A Trace of Crime

CHAPTER SEVEN

Keri thought she might be sick. It was almost funny. After all, she’d lived on a floating houseboat for several years. But floating on a sailboat in open channel waters while holding binoculars to her eyes for long stretches was a different proposition.

Butch had offered to drop anchor on the Pipsqueak but both Keri and Ray worried that a stationary boat in the water might look suspicious. Of course, a boat aimlessly traipsing back and forth wasn’t much better.

After about fifteen minutes of that, Butch suggested they loiter near a dock across the channel from the park, where at least the other boats would make them stand out less. Keri, uncertain that she could hold off the nausea much longer, jumped at the suggestion.

They found an unoccupied spot and lingered there as midnight drew near. The biting winter wind howled outside. Sitting on the small bench near the window, Keri could hear the water lapping loudly against the hull. She embraced it, trying to match her breathing to its rhythm. She felt the knot in her stomach start to loosen and the sweat on her brow subside a bit.

It was 11:57 p.m. Keri put the binoculars to her eyes again and looked across the water at the park. Ray, several feet over, was doing the same.

“See anything?” Butch asked from up above. He was excited to be a part of a police operation and was having a hard time hiding it. This was probably the most eventful thing to happen to him in years.

He was the same crusty guy she remembered, defined by his weather-beaten skin, his shock of unbrushed white hair, and the perpetual smell of liquor on his breath. Under normal circumstances, operating a boat in his condition was a violation. But she was willing to let it slide considering the situation.

“There are some trees partially blocking the view,” she whispered back loudly. “And it’s hard to see with the glare from the window, even with the lights out down here.”

“I can’t do anything about the trees,” Butch said. “But you know, the windows open part way.”

“I didn’t know that,” she admitted.

“How long did you live on that boat?” Ray asked.

Keri, happily surprised that he was willing to engage in teasing, stuck her tongue out at him before adding, “Apparently not long enough.”

A voice came over their comms, interrupting the most natural moment they’d had all day. It was Lieutenant Hillman.

“All units be advised. This is Unit One. The messenger has the cargo, has parked, and is en route to the destination on foot.”

Hillman was one of the people stationed on the second floor of the Windjammers Club, which had a good vantage point of much of the park, including the bridge. He was using pre-assigned non-specific terms for everyone involved to avoid sharing too much information over communication lines, which always seemed to be hacked by curious citizens who liked to listen in on police traffic. Rainey was the messenger. The bag of money was the cargo. The bridge was the destination. The kidnapper would be referred to as the subject and Jessica would be the asset.

“This is Unit Four. I can see the destination,” Keri said, finally finding an angle with a clear view of the bridge. “There’s no one visible in the vicinity.”

“This is Unit Two,” came the voice of Officer Jamie Castillo, who was playing the role of the homeless woman in the park. “The messenger has just passed my location west of the community building near the cafe. The only other people I see are two homeless individuals. Both of them have been here all afternoon. Both appear to be sleeping.”

“Keep an eye on those individuals, Unit Two,” Hillman said. “We don’t know what the subject looks like. Anything is possible.”

“Copy that, Unit One.”

“I hope you guys can hear me,” a nervous-sounding Tim Rainey whispered loudly into his lavalier microphone. “I’m in the park and headed toward the bridge.”

“Ugh,” Ray muttered under his breath. “Are we going to get a running commentary from this guy?”

Keri scowled at him.

“He’s nervous, Ray. Cut him some slack.”

“All units be advised. This is HQ,” Manny Suarez said from the van in the shopping center parking lot that served as mobile headquarters. “We have eyes on the entire area and there is no movement at this point besides the messenger, who is fifty yards from the destination.”

Keri looked at her watch. 11:59 p.m. In the distance she heard the motor of a boat at the far end of the marina’s main channel. Seals, who liked to sunbathe on the docks in the day, were calling out to one another. Other than that, the wind, and the waves, it was silent.

“Movement along Mindanao Way approaching the park,” came an unfamiliar, agitated voice.

“Identify your unit,” Hillman barked, “and don’t use proper names.”

“Sorry, sir. This is Unit Three. There is a vehicle approaching the park along…the street leading up to it. It appears to be a motorcycle.”

Keri realized who Unit Three was – Officer Roger Gentry. West LA wasn’t the largest division of LAPD and they were short on available manpower at this hour, so Hillman had pulled in every unassigned officer and that included Gentry. He was a rookie, on the job less than a year, about as long as Castillo but far less confident or, apparently, capable.

“Does anyone else have eyes?” Hillman asked.

“Can anybody else hear that?” Tim Rainey asked way too loudly, apparently forgetting no one could reply to him. “It sounds like someone’s coming.”

“This is Unit Two,” Castillo said from her makeshift nook near the community center. “I have eyes. It is a motorcycle. Can’t identify from my location but it’s small, a Honda, I think. Only a driver. It has entered the park and is traveling along the south edge of the service road in the general direction of the destination and the messenger.”

Keri saw the bike now too, speeding along the service road that skirted the edge of the park near the water. She turned her attention to Tim Rainey, who was standing stiffly in the middle of the bridge, his right hand tightly clutching the bag.

“This is Unit One,” Hillman announced. “We have rifle on standby, prepared to assist. Does anyone have an updated visual on the vehicle?”

“This is Unit Four,” Ray said. “We have a visual. Solo rider is traveling about fifty miles per hour along the edge of the service road. Vehicle is turning right, that’s north, in the general direction of the destination.”

“I think it’s someone on a motorcycle,” Tim Rainey said. “Can anyone tell who it is? Is it the guy? Does he have Jess?”

“Unit Four, this is Unit One,” Hillman said, ignoring the chatter from Rainey. “Do you see any weapons? Rifle, stand ready.”

“Rifle ready,” came the voice of the sniper next to Hillman in the second-floor room of the yacht club.

“This is Unit Four,” Ray replied. “I don’t see any weapons. But my visual is compromised by darkness and the speed of the vehicle.”

“Rifle on my mark,” Hillman said.

“On your mark,” the sniper replied calmly.

Keri watched as the driver of the bike hit the brakes and did a sudden, dramatic wheelie. When the front wheel hit the road again, the driver forced the bike in a tight donut, circling three times before coming out of it and speeding back in the direction from which it came.

“This is Unit Four,” she said quickly. “Stand down. Repeat, recommend Rifle stand down. I think we’ve got a late-night joyrider on our hands.”

“Rifle, stand down,” Hillman ordered.

Sure enough, the bike continued back the way it had come, down the service road and through the metered parking lot. She lost sight of it when it got back on Mindanao.

“Who has eyes on the messenger?” Hillman asked urgently.

“This is Unit Four,” Keri continued. “The messenger is shaken but unharmed. He’s standing there, unsure how to proceed.”

“Frankly, I’m unsure too,” Hillman admitted. “Let’s just keep alert, people. That may have been a decoy.”

“Is anyone coming to get me?” Rainey asked, as if in response to Hillman. “Should I just stay here? I’m going to assume I should stay here unless I hear different.”

“God, I wish he’d shut up,” Ray muttered, putting his hand over his mic so only Keri and Butch could hear him. Keri didn’t respond.

After about ten minutes, Keri saw Rainey, still standing in the middle of the bridge, check his phone.

“I hope you can hear me,” he said. “I just got a text. It says ‘By involving the authorities, you have betrayed my trust. You have sacrificed the opportunity to redeem the child sinner. I must now determine whether to remove the demon myself or forgive your insubordination and allow you one more chance to purify her soul. Her fate was in your hands. Now it is in mine.’ He knew you were here. All your elaborate planning was for nothing. And now I have no idea whether he’ll even reach out to me again. You might have killed my daughter!”

He screamed the last line, his voice cracking in fury. Keri could hear his voice across the marina even as it came over the comm. She saw him drop to his knees, let go of the bag, put his hands to his face, and begin weeping. His pain felt intimately familiar.

It was the anguished cry of a parent who believed his child was lost to him forever. She recognized it because she had wept the same way when her own daughter had been taken and she could do nothing to stop it.

Keri rushed out of the boat cabin and just made it up on deck in time to vomit over the side into the ocean.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jessica Rainey wriggled her fingers to keep them from falling asleep again. They were tied behind her back, attached to the pipe she sat leaning against. The ground was asphalt, hard and cold. The one fluorescent light that dangled from the ceiling flickered intermittently, making it impossible to fall asleep.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been in this place but knew it had been long enough for day to turn into night. She could tell because of tiny cracks in the wall that let in the light from the sun. There was no light now.

She hadn’t even noticed the cracks initially. When she woke up, all she did was scream and try to yank herself free. She screamed for help. She screamed for her parents. She even screamed for her little brother, Nate, not that he could have helped her.

And she pulled so hard at the restraints on her wrists that when she looked behind her, she could see the drops of blood where they had dug into her skin and dripped onto the ground.

It was around that time that she noticed she wasn’t wearing her own clothes. Someone had removed them and replaced them with a sleeveless dress that went to her knees. It was clearly homemade, stitched together unevenly.

Beyond that, it was rough and scratchy, as if it had been made from several burlap sacks. If she wasn’t so sore, she’d be totally focused on how itchy she was. She refused to think about how she had actually gotten from one outfit into the other.

After she had worn herself out from screaming and yanking and the adrenaline had faded from her system, she tried to remember what had happened to her. The last thing she could recall was riding her bike up the big hill on Rees Street, when she’d felt a sudden sharp pain in her back. It felt like the electrical shock she sometimes got from touching a metal door handle after walking on a carpet, only a hundred times worse.

And that was it. The next thing she knew she was in this room that was only lit for about six feet around her before it collapsed into darkness. She no idea of its dimensions but she was pretty sure the walls were made of the same asphalt as the floor. When she yelled, it sounded muffled, as if no sound could escape the room.

And her back hurt, not in the way all of the rest of her hurt, which was mostly an ache due to being stuck in the same position for so long. There was one particular spot on her back that felt burned.

In fact, it was the same spot where she’d felt the pain earlier. The more she thought about it, the more Jessica suspected someone had poked her in that spot with something like a cattle prod. She remembered reading about them in her history class’s section on Western States.

Ranchers sometimes used them on their cows to get them to go in the direction they wanted. She remembered Mr. Hensarling saying that it gave a cow a jolt but that a cattle prod would do much worse to a human being.

Now that the initial terror and exhaustion had worn off, Jessica realized something else: she was hungry. She hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since lunch. And whatever time it was now, she was sure it was late.

But no one had come by to offer food or even check to see if she was still alive. She hadn’t heard anything other than her own voice and the occasional rattle of the pipes since she’d arrived.

Have I just been left here to die? Will I ever see my family again? Will I ever even learn who did this to me?

Just then, the light above her burned out completely. Too tired and hoarse to scream, she pressed her back against the pipe as if it could offer her some kind of protection.

After a few seconds, a hum kicked in and a dull blue emergency light came on in the far corner of the room. Her eyes slowly started to adjust to the half-darkness and she noticed something in the same corner where the light emanated from. She squinted, in the vain hope that could somehow help. Eventually the form came into focus and she realized that it had the shape of a human.

“Hello,” she called out excitedly. “You in the corner – can you hear me?”

There was no response. She looked a little closer and realized there was something odd about the figure, lying limply on its side. It looked human but somehow different. She was perplexed. And then, in a flash of recognition, she realized what she was looking at. It was a human skeleton.

Jessica Rainey discovered that she could still scream after all.

CHAPTER NINE

Even though she didn’t really feel it, Keri pretended to stay calm and collected for the sake of her passenger.

Tim Rainey was so shell-shocked that she had to drive him home in his own car. Ray said he wanted to check on some leads at the station so Manny Suarez followed her and picked her up to drive her back.

On the way, she tried to tell Rainey that there was still hope, that they still had lots of leads to follow. But she could tell he wasn’t really listening and stopped trying after a few minutes. When they got to his house, he got out of the car and closed the door behind him without saying a word.

Back at the station, Keri was surprised to find there was very little in the way of investigative activity. That was until she remembered that it was after 1 a.m. and there wasn’t much more that could be done until morning.

“How’s Rainey doing?” Hillman asked when he saw Keri and Manny walk in.

“Not great,” Keri admitted. “He was equal parts pissed and stunned. I’d expect it to tip more toward pissed by morning. Do we know what gave us away? How the hell did this guy know we were there?”

“I’m reviewing the footage from the scene,” Edgerton said. “So far, I can’t find any errors on our part.”

Hillman sighed heavily. He’d seen a lot of these situations and Keri noticed that he wasn’t as quick to place blame as usual.

“Folks, we may not have done anything wrong at all. This guy has clearly been planning this for a long time. It’s reasonable to think he prepared for this contingency as well.”

“It’s like Keri mentioned to me earlier,” Ray added. “He gave us a lot of lead time on the drop area. It’s possible he had already set up cameras in the area or at the Rainey house. If he was testing them to see if they’d call us, it wouldn’t have been hard to discover they had.”

Keri appreciated that even though he was upset with her, Ray was willing to acknowledge that her misgivings hadn’t been misplaced.

“I’m just worried we might not get another chance,” Manny said. “He may not want to risk another attempt.”

Keri was tempted to remind them about her doubts that the kidnapper ever intended to show up but decided now wasn’t the time.

“What happened with the motorcyclist?” she asked instead.

“Nothing,” came a voice from the couch in the corner. Keri looked over and saw that it was Frank Brody, sprawled out lazily.

“Can you be a bit more specific?” she asked, trying to keep her tone non-confrontational. She hadn’t even realized he had been part of the operation.

“He was just some joyriding teenager. We pulled him over a few blocks away. We checked and he has no record other than two speeding tickets for the same sort of thing. He goes to high school in Venice – no obvious connection to the girl or anything else in the area.”

Garrett Patterson, who had remained back at the station to help with coordination, cleared his throat.

“If you got something to say, Patterson, just spit it out,” growled Brody. “This isn’t a finishing school.”

For once Keri agreed with him. Patterson was great at sifting through data but his reticence to go in the field or even speak up in meetings was getting tiresome. Patterson swallowed hard and spoke.

“I was just going to say that we traced the phone that texted Mr. Rainey. It was a burner. Its last GPS location was in the marina, not too far from the park. We think it was dumped in the ocean after it was used.”

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