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“Anybody you’d like to give some payback to from your criminal days?”
Banner squinted at her suspiciously, then seemed to let his doubts go.
“I wouldn’t mind having a word or two with my old partner, the one who shot the clerk during that robbery and turned what would have been a ten-month stint for me into nine years. But considering he got shot in the yard at Salinas Valley State Prison two years ago, I don’t think that’s gonna happen. He died before the guards even got to him. Otherwise, I’m good.”
“Where were you this morning before coming to work?” she demanded, feeling her resolve weaken as her head began to pound.
“I was at the motel in Sylmar where I live these days until 7 a.m.,” he said. “That’s when I caught the bus to a stop down the hill from here. One of the other guys on the crew picked me up and drove me the rest of way. I’ve been here since about eight.”
“You don’t have a car?” she asked, her mouth suddenly dry.
“I don’t even have a bike.”
“Your ride up here from the bus stop will confirm those times?”
“I don’t see why not,” he replied. “What’s this all about anyway? Because I don’t want to be a part of any studies. I just want to live my life and move past what happened. You can tell this other doctor that."
Though she was pretty sure this was a dead end, Jessie decided to give it one more shot, just in case.
“I wish I could tell her,” she told him, “but I can’t, because she’s been murdered.”
She fixed her attention on Banner’s face, looking for any sign that he already knew. But his expression was one of shock, which quickly turned to fear.
“Wait, you don’t think that I—?”
Jessie didn't catch the rest of the sentence. Her ears suddenly plugged up as if she was on a plane. She felt oddly clammy. The pain in her skull grew exponentially. Banner's face seemed to morph and blur like something out of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" painting. Her knees buckled involuntarily, and her vision went black as she toppled forward. She waited to hit the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
“You can’t tell Ryan.”
Jessie sat in the passenger seat of Grover’s car, sipping Gatorade and letting the full blast of the air conditioning cool her overheated skin. The sharp head pain she’d felt earlier had settled into a dull ache. She could swallow now without feeling like she was inhaling bits of gravel.
“You almost face planted onto the ground, Jessie,” he said. “If Banner and I hadn’t grabbed you, you might be in the ER right now. Maybe you should be anyway. What the hell was that?”
“I think the heat just got to me,” she said. “That, and I didn’t drink enough today. Remember, I was in the hospital just four days ago.”
“That is not a reassuring explanation,” Grover told her. “I’m supposed to be keeping you safe, not carrying you to my car like a dead body, which is what happened by the way. That poor Banner fella thought he was going to get arrested for just being around when that happened.”
“Ugh,” Jessie muttered, remembering Banner. “I think we’re out of luck on that guy. I’ll have Jamil and Beth pull up the bus surveillance video from this morning, just in case he’s lying. But I’m pretty sure he’s going to be on it, which means our best lead just went kaput.”
“That’s your priority right now?” Grover asked incredulously, “not that you passed out in the middle of interrogating him?”
“Two women are still dead, Grover,” she reminded him, “and the guy who did it is out there, possibly planning to kill another one. So yeah, that’s my priority.”
“Listen, lass,” he said gravely, “you can’t help anybody if you’re dead too.”
Before she could reply, her phone rang. It was Ryan. She wasn’t feeling up to a conversation right now but knew that if she didn’t answer, he’d just call Grover.
“Hey,” she said after accepting the call, “what’s up?”
“Just checking to see how everything’s going,” he told her. “How’s investigating from afar coming along?”
She could tell immediately from his tone that he knew. Maybe not about the extent to which she’d been violating her agreement to keep at arm’s length from the case, but at the very least about her recent medical incident. She glanced over at Grover, whose eyes were aggressively focused on the road. It was clear that he’d squealed.
“I’m going to be fine, Ryan,” she said, cutting through the charade. “The heat just got to me. If your boy Grover hadn’t snitched, you’d never have been able to tell any difference.”
He stopped playing, too.
