Croatia, and New York. Every single killing coincides with a film crew being in the city. More specifically, they coincide with a movie or television show starring Jared Johns being filmed in the area.”
“The first victim we know of is a woman named Carrie Reynolds,” Rush explained, his voice altogether too academic. He pressed a button that lowered the lights and started the slide presentation. A brown-haired woman was smiling on the screen. “She was a production assistant on the set of the TV series Polly’s Practice . It filmed in and around LA.”
Kai couldn’t help but groan. It had been Jared’s first big television role. He’d played a secondary character, an EMT who had a relationship with the much older psychologist, Polly. Kai had not watched that show. Nope. Even reading a single synopsis had made him want to pull his hair out. He would never watch a show where all the doctors slept together and with their patients and with the pizza delivery people and probably their dogs. Definitely not one where the lead slept with his brother. Though sometimes he caught Jared’s various commercials for whatever he happened to be hawking that week.
“Is there confirmation that Johns knew her?” Charlotte asked. She looked up from the photos in the folder. “You know, Kai, this guy looks a lot like you. A little younger, more muscular version of you. And look at those dimples.”
Naturally Charlotte picked up on that. “Not that much older, and I would have those muscles if I spent all my time in a gym and had a personal trainer on me twenty-four seven. Forgive me for having actual work to do.”
Alex nodded Charlotte’s way. “The actor in question’s legal name is Jared John Ferguson. He’s Kai’s younger brother.”
“Whoa,” Charlotte said, leaning back. “I did not see that coming. I’ve watched that show religiously and I didn’t see the resemblance until I was looking at a photo of him and sitting in the same room with you. Wow. You have a ridiculously attractive brother.”
“So I’ve been told and yes, there’s proof that Jared knew Carrie, though according to all reports, they were only coworkers.” It was time to bring this back to the discussion at hand. “There’s nothing that states he had a relationship with her that went past the set.”
“Well, there were rumors afterward,” Rush said. “I didn’t put them in the packets because they can’t be confirmed, but there was talk that she’d been seen coming out of Jared Johns’s trailer late one night. However, she was the production assistant. They tend to do things like fetch and carry for the stars. We couldn’t find any of her friends who would say she’d had a relationship with him. They did say she’d spent a lot of time on set and was seeing someone, but she wouldn’t give them a name. She was a quiet girl and she seemed to keep mostly to herself. She was found in her apartment with multiple stab wounds. No sign of forced entry and no prints to be found.”
“Did my brother have an alibi for the night of her murder?” He had to. It was ridiculous to think that Jared would stab someone.
“From what we can tell, he was out all night. He spent the night at a party at a friend’s house. We’ve very quietly investigated this. The people at the party that night were wasted. They remember someone giving Carrie a ride home, but no one can remember who.”
That was unhelpful, but then it reminded him of what Jared’s life had always been like—a never-ending wave of parties he could barely remember and girls whose names he forgot. “Let’s move on to the second victim. She was in London where Jared was filming some science fiction movie.”
“Yeah, something about an alien princess and her warrior,” Rush agreed. “Her name was Veronica Kath. She was not working on the actual production. She was a local who worked at a bakery. She delivered to the set every day for the course of the filming. She was found
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley