A Trace of Death

Blake Pierce is author of the bestselling RILEY PAGE mystery series, which include the mystery suspense thrillers ONCE GONE (book #1), ONCE TAKEN (book #2), ONCE CRAVED (#3), ONCE LURED (#4), ONCE HUNTED (#5), and ONCE PINED (#6). Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, the AVERY BLACK mystery series, and the KERI LOCKE mystery series.

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.comwww.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2016 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 PhotographyByMK, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

PROLOGUE

He glanced at his watch.

2:59 PM.

The school bell would ring in less than a minute.

Ashley only lived about twelve blocks from the high school, less than a mile, and almost always made the trek alone. That was his only concern – that today would be one of the rare occasions where she had company.

Within five minutes of school letting out, she was in sight, and his heart sank as he saw her walking with two other girls along Main Street. They stopped at an intersection and chatted. This wouldn’t do. They had to leave her. They had to.

He felt the anxiety rise in his belly. This was supposed to be the day.

Sitting in the front seat of his van, he tried to control what he liked to call his original self. It was his original self which emerged when he was doing his special experiments on his specimens back at home. It was his original self which allowed him to ignore the screams and begging of those specimens so he could focus on his important work.

He had to keep his original self well hidden. He reminded himself to call them girls and not specimens. He reminded himself to use proper names like “Ashley.” He reminded himself that to other people, he looked completely normal and that if he acted that way, no one could tell what lurked in his heart.

He’d been doing it for years, acting normal. Some people even called him smooth. He liked that. It meant he was a great actor. And by acting normal almost all the time, he’d somehow carved out a life, one that some might even envy. He could hide in plain sight.

Yet now he could feel it bursting in his chest, begging to be let free. The desire was getting the better of him – he had to rein it in.

He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, trying to remember the instructions. On the last breath, he inhaled for five seconds and then exhaled slowly, allowing the noise he’d learned to escape his mouth slowly.

“Ohhhmmm…”

He opened his eyes – and felt a rush of relief. Her two friends had turned west on Clubhouse Avenue toward the water. Ashley continued south on Main Street alone, next to the dog park.

Some afternoons she lingered there, watching dogs tear across the wood chip–covered ground after tennis balls. But not today. Today, she walked with purpose, as if she had somewhere to be.

If she’d known what was coming, she wouldn’t have bothered.

That thought made him smile to himself.

He’d always thought she was attractive. And as he inched his way along the street behind her, making sure to give way to the cavalcade of high school jaywalkers, he once again admired her lean, athletic surfer’s body. She was wearing a pink skirt that stopped just above the knees and a bright blue top that hugged her close.

He made his move.

A warm calmness washed over him. He activated the unconventional-looking e-cigarette that had been resting on the van’s center console and pressed his foot gently on the gas pedal.

He pulled up next to her in the van and called out through the open passenger window.

“Hey.”

At first she looked taken aback. She squinted into the vehicle, clearly unable to tell who it was.

“It’s me,” he said casually. He put the van in park, leaned over, and opened the passenger door so she could see who it was.

She leaned in a little to get a better look. After a moment, he saw something like recognition cross her face.

“Oh, hi. Sorry,” she apologized.

“No problem,” he assured her, before taking a long drag.

She looked more closely at the device in his hand.

“I’ve never seen one like that before.”

“You want to check it out?” he offered as casually as he could.

She nodded and stepped closer, leaning in. He leaned toward her as well, as if he were about to take it out of his mouth and hand it to her. But when she was about three feet away, he clicked a little button on the device, which made a small clasp open, and which sprayed a chemical right for her face, in a small fog. At the same moment, he raised a mask to his own nose, so as not to breathe it himself.

It was so subtle and quiet that Ashley didn’t even notice. Before she could react, her eyes began to close, her body to slump.

She was already leaning forward, losing consciousness, and all he had to do was reach over and ease her into the passenger seat. To the casual observer, it might even look like she got in of her own accord.

His heart was thumping but he reminded himself to stay calm. He had come this far.

He reached across the specimen, pulled the passenger door closed, and properly secured her seatbelt and then his own. Finally, he allowed himself one last slow deep breath in and out.

When he was sure the coast was clear, he edged out into the street.

Soon he merged with the mid-afternoon Southern California traffic, just another commuter blending in, trying to navigate his way in a sea of humanity.

CHAPTER ONE

Monday

Late Afternoon

Detective Keri Locke pleaded with herself not to do it this time. As the most junior detective in the West Los Angeles Pacific Division Missing Persons Unit, she was expected to work harder than anyone else in the division. And as a thirty-five-year-old woman who’d only joined the force four years ago, she often felt like she was supposed to be the hardest-working cop in the entire LAPD. She couldn’t afford to look like she was taking a break.

All around her, the department buzzed with activity. An elderly Hispanic woman was sitting at a nearby desk, giving a statement about a purse snatching. Down the hall, a carjacker was being booked. It was a typical afternoon in what had become her new normal of a life. And yet that recurring urge was eating at her, refusing to be ignored.

She gave in to it. She stood up and wandered over to the window that looked out on Culver Boulevard. She stood there and could nearly see her reflection. With the dancing glare from the afternoon sun, she looked part human, part ghost.

That was how she felt. She knew that objectively, she was an attractive woman. Five foot six and about 130 pounds – 133 if she was being honest – with dirty blonde hair and a figure that had escaped childbirth relatively unscathed, she still turned heads.

But if anyone looked closely, they’d see that her brown eyes were red and bleary, her forehead was a knotted mass of premature lines, and her skin often had the pallor of, well, a ghost.

Like most days, she was wearing a simple blouse tucked into black slacks and black flats that looked professional but were easy to run in. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. It was her unofficial uniform. Pretty much the only thing that changed daily was the color of the top she wore. It all reinforced her feeling that she was marking time more than really living.

Keri sensed movement out of the corner of her eye and snapped out of her reverie. They were coming.

Outside the window, Culver Boulevard was mostly devoid of people. There was a running and biking path across the street. On most days in the late afternoon, it was choked with foot traffic. But it was relentlessly hot today, with temperatures in the high nineties and no breeze at all, even here, less than five miles from the beach. Parents who normally walked their kids home from school took their air-conditioned cars today. Except for one.

At exactly 4:12, just like clockwork, a young girl on a bike, about seven or eight years old, pedaled slowly down the path. She wore a fancy white dress. Her youngish mom trailed behind her in jeans and a T-shirt, with a backpack slung casually over her shoulder.

Keri fought the anxiety bubbling in her stomach and looked around to see if anyone in the office was watching her. No one was. She allowed herself to give in to the itch she’d tried not to scratch all day and stared.

Keri watched them with jealous, adoring eyes. She still couldn’t believe it, even after so many times at this window. The girl was the spitting image of Evie, right down to the wavy blond hair, the green eyes, even the slightly crooked smile.

She stood there in a trance, staring out the window long after the mother and child had disappeared from sight.

When she finally snapped out of it and turned back to the bullpen, the elderly Hispanic woman was leaving. The carjacker had been processed. Some new miscreant, cuffed and surly, had slid into his spot at the booking window, an alert uniformed officer standing at his left elbow.

She glanced up at the digital clock on the wall above the coffee machine. It read 4:22.

Have I really been standing at that window for ten solid minutes? This is getting worse, not better.

She walked back to her desk with her head down, trying not to make eye contact with any curious co-workers. She sat and looked at the files on her desk. The Martine case was largely wrapped up, just waiting for a sign-off from the prosecutor before she could dump it in the “complete until trial” cabinet. The Sanders case was on hold until CSU came back with its preliminary report. Rampart division had asked Pacific to look into a prostitute named Roxie who had dropped off the radar; a co-worker had told them she’d started working the Westside and they were hoping someone in her unit could confirm that so they didn’t have to open a file.

The tricky thing with missing persons cases, at least for adults, was that it wasn’t a crime to disappear. Police had more leeway with minors, depending on the age. But in general, there was nothing to prevent people from simply dropping out of their lives. It happened more often than most people would expect. Without some evidence of foul play, law enforcement was limited in what they could legally do to investigate. Because of that, cases like Roxie’s often fell through the cracks in the system.

Sighing in resignation, Keri realized that barring something extraordinary, there was really no reason to stick around beyond five.

She closed her eyes and pictured herself, less than an hour from now, kicking back on her houseboat, Sea Cups, pouring herself three fingers – okay, four – of Glenlivet and settling in to an evening of leftover Chinese takeout and a few reruns of Scandal. If that personalized therapy didn’t pan out, she might end up back on Dr. Blanc’s couch, an unappealing alternative.

She had started to pack up her files for the day when Ray walked in and plopped himself in the chair across the large desk they shared. Ray was officially Detective Raymond “Big” Sands, her partner of nearly a year now and her friend for closer to seven.

He matched his nickname in every way. Ray (Keri never called him “Big” – he didn’t need the ego stroking) was a six-foot-four, 230-pound black guy with a shiny bald head, a chipped lower tooth, a meticulously trimmed goatee, and a penchant for wearing dress shirts a size too small for him, just to emphasize his build.

Forty years old now, Ray still resembled the bronze-medal-winning Olympic boxer he’d been at age twenty and the professional heavyweight contender, with a record of 28-2-1, he’d been until the age of twenty-eight. That was when a scrappy little southpaw five inches shorter than him took out his right eye with a vicious hook and brought everything to a screeching halt. He wore a patch for two years afterward, didn’t like the discomfort, and finally got a glass eye, which somehow worked for him.

Like Keri, Ray joined the Force later than most, when he was searching for a new purpose in his early thirties. He rose through the ranks quickly and was now the senior detective in Pacific Division’s Missing Persons Unit, or MPU.

“You look like a woman dreaming of waves and whiskey,” he said.

“Is it that obvious?” Keri asked.

“I’m a good detective. My powers of observation are unmatched. Also, you mentioned your exciting evening plans twice today already.”

“What can I say? I’m dogged in pursuit of my goals, Raymond.”

He smiled, his one good eye betraying a warmth his physical demeanor hid. Keri was the only one allowed to call him by his proper name. She liked to mix it up with other, less flattering, titles. He often did the same to her.

“Listen, Little Miss Sunshine, maybe you’d be better off spending the last few minutes of your shift checking in with CSU on the Sanders case instead of daydreaming about day drinking.”

“Day drinking?” she said, mock offended. “It’s not day drinking if I start after five, Gigantor.”

He was about to come back at her when the line rang. Keri picked up before Ray could say anything and stuck her tongue out at him playfully.

“Pacific Division Missing Persons. Detective Locke speaking.”

Ray got on the line as well but didn’t talk.

The woman on the phone sounded young, late twenties or early thirties. Before she even said why she was calling, Keri noted the worry in her voice.

“My name is Mia Penn. I live off Dell Avenue in the Venice Canals. I’m worried about my daughter, Ashley. She should have been home from school by three thirty. She knew I was taking her to a four forty-five dentist appointment. She texted me just before she left school at three but she’s not here and she’s not responding to any of my calls or texts. This isn’t like her at all. She’s very responsible.”

“Ms. Penn, does Ashley usually drive or walk home?” Keri asked.

“She walks. She’s only in tenth grade – she’s fifteen. She hasn’t even started Driver’s Ed yet.”

Keri looked at Ray. She knew what he was going to say and she couldn’t really argue the point. But something in Mia Penn’s tone got to her. She could tell the woman was barely holding it together. There was panic just below the surface. She wanted to ask him to dispense with protocol but couldn’t come up with a credible reason why.

“Ms. Penn, this is Detective Ray Sands. I’m conferencing in. I want you to take a deep breath and then tell me if your daughter’s ever been home late before.”

Mia Penn launched in, forgetting the deep breath part.

“Of course,” she admitted, trying to hide the exasperation in her voice. “Like I said, she’s fifteen. But she’s always texted or called if she wasn’t back within an hour or so. And never if we had plans.”

Ray responded without glancing at what he knew would be Keri’s disapproving glare.

“Ms. Penn, officially, your daughter is a minor and so typical missing person laws don’t apply as they would for an adult. We have broader authority to investigate. But speaking to you honestly, a teenage girl who isn’t responding to her mother’s texts and isn’t home less than two hours after school lets out – that’s not going to command the kind of immediate response you’re hoping for. At this point there’s not much we can do. In a situation like this, your best bet is to come down to the station and file a report. You should absolutely do that. There’s no harm in it and it could expedite things if we need to ramp up resources.”

There was a long pause before Mia Penn responded. Her voice had a sharp edge that wasn’t there before.

“How long do I have to wait before you ‘ramp up,’ Detective?” she demanded. “Is two more hours enough? Do I have to wait until it gets dark? Until she’s not home in the morning? I’ll bet that if I was – ”

Whatever Mia Penn was about to say, she stopped herself, as if she knew that anything else she added would be counterproductive. Ray was about to respond but Keri held up her hand and gave him her patented “let me handle this” look.

“Listen, Ms. Penn, this is Detective Locke again. You said you live in the Canals, right? That’s on my way home. Give me your e-mail address. I’ll send you the missing persons form. You can get started on it and I’ll stop by to help you finish it up and expedite getting it in the system. How does that sound?”

“It sounds good, Detective Locke. Thank you.”

“No problem. And hey, maybe Ashley will be home by the time I get there and I can give her a stern lecture on keeping her mom better informed – free of charge.”

Keri gathered her purse and keys, preparing to head to the Penn house.

Ray hadn’t said a word since they’d hung up. She knew he was silently seething but she refused to look up. If he caught her eye, then she’d be the one getting the lecture and she wasn’t in the mood.

But Ray apparently didn’t need to make eye contact to say his piece.

“The Canals are not on your way home.”

“They’re only a little out of my way,” she insisted, still not looking up. “So I’ll have to wait until six thirty to get back to the marina and Olivia Pope and associates. No big deal.”

Ray exhaled and leaned back in his chair.

“It is a big deal. Keri, you’ve been a detective here almost a year now. I like having you as my partner. And you’ve done some great work, even before you got your shield. The Gonzales case, for example. I don’t think I could have solved that one and I’ve been investigating these cases for a decade longer than you. You have a kind of sixth sense about these things. That’s why we used you as a resource in the old days. And it’s why you have the potential to be a truly great detective.”

“Thanks,” she said, though she knew he wasn’t finished.

“But you have one major weakness and it’s going to ruin you if you don’t get a handle on it. You have got to let the system work. It’s here for a reason. Seventy-five percent of our job will work itself out in the first twenty-four hours without our help. We need to let that happen and concentrate on the other twenty-five percent. If we don’t, we end up running ourselves ragged. We become unproductive, or worse – counterproductive. And then we’re betraying the people who really end up needing us. It’s part of our job to choose our battles.”

“Ray, I’m not ordering an Amber Alert or anything. I’m just helping a worried mother fill out some paperwork. And truly, it’s only fifteen minutes out of my way.”

“And…” he said expectantly.

“And there was something in her voice. She’s holding something back. I just want to talk to her face to face. It might be nothing. And if it is, I’ll leave.”

Ray shook his head and tried one more time.

“How many hours did you waste on that homeless kid in Palms you were certain had gone missing but hadn’t? Fifteen?”

Keri shrugged.

“Better safe than sorry,” she muttered under her breath.

“Better employed than discharged for inappropriate use of department resources,” he countered.

“It’s after five,” Keri said.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m off the clock. And that mother is waiting for me.”

“It would appear that you’re never off the clock. Call her back, Keri. Tell her to e-mail the forms back when she’s done. Tell her to call here if she has any questions. But go home.”

She’d been as patient as she could but as far as she was concerned, the conversation was over.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Clean,” she said, giving him a squeeze on the arm.

As she headed for the parking lot and her ten-year-old silver Toyota Prius, she tried to remember the quickest shortcut to the Venice Canals. She already felt an urgency she didn’t understand.

One she didn’t like.

CHAPTER TWO

Monday

Late Afternoon

Keri threaded the Prius through rush hour traffic to the western edge of Venice, driving faster than she meant to. Something was driving her, a gut feeling rising up, one she didn’t like.

The Canals were only a few blocks from tourist hot spots like the Boardwalk and Muscle Beach and it took ten minutes of driving up and down Pacific Avenue before she finally found a spot to park. She hopped out and let her phone direct her the rest of the way on foot.

The Venice Canals weren’t just a name for a neighborhood. They were a real series of man-made canals built in the early twentieth century, and modeled after the originals in Italy. They covered about ten square blocks just south of Venice Boulevard. A few of the homes that lined the waterways were modest, but most were extravagant in a beachy way. The lots were generally small but some of the homes were easily worth eight figures.

The one Keri arrived at was among the most impressive. It was three stories high, and only the top floor was visible due to the high stucco wall that surrounded it. She walked around from the back, which faced the canal, to the front door. As she did, she noticed multiple security cameras on the mansion walls and the house itself. Several of them seemed to be tracking her movements.

Why does a twenty-something mom with a teenage daughter live here? And why such heavy security?

She reached the wrought-iron gate in front and was surprised to find it open. She stepped through and was about to knock on the front door when it opened from the inside.

A woman stepped out to meet her, wearing frayed jeans and a white tank top, with long, thick brown hair and bare feet. As Keri suspected from hearing her on the phone, she couldn’t have been more than thirty. About Keri’s height and easily twenty pounds lighter, she was tanned and fit. And she was gorgeous, despite the anxious expression on her face.

Keri’s first thought was trophy wife.

“Mia Penn?” Keri asked.

“Yes. Please come in, Detective Locke. I’ve already filled out the forms you sent.”

Inside, the mansion opened into a commanding foyer, with two matching marble staircases leading to an upper level. There was almost enough room to play a Lakers game. The interior was immaculate, with art covering every wall and sculptures adorning carved wooden tables that looked like they might be art as well.

The whole place looked like it could be featured on a moment’s notice in Homes That Make You Question Your Self-Worth magazine. Keri recognized one prominently placed painting as a Delano, meaning that all by itself, it was worth more than the pathetic twenty-year-old houseboat she called home.

Mia Penn guided her to one of the more casual living rooms and offered her a seat and a bottled water. In the corner of the room, a thickly built man in slacks and a sport jacket leaned casually against the wall. He didn’t say anything but his eyes never left Keri. She noticed a small bulge on his right hip under the jacket.