A T R A C E O F V I C E
(A KERI LOCKE MYSTERY—BOOK 3)
B L A K E P I E R C E
Blake Pierce
Blake Pierce is author of the bestselling RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes seven nine (and counting). Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising six books (and counting); of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising four books (and counting); and of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising four books (and counting).
An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.
Copyright © 2017 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Rommel Canlas, used under license from Shutterstock.com.
BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE
RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES
ONCE GONE (Book #1)
ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)
ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)
ONCE LURED (Book #4)
ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)
ONCE PINED (Book #6)
ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)
ONCE COLD (Book #8)
ONCE STALKED (Book #9)
MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES
BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)
BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)
BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)
BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)
BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)
BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)
AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES
CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)
CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)
CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)
CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)
KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES
A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)
A TRACE OF MUDER (Book #2)
A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)
A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Even though Sarah Caldwell was just sixteen, she had a good head on her shoulders and a keen sense of when things felt off. And this felt off.
She almost didn’t go. But when Lanie Joseph, her best friend since elementary school, called and asked her to hang out at the mall this afternoon, she couldn’t think of a convincing reason not to go.
But ever since they met up, Lanie seemed jumpy. Sarah couldn’t understand what about wandering around the Fox Hills Mall could be so anxiety inducing. She noticed that when they were trying on cheap necklaces at Claire’s, Lanie’s hands shook as she tried to fasten the clasp.
The truth was that Sarah didn’t really know what made Lanie nervous anymore. They’d been incredibly close all through elementary school. However, once Sarah’s family had moved from south Culver City to the still working-class but less-dangerous neighborhood of Westchester, they’d slowly drifted apart. The communities were only a few miles apart. But without cars, which neither girl had, or a serious commitment to stay connected, they’d lost touch.
As they tried on makeup at Nordstrom, Sarah stole glances at Lanie in the mirror. Her friend’s light blonde hair was streaked with blue and pink. She already had on so much dark eye makeup that there was really no reason to test anything out at the counter. Her fair skin seemed even paler when contrasted with her multiple tattoos and the black tank top and Daisy Dukes she wore. Amid the intentional body art, Sarah couldn’t help but notice some bruises mixed in.
She looked back at her own reflection and was stunned by the contrast. She knew she was pretty too, but in a more subdued, almost sensible way. Her shoulder-length brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her own makeup was subtle, highlighting her hazel eyes and long lashes. Her olive skin was tattoo free and she wore faded jeans and a cute but far from risqué teal top.
She wondered if she’d stayed in the old neighborhood, would she look like Lanie did now? Almost certainly not. Her parents would never have allowed her to start down that path.
If Lanie had moved to Westchester, would she still look like she was a teen prostitute working a truck stop?
Sarah felt her face turn crimson as she shook the thought from her head. What kind of person was she, to think such awful thoughts about someone she’d played Barbies with as a girl? She turned away, hoping Lanie wouldn’t see the guilt she felt sure was plastered all over her face.
“Let’s get a snack at the food court,” Sarah said, trying to change the dynamic. Lanie nodded and they headed out, leaving the disappointed saleslady behind.
As they sat at a table munching on pretzels, Sarah finally decided to find out what was going on.
“So you know I always love to see you, Lanie. But you sounded so upset when you called and you seem so uneasy…is there something wrong?”
“No. Everything’s cool. I just…my boyfriend is stopping by to say hi and I guess I’m nervous about you meeting him. He’s a little older and we’ve only been together for a few weeks. I kind of feel like I might be losing him and I thought that you could talk me up a little, that if he saw me with my oldest friend, it would make him see me differently?”
“How does he see you now?” Sarah asked, concerned.
Before Lanie could answer, a guy approached their table. Even before the introductions, Sarah knew this must be the boyfriend.
He was tall and super-skinny, with tight jeans and a black T-shirt that set off his own pale skin and multiple tattoos. Sarah noticed that he and Lanie had the same small skull and crossbones image on top of their left wrists.
With his long, black, spiky hair and penetrating dark eyes, he wasn’t so much handsome as beautiful. He reminded Sarah of the lead singers of those hair metal bands from the 1980s her mom always swooned over with names like Skid Row or Motley Row or something Row. He was easily twenty-one.
“Hey, babe,” he said casually and leaned in to give Lanie a surprisingly passionate kiss, at least for a mall food court. “Did you tell her?”
“I didn’t get a chance yet,” Lanie said sheepishly, before turning to Sarah. “Sarah Caldwell, this is my boyfriend, Dean Chisolm. Dean, this is my oldest friend in the world, Sarah.”
“Nice to meet you,” Sarah said, nodding politely.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Dean said, taking her hand in his and doing a deep, playfully exaggerated bow. “Lanie talks about you all the time, how she wishes you guys could hang out more. So I’m really glad you could get together today.”
“Me too,” Sarah said, impressed by the unexpected charm of the guy, but wary nonetheless. “What didn’t she get a chance to tell me?”
Dean’s whole face broke into an easy smile that seemed to melt away her suspicions.
“Oh that,” he said. “I’m having some friends over to my place this afternoon and we thought it might be fun for you to join us. Some of them are in bands. One of them needs a new lead singer. Lanie thought you might like to meet them. She says you’re a really good singer.”
Sarah looked at Lanie, who smiled back but said nothing.
“Is that what you want to do?” Sarah asked her.
“It could be fun to try something new,” Lanie said. Her tone was casual but Sarah recognized the look in her eyes, which pleaded for her friend not to say anything to embarrass her in front of her hot new boyfriend.
“Where is it?” Sarah asked.
“Hollywood adjacent,” he said, his eyes glimmering with anticipation. “Let’s head out. It’s gonna be fun.”
*
Sarah sat in the back seat of Dean’s old Trans Am. The relic was well maintained on the outside but the interior was littered with cigarette butts and rolled up McDonald’s wrappers. Dean and Lanie sat up front. With the loud music, it was impossible to have a conversation. They passed through Hollywood in the direction of Little Armenia.
Sarah looked at her friend in the front passenger seat and wondered whether she was even helping her by coming. Her thoughts drifted back to the mall ladies’ room before they’d left, where Lanie had finally come somewhat clean with her.
“Dean is super passionate,” she’d said as they checked their makeup one last time in the bathroom mirror. “And I’m worried that if I don’t keep up, I’m going to lose him. I mean, he’s so sexy. He could have his pick of girls. And he doesn’t treat me like some teenager. He treats me like a woman.”
“Is that why you have those bruises, because he treats you like a woman?”
She tried to catch Lanie’s eye in the mirror but her friend refused to look at her directly.
“He was just upset,” she said. “He said I was ashamed of him and that’s why I didn’t introduce him to any of my respectable girlfriends. But the truth is, I don’t really have any friends like that anymore. That’s when I thought of you. I figured if you two met, it would be a double whammy. He’d know I wasn’t hiding him and you’d make me look good because I have at least one friend who’s, you know, got a future.”
They hit a pothole and Sarah’s thoughts were ripped back into the present. Dean was pulling into a parallel parking spot on a seedy street with a row of small houses, all with bars on the windows.
Sarah pulled out her phone and tried for the third time to send a quick text to her mom. But she still couldn’t get any reception. It was weird because they weren’t in the boonies or anything; they were in the heart of Los Angeles.
Dean parked the car and Sarah put her phone back in her purse. If reception was still bad in his house, she’d use his landline. After all, her mom was pretty understanding, but going hours without giving a courtesy call was definitely against family rules.
As they walked up the path to the house, Sarah could already hear the thumping beat of music. A tingle of uncertainly coursed through her body but she ignored it.
Dean banged loudly on the front door and waited while someone inside undid what sounded like multiple separate locks.
Finally, the door opened a crack to reveal a guy whose face was hidden under a mass of long, unkempt hair. The strong smell of pot wafted out and hit Sarah so unexpectedly that she started coughing. The guy saw Dean and gave him a fist bump, then opened the door wide to let them all in.
Lanie stepped in and Sarah stayed close behind her. Blocking the foyer from the rest of the house was a large red velvet curtain, like something out of a cheesy magician’s act. As the long-haired guy relocked the doors behind them, Dean pulled back the curtain and directed them into the living room.
Sarah was shocked by what she saw. The room was packed full with couches, love seats, and beanbag chairs. On each of them were couples making out and in some cases, doing much more. All of the girls looked to be Sarah’s age and most looked drugged up. A few even appeared to be passed out, which didn’t stop the guys, all of whom looked older, from doing their thing. The vaguely unsettled feeling she’d had walking up to the house returned, but much stronger now.
This is not a place I want to be.
The air was thick with pot and something sweeter and stronger that Sarah didn’t recognize. Almost on cue, Dean handed Lanie a joint. She took a long drag before offering it to Sarah, who declined. She decided she’d had enough of this place, which looked like the set of an old porno.
She took out her phone to order an Uber but found she still had no reception.
“Dean,” she shouted over the music, “I need to call my mom to let her know I’ll be late but I can’t get a connection. Do you have a landline?”
“Of course. There’s one in my bedroom. I’ll show you,” he offered, once again flashing that broad, warm smile before turning to Lanie. “Babe, would you get me a beer from the kitchen? It’s that way.”
Lanie nodded and headed in the direction he’d pointed and Dean motioned for Sarah to follow him down a hall. She wasn’t sure why she’d lied about needing to call her mom. But something about this situation made her feel like it wouldn’t be well received if she said she wanted to bail.
Dean opened a door at the end of the hall and stepped aside to let her enter. She looked around but didn’t see a phone.
“Where’s your landline?” she asked, turning back to Dean as she heard a door lock. She saw that he’d already turned the deadbolt and was attaching the chain lock near the top of the bedroom door.
“Sorry,” he said, shrugging but not sounding apologetic at all. “I must have moved it to the kitchen. I guess I forgot.”
Sarah weighed how aggressive she needed to be. Something was very wrong here. She was in a locked bedroom in what appeared to be something close to a brothel in a seedy part of Little Armenia. She wasn’t sure how effective calling him out would be under the circumstances.
Be sweet. Act ignorant. Just get out.
“That’s okay,” she said perkily, “let’s just go to the kitchen then.”
As she spoke she heard a toilet flush. She turned to see the bathroom door open, revealing a huge Hispanic guy wearing a white T-shirt that rode up on his enormous, hairy belly. His head was shaved and he had a long beard. Behind him on the linoleum floor of the bathroom lay a girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen. She had on only panties and appeared to be passed out.
Sarah felt her chest tighten and her breathing get shallow. She tried to hide the growing panic she felt.
“Sarah, this is Chiqy,” Dean said.
“Hi, Chiqy,” she said, forcing her voice to remain calm. “Sorry to cut this short but I’m just headed to the kitchen to make a call. Dean, if you could just unlock the door for me.”
She decided that instead of trying to find the kitchen, where she doubted she’d see a phone anyway, she was heading straight for the front door. Once outside, she’d flag someone down for a ride. Then she’d call 911 to get help for Lanie.
“Let me get a better look at you,” Chiqy ordered in a gravelly voice, ignoring what she’d said. Sarah turned to see the massive man eyeing her up and down. After a moment, he licked his lips. Sarah felt the urge to vomit.
“What do you think?” Dean asked him eagerly.
“I think we put her in a sundress with pigtails and we got a solid earner here.”
“I’m going to go now,” Sarah said and hurried over to the door. To her surprise, Dean stepped aside, looking amused.
“You used the dampener so she couldn’t call or text?” she heard Chiqy ask from somewhere behind her.
“Yep,” Dean answered. “I watched her real close. She tried a lot but never seemed to get a connection. Did you, Sarah?”
She fumbled with the chain lock and almost had it off when a huge shadow suddenly blocked out the light. She started to turn but before she could, she felt a sharp thud on the back of head and then everything went black.
Detective Keri Locke’s heart was pounding. Even though she was in the middle of a huge police station, she tuned out everything around her. She could barely think straight as she stared at the email message on her phone, refusing to believe it was real.
willing to meet if you follow the rules. will be in touch soon.
The words were simple but their meaning was colossal.
For six long weeks, she’d been waiting for this, hoping against hope that the man she suspected had abducted her daughter five years ago would reach out. And now he had.
Keri slid her phone away on the desk and closed her eyes, trying to stay composed as she attempted to wrap her head around the situation. When she’d first uncovered the contact information for the man known only as the Collector, she’d set up a meeting. But he never showed up.
She reached out to him to find out what happened. He indicated that she hadn’t followed the rules but hinted that he might get in touch in the future. It had taken all of her discipline and patience not to try to contact him again. She wanted to desperately but worried that if she came on too strong, he would get skittish and dump the email address completely, leaving her no way of ever finding him, or Evie.
And now, after all those torturous weeks of silence, he’d finally gotten in touch again. Of course, he didn’t know he was communicating with Evie’s mother or even that it was a woman. All he knew was that this was a potential client interested in discussing an abduction for hire.
This time she would come up with a better plan than before. The last time, she had less than an hour to get to his assigned meeting place. She tried to set up a decoy to go in her place and survey the situation from afar. But somehow he knew the decoy wasn’t legitimate and he didn’t come. She couldn’t let that happen again.
Stay cool. You’ve held out this long and it’s paid off. Don’t ruin it by doing something impulsive. There’s nothing you can do right now anyway. The ball’s in his court. Just give a basic response and wait to hear back.
Keri typed one word:
understood
Then she put the phone in her purse and stood up from her desk, too nervous and excited to sit still. Knowing there was nothing more she could do, she tried to force the Collector from her mind.
She headed for the break room to get a bite to eat. It was after 4 p.m. and her stomach was growling, although she wasn’t sure if it was because she’d skipped lunch or due to general anxiety.
When she arrived, she saw her partner, Ray Sands, rifling through the refrigerator. He was notorious for snagging any food not properly marked. Luckily her chicken salad, with her name clearly taped to the container, was hidden in the lower back corner. Ray, a 6-foot-4-inch, 230-pound black man with a bald head and a heavily muscled frame, would have to really be desperate to navigate himself down there just for a salad.
Keri stood in the doorway, silently enjoying watching Ray’s butt wriggle as he maneuvered. In addition to being her partner, he was also her best friend and lately, maybe something more. They both felt a strong attraction to each other and had admitted as much to one another less than two months ago, when Ray was recovering from a gunshot wound he’d sustained when they took down a child kidnapper.
But since then, they’d only taken baby steps. They flirted more openly when they were alone and there had been several semi-dates, where one of them would come to the other’s apartment to watch a movie.
But they both seemed afraid to make the next move. Keri knew why she felt this way and suspected Ray felt the same. She was worried that if they decided to really go for it and it didn’t work out, both their partnership and their friendship could be put at risk. It was a legitimate concern.
Neither of them had a great romantic track record. Both were divorced. Both had cheated on their spouses. Ray, a former professional boxer, was a notorious ladies’ man. And Keri had to admit that since Evie was taken, she’d been one big pulsing nerve, constantly on the verge of spinning out of control. Match.com wouldn’t be putting either of them on posters anytime soon.
Ray sensed that he was being watched and turned around, half of an unclaimed sandwich in his hand. Seeing that there was no one in the room but Keri, he asked, “Like what you see?” and winked.
“Don’t get cocky, Incredible Hulk,” she warned. They loved to tease each other with pet names that highlighted their substantial size difference.
“Who’s using the double entendres now, Miss Bianca?” he asked, smiling.
Keri saw his face darken and realized she hadn’t done a good enough job of hiding her nervousness about the Collector. He knew her too well.
“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.
“Nothing,” she said as she brushed past him and bent down to grab her salad. Unlike him, she had no problem navigating tight spaces. While she wasn’t as small as a fictional mouse nickname might suggest, compared to Ray, her 5-foot-6-inch, 130-pound body was Lilliputian.
She could feel his eyes on her but pretended not to notice. She didn’t want to discuss what was on her mind for a couple of reasons. First of all, if she told him about the email from the Collector, he’d want to break it down in detail with her. And that would undermine her efforts to keep sane by not thinking about it.
But there was another reason. Keri was under surveillance by a shady lawyer named Jackson Cave, who was notorious for representing pedophiles and child abductors. To get the information that led her to find the Collector, she’d broken into his office and copied a hidden file.
The last time they’d seen each other, Cave had hinted that he knew what she’d done and said outright that he had his eye on her. It was clear to her what he’d meant. Ever since, she’d done regular sweeps for listening devices and been careful to only discuss the Collector in secure environments.
If Cave knew she was on to the Collector, he might warn him. Then he’d disappear and she’d never find Evie. So there was no way she was going to mention anything about it to Ray here.
But he didn’t know any of that, so he pressed her.
“I can tell something’s up,” he said.
But before Keri could diplomatically shut him down, their boss burst through the door. Lieutenant Cole Hillman, their immediate supervisor, was fifty but looked significantly older, with a deeply wrinkled face, uncombed salt-and-pepper hair, and a growing potbelly he couldn’t hide with his oversized dress shirts. As usual, he wore a jacket and tie but the former was ill-fitting and the latter was ridiculously loose.
“Good. I’m glad you’re both here,” he said, skipping any kind of greeting. “Come with me. You’ve got a case.”
They followed him back to his office and both took seats on the weathered loveseat against the wall. Knowing she likely wouldn’t have a chance to eat later, Keri scarfed down her salad while Hillman read them in. She noticed that Ray had already finished the sandwich he’d stolen before they sat down. Hillman dove right in.
“Your possible victim is a sixteen-year-old girl from Westchester, Sarah Caldwell. She hasn’t been seen since lunchtime. Parents called her multiple times, saying they couldn’t reach her.”
“They’re freaking out because their teenage daughter didn’t call them back?” Ray asked skeptically. “Sounds like pretty much every family in America.”
Keri didn’t reply despite her natural inclination to disagree. She and Ray had argued this point many times. She thought he was too slow to sign onto cases like this. He felt that her personal experience made her far too likely to jump in prematurely. It was a constant source of friction and she didn’t feel like getting into it at this moment. But Hillman apparently was willing.
“I thought so too at first,” Hillman said, “but they were very convincing that their daughter would never go this long without checking in. They also tried to check her location using the GPS on her smartphone. It was turned off.”
“That’s a little weird, but still,” Ray reiterated.
“Listen, it may be nothing. But they were insistent, panicked even. And they noted that the policy of being missing for twenty-four hours before starting a search doesn’t apply to minors. You two don’t have any pressing cases right now so I told them you’d stop by to take their statement. Hell, the girl may be home by the time you get there. But it won’t do any harm. And this keeps our asses covered on the off chance something is up.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Keri said, standing up to go with her mouth full of her last bite of salad.
“Of course it sounds good to you,” Ray muttered as he took the address from Hillman. “Another wild goose chase for you to drag me on.”
“You know you love it,” Keri said, walking out the door ahead of him.
“Could you two please be a little more professional when you get to the Caldwells’?” Hillman shouted through the open door after them. “I’d like them to think we’re at least pretending to take them seriously.”
Keri tossed her salad container in the trash and headed for the parking lot. Ray had to jog to keep up with her. As they reached the exit, he leaned in and whispered to her.
“Don’t think you’re off the hook on whatever it is you’re keeping secret from me. You can tell me now or you can tell me later. But I know something’s going on with you.”
Keri tried not to visibly react. There was something going on. And she did plan to fill him in when it was safe to do so. But she needed to find a more secure location to tell her partner, best friend, and potential boyfriend that she might be on the verge of finally catching her daughter’s abductor.
As they pulled up in front of the Caldwell house, Keri’s stomach suddenly clenched up.
No matter how often she met with the family of a potentially abducted child, she was always taken back to that moment when she first saw her own little girl, just eight years old, being carried across the bright green grass of a park by a malevolent stranger in a baseball cap pulled low to hide his face.
She felt the same familiar panic rising in her throat now that she’d experienced as she chased the man through the gravel parking lot and saw him toss Evie into his white van like a rag doll. She relived the horror of seeing the teenager who’d tried to stop the man get stabbed to death.
She winced at the memory of the pain she’d felt as she ran barefoot on the gravel lot, ignoring the sharp bits of rock that embedded in her feet as she tried to catch up to the van that was peeling out and driving off . She recalled the sense of helplessness that had overcome her as she realized the van had no license plates and she had almost no description to offer the police.
Ray was familiar with how much she was always affected by this moment and sat quietly in the driver’s seat while she worked through the cycle of emotions and gathered herself for what was to come.
“You good?” he asked, when he saw her body finally relax slightly.
“Almost,” she said, pulling down the visor mirror and giving herself one last check to make sure she wasn’t a total mess.
The person staring back at her looked much healthier than she had just a few months ago. The black circles she used to have under her brown eyes were no longer there and they weren’t bloodshot. Her skin was less blotchy. Her dirty blonde hair, while still pulled back in a utilitarian ponytail, wasn’t greasy and unwashed.
Keri was closing in on her thirty-six birthday but she looked better than she had at any point since Evie was taken five years earlier. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the sense of hope she’d had since the Collector had hinted all those weeks ago that he’d be in touch.
Or maybe it was the real possibility of romance with Ray on the horizon. It could also have been recently moving out of the ratty houseboat she’d called home for several years into a real apartment. Or it might have had to do with her reduced consumption of large quantities of single malt scotch.
Whatever it was, she noticed more men than usual turning their heads when she walked by these days. She didn’t mind it, if only because for the first time in forever, she felt like she had some power over her often out-of-control life.
She flipped the visor back up and turned to Ray.
“Ready,” she said.
As they walked up to the front door, Keri took in the neighborhood. This was the northernmost part of Westchester, adjacent to the 405 freeway and just south of the Howard Hughes Center, a large retail and office complex that dominated the skyline in this part of town.
Westchester had a reputation as a working-class neighborhood, and most of the homes were of the modest, one-story variety. But even those had exploded in cost in the last half dozen years. As a result, the community was a mix of old-timers who’d lived here forever and young, professional families who didn’t want to live in cookie-cutter developments but somewhere with personality. Keri guessed these folks were the latter.
The door opened before they even got to the porch and out stepped a clearly worried couple. Keri was surprised at their age. The woman—petite, Hispanic, with a no-nonsense pixie cut—looked to be in her mid-fifties. She wore a nice but well-worn women’s suit and old but immaculately maintained black shoes.
The man was easily half a foot taller than her. He was white, balding with tufts of grayish-blond hair, and spectacles hanging around his neck. He was at least as old as her and probably closer to sixty. He was more casually dressed than she was, in comfortable slacks and a crisp, buttoned-down plaid dress shirt. His brown loafers were scuffed and one of his laces was undone.
“Are you the detectives?” the woman asked, reaching out her hand to shake theirs even before getting confirmation.
“Yes, ma’am,” Keri answered, taking the lead. “I’m Detective Keri Locke of LAPD’s West Los Angeles Pacific Division Missing Persons Unit. This is my partner, Detective Raymond Sands.”
“Good to meet you folks,” Ray said.
The woman beckoned them in as she spoke.
“Thank you for coming. My name is Mariela Caldwell. This is my husband, Edward.”
Edward nodded but didn’t speak. Keri sensed that they didn’t know how to begin so she took the initiative.
“Why don’t we have a seat in the kitchen and you can tell us what has you so concerned?”
“Of course,” Mariela said, and led them through a narrow hallway adorned with photos of a dark-haired girl with a warm smile. There had to be at least twenty photos covering her entire life from birth until now. They came to a small but well-appointed breakfast nook. “Can I offer you anything—coffee, a snack?”
“No thank you, ma’am,” Ray said as he tried to squeeze against the wall to maneuver around and into a chair. “Let’s all just sit down and get as much information as possible as quickly as we can. Why don’t you start by telling us what has you worried? My understanding is that Sarah has only been out of touch for a few hours.”
“Almost five hours now,” Edward said, speaking for the first time as he sat down across from Ray. “She called her mother at noon to say she was meeting up with a friend she hadn’t seen in a while. It’s almost five p.m. now. She knows she’s supposed to check in every couple of hours when she goes out, even if it’s only a text to say where she is.”
“She doesn’t ever forget?” Ray asked, keeping his tone neutral so that only Keri caught his underlying skepticism. Neither of the Caldwells spoke for a moment and Keri worried that Ray had offended them. Finally Mariela answered.
“Detective Sands, I know it may be hard to believe. But no, she doesn’t ever forget. Ed and I had Sarah later in life. After many failed attempts, we were blessed by her arrival. She is our only child and I admit that we are both a little, what’s the word, hovering?”
“Helicopter parents,” Ed added with a wry smile.
Keri smiled too. She could hardly blame them.
“Anyway,” Mariela continued, “Sarah knows that she is our dearest love in the world and amazingly, she doesn’t resent it or feel stifled. We bake together on weekends. She still loves to go to ‘take your daughter to work’ days with her father. She even came with me to a Motley Crue concert a few months ago. She dotes on us. And because she knows how precious she is to us, she is very diligent about keeping us in the loop. We established the ‘text where you are’ policy. But she’s the one who chose the two-hour rule.”
Keri watched both of them closely as they spoke. Mariela’s hand was in Ed’s and he was gently stroking the back of hers with his thumb. He waited until she was done, then spoke up.
“And even if she did forget, for the first time ever, she wouldn’t have gone this long without getting in touch or replying to any of our texts or calls. Between us, we’ve texted her a dozen times and called half a dozen. In my last message I told her I was calling the police. If she had received any of those, she would have reached out. And as I said to your lieutenant, the GPS on her phone is turned off. That’s never happened before.”
That unsettling detail hung in the room, threatening to overwhelm everything else. Keri tried to squelch any movement in the direction of panic by quickly asking the next question.
“Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell, may I ask why Sarah wasn’t in school today? It is a Friday.”
Both of them looked at her with surprised expressions. Even Ray appeared taken aback.
“It’s the day after Thanksgiving,” Mariela said. “There’s no school today.”
Keri felt her heart drop into her gut. Only a parent would know that kind of detail and for all practical purposes, she no longer was one.
Evie would be thirteen now. Under normal circumstances, Keri would have been negotiating how to ensure child care for her daughter so she could work today. But she hadn’t had normal circumstances in a long time.
The rituals associated with school breaks and family holidays had faded away in recent years to the point where something that used to be obvious to her no longer registered.
She tried to respond but it came out as an unintelligible cough. Her eyes got watery and she lowered her head so no one could see. Ray came to her rescue.
“So Sarah had the day off but you didn’t?” he asked.
“No,” Ed answered. “I own a small paint store in the Westchester Triangle. It’s not like I’m rolling around in money. I can’t take many days off—Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s—that’s about it.”
“And I’m a paralegal for a big law firm in El Segundo. Normally I’d be off today but we’re prepping a huge case for trial and they needed all hands on deck.”
Keri cleared her throat and, confident that she had control of herself, rejoined the conversation.
“Who is this friend Sarah was meeting?” she asked.
“Her name is Lanie Joseph,” Mariela said. “Sarah used to be friends with her in elementary school. But when we moved here from our old neighborhood, they lost touch. Frankly, I wish it had stayed that way.”
“What do you mean?” Keri asked.
Mariela hesitated, so Ed jumped in.
“We used to live in South Culver City. It’s not very far away from here but that area is much more hardscrabble. The streets are rougher and so are the kids. Lanie had an edge that always made us a bit uncomfortable, even when she was young. It’s gotten worse. I don’t mean to be judgmental, but we think she’s headed down a dangerous road.”
“We scrimped and saved,” Mariela jumped in, clearly uncomfortable at casting aspersions among strangers. “The year Sarah started middle school we moved here. We bought this place just before the market exploded. It’s small but we’d never be able to buy it now. It was tight even then. But she needed a fresh start with different kids.”
“So they lost touch,” Ray prodded gently. “What made them reconnect recently?”
“They’d see each other a couple of times a year but that was about it,” Ed answered. “But Sarah told us that Lanie texted her yesterday and said she really wanted to meet—that she needed her advice. She didn’t say why.”
“Of course,” Mariela added, “because she’s such a sweet, caring girl, she agreed without hesitation. I remember her telling me last night, ‘What kind of friend would I be, Mama, if I didn’t help someone when they needed it most?’”
Mariela broke off, overcome with emotion. Keri saw Ed give her hand a little squeeze of support. She envied these two. Even in a moment of near-panic, they were a united front, finishing one another’s sentences, backstopping each other emotionally. Somehow their shared devotion and love was keeping them from falling apart. Keri remembered a time when she thought she’d had the same thing.
“Did Sarah say where they were meeting?” she asked.
“No, they hadn’t decided as of noon. But I’m sure it was somewhere close—maybe the Howard Hughes Center or Fox Hills Mall. Sarah doesn’t drive yet so it would have to be somewhere with easy bus access.”
Can you give us a few recent photos of her?” Keri asked Mariela, who immediately got up to get some.
“Is Sarah on social media?” Ray asked.
“She’s on Facebook. Instagram, Twitter. I don’t know what else. Why?” asked Ed.
“Sometimes kids will share details on their accounts that are helpful to investigations. Do you know any of her passwords?”
“No,” Mariela said as she pulled a few pictures from their frames. “We’ve never had cause to ask for them. She shows us posts on her accounts all the time. She never seems to be hiding anything. We’re even Facebook friends. I just never felt the need to ask for that kind of thing. Is there no way you can get access to those?”
“We can,” Keri told her. “But without the passwords, it takes time. We have to get a court order. And right now we don’t have probable cause.”
“What about the GPS being off?” Ed asked.
“That helps make the case,” Keri answered. “But at this point everything’s circumstantial at best. You’ve both made a compelling argument for why this situation is so unusual. But on paper, it might not look that way to a judge. But don’t let that upset you too much. We’re just starting out here. This is what we do—investigate. And I’d like to start by going to Lanie’s house and speaking to her folks. Do you have her address?”
“I do,” Mariela said, handing Keri several photos of Sarah before pulling out her phone and scrolling through her contacts. “But I don’t know how much help it will be. Lanie’s father is out of the picture and her mother is…uninvolved. But if you think it will help, here it is.”
Keri wrote down the information and everyone made their way to the front door. They shook hands formally, which struck Keri as odd for people who’d just been discussing something so intimate.