THE PERFECT REVENGE, page 10
“We always like to follow up with our own questions, Mr. Borowitz,” she said.
“Okay, but can we please make it quick. I don’t want to leave my son for too long.”
“You left him alone in the room?” Susannah asked, aghast.
"Of course not!" he nearly spat. "My fiancée flew into town early this morning. She's with him in the room. He's napping right now, but I want to be there when he wakes up."
“How is Devon doing?” Jessie asked, hoping to move past the speedbump. “This must be very difficult for him.”
A server came over to their table, but Susannah waved her off before she could say a word. Teddy looked like he might have liked to order something, but reluctantly returned his attention to Jessie.
“He’s not great,” he said. “He doesn’t know what happened to Maggie yet, but he keeps asking for his mommy. He’s upset that he didn’t get to say goodnight to her last night. He’s fixated on not having gotten a bedtime kiss.”
"We're really sorry to hear that," Jessie said with total sincerity. She remembered how hard it was to process her mother's death. Even though she'd been twice as old as Devon at the time and had watched her be slaughtered, back then, she sometimes thought it was just a bad dream. She didn't envy Borowitz, but that wasn't their priority right now. "We want to let you get back to him as soon as possible, so we're going to be direct in our questions, okay, Mr. Borowitz. Please don't take offense at that."
“I’ll try not to.”
“What was your relationship like with Maggie after your divorce?”
“Why, do you consider me a suspect?” His tone was immediately belligerent and defensive.
“I didn’t say that,” Jessie said calmly. “But I told you we’d be direct. So please, how did you get along?”
He was quiet for a moment. When he replied, he was less agitated.
“After I first left, it was pretty awful. She was really mad because of how things happened with you know, my fiancée.”
“You mean the affair?” Susannah piped in.
Jessie knew that her partner was intentionally needling Borowitz to keep him off guard, but she wasn't sure that was the best course of action.
“Yes, after the affair,” he shot back.
“Did things get better?” Jessie pressed.
"Eventually. She never forgave me, but we managed to mostly bury the hatchet for Devon's sake. And I think me not fighting her on what she wanted in the settlement probably helped. She wanted generous alimony and child support. I gave it. She wanted to make the beach house her primary residence. I said fine. I was moving to San Francisco anyway. In the last few months, we reached—not friendliness, but maybe a détente."
“And she’d started dating again,” Susannah noted, still pushing buttons.
“Yes.” His voice was flat and emotionless.
“How did you feel about that?” Jessie asked.
“Is this a therapy session or police questioning?” he suddenly demanded.
“So you didn’t love it,” she concluded.
He was quiet again. He started to speak, then seemed to think better of it. After regrouping, he tried again.
“Look, I’m just going to be straight with you. If I had a lawyer here, they’d probably say it was a bad idea, but I don’t care. I was still in love with Maggie.”
Jessie was genuinely surprised by that response.
“Did you tell her that?” she asked.
"Are you kidding me?" he scoffed. "I betrayed her trust by cheating with someone she considered a friend. I upended her entire life. And then I'm going to come back to her a little while later and say, 'I made a mistake? My fiancée is actually super annoying, and I want to get out of the wedding. Would you please take me back?’ No way. She had moved on. I’d only be embarrassing myself.”
“Any chance your fiancée knew how you really felt?” Susannah asked.
“No.” He shook his head. “She’s oblivious. Before this happened yesterday, she had me spend an hour deciding on banquet table linen colors. She thinks we’re good.”
“And how is she taking it now?” Jessie asked. “Suddenly she’s going from part-time stepmom to full-time mom.”
“I don’t think she’s really processed that yet. But she adores Devon. When I left the room, she was in the bed with him, stroking his hair.”
Jessie thought this was as good a time as any to broach the subject she’d wanted to address with Borowitz all along.
“Speaking of Devon, we came across some information in our investigation indicating that you and Maggie pursued fertility treatment with Dr. Andrew Brennan, but that it didn’t work out.”
“You can get access to that information?” He looked surprised.
“We’re investigating her murder, Mr. Borowitz,” Jessie reminded him. “We are pursuing every angle. That’s why we need to know, did you go to a different doctor once things didn’t pan out with Brennan?”
“We did,” he said.
“And that led to Devon?”
He was silent. Jessie studied him closely. She was toying with a theory in the back of her head, and his response wasn't doing anything to make her disregard it. She pushed.
“Mr. Borowitz, was Devon conceived through a fertility clinic? Is he your biological child?”
He squirmed before finally replying. “Devon came from Maggie’s egg and my sperm. Do the particulars really matter?”
“They might,” she said, “and I’d love a straight answer.”
Borowitz’s phone rang.
“It’s my fiancée. I have to answer it,” he said, picking up. “Is everything okay?”
Whatever the response was, he turned grim.
"I'll be right there." He hung up. "Devon just woke up, and he's upset. She can't calm him down. I have to go."
He started to get up. Susannah looked like she wanted to stop him, but Jessie shook her head.
“We’ll be in touch,” she said as he extricated himself from the booth.
Once he was gone, Susannah turned to her.
“Upset kid or not, why did you let him off the hook?”
“I didn’t. Even though he dodged my question, his evasiveness helped answer it for me. I think we’ve got a new lead to follow.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Hannah could already feel the burn in her legs.
She and Dallas had only been on the trail for about fifteen minutes, but almost all of it had been a steep uphill slog so far. She thought she could see the path start to level out about fifty yards ahead of them and hoped she was right. Otherwise, they'd have to take a break, which she didn't want to do so early on. Dallas would think she was pathetic.
And she didn’t want that. Telling the boy with the muscular build, wavy black hair, doe-like blue eyes, and charmingly sheepish smile that she was already struggling was not an option.
“What would you say the temperature is?” she called out to him as he was a couple of paces ahead of her.
“When I checked in my car just before we got out, it said it was 97 degrees. But it feels well over a hundred to me.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “It was something like 78 degrees when we left town. That’s a pretty dramatic shift. I guess that explains why we’ve hardly seen anyone. Is it going to be like that the whole way?”
“What way?” Dallas asked.
“A ghost town.”
Hannah had been hiking many times before, but usually only on day hikes, not overnights, and never on this trail deep in the Santa Monica Mountains—which were mostly really very big hills— so she didn't know what to expect.
“I’m sure we’ll run into a few more folks,” Dallas said. “This trail eventually dips down, leading to a cool spot—literally and figuratively—called Split Rock. There’s an actual giant boulder with a huge crevice in between that you can walk through. People sometimes like to take a rest there. But once we get closer to the Backbone Trail, we should have the area mostly to ourselves.”
“How long will it take to get there?”
“Depending on our pace, between an hour and a half to two hours.”
Hannah was quiet until, as she'd hoped, the trail did finally level off. After taking a few seconds to catch her breath, she posed another question that probably should have come up earlier, but only just occurred to her.
“Do you think we have enough water?”
“I loaded up my backpack with a gallon and a half,” he said. “Yours took a gallon.”
“So that’s why it’s so heavy.”
He laughed.
“Well, the good thing is that it will get lighter as the trip goes on. But to answer your question, that should be enough to last us until midday tomorrow, when we’ll get back to the trailhead. Plus, I loaded up the cooler in my trunk with Gatorades and extra water, so we’ll be able to replenish when we get back to the car.”
"So until then, we're on our own?" Hannah didn't want to sound like a wuss, but she needed to know where they stood.
“Yeah. But we’ll be fine. I’ve done this hike many times before and have never had an issue.”
“Okay,” she teased. “Just know that your reputation is on the line.”
“Understood,” he said with a smile.
In truth, Hannah wasn’t all that worried. The worst case scenario was probably a turned ankle. And she found, to her surprise, that she was actually looking forward to the solitude.
Barring a confrontation with a snake or a backcountry serial killer, this would be a nice break from the stress of her everyday life
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
All they needed was confirmation.
Jessie already had the research team looking into her alternate theory, and it had proved promising. Now, sitting in the West L.A. station conference room, they waited for Gray Sterling to call them back. While they did, a text pinged both their phones. It was from Jamil. Jessie glanced at it.
Still checking records, but so far, no evidence that either Emma Sterling or Devon Borowitz was adopted.
“That fits,” Susannah noted. “Your theory is looking more plausible by the second.”
Jessie thought so too. It was something that Teddy Borowitz said that sent her down this road. He’d been adamant that Devon was the result of his sperm and Maggie’s egg. Assuming he was telling the truth, that ruled out adoption. And if fertility treatments weren’t working for them, that left one other option.
Just then, Jessie's phone rang. It was Gray Sterling.
“I guess we’re about to get a more definitive answer,” she said before answering and putting the call on speaker. “Thanks for getting back to us, Mr. Sterling. You’re on speakerphone with me and Detective Valentine. How are you feeling?”
"Better than I was," he said. "I haven't had a panic attack since I left the hospital, and they gave me something to take the edge off if they come back. I'm hoping this call doesn't cause another one."
“We are too,” Jessie said, “but we do have a difficult subject to address with you.”
“What?”
"We are looking into connections between Veronica's killing and that of another woman named Margaret Caldwell. Do you know her?"
“I don’t think so,” he said, his tone suggesting that he was confused by the question. “The name doesn’t sound familiar.”
“What about her married name—Margaret Borowitz? Or maybe you know her ex-husband, Ted Borowitz?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t recognize any of those names. Did you say that Vonnie’s death was connected to this woman’s?”
"We think it's possible," Susannah told him, even though they were almost certain. "The same method was used to kill them. That's why we're trying to find what the two of them might have in common. And that's why we need you to be straight with us."
“I’ll do my best,” he said apprehensively.
Susannah looked over at Jessie, as if to say, 'It's your show now.'
"Mr. Sterling, I know this is personal, but was Emma born via a surrogate mother?"
The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.
“Why?” he finally asked.
Jessie decided to simply be up front. At this point, she had nothing to lose.
“We just confirmed that Maggie Caldwell and her ex had their son via surrogacy. If you and Veronica did as well, that could prove to be a useful lead in our investigation.”
“I don’t think Veronica would have wanted me to say,” he replied, answering her question without meaning to. “She was very private about our family.”
“We understand that,” Jessie said softly. “But the person who did this is still out there. Do you really think Vonnie would have objected if revealing the truth helped catch her killer? Especially when they may already have other victims in mind. What you tell us could be crucial to catching them.”
Again, the line was quiet. Then they heard a loud sigh.
“I never thought it should have been a secret anyway,” he eventually said. “I told Vonnie that there’s nothing to be ashamed of. But she considered her inability to conceive to be a failure on her part. She had a sense of shame about it that she couldn’t get past. But I guess that doesn’t matter now. Yes, we used a surrogate.”
“Did you go through a service?” Jessie tried to keep her excitement at bay.
"We tried privately first. But that didn't work, so we went with a company called Elite Family Services. They're in Santa Monica."
Jessie silently pumped the air. That was the same company that Maggie Caldwell had used.
“And what was your surrogate’s name?”
“Angela something,” he said, searching his memory. “Last name was Baracco or Bracco. Something like that.”
Jessie felt her enthusiasm briefly dissipate. The name of the Borowitz's surrogate was Mandy Carr. Then it occurred to her that she was making too big an issue of them potentially having the same surrogate. Her working assumption had been that the surrogate felt somehow wronged by the couple and sought revenge. That appeared not to be the case, but it didn't mean she was completely off base. Maybe their killer worked at the surrogacy service itself.
“Thank you, Mr. Sterling,” she said. “You’ve been extremely helpful. But there is one more thing you could do.”
“What?”
"Authorize us to access your files at Elite Family Services. We can get a court order if we have to, but this would be a lot faster. And we're worried that time might be running short."
“If it helps catch whoever did this to Vonnie, I’ll authorize anything.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
“EFS has very strict protocols.”
As Jessie sat across from the woman giving them such a hard time, she could feel her agitation getting the better of her. She tried Jamil’s technique of clenching and releasing her fists before responding to their hostess. Sitting next to her, Susannah looked like she was about to blow her top.
“We get that, Ms. Mulligan,” Jessie said, clenching and unclenching violently. “But as I said, this is a murder investigation and we have authorization from the next of kin of both victims to review their records.”
Mary Mulligan, the executive director of Elite Family Services, or EFS, was sitting across the desk from them in her office, looked unimpressed. In her fifties, with a shock of short white hair, black horn-rimmed glasses, and a seemingly permanent scowl, the woman had been nothing but difficult since they arrived.
“But that doesn’t mean you can go rooting around in the records of other patients,” she almost spat.
Jessie was at her wit's end. And something told her that Mary Mulligan might be more receptive to Susannah's interpersonal style than her own. Glancing over, she gave the detective a slight nod and leaned back in her chair to take in the upcoming fireworks. Susannah smiled as she leaned forward. When she spoke, her voice was full of cold, coiled derision.
"Ma'am, we're less concerned with the records of other patients than we are with your employees. We have reasonable suspicion that a member of your staff may be responsible for these killings. Since the killer is still at large, we are more than willing to bring the full force of the Los Angeles Police Department to bear as we pursue this matter. That means we call a half dozen patrol cars, confine your entire staff to one room, and put police tape up around the entire building. We brought along a uniformed officer with us today who will ensure that all that happens in the next half hour.”
Jessie did her best to keep a stern expression as her partner continued. It was true that they’d brought along Officer Devery, just as they had when they met with Teddy Borowitz. But as before, he was currently in the parking lot, likely trying to solve today’s Wordle puzzle if past was present. Susannah’s ongoing threat made Jessie re-focus.
"Then we request a warrant for access to all your records—employees and patients. That might not come today, so we'll need to shut down EFS until it does arrive, probably tomorrow sometime. You'll need to call all your clients to reschedule, assuming they'll want to come back. They may not, once they see this building plastered all over the local news in the context of the murders of two women who came here for help. That's option one. Option two is you share your employee files with us here in the privacy of your office, and we review them quietly. To be honest, I'd love to go with option one, but considering that there's a murderer on the loose, I'm willing to compromise. Now with all that in mind, what is your preference going forward?"
Jessie had watched with barely suppressed glee as, over the course of thirty seconds, Mary Mulligan’s self-satisfied scowl was replaced by something between anxiety and full-on panic. Before she spoke, she swallowed hard and adjusted herself in her seat, seemingly trying to maintain some dignity.
“I’ll give you the employee records, since those aren’t protected,” she said, adding that last bit as if it made all the difference. “But I can tell you right now that you won’t find any issues with anyone on our current staff.”
“How can you be so sure?” Susannah pressed.
“Because we had them vetted by a firm that does specialized background checks.”
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