A Trace of Vice

PROLOGUE

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.

CHAPTER ONE

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.

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:

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.

CHAPTER TWO

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.