A Trace of Crime

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’m telling you, it’s just a cover,” Detective Frank Brody shouted indignantly. “All that blather about mechanisms and the Lord is just to throw us off. This guy is a con man, pure and simple!”

The station conference room was a mass of noisy, angry voices and it was starting to piss Keri off. She was tempted to yell at everyone to shut up, but painful experience had taught her that some of these people needed to wear themselves out before anything useful could be accomplished.

Brody, an old-school veteran of the unit less than a month from retirement, was convinced the letter was a sham. As usual, he had some kind of sauce on his shirt, which was tucked in but missing a button so that part of his large stomach was exposed. And as usual, Keri thought, he was more interested in being loud than in being right.

“You don’t know that!” shouted back Officer Jamie Castillo. “You just want it to be true because that makes the case easier to understand.”

Castillo wasn’t a detective yet, but because of her competence and enthusiasm, she’d become essentially a junior member of the unit, almost always assigned to their cases. And despite her junior status, she was no shrinking violet.

Right now, her dark eyes were blazing and her black hair, tied back in a ponytail, was bobbing up and down along with her animated responses. Her muscular arms and athletic frame were both tightly coiled in frustration.

“None of us are experts in this sort of thing,” Detective Kevin Edgerton insisted. “We need to bring in the police psychologist.”

Keri wasn’t surprised that Edgerton wanted to go that route. Tall and skinny with perpetually unkempt brown hair, he was a computer genius who knew the ins and outs of everything from a smartphone to the utility grid. But not yet thirty years old, he didn’t always trust his instincts when it came to things with less clear-cut solutions. It was his nature to defer to expertise, if it was available.

The problem was that Keri wasn’t confident the police psychologist would have any more insight into the letter than the rest of them. Any conclusions he was likely to draw would just be speculation. If that was the case, she trusted her own speculation more than most others’.

Lieutenant Hillman held up his hands in an appeal for calm and quiet. To Keri’s surprise, everyone complied.

“I sent a copy of the letter to Dr. Feeney at home. He’s looking at it now. We’ll probably get feedback soon. In the meantime, any other thoughts? Sands?”

Ray had been sitting quietly, rubbing the top of his bald head, taking it all in. From this angle, Keri could clearly see the reflection of the station lights off the glass left eye that replaced the eye he’d lost boxing. He looked up and she could tell where he stood before he even spoke.

“I’m inclined to agree with Frank. That letter is just so over the top that it’s hard to buy. Everything is so overheated. That is, except for the part about wanting the money and where to bring it. That section is completely straightforward; pretty convenient, if you ask me. Still…”

“What?” Hillman asked.

“Well, I’m just not sure whether it makes any difference. We know so little and don’t have much time. Regardless of whether he’s a psycho or a con artist, there’s still a drop with him in a few hours.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” Keri finally said. She didn’t love contradicting her partner publicly under any circumstances and especially not with the way things were between them at the moment. But it wasn’t about that right now. It was about the job and finding this girl. Keri had never held her tongue about a case before and she wasn’t about to start now, regardless of the personal consequences.

“Look, I don’t know for sure if this guy is faking or for real. But I think it does matter which is true. If he’s just pretending to be some kind of religious fanatic and this is all just about money, I’d prefer it. Then this is transactional for him, not personal. And that scenario is way more predictable. It means he’s more likely to show up. And it’s more of a priority for him to keep Jessica alive.”

“But you don’t buy it,” Ray said, proving he knew her as well as she knew him.

“I’m skeptical. I think it’s possible that money stuff was so straightforward because he didn’t really believe in it and was just saying what he was supposed to in a ransom note. What if that’s the fake part and the real part is the crazy stuff? I mean the contrast between those sections is so dramatic as to be ridiculous. The ‘overheated’ language seems to be where his passion is.”

“Seems to be,” Brody interrupted. Keri reminded herself to keep a level head. The short-timer was baiting her, hoping he could rile her up to make her argument seem less credible. She nodded politely and continued.

“Yes, Frank, seems to be. I don’t pretend to know anything for sure. But all that talk of freeing her from her own evil spirit, of the machinery of the Lord, it’s pretty detailed, like he’s developed some kind of personal liturgy to reflect his own warped religion – one where he’s in control, like he’s the Pope of his own demented faith. And if that’s true, we’ve got a much bigger problem.”

“How so?” Edgerton asked.

“Because if this is all truly about cleansing spirits and pleasing his deity, then he doesn’t really care about the money. It might just be a way to justify the abduction to himself in societal terms. He tells himself it’s about the money so he can function in some kind of normal way. But deep down, he knows that’s just an excuse, that the real reason he took her is much deeper and darker.”

“So Locke,” Hillman said, “you’re suggesting this guy is having some internal struggle and that the money is just a way for him to hide what he really wants to do to the girl from himself?”

“Maybe.”

“That seems like a stretch,” he said. “Other than the language he used, what do you have to support the theory?”

“It’s not just the language, Lieutenant. The very fact that he offered to return her, to let her own father purify her, suggests that he might be trying to fight this thing, that he’s trying to find an ‘out,’ some way to not free her from the demon by killing her.”

She stopped talking and looked around at the faces of her co-workers, which were a mix of skepticism and genuine intrigue. Even Hillman seemed to be reconsidering.

“Or he could just be after the money and your mumbo-jumbo is as full of BS as he is,” Brody said derisively. His comment seemed to drain the room of goodwill and Keri felt everyone retreating to their safe corners.

“You’re a Neanderthal!” Castillo said, disgusted.

“Yeah?” he spat back. “I think you could use a good hair dragging.”

“You want to go right now, old man?” Castillo said, taking a step toward him. “I’ll knock your beached whale ass back in the ocean.”

“Enough!” Hillman shouted. “We’ve got a twelve-year-old girl to save and we don’t have time for this crap. And Brody, another sexist comment like that and I’ll dock your pay for the rest of your frickin’ career, even if that’s only a month, you got me?”

Brody reluctantly shut his mouth. Castillo looked like she wasn’t done yet so Keri put her hand on her shoulder and led her away.

“Let it go, Jamie,” she muttered under her breath. “The guy’s one more burrito away from a heart attack. You don’t want to get blamed when he keels over.”

Castillo chuckled despite her anger. She was about to reply when Detective Manny Suarez walked into the room. Manny wasn’t much to look at, with his longish stubble, his love handles, and his heavy-lidded eyes that reminded Keri of Sleepy the dwarf. But he was a tough, able detective. And most importantly right now, he was returning from the FedEx office where the ransom note had been dropped off. Keri hoped he had good news.

“Give me something good,” Hillman said.

Suarez shook his head as he sat down at the conference room table and pulled out one lonely receipt from the manila envelope he was holding. He slammed it on the table.

This is it,” he said. “This is the one piece of meaningful evidence I was able to retrieve from the FedEx store. It has the time and date of the purchase, which was made with cash. That’s it.”

“Wasn’t there any security footage you could match to the time of purchase?” Hillman asked.

“There is, but it’s mostly useless. The exterior footage from the place shows someone walking in. But that person is wearing a bulky sweatshirt with a hoodie and sunglasses. I’m having it circulated but it won’t be much help. It’s hard to even tell whether it’s a male or female.”

“What about inside the FedEx store?” Castillo asked.

Suarez pulled out a second sheet of paper from the envelope and put it on the desk too. It looked like a photo but it was basically white with black around the edges.

“This is a still image from the interior camera,” he said. “It looks like he was using a pair of laser refraction sunglasses that blow out anything onscreen. This is what the footage looks like the whole time the person is in there.”

“That’s hardcore tech,” Edgerton noted, impressed. “Usually that sort of thing is only used in high-end robberies.”

“What about other cameras?” Ray asked. “Ones he didn’t look at directly.”

“They were unaffected. But the suspect stood conveniently out of frame of each of them. It’s like he knew exactly where every camera would be and steered clear of all but the one he couldn’t avoid, right behind the register. And that’s the one that’s blown out.”

“I’m assuming he avoided any other exterior cameras on the way out too?” Keri guessed. “No chance he walked to his car and we can get a make or license plate?”

“No chance,” Suarez confirmed. “We have him walking around the corner. But the direction he went leads to an industrial block where none of the businesses have cameras. He could have gone anywhere from there.”

“I hate to pile on,” Edgerton added, studying the laptop in front of him. “But I’ve got more bad news. Jessica’s backpack and phone were busts. CSU just emailed me that they didn’t find any unexpected prints.”

Lieutenant Hillman’s cell phone rang but he indicated for Edgerton to continue as he stepped out of the room to take the call. Kevin picked up where he’d left off.

“And I’ve been running a program using her SIM card to look for suspicious activity. It just finished. But there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Every single call she made or received in the last three months is from either her family or friends.”

Keri and Ray exchanged a silent glance. Even the tension between them couldn’t undermine their shared concern that this case was going downhill fast.

Before anyone could respond to Edgerton, Hillman walked back in. Keri could tell from his expression that there was more bad news coming.

“That was Dr. Feeney,” he said. “He buys the con man theory too. He thinks this guy’s faking the crazy stuff and just wants the money.”

Great. Every lead we have has gone nowhere and now the unit consensus is that this guy is just a run of the mill kidnapper.

Keri couldn’t explain it, even to herself. But her instincts were telling her that the consensus was dangerously wrong; that this kidnapper was something else entirely. And she feared that if they didn’t get on the right track soon, Jessica Rainey would pay the price.

CHAPTER SIX

As the minutes leading up to the drop passed, Keri tried to ignore the pit of anxiety growing in her stomach. Time was running short and Keri felt like they were losing options fast. She actively told herself not to lose hope, to remember that Jessica was out there somewhere, desperately waiting for someone to find her.

Since the FedEx office and Jessica’s backpack and phone were dead ends, the team began pursuing less case-specific, and therefore less promising, options.

Edgerton put the case parameters into a federal database to see if there was any record of similar kidnappings. The results would come in soon but culling through them would be time-consuming.

He also input the ransom note in the system on the off chance that the language checked the boxes of any previous letters. That was a long shot. If a letter this strange had been sent to someone before, they felt confident they would have heard about it.

Suarez was looking at a list of registered sex offenders who lived in the area to see if any of them had a record of this kind of crime. Castillo had gone to the park to prep for surveillance. Brody had left the station, claiming he was going to talk to some of his street informants. Keri suspected he’d just gone out to get something else to eat.

She and Ray pored through old case files, looking for any old or unsolved cases that matched Jessica’s. It was possible that this was the work of someone back out on the streets after a long prison stretch. If that was the situation, it would predate either of their time on the force and they wouldn’t remember the particulars. Neither of them thought the exercise would bear fruit but they weren’t sure what else to do.

After over an hour without success they headed out. It was almost 10 p.m. and she and Ray were returning to the Rainey house. It was the same route they’d taken that morning, when everything had been normal, right up until the moment he’d asked her out. Both of them were aware of that fact, but they were too busy to allow that to get in their way at the moment.

As they drove, Ray was on the phone with Detective Garrett Patterson, who was still at the station coordinating the surveillance for the drop location, Chace Park.

Patterson, a quiet, bookish guy in his thirties, was a tech geek like Edgerton. But unlike his younger colleague, Patterson seemed content to focus on the minutiae of cases. He loved activities like poring over phone records and comparing IP addresses, so much so that it had gotten him the nickname Grunt Work, which he didn’t mind at all.

Patterson wasn’t the kind of detective who was going to make instinctive leaps of deduction. But he could be counted on to set up a thorough perimeter of video and electronic surveillance that would be both effective and undetectable.

“They’re prepped,” Ray told her as he hung up. “The surveillance team is in place. Manny is headed over to Rainey’s boss’s place now to accompany him and the money to the remote headquarters in the van at the Waterside shopping center.”

“Great,” Keri said. “While you were talking, I had an idea. I have a friend I know from when I used to live on the houseboat in the marina. He has a sailboat and I bet he’d take us out so we could observe the drop area from the water. What do you think?”

“I say reach out,” Ray said. “The more eyes we can get on the drop area without being noticed, the better.”

Keri texted her friend, a crusty old sailor named Butch. He was actually less of a friend than a sometime drinking companion who liked scotch as much as she did. After she lost Evie, her marriage, and her job in quick succession, she’d bought a decrepit old houseboat in the marina and lived there for several years.

Butch was a friendly, retired Navy man who liked to call her “Copper,” didn’t ask about her past, and was happy to swap professional war stories with her. At the time, that was exactly the kind of companionship she was looking for. But since she’d moved from the marina to her apartment and significantly reduced her alcohol consumption, they hadn’t hung out much recently.

Apparently he wasn’t holding a grudge as she heard back almost immediately with a text that read: “no problem – see you soon, Copper.”

“We’re good,” she told Ray, then let her mind drift to something that had been eating at her. She didn’t realize how long she’d been quiet until Ray broke into her thoughts.

“What is it, Keri?” Ray asked expectantly. “I can tell you’re turning some clue over in your head.”

Once again Keri marveled at how he seemed capable of reading her mind.

“It’s just the drop. Something about it bugs me. Why would this guy, assuming it’s a guy, give us the location so early? He must know that if the Raineys contacted us, we’d have hours to do exactly what we’re doing – establish a perimeter, install surveillance, gather manpower. Why give us a head start? I understand demanding the money early to give them time to gather it. But if it was me, I’d call at eleven forty-five p.m. to reveal the drop location and say the meet was at midnight.”

“Fair question,” he agreed. “And it fits with your suspicion that he doesn’t really care about the money.”

“I don’t want to belabor it, but I really don’t think he does,” she said.

“So what do you think he cares about?” Ray asked.

Keri had been mulling this over in her head and was happy for the opportunity to share it out loud.

“Whoever this guy is, I think he’s fixated on Jessica. I feel like he knows her or has at least met her. He’s been watching her.”

“That fits. Everything suggests he’s been planning this for a while.”

“Exactly. Those special sunglasses he used at FedEx, knowing where the cameras were there, abducting her at the perfect time when she was out of sight of the school but not yet to her mother, in a part of the neighborhood where no neighbors had exterior security cameras. These are all signs of someone who has been working on this for a long time.”

“That makes sense. But the security officer at the school came up empty with staff. I checked again at the station. No teachers had records of anything more than parking tickets.”

“What about school janitors or bus drivers?”

“They’re employed through outside companies. But everyone who comes in contact with the school has to pass a background check. We can go through the list again. But the guy was pretty thorough.”

“Okay then, what about employees at businesses along her bike route or construction workers on a house being built nearby – people who would see her every day and be familiar with her routine and who have a record?”

“Those are good leads we can pursue in the morning. But I’m hoping we nab this guy tonight and none of that is necessary.”

They pulled up to the Rainey house and noticed a police car parked far down the block. It had been instructed not to park too close to the house in case the abductor drove by. They walked to the door and knocked. An officer opened it immediately and they stepped inside.

“How are they doing?” Ray asked him quietly.

“The mom has spent most of her time upstairs with the little boy, trying to keep him busy,” the officer replied.

“And keep herself busy,” Keri added.

“I think so,” the officer agreed. “The dad has been mostly quiet. He’s spent a lot of time studying the park layout on his laptop. He’s been asking us all kinds of questions about our surveillance, most of which we don’t have answers to.”

“Okay, thanks,” Ray said. “Hopefully we can provide a few.”

Just as the officer said, Tim Rainey was seated at the kitchen table, with a Google map of Burton Chace Park on his laptop screen.

“Hi, Mr. Rainey,” Keri said. “We understand you have a few questions.”

Rainey looked up and for a moment, barely seemed to recognize them. Then his eyes focused and he nodded.

“I have a lot actually.”

“Go ahead,” Ray said.

“Okay. The note said not to contact the authorities. How are you going to keep from being seen?”

“First, we’ve set up hidden cameras throughout the park,” Ray answered. “We’ll be able to monitor them remotely from a van in a nearby parking lot. Also, the park is populated by some homeless people and we’ve dressed up an officer accordingly to fit in. She’s been there for hours so as not to draw suspicion from the others. We’ll have people at the Windjammers Yacht Club next door, watching from a second-floor room with tinted glass. One of them is a sniper.”

Keri saw Tim Rainey’s eyes widen but he said nothing as Ray continued.

“We’ll have an overhead drone available but won’t use it unless absolutely necessary. It’s almost silent and can operate up to five hundred feet. But we don’t want to take any chances with that. In total, we’ll have almost a dozen officers offsite but within sixty seconds of the location to assist you if things go south. That includes Detective Locke and myself. We’ll be on a civilian boat in the marina, far enough away to avoid suspicion but close enough to watch events through binoculars. We’ve thought this through, Mr. Rainey.”

“Okay, that’s obvious. So what exactly do I need to do?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Ray said. “That’s what we’re here to go over now. Why don’t we prep right here, since you already have the map up?”

He and Keri sat down on either side of Rainey and she took over.

“So you’re supposed to meet him on the bridge between the pergolas at the back of the park near the water. And that’s exactly what you’re going to do,” Keri said. “The park itself will be officially closed so you can’t park in the metered lot. That’s probably partly why he’s doing this at midnight. Any car in the lot would look suspicious. You’ll park in the public lot a block away. We’ll give you change. All you have to do is park, pay, and walk toward the drop area. Does all this make sense so far?”

“Yes,” Rainey said. “When will I get the ransom money?”

“You’re going to pick it up at Waterside shopping center near the park.”

“What if the kidnapper is watching?”

“That’s okay,” Keri assured him. “Your boss will be making the handoff to you, right in front of the Bank of America ATMs. He’s being prepped by one of our detectives right now. There will be officers in the area, also out of sight, in case the abductor tries to grab the money then.”

“Are you tagging the money with some kind of GPS locator?”

“We are,” Ray admitted, jumping in, “and the bag too. But the locators are all very small. The one in the bag will be sewn into the stitching. The tags placed on the money are tiny, clear stickers placed on individual bills. Even if he found the exact bills, the tags are very hard to see.”

Keri knew why Ray had answered that question. It was clear from Rainey’s sour expression that he wasn’t happy about the locators. He didn’t say it but they could tell that he was worried they might put Jessica at risk.

Ray had spoken up so he would be the bearer of that unwelcome information. That way, the rapport and trust Keri was developing with the anxious father wouldn’t be undermined. Keri nodded her imperceptible thanks to her partner. Rainey didn’t seem to notice. She could tell he was agitated by what Ray had said but didn’t object. He moved on.

“So what do I do next?’ he asked Keri, pointedly looking away from Ray.

“Like I said before, after you get the ransom money, drive to the parking lot a block from Chace Park. Then just get out and walk to the bridge between the pergolas. There will be officers in the area but you won’t see them. And it’s not your job to worry about any of that. All you have to do is go to the bridge with the money.”

“What happens when he arrives?” Rainey wanted to know.

“You’re going to ask for your daughter. In theory, he’s going to be under the impression that you’re alone. So it won’t feel right if you just give him the money without a fight. He’d get suspicious. I seriously doubt he’ll have brought her with him. He may give you a location. He might tell you he’ll text you the location once he’s safely away. He might say he’ll FedEx the location – ”

“You don’t think she’ll be there?” Rainey interrupted.

“I’d be very surprised. He’d be giving up all his leverage if he had her with him. His best bet to keep you in line is to keep you in fear for Jessica’s safety. You need to prepare yourself for the likelihood that she won’t be there.”

“I understand. What next?”