Jessie had to clench her jaw to keep from visually reacting to that last statement. She didn’t want Ryan to see any response from her and take it personally.
“What did you do next?” she asked quickly.
“We hung out here for a while. I watched some TV. Scott made work calls. Then we got dressed for dinner and headed out.”
“Where to?” Ryan wondered.
“A place called The Captain’s Quarters up near the main building,” Bridget replied. “It’s fine dining and dancing. They have a live, old-style, big band and a huge dance floor. When the band ended their set, it turned into a modern nightclub. We were there all night.”
“Do you remember Scott getting into any conflicts during the evening?” Jessie asked, “Maybe a dispute with a waiter or some disagreement with someone on the dance floor? It could be as simple as him stepping on someone’s toe and them calling him a jerk.”
Bridget thought about it before shaking her head.
“I wasn’t with him every second once dinner ended,” she told them. “There were times that I was hanging at the table while he was dancing and vice versa. But I feel like I would have remembered anything like that. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with some explanation for how this could have happened. I fixate on little details all the time, hoping to have some breakthrough that will help it all make sense. But I always come up empty. And as far as that evening goes, honestly, it was a pretty normal night out.”
Ryan looked over at Jessie and she could tell what he was thinking. Bridget Newhouse wasn’t going to add anything new at this point. It was time to go.
“Thanks for your time,” she said. “We’ll keep you posted. I know you’re anxious to leave here and we’ll try to make that possible as soon as we can.”
They left her casita and headed toward the main building in lockstep.
“I assume we’re going to The Captain’s Quarters?” Jessie asked.
“It’s the only new lead we have,” Ryan said. “Maybe something happened there when Bridget wasn’t looking, something he didn’t tell her about. We can review the restaurant camera footage. Maybe we can have Jamil and Beth run facial recognition to isolate Scott’s movements over the course of the evening. Who knows what might pop?”
Jessie kept her skepticism to herself. It seemed like a long shot but they were running out of time and options. There was no point in being negative. She tried to think of something supportive to say and was saved by the ringing phone. Ryan held it up. It was Laird.
“This should be fun,” he muttered before answering it and in a much more chipper voice, saying, “Good morning, Chief.”
“How good it is depends on what you have for me, Hernandez,” he warned. “I’ve got the press demanding answers about what happened to one of the most prominent public figures in this city. They know you two are on this thing, which has them in a frenzy. After all, HSS doesn’t handle deaths by natural causes. And I still don’t know if it’s safe to call Bridget Newhouse. Is it?”
“Chief,” Ryan said, keeping that positive tone, despite everything he’d just heard, “I know you want to reach out to Mrs. Newhouse, but I think that would be inadvisable at this time. We just came from speaking with her and she didn’t seem put out by not having heard from you. She’s focused on getting back to her kids, but she hasn’t made any demands to leave. I think contacting her would only exacerbate the situation. She might make a request that could put you in an uncomfortable situation. And technically, we haven’t cleared her yet. Until we do, contacting her might look bad if the press found out.”
Jessie nodded approvingly. Anything that made Laird look bad in the media was something he would avoid. Appealing to his narcissism was never a bad move.
“The question is,” Laird pressed, “how much longer are you going to be investigating? Do you have anything substantial or are you just spinning your wheels?”
“We’re actually following up on a brand new lead right now, Chief,” Ryan said as they crested the hill and the main building came into sight. “I think it might be very promising.”
“When will you know for sure?” Laird demanded.
“Um,” Ryan hesitated, “maybe by lunchtime?”
“So you’re telling me I can schedule a news conference for early afternoon then,” the chief said emphatically.
“I don’t think I’d be so definite—.”
“Excellent,” Laird interrupted, “I’ll tell my girl to set it for 2 p.m. That should give you enough time to prep me. I look forward to the satisfactory resolution of this mess.”
He hung up without waiting for a response.
“Why did you tell him lunchtime?” Jessie asked, alarmed.
“I was just stalling for time,” Ryan said defensively. “I figured that would give us a few hours at least and if we came up empty, then we could have Decker call him and take the hit for us.”
Jessie wanted to ream him out for taking a risk that could backfire badly. But with their personal situation currently so delicate, she worried that any attack from her might seem like more than just professional frustration. So she held her tongue on that point.
“I guess we better get moving,” she finally said.
Ryan didn’t reply though he did start walking up the hill a little faster.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Jessie felt like there was stopwatch ticking in her chest.
She sat in the security office with Ryan and Hugo Cosgrove. They were all on speakerphone with Jamil and Beth, who were working furiously to track Scott Newhouse’s movements at The Captain’s Quarters using facial recognition.
For a while, Jessie and the others had tried to do the same using just their bare eyes, but with the shadows in the club, it was mostly guesswork. Kat had ambled in casually after they’d been there for over a half hour, looking relaxed and happy.
“I thought you’d have it solved by now,” she joked, then quieted down when she saw that no one was amused.
As they waited, mostly silent with occasional terse exchanges, Jessie saw her friend pick up on the tense vibe, seeming to sense that the strain between her and Ryan was about more than just the case. Kat raised her eyebrows at her questioningly, but Jessie shook her head ever so slightly to indicate that this wasn’t the time. Kat nodded back, though with a worried look on her face.
“We’ve got it,” Jamil shouted over the phone, breaking the uncomfortable quiet.
“What?” Ryan asked with a hint of hope.
“I’m sending you a video that tracks Newhouse’s movement’s throughout the night. We have ninety-five percent of his time accounted for, except when he goes to the bathroom.”
“How long is the video?” Jessie asked.
“They were there for four hours,” Beth said.
“That will take way too long to go through,” Ryan protested. “We’re going to get a call from Chief Laird demanding answers in two hours. I can’t tell him we’re still scrolling through video.”
“You can speed it up, Detective,” Jamil said calmly. “And from my first pass, about half his time is spent sitting at their dinner table. I’m assuming that anything worthwhile will jump out on screen.”