Page 7 of The Perfect Deception
“Sure.”Kat didn’t sound impressed.“It’s times like this that I’m glad to be an independent operator.Speaking of, I have to get back to it.I have a meeting with a guy who thinks his wife is cheating with a pro football player.True or not, that could be a nice payday.”
Jessie studied her friend.To the average person, Kat Gentry looked like she was doing fine.There was no obvious sign of the grief she felt over her fiancé’s murder or the PTSD she still had from being tortured by Ash Pierce.Of course, this was a woman who still bore the wounds of her time in war.Kat had been an Army Ranger in Afghanistan, where she was injured in an IED explosion that left her with damage both internal and external, including multiple facial burn marks and a long scar that ran vertically down her left cheek from just below her eye.
“Okay.”Jessie tried to keep it casual as she asked the question on her mind.“Maybe later you can update me on the Ash Pierce situation?I know I’ve been out of the loop but I’d like to know where we stand.”
"Of course.But for now, you should enjoy your last relaxing afternoon for—maybe forever?"
She chuckled to herself as she walked off, leaving Jessie and Ryan alone.Her husband smiled at her and she felt a wave of warmth wash over her.His kind brown eyes, shy grin, and adorable dimples—the features that had first attracted her to him—were on full display.So too were some of his other attributes, which included a square jaw and a well-muscled, two-hundred pound, six foot tall body that strained at his dress shirt.It was nice to be close to him again.Having said that, the conversations the two of them most needed to have would wait until later, when they were at home by themselves.For now, she had another priority.
“Do you mind if I check in with Jamil before we head out?”she asked.“It won’t take long.”
“That’s fine.I need to finish up a bit of paperwork on the case we closed yesterday anyway.”
He sat at his desk and Jessie headed down the hall to the research department.The door was open but she knocked anyway.Everyone looked up.The room, already packed with computers and giant monitors, seemed much smaller now that Jamil and Beth had been joined by Hannah.She was seated at a small folding table that had been set up in the corner of the room.
“Can I talk to you privately for a second, Jamil?”
He stood up nervously, looking over at Beth who offered a supportive smile.
“You’re not in trouble,” the young woman teased.“Jessie just wants catch up on what she missed.And who better to give updates than our resident genius?”That seemed to make him relax slightly as he walked over.
Beth wasn’t kidding.Jamil was brilliant, skilled at filtering through massive databases, sorting surveillance video into manageable buckets, or making complex financial records understandable, all seemingly without even trying.What required actual effort for him was the social side of human interaction.His proficiency on that front didn’t always match his intellectual abilities.
Luckily he had Beth to help him out.She was as adept with people as Jamil was with numbers.Her perpetually chill, friendly vibe was the complete inverse of Jamil’s jittery intensity.And while not a human supercomputer like him, she had an incredibly sharp mind, which people tended to underestimate because she was an attractive, six-foot-plus former college volleyball star.Jessie wondered how Hannah was fitting in with their two very different energies.It surely wasn’t boring.
“What can I do for you, Ms.Hunt?”Jamil asked once they were alone in the hallway.
“Call me Jessie.”She had told him to use her first name dozens of times since he’d joined HSS but he never did.Now it was kind of an inside joke that she wasn’t sure he got.“I was hoping you could update me on the whole Haddonfield thing.”
It was a pretty open-ended question considering the enormity of the “whole Haddonfield thing.”Haddonfield was Mark Haddonfield, an unstable college student who had become obsessed with Jessie and took great offense when she didn’t do as he thought she should and install him as her profiling protégé.It didn’t matter to him that she didn’t even know who he was.
Already teetering on the mental edge, her “rejection” of him sent him spiraling down a violent path.Ultimately he ended up murdering multiple people that Jessie had previously saved from other killers.He eventually went after Hannah and then Jessie herself before he was caught.
While incarcerated and awaiting trial, a manifesto he’d written before his capture was released on the internet.It called for supporters of his to take action against Jessie and her loved ones on his behalf.That led to an attack on Dr.Lemmon, which she barely survived.And one on Kat, that her fiancé did not.
Realizing that unhinged acolytes would keep coming out of the woodwork, Jessie was able to convince Haddonfield to do a video retraction of the manifesto.In exchange, she agreed to let him look at some of her open case files and "work with her" on occasion.He embraced the deal as it gave him the thing he wanted most: to be her protégé, at least in his mind.
But their work together was short-lived.On the day he was convicted of multiple murders, Haddonfield was killed by none other than Ash Pierce, who used the chaos surrounding the end of his trial to escape from the courthouse where she had a hearing that day.Jessie assumed that was the last she’d hear from Mark Haddonfield.But she was wrong.
After his death, the administrator of the jail where Haddonfield was housed gave her his box of personal effects, saying that was the young man’s wish.Only weeks later did she discover that a necklace pendant in the box was actually a thumb drive.On the drive were screenshots of letters that he’d received from fans of his manifesto.He’d made particular note of messages from three people, who seemed more like disciples than mere fans.It was immediately clear why.
Unlike most of the correspondence he received, which offered general praise for his crimes or vague suggestions that the writer might follow in his footsteps, these three messages were different.And far scarier.
What set all of them apart was their specificity.In addition to the boilerplate promises to pick up the baton for Haddonfield and carry on his murderous work, these three supporters listed individual people they would go after, and described how they intended to get to them.
One of the three was incredibly detailed in his plans but not especially smart about protecting his identity.He gave his real name and was picked up by authorities even before Jessie left for Italy.He turned out to be an electrician from Reseda with a history of making threatening comments against public figures.Because he’d made specific, credible threats against multiple people close to Jessie, he was held without bail, pending his trial.
Unfortunately, the other two acolytes were more careful in their communications.Both used pseudonyms.Their letters were typed rather than handwritten.Both referenced the real home or work addresses of multiple people in Jessie's inner circle.Clearly, Haddonfield considered them to be legitimate threats, or he wouldn't have flagged them.And even though no one had made a move against folks she cared about in months, Jessie took them seriously too.
That’s why, before she left the country, she’d asked Jamil to look for any markers that might help narrow down their identities.If he’d uncovered anything definitive while she was gone, he would have told Ryan, who’d have passed word along to her.But that didn’t mean he hadn’t made any progress.
“I wish I had better news for you.”He appeared embarrassed not to have answers.“I tried to pair the language in the letters to other threatening letters we have on file from the past but there were no matches.In addition, the letters both used bland fonts, making it hard to glean anything useful about either writer from that.The actual physical letters can’t be found.All we have are screenshots, so there’s no way to check fingerprints or DNA.Jail staffdidtake photos of the envelopes when sending them through security scanners.Those photos show that neither envelope had a return address.Even if we had them, both used adhesive stamps to avoid revealing DNA.The jail address was written in block letters by both acolytes, making handwriting analysis useless.Those kinds of precautions have me as concerned as the actual threats.These two seem more capable than the average person who makes threats.”
“Don’t feel too bad, Jamil.”Jessie didn’t want the constantly self-judging researcher to get down.“I submitted the letters to Dr.Janice Lemmon too, you know.She worked as a profiler for the LAPD and FBI for years before she went into private practice as a psychiatrist.And she wasn’t able to come to any firm conclusions either, at least not yet.I’m hoping that she made some other discoveries while I was gone.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t more helpful.”Jamil lowered his head.“I wanted to have something meaningful for you by the time you got back.But I just don’t.”
“Look, we’re all in the same boat.We know there are multiple threats out there but we just don’t have enough to act on them.For now, just keep doing what you’re doing.Something will break soon.”
