A Trace of Death
Gun. Must be security.
Once Keri sat, her hostess didn’t waste any time.
“Ashley’s still not answering my calls or texts. She hasn’t tweeted since school let out. No new Facebook posts. Nothing on Instagram.” She exhaled and added, “Thanks for coming. I can’t even begin to tell you how much this means to me.”
Keri nodded slowly, studying Mia Penn, trying to get a sense of her. Just as on the phone, the barely concealed panic felt real.
She seems to genuinely fear for her daughter. But she’s holding something back.
“You’re younger than I expected,” Keri finally said.
“I’m thirty. I had Ashley when I was fifteen.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what everyone says. I feel like because we’re so close in age, we have this connection. I swear sometimes I know what she’s feeling even before I see her. I know it sounds ridiculous but we have this bond. And I know it’s not evidence but I can feel that something’s wrong.”
“Let’s not panic quite yet,” Keri said.
They went over the facts.
The last time Mia saw Ashley was that morning. Everything was fine. She had yogurt with granola and sliced strawberries for breakfast. She’d left for school in a good mood.
Ashley’s best friend was Thelma Gray. Mia called her when Ashley didn’t show up after school. According to Thelma, Ashley was in third-period geometry like she was supposed to be and everything seemed normal. The last time she saw Ashley was in the hall around 2 PM. She had no idea why Ashley didn’t make it home.
Mia had also spoken to Ashley’s boyfriend, a jock-type named Denton Rivers. He said he saw Ashley in school in the morning but that was it. He texted her a few times after school but she never answered.
Ashley didn’t take any medications; she had no physical ailments to speak of. Mia said she’d gone through Ashley’s room earlier in the afternoon and everything was normal.
Keri scribbled it all down on a little pad, making specific note of names she’d follow up with later.
“My husband should be home from the office any minute. I know he wants to speak with you as well.”
Keri looked up from her pad. Something in Mia’s voice had changed. It sounded more guarded, cautious.
Whatever she’s hiding, I bet it’s related to this.
“And what’s your husband’s name?” she asked, trying to keep it light.
“His name’s Stafford.”
“Wait a minute,” Keri said. “Your husband is Stafford Penn, as in United States Senator Stafford Penn?”
“Yes.”
“That’s kind of important information, Mrs. Penn. Why didn’t you mention it before?”
“Stafford asked me not to,” she said apologetically.
“Why?”
“He said he’d like to address that with you when he arrived.”
“When did you say he’d be here again?”
“Less than ten minutes, for sure.”
Keri looked at her hard, trying to decide whether to push. Ultimately, she chose to hold off for now.
“Do you have a picture of Ashley?”
Mia Penn handed over her phone. The background photo was of a teenage girl in a sundress. She looked like Mia’s younger sister. Other than Ashley having blonde hair, they were hard to tell apart. Ashley was slightly taller, with a more athletic frame and a deeper tan. The dress couldn’t hide her muscular legs and powerful shoulders. Keri suspected she was a regular surfer.
“Could she just have forgotten about the appointment and be out catching waves?” Keri asked.
Mia smiled for the first time since Keri met her.
“I’m impressed, Detective. You made that guess based on one picture? No, Ashley likes to surf in the mornings – better swells and fewer troublemakers. I checked the garage just in case. Her board’s in there.”
“Can you send me that photo as well as a few close-ups with and without makeup?”
While Mia did that, Keri asked another question.
“Where does she go to school?”
“West Venice High.”
Keri couldn’t hide her surprise. She knew the place well. It was a large public high school, a melting pot of thousands of kids, with everything that entailed. She had arrested many a student who attended West Venice.
Why the hell is the wealthy daughter of a US senator going there instead of a fancy private school?
Mia must have read the surprise on Keri’s face.
“Stafford’s never liked it. He’s always wanted her in private schools, on track to Harvard, where he went. But it wasn’t just for better academics. He also wanted better security,” she said. “I’ve always wanted her in public schools, to be in the mix of real kids where she could learn about real life. It’s one of the few battles I’ve actually won with him. If Ashley ends up hurt because of something at school, it will be my fault.”
Keri wanted to nip that kind of thinking in the bud fast.
“One – Ashley is going to be fine. Two – if anything were to happen to her it would the fault of the person who hurt her, not the mother who loves her.”
Keri watched to see if Mia Penn bought it but she couldn’t tell. The truth was, her reassurance was intended to keep a valuable resource from falling apart more than to buck her up. She decided to press on.
“Let’s talk about that for a second. Is there anyone who would want to hurt her, or you or Stafford, for that matter?”
“Ashley, no; me, no; Stafford, nothing specific that I’m aware of, other than what comes with the territory of doing what he does. I mean he gets death threats from constituents who claim to be aliens. So it’s hard to know what to take seriously. “
“And no one’s called demanding ransom, right?”
The sudden stress on the woman’s face was palpable.
“Is that what you think this is?”
“No, no, no, I’m just covering the bases. I don’t think it’s anything yet. These are all just routine questions.”
“No. There have been no ransom demands.”
“You obviously have some money – ”
Mia nodded.
“I come from a very wealthy family. But no one really knows that. Everyone assumes our money comes from Stafford.”
“Out of curiosity, how much are we talking about, exactly?” Keri asked. Sometimes this job made discretion impossible.
“Exactly? I don’t know – we have a beachfront house in Miami and a condo in San Francisco, both owned under company names. We’re active in the market and have lots of other assets. You’ve seen all the art in the house. Altogether we’re probably talking about fifty-five to sixty million.”
“Does Ashley know?”
The woman shrugged.
“To a point – she doesn’t know the exact figures but she knows there’s a lot of it and that the public isn’t supposed to know about all of it. Stafford likes to project a ‘man of the people’ persona.”
“Would she talk about it? Just to her friends, maybe?”
“No. She’s under strict instructions not to.” The woman exhaled and said, “God, I’m really shooting my mouth off. Stafford would be livid.”
“Do you two get along?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How about Ashley? Do you get along with her?”
“There’s no one in the world I’m closer to.”
“Okay. Does Stafford get along with her?”
“They get along fine.”
“Is there any reason she’d run away from home?”
“No. Not even close. That’s not what’s going on here.”
“How’s her mood been lately?”
“It’s been good. She’s happy, stable, all of it.”
“No boy trouble – ”
“No.”
“Drugs or alcohol?”
“I can’t say never. But in general, she’s a responsible young lady. This summer she trained as a junior lifeguard. She had to be up at five in the morning every day for that. She’s not a flake. Besides, she hasn’t even had time to get bored yet. This is her second week back to school.”
“Any drama there?”
“No. She likes her teachers. She gets along with all the kids. She’ll be going out for the girls’ basketball team.”
Keri locked eyes with the woman and asked, “So what do you think is going on?”
Confusion washed over the woman’s face. Her lips trembled.
“I don’t know.” She turned her eyes to the front door, then back, and said, “I just want her to come home. Where the hell is Stafford?”
As if on cue, a man appeared from around a corner. It was Senator Stafford Penn. Keri had seen him dozens of times on TV. But in person, he gave off a vibe that didn’t come through onscreen. About forty-five, he was muscular and tall, easily six foot two, with blond hair like Ashley’s, a chiseled jaw, and piercing green eyes. He had a magnetism that seemed to almost vibrate. Keri gulped hard as he extended his hand to shake hers.
“Stafford Penn,” he said, although he could tell she already knew that.
Keri smiled.
“Keri Locke,” she said. “LAPD Missing Persons Unit, Pacific Division.”
Stafford gave his wife a quick peck on the cheek and sat down beside her. He didn’t waste any time with pleasantries.
“We appreciate your coming down. But personally, I think we can let it rest until the morning.”
Mia looked at him in disbelief.
“Stafford – ”
“Kids break away from their parents,” he continued. “They wean themselves. It’s part of growing up. Hell, if she was a boy, we would have been dealing with days like this two or three years ago. That’s why I asked Mia to be discreet when she called you. I doubt this is the last time we’ll be dealing with this kind of thing and I don’t want to be accused of crying wolf.”
Keri asked, “So you don’t think anything’s wrong?”
He shook his head.
“No. I think she’s a teenager doing what teenagers do. To be honest, I’m sort of glad this day has come. It shows she’s getting more independent. Mark my words, she’ll show up tonight. Worst case, tomorrow morning, probably with a hangover.”
Mia stared at him incredulously.
“First of all,” she said, “it’s a Monday afternoon during the school year, not Spring Break in Daytona. And second, she wouldn’t do that.”
Stafford shook his head.
“We all get a little crazy sometimes, Mia,” he said. “Hell, when I turned fifteen, I drank ten beers in a couple of hours. I was literally heaving my guts out for three days. I remember my dad got a good chuckle out of that. I think he was pretty proud of me, actually.”
Keri nodded, pretending that was completely normal. No point in alienating a US senator if she could avoid it.
“Thanks, Senator. You’re probably right. But as long as I’m here, would you mind if I took a quick peek in Ashley’s room?”
He shrugged and pointed to the staircase.
“Go for it.”
Upstairs, at the end of the hall, Keri entered Ashley’s room and closed the door. The decor was about what she expected – a fancy bed, matching dressers, posters of Adele and one-armed surfing legend Bethany Hamilton. She had a retro lava lamp on the bedside table. Resting on one of her pillows was a stuffed animal. It was so old and tattered that Keri couldn’t tell if it was a dog or a sheep.
She fired up the Mac laptop on Ashley’s desk and was surprised to find it wasn’t password protected.
What teenager leaves her unprotected laptop sitting out on her desk for any nosy adult to check?
The Internet history showed searches for only the last two days; the priors had been cleared. What was left mostly appeared to relate to a biology paper she was researching. There were also a few visits to websites for local modeling agencies, as well as a few in New York and Las Vegas. Another was to the site for an upcoming surfing tournament in Malibu. She had also gone to the site of a local band called Rave.
Either this girl is the most boring goody two-shoes of all time or she’s leaving this stuff out on purpose to present an image she wants her folks to buy.
Keri’s instinct told her it was the latter.
She sat down at the foot of Ashley’s bed and closed her eyes, trying to channel the mindset of a fifteen-year-old girl. She’d been one once. She still hoped to have one of her own. After two minutes, she opened her eyes and tried to look at the room fresh. She scanned the shelves, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
She was about to give up when her gaze fell on a math book at the end of Ashley’s bookshelf. It read Algebra for 9th Grade.
Didn’t Mia say Ashley was in tenth grade? Her friend Thelma saw her in geometry class. So why is she holding on to an old textbook? Just in case she needs a refresher?
Keri grabbed the book, opened it, and began paging through it. Two-thirds of the way through, easy to miss, she found two pages carefully taped together. There was something hard in between them.
Keri sliced open part of the tape and something fell out onto the floor. She picked it up. It was an extremely authentic-looking fake driver’s license with Ashley’s face on it. The name on it was Ashlynn Penner. The date of birth indicated she was twenty-two.
More confident that she was now on the right track, Keri moved quickly through the room. She didn’t know how long she had before the Penns got suspicious. After five minutes, she found something else. Tucked in a tennis shoe in the back of the closet was a spent 9mm casing.
She got out an evidence bag, pocketed it along with the fake ID, and left the room. Mia Penn was walking down the hall toward her as she closed the door. Keri could tell something had happened.
“I just got a call from Ashley’s friend Thelma. She’s been talking to people about Ashley not making it home. She says another friend named Miranda Sanchez saw Ashley get into a black van on Main Street next to a dog park near the school. She said she couldn’t be sure if Ashley got in on her own or if she was pulled in. It didn’t seem that weird to her until she heard Ashley was missing.”
Kerry kept her expression neutral despite the sudden increase in her blood pressure.
“Do you know anyone who has a black van?”
“No one.”
Keri started briskly down the hall toward the stairs. Mia Penn tried desperately to keep up.
“Mia, I need you to call the detectives’ line at the station – the one you reached me on. Tell whoever picks up – it’ll probably be a guy named Suarez – that I said to call. Give him Ashley’s physical description and what she was wearing. Also give him the names and contact information for everyone you mentioned to me: Thelma, Miranda, the boyfriend Denton Rivers, all of them. Then tell him to call me.”
“Why do you need all that info?”
“We’re going to have them all interviewed.”
“You’re starting to freak me out. This is bad, isn’t it?” Mia demanded.
“Probably not. But better safe than sorry.”
“What can I do?”
“I need you to stay here in case Ashley calls or shows up.”
They got downstairs. Keri looked around.
“Where’s your husband?”
“He got called back into work.”
Keri bit her tongue and headed for the front door.
“Where are you going?” Mia shouted after her.
Over her shoulder Keri called back:
“I’m going to find your daughter.”
CHAPTER THREE
Monday
Early Evening
Outside, as she hurried back to the car, Keri tried to ignore the heat reflecting off the sidewalk. Beads of sweat formed on her brow after only a minute. As she dialed Ray’s number, she cursed quietly to herself.
I’m frickin’ six blocks from the Pacific Ocean in mid-September. When is this going to let up?
After seven rings, Ray finally picked up.
“What?” he demanded, sounding winded and annoyed.
“I need you to meet me on Main, across from West Venice High.”
“When?”
“Now, Raymond.”
“Hold on a second.” She could hear him moving around and muttering under his breath. It didn’t sound like he was alone. When he got back on the line, she could tell he’d changed rooms.
“I was kind of otherwise engaged, Keri.”
“Well, disengage yourself, Detective. We’ve got a case.”
“Is this that Venice thing?” he asked, clearly exasperated.
“It is. And could you please cut it with the tone. That is, unless you think the daughter of a US senator disappearing into a black van isn’t worth checking out.”
“Jesus. Why didn’t the mother mention the senator thing on the phone?”
“Because he asked her not to. He was as dismissive as you, maybe even more so. Hold on a second.”
Keri had reached her car. She put the phone on speaker, tossed it in the passenger seat, and got in. As she pulled out onto the street, she filled him in on the rest – the fake ID, the shell casing, the girl who saw Ashley getting in the van – possibly against her will – the plan to coordinate interviews. As she was finishing up, her phone beeped and she looked at the screen.
“That’s Suarez calling in. I want to fill him in on the details. We good? You disengaged yet?”
“I’m getting in the car now,” he answered, not taking the bait. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“I hope you offered her my apologies, whoever she was,” Keri said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
“She wasn’t the kind of girl who needs apologies,” Ray replied.
“Why am I not surprised?”
She switched calls without saying goodbye.
*Fifteen minutes later, Keri and Ray walked the stretch of Main Street where Ashley Penn may or may not have been abducted. There was nothing obviously out of the ordinary. The dog park next to the street was alive with happy yips and owners shouting out to pets with names like Hoover, Speck, Conrad, and Delilah.
Rich bohemian dog owners. Ah, Venice.
Keri tried to force the extraneous thoughts out of her head and focus. There didn’t seem to be much to go on. Ray clearly felt the same way.
“Is it possible she just took off or ran away?’ he mused.
“I’m not ruling it out,” Keri replied. “She’s definitely not the innocent little princess her mom thinks she is.”
“They never are.”
“Whatever happened to her, it’s possible she played a role in it. The more we can get into her life, the more we’ll know. We need to talk to some people who won’t give us the official line. Like that senator – I don’t know what’s going on with him. But he definitely wasn’t comfortable with me probing into their life.”
“Got any idea why?”
“Not yet, other than a gut feeling that there’s something he’s hiding. I’ve never met a parent so blasé about their missing child. He was telling stories about pounding beers at fifteen. He was trying too hard.”
Ray winced visibly.
“I’m glad you didn’t call him on it,” he said. “The last thing you need is an enemy who has the word Senator in front of his name.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, you should,” he said. “A few words from him to Beecher or Hillman, and you’re history.”
“I was history five years ago.”
“Come on – ”
“You know it’s true.”
“Don’t go there,” Ray said.
Keri hesitated, glanced at him, then turned her gaze back to the dog park. A few feet from them, a little brown-furred puppy was happily rolling on its back in the dirt.
“Want to know something I never told you?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“After, what happened, you know – ”
“Evie?”
Keri felt her heart clench at her daughter’s name.
“Right. There was a time right after it happened, when I was trying to get pregnant like crazy. It went on for two or three months. Stephen couldn’t keep up.”
Ray said nothing. She continued.
“Then I woke up one morning and hated myself. I felt like someone who’d lost a dog and went straight to the pound to get a replacement. I felt like a coward, like I was being all about me, instead of keeping the focus where it belonged. I was letting Evie go instead of fighting for her.”
“Keri, you got to stop doing this to yourself. You’re your own worst enemy, you really are.”
“Ray, I can still feel her. She’s alive. I don’t know where or how, but she is.”
He squeezed her hand.
“I know.”
“She’s thirteen now.”
“I know.”
They walked the rest of the block in silence. When they got to the intersection at Westminster Avenue, Ray finally spoke.
“Listen,” he said in a tone that indicated he was focusing on the case again, “we can follow every lead that turns up. But this is a senator’s daughter. And if she didn’t just go for some joyride, the claws are going to come out on this one. Sometime soon, the Feds are going to get involved. The brass downtown are going to want in too. By nine tomorrow morning, you and I will be kicked to the curb.”
It was probably true but Keri didn’t care. She’d deal with the morning in the morning. Right now they had a case to work.
She sighed deeply and closed her eyes. After partnering with her for a year, Ray had finally learned not to interrupt her when she was trying to get in the zone.
After about thirty seconds she opened her eyes and looked around. After a moment, she pointed to a business across the intersection.
“Over there,” she said and started walking.
This stretch of Venice north of Washington Boulevard up to about Rose Avenue was a weird crossroads of humanity. There were the mansions of the Venice Canals to the south, the fancy shops of Abbot Kinney Boulevard directly east, the commercial sector to the north, and the grungy surf and skate section along the beach.
But throughout the entire area were gangs. They were more prominent at night, especially closer to the coast. But LAPD Pacific Division was tracking fourteen active gangs in greater Venice, at least five of which considered the spot Keri was standing on as part of their territory. There was one black gang, two Hispanic ones, a white power motorcycle gang, and a gang comprised primarily of drug- and gun-dealing surfers. All of them existed uneasily on the same streets as millennial bar-goers, hookers, wide-eyed tourists, homeless vets, and long-time granola-chomping, tie-dyed T-shirt–wearing residents.
As a result, business in the area comprised everything from hipster speakeasies to henna tattoo parlors to medicinal marijuana dispensaries to the place Keri stood in front of now, a bail bondsman’s office.
It was on the second story of a recently restored building, just above a pressed juice bar.
“Check it out,” she said. Above the front door, the sign read Briggs Bail Bonds.
“What about it?” Ray said.
“Look right above the sign, above ‘Bail.’”
Ray did, confused at first, then squinted his one good eye to see a very small security camera. He looked in the direction the camera was pointing. It was trained on the intersection. Beyond that was the stretch of Main Street near the dog park, where Ashley had allegedly entered the van.
“Good catch,” he said.
Keri stepped back and studied the area. It was probably busier now than it had been a few hours ago. But this wasn’t exactly a quiet area.
“If you were going to abduct someone, is this where you’d do it?”
Ray shook his head.
“Me? No, I’m more of an alley guy.”
“So what kind of person is so brazen as to snatch someone in broad daylight near a busy intersection?”
“Let’s find out,” Ray said, heading for the door.
They walked up the narrow stairwell to the second floor. The Briggs Bail Bonds door was propped open. Immediately inside that door to the right, a large man with an even larger gut was settled into a recliner, perusing Guns & Ammo magazine.
He looked up when Keri and Ray walked in, made the snap decision that they weren’t a threat, and nodded to the back of the room. A long-haired man with a scruffy beard sitting at a desk waved them over. Keri and Ray sat in the chairs in front of the man’s desk and waited patiently as he worked the phone with a client. The issue wasn’t the ten percent cash down, it was the collateral for the full amount. He needed a deed of trust on a house, or possession of a car with a clean title, something like that.
Keri could hear the person on the other end of the line pleading but the long-haired guy wasn’t moved.
Thirty seconds later he hung up and focused on the two people in front of him.
“Stu Briggs,” he said, “what can I do for you, Detectives?”
Nobody had flashed a badge. Keri was impressed.
Before they could answer he looked more closely at Ray, then nearly shouted.
“Ray Sands – The Sandman! I actually saw your last fight, the one with the southpaw; what was his name?”
“Lenny Jack.”
“Right, right, yeah, that’s it, Lenny Jack – the Jack Attack. He was missing a finger or something, wasn’t he? A pinky?”
“That was after.”