did Jessie move in the woman’s direction. Martinez was trapped in the morass of people that had been her protection up until this point, but now served as more of one big human enclosure.
Jessie sidled through the herd, keeping low so that if Martinez looked back, she wouldn’t immediately see her. There were four people between her and her target. With those exiting now clear of the train, people started inching forward again.
Jessie realized that even at this slow pace, with the multiple people between her and Martinez, she was unlikely to get to the woman before she boarded the train. And if she got away, they might not find her before someone else was attacked. That’s when Jessie decided that she had to take action. So she did something she otherwise never would.
She shoved the man just in front of her hard to the right. He stumbled and fell, taking two others with him. As they tumbled away, Jessie stepped forward and kneed the back of the leg of a young woman who was the only thing keeping her from Martinez. That woman crumpled in a heap to the left, taking a middle-aged businessman with her.
People howled at Jessie in anger. Martinez, despite her best efforts not to, glanced behind her to see what the ruckus was all about. That’s when Jessie punched her in the gut. The woman doubled over as Jessie brought her knee up to meet the woman’s temple. That sent her sprawling backward onto the platform tile as Jessie pulled her gun from the holster.
“Elena Martinez!” she shouted to the woman lying on her back, even as those around her began to scream, “you’re under arrest!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Hannah’s eyes ached.
She’d been studying the video footage from the party on Saturday night for over an hour now, and it was starting to get to her. There were two angles to review: the one above the front door and the one behind the bar in the corner of the living room. Scanning back and forth between them was doing a number on her. She stood up to stretch her legs and regroup.
Jennings Casterly had gotten permission from the Omega Sigma president to let Hannah review the video, but it was under false pretenses. He’d said that his wallet had been stolen during the party and that Finn had recommended having Hannah look over the footage because of her experience with this sort of thing. He suggested it was better than involving the police and letting them see raw footage of the untoward stuff that might have been captured on camera.
The president relented. Apparently his official reason was because of the help Hannah had given brother Reggie Calderone, as well as her assistance last winter in locating an Omega Sigma pledge who'd gone missing during a fraternity scavenger hunt. But she was pretty sure it was the "not involving the cops" part that truly convinced him. His one requirement was that she not leave the tiny closet that had been converted into the house's security office, complete with multiple computer drives and two small monitors.
Hannah did a couple of lunges to loosen up her muscles, then sat back down to squint at the aging monitors. She’d already gone through about two hours of party footage and picked up where she’d left off, just after 11 P.M. It wasn’t hard to locate Casterly.
Like he had earlier in the evening, he continued to bounce around the living room, sometimes chatting with his brothers, often hitting on girls, occasionally dancing. Even if he hadn’t already admitted it to her, Hannah would have known he was drunk. As the evening wore on, he stumbled more often and clumsily bumped into folks. Even with the poor monitor quality, his glassy eyes were obvious.
Multiple times he got into the personal space of girls he was speaking to, but never got so aggressive that they looked scared. Most of the young women he accosted looked more embarrassed for him than concerned for their own welfare. That is, until 11:37 P.M.
That was when he approached a petite brunette who, up until then, had mostly been hugging the wall during her time in the house. Neither angle was great so Hannah couldn’t get a clear view of the girl’s expression when Casterly edged over to her, but she didn’t walk away.
Nor did she shrink back when he put his hand on her shoulder and leaned in to whisper something in her ear. In fact, from the distance of the camera at least, she looked intrigued. A couple of seconds later, he took her wrist and gently tugged her to the part of the living room that served as a makeshift dance floor.
They first started dancing as if there was an invisible divider between them, but about halfway through the song, Casterly put his arm around her waist and pulled her in close. She didn’t resist. The dancing turned into something closer to grinding as he again bent down toward her and murmured something in her ear. Her expression seemed to be a mix of shock and intrigue.
The song ended and she got on her tiptoes to whisper something back to him. Whatever she said made him nod. She pointed somewhere off-camera and he again nodded. Then she left the living room and he maneuvered over to a nearby wall. Hestood there for a minute, catching his breath, until a tall blonde crossed his path. He appeared to call out to her and she turned around.
Unlike the tiny brunette, the tall blonde didn’t seem shy at all, likely buoyed by her bombshell figure. They had a brief discussion during which he rested his hand on her forearm suggestively. Just then, the petite brunette returned and tapped him on the shoulder.
He looked back, saw her there, and spoke to her very briefly before returning his attention to the blonde. The petite brunette’s face went slack at whatever he told her. After a moment, she stepped forward and replied to him. He looked annoyed and said something to the blonde, which made them both laugh. Then he leaned close to the petite brunette and whispered something to her.
Whatever he said made her stumble back in surprise. Unconcerned, he turned back to the blonde. Even with the crappy video quality, the distance from the camera, and the relentless strobe lights in the darkened living room, the brunette’s glistening eyes were impossible to miss. Whatever he’d said had made her cry.
After standing behind him for a few more seconds, she turned and pushed her way through the crowd before hurrying out the open front door. Hannah hit pause and briefly wondered what Jennings Casterly had said to cause such a strong reaction. Whatever it was, there was now a suspect.
Hannah rewound the footage until she got to the clearest image she could find of the brunette. She didn’t recognize the girl, but she didn’t have to. Holding up her phone to the screen, she took a photo.
After a minute of doing digitally-assisted touch-ups, she submitted the image to the facial recognition app where she’dalready pre-loaded campus directory photos of all UC Irvine undergrads. It took less than a minute for a match to pop up.
Her name was Miriam Duress, though according to her directory snapshot profile, she went by Polly. She was an incoming freshman from San Diego. Hannah pulled out her laptop and did a quick and dirty background check, which turned up nothing of consequence. The girl definitely didn’t have a record. She didn’t even have any driving citations.
She was a National Merit Scholar who had won a prestigious scholarship for English majors, which tracked. The language in the note didn’t feel like the work of a STEM student. Hannah checked which dorm she was in and made a mental note.
Then she reset the party video footage to the start, cleared the cache, and stood up. She didn’t want anyone else to stumble on the footage and try to identify Polly before she had a chance to look into her. She wanted to speak to the girl personally and get a sense of what she was capable of.
