Night Watch (Kendra Michaels #4)(51)

“Neither am I. But there are times when you have to take the chance. You won’t regret it,” Kendra said. “If your friends at the Santa Monica PD are keeping you in the loop, then you know I’ve done more to try to find Waldridge than anyone.”

“I do know that.”

“Then what’s the problem? I guarantee you, Waldridge would want me to have every bit of information that might help me find him.”

Jessie dropped down on a chair. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know, but I need you to reciprocate. Deal?”

“Sure,” Kendra said.

Jessie glanced at Lynch. “I know that he won’t be cooperative. From what I’ve been able to gather about him, I don’t know if I’d want to deal with him anyway.”

“Very wise,” Lynch said. “But do be aware that I don’t like Kendra’s being lied to. It tends to upset me.”

Jessie shrugged, and her gaze shifted back to Kendra. “I haven’t found out much. I’m not sure what good it will do you.”

“It has to be better than stumbling around in the dark,” Lynch said.

“Sounds exactly like what I’ve been doing,” Jessie said. “Anyway, I met Waldridge when he came to my office in West L.A. He was on edge. There was a certain … desperation.”

Kendra sat down across from her. “About what?”

“He was concerned about a colleague of his.”

“Shaw?”

“No. Another man. His name is Hayden Biers. Waldridge told me that this guy had come to L.A. from England late last month. They’d been in touch, but Biers had suddenly dropped off the face of the Earth.”

“Sounds familiar,” Kendra said. “What did Waldridge tell you about him?”

“He’s a medical doctor. More into research than treating patients.”

“Also familiar,” Lynch said. “But why was he in L.A.?”

“Waldridge couldn’t say.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

Jessie’s lips twisted. “Funny you should ask that. For someone who was so obviously concerned for his colleague, he was extremely cagey. I had to pry information out of him.”

“I feel your pain,” Kendra said. “I went through the exact same thing when I saw him that night. But he didn’t tell me about this at all.”

“He was extremely concerned about confidentiality at all costs. His words. That’s why I haven’t talked to anyone about it.”

“So what did he tell you?”

“He gave me an address down in Redondo Beach. Biers had been renting a furnished house there month to month. Waldridge went there as soon as he hit town, but there was no sign of Biers.”

“Did you go there?” Lynch asked.

She was clearly annoyed at his question. “Uh, yeah. I am a real private investigator. No sign of a struggle. There were some clothes and a few things in the fridge, but that was about it. So I slipped in a couple webcams and moved on.”

“Any local contacts?” Lynch asked.

“None that Waldridge knew of.”

“And he didn’t give you any clue why Biers might have come from England to L.A.?”

“Just some B.S. about him having a high-stress job and needing to get away from it all. I didn’t buy it, and I even called him on it. But Waldridge wouldn’t tell me any more.”

“What was Biers’s job? Did he tell you that?

“Only in the most general terms. I had to dig around myself to find out, and it wasn’t easy. But you’ll be interested in this, though.”

Kendra leaned forward. “Let me guess. He was involved in the Night Watch Project.”

Jessie looked at her in surprise. “You got it. Looks like someone else has been doing her homework.”

“It’s a common thread between these three men. And now one is dead, and the other two are missing.”

“Did Waldridge tell you anything else?” Lynch asked.

“Not much. I got Biers’s cell-phone number, but there’s been no activity on the line since he disappeared.”

“How do you know?” Kendra asked.

“The next morning, when Waldridge disappeared, I’d taken his money to find his associate, so it wasn’t a stretch to figure there was a connection between what happened to those two guys. Biers’s trail stalled pretty quickly, so I began to look into Waldridge’s case. That’s when I found out that you were on it. I tracked him back to Big Bear, and—”

“How?” Lynch asked.

She gave him another annoyed look. “Again, I’m a licensed private investigator. I know how to do my job. But if you must know, he paid me using a prepaid Visa credit card, so I had the number. I have credit-agency contacts, too. He’d used the card a few times in Big Bear. I went up there and asked around. It wasn’t too hard to find the house that Shaw rented.”

“Why a prepaid card?” Kendra asked. “Why not his own?”

Jessie shrugged. “He was visiting from England. Some people like to use those in lieu of traveler’s checks. Only later did I think that he was trying to avoid being tracked.”

“Like you tracked him?”

“Exactly. If that’s what he was trying to do, he should have hired me to help him stay invisible. I’m pretty good at that. Anyway, I found Shaw’s body, just a few minutes before you came along that night. I tried to hide, but my damned footprints in the snow made that impossible.”