“Well, maybe we’ll have more luck,” Jessie replied, looking around. “Where are you keeping him?”
Stafford looked surprised by the question.
“I thought you already knew,” he said nervously. “He’s at the hospital.”
“Why?” Valentine demanded.
“He was in shock,” Stafford explained. “But he managed to fight through it to answer our initial round of questions. Then the crime scene folks came in and I guess it all got too real for him. He started yelling that he didn’t want them touching her. He even tried to go back outside and hold her. We had to restrain him. Eventually, an EMT gave him a sedative, and he was transported to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for evaluation. He just kind of lost it.”
Jessie turned to Valentine and said something she was sure that her partner would agree with.
“Let’s get over there and help him find it.”
CHAPTER SIX
Henry Faraday was groggy.
Jessie stood silently at the door to his hospital room and watched him struggle to keep his head upright as the nurse positioned the pillows to offer him more support. More notable than the personal touch was the fact that a man who was brought in without any injuries and was only here to recover from shock had his own, giant hospital room. Then again, Henry Faraday wasn’t most people.
“Can’t you give him something to make him more alert?” Valentine asked the nurse in a hushed voice once she finally stepped away from her patient.
The woman stared back at her with disdain. Jessie glanced out the window, too mortified to make eye contact.
“We don’t give people unnecessary medication to help expedite police interviews, Detective,” the nurse said tersely. “You can speak to him as is or you can wait for the cobwebs to clear up. Those are your choices.”
She turned and spun on her heel before Valentine could respond.
“Let’s just do the best we can,” Jessie said, trying to hide her irritation with her partner, who seemed to be making a concerted effort to alienate every professional they came in contact with this morning. She couldn’t help but add, “Maybe we start with a light touch.”
Valentine nodded as they approached Faraday, who was squinting in their direction. Despite a slightly disheveled appearance marked by unkempt brown hair and a poor-fitting hospital gown, Jessie observed that the man still had an air of bookish authority. She noticed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the tray beside his bed and handed them to him.
“Hello, Mr. Faraday,” she said as he put them on. “My name is Jessie Hunt, and this is Detective Susannah Valentine. How are you feeling?”
“Hazy,” he admitted. “I’m sure someone told me this already, but where exactly am I?”
Jessie felt a twinge of uncomfortable familiarity at the question. It was the same one that she’d asked when she woke up in the hospital a month ago.
“You’re at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,” Valentine told him. “You were transported here from your home earlier this morning.”
The phrase “this morning” seemed to jog something in his memory. His haziness dissipated dramatically, and he looked around with frantic eyes.
“What time is it?” he demanded.
Jessie looked at her phone.
“It’s 9:08,” she said.
“Oh no,” he said. “I need my phone. I have to call my firm. I’m supposed to be in court at ten, and I need to tell them to request a continuance.”
Jessie tried to hide her surprise that this was what the man was focusing on just hours after discovering his wife’s dead body.
“We’ll let you get to that in just a moment, Mr. Faraday,” she told him. “But first, we need to talk to you about your wife.”
He stopped looking around and fixed his brown eyes—small behind his glasses—on her.
“She’s dead,” he said solemnly, and it sounded like he was informing himself as much as them.
“We know,” Valentine said, doing her best to sound patient. “We need to ask you some questions regarding her passing.”
He nodded, then seemed to think of something else. “I have to call Trent,” he said suddenly.
“Who’s Trent?” Valentine asked.
“Our son,” he answered. “He’s in college, but right now, he’s on Spring Break in the Bahamas. I have to let him know. Or maybe I should wait until he gets back, let him have a week of happiness before his world falls apart. What do you think?”
There was a plaintiveness in his voice that Jessie found affecting. Either he was an incredible actor, or he really was quite lost right now.
“We have people who can help guide you through this process, Mr. Faraday,” she said gently, “but at the moment, we have a few very specific questions we need to ask you. They shouldn’t take long, but they’re important. Then we’ll put you in touch with folks who can help with your son. Okay?”
Faraday nodded. Jessie looked over at Valentine, certain that she’d want to ask the first question. The detective jumped right in. “You told the officers at your home earlier that you were at your downtown office working until 3:30 this morning, is that correct?”
“Yes,” he said, most traces of grogginess now gone, “for the case I have today.”
“And you gave the names of several people who can verify that?”
“Right,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “I went home to clean up and try to get a quick nap. Some of the associates stayed to finish up. They planned to pull an all-nighter.”
“What is the case about, by the way?” Jessie asked, as if she was just mildly curious and there was no larger purpose for the question.
“Real estate,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Can you be more specific?”
“It’s a property dispute,” he explained. “Two large corporations are both claiming that they purchased a downtown lot where an old building was recently torn down. I represent one of those corporations.”
Even though the case sounded unbearably dry, Jessie had to ask the natural follow-up question. “Mr. Faraday, is it possible that someone might have killed your wife to harm—” she started to inquire when he interrupted her.
“You think that she was killed?” he asked, his voice rising.
“We’re investigating all possibilities, sir,” she said calmly. “It would be irresponsible not to pursue this one. Could someone have done this to her to hurt you? To distract you from this case or get you off it completely?”
Faraday sighed heavily, letting his chin fall to his chest. When he looked back up at her, his eyes were clear. “Unlikely,” he said. “Like I said, I’m a real estate attorney. This case is just a property dispute, albeit on a massive scale. The company I represent and the one they’re in conflict with both want to build large office towers on the lot in question. But we’re talking about huge corporations with hundreds of similar properties around the world. It’s not like this one has any special significance to either of them. It’s just centrally located in Los Angeles’s downtown district, with easy freeway access.”