Keri Locke 02-A Trace of Muder Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  Keri stood frozen in place. She was consumed by a flood of conflicting emotions. Technically, this was good news. It looked like she was being put back on field duty a day early, a sign that Hillman, despite his issues with her, felt she was ready to resume her normal responsibilities. But part of her just wanted to ignore him and go straight to the warehouse this second.

  “Today, please,” Hillman called out, snapping her out of her momentary indecision.

  “Coming, sir,” she said. Then turning to Castillo with a little half-smile, she added, “To be continued.”

  When she stepped into Hillman’s office, she noticed that his typically wrinkled brow was even more scrunched up than usual. Every one of his fifty years was visible on his face. His salt and pepper hair was mussed as usual. Keri could never tell if he didn’t notice or just didn’t care. He wore a jacket but his tie was loose and his ill-fitting shirt couldn’t hide his slight paunch.

  Sitting on the old, beat-up loveseat against the far wall was Detective Frank Brody. Brody was fifty-nine years old and less than six months from retirement. Everything about his demeanor reflected that, from his barely competent attempts at politeness to his disheveled, ketchup-stained dress shirt, nearly bursting at the buttons against his formidable girth, to his loafers, which were splitting at the seams and looked like they might fall apart at any moment.

  Brody had never struck Keri as the most dedicated and hard-working of detectives, and recently he seemed more interested in his precious Cadillac than in solving cases. He usually worked Robbery-Homicide but had been reassigned to Missing Persons with the unit short-handed because of Keri’s and Ray’s injuries.

  The move had put him in a permanently foul mood, which was only reinforced by disdain at potentially having to work with a woman. He was truly a man of a different generation. She’d actually once overheard him say, “I’d rather work with bricks and turds than chicks and birds.” The feeling, though maybe stated in a slightly different way, was mutual.

  Hillman motioned for Keri to sit in the metal folding chair across from his desk, then took the caller off mute and spoke.

  “Dr. Burlingame, I’m here with the two detectives I’m going to be sending to meet with you. On the line are Detectives Frank Brody and Keri Locke. Detectives, I’m speaking to Dr. Jeremy Burlingame. He’s concerned about his wife, whom he hasn’t been able to reach for more than twenty-four hours. Doctor, can you please repeat what you told me?”

  Keri pulled out her notebook and pen to take notes. She was immediately suspicious. In any case of a missing wife, the first suspect was always the husband and she wanted to hear the timbre of his voice the first time he spoke.

  “Of course,” the doctor said. “I drove to San Diego yesterday morning to help perform a surgery. The last time I spoke to Kendra was before I left. I got home very late last night and ended up sleeping in a guest room so as not to wake her up. This morning I slept in since I didn’t have any patients to see.”

  Keri wasn’t sure if Hillman was recording the conversation so she scribbled furiously, trying to keep up as Dr. Burlingame continued.

  “When I went into the bedroom, she was gone. The bed was made. I assumed she’d just left the house before I got up so I texted her. I didn’t hear back—again, not that unusual. We live in Beverly Hills and my wife attends a lot of local charity functions and events and she typically silences her phone for them. Sometimes she forgets to turn the volume back on.”

  Keri wrote everything down, evaluating the veracity of each comment. So far nothing she’d heard sounded warning bells but that didn’t mean much. Anyone could hold it together on the phone. She wanted to see his demeanor when confronted in person by LAPD detectives.

  “I went to work and called her again on the way in—still no answer,” he continued. “Around lunchtime I started to get worried. None of her friends had heard from her. I called our maid, Lupe, who said that she hadn’t seen Kendra today or yesterday. That’s when I really started to worry. So I called nine-one-one.”

  Frank Brody leaned in and Keri could tell he was going to interrupt. She wished he wouldn’t but there was nothing she could do to stop him. She typically preferred to let an interviewee go on as much as they liked. Sometimes they got comfortable and made mistakes. But apparently Brody didn’t share her philosophy.

  “Dr. Burlingame, why didn’t your call get routed to the Beverly Hills Police Department?” he asked. His gruff tone carried no sense of sympathy. It sounded to Keri like he was wondering how he’d gotten stuck with the case.

  “I guess because I’m calling you from my office, which is in Marina del Rey. Does it really matter?” he asked. He sounded lost.

  “No, of course not,” Hillman assured him. “We’re happy to help. And our missing persons unit would likely have been called in by BHPD anyway. Why don’t you return to your house and my detectives will meet you there around one thirty. I have your home address.”

  “Okay,” Burlingame said. “I’m leaving now.”

  After he hung up, Hillman looked at his two detectives.

  “Initial thoughts?” he asked.

  “She probably just ran off to Cabo with some of her girlfriends and forgot to tell him,” Brody said without hesitation. “That or he killed her. After all, it’s almost always the husband.”

  Hillman looked at Keri. She thought for a second before speaking. Something about applying the usual rules to this guy didn’t feel right, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.

  “I’m tempted to agree,” she finally said. “But I want to look this guy in the face before I draw any conclusions.”

  “Well, you’re about to get your chance,” Hillman said. “Frank, you can head out. I need to talk to Locke for a minute.”

  Brody gave her a malicious smile as he left, like she’d gotten detention and he’d somehow escaped it. Hillman closed the door behind him.

  Keri braced herself, certain that whatever was coming couldn’t be good.

  “You can head out in a second,” he said, his tone softer than she’d anticipated. “But I wanted to remind you of a few things before you go. First, I think you know I wasn’t very happy about your stunt at the press conference. You put your own needs ahead of the department. You get that, right?”

  Keri nodded.

  “That said,” he continued, “I’d like for us to get a fresh start. I know you were in a bad way at that moment and saw this as a chance to shine a light on your daughter’s disappearance. I can respect that.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Keri said, slightly relieved but suspicious that a hammer was yet to drop.

  “Still,” he added, “just because the press loves you doesn’t mean I won’t kick you out on your ass if you pull any of your typical lone wolf shit. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Lastly, please take it easy. You’re less than a week out of the hospital. Don’t do anything to put yourself back in there, okay? Dismissed.”

  Keri left his office, mildly surprised. She’d been expecting a dressing down. But she hadn’t been prepared for the slight hint of concern for her well-being.

  She looked around for Brody before realizing he must have already left. Apparently he didn’t even want to share a car with a female detective. Normally she’d be annoyed but today it was a blessing in disguise.

  As she headed for her car, she stifled a smile.

  I’m back on field duty!

  It wasn’t until she’d been assigned a new case that she realized just how much she’d missed it. The familiar excitement and anticipation started to take hold and even the pain in her ribs seemed to dissipate slightly. The truth was that unless she was solving cases, Keri felt like a piece of her was missing.

  She also couldn’t help but grin about something else—she was already planning to violate two of Hillman’s orders. She was about go lone wolf and not take it easy at the same time.

  Because she was making a pit stop o
n her way to the doctor’s house.

  She was going to check out that abandoned warehouse.

  CHAPTER THREE

  With her siren on top of her battered Prius, Keri weaved in and out of traffic, her fingers gripped tight on the wheel, her adrenaline rising. The Palms warehouse was on the way to Beverly Hills, more or less. That was how Keri justified prioritizing the search for her daughter, missing five years ago last week, over the hunt for a woman who’d been gone less than a day.

  But she had to get there quick. Brody had a head start in getting to Burlingame’s house so she could get there after him. But if she showed up too much later, Brody was sure to rat her out to Hillman.

  He’d use any excuse he could to avoid working with her. And telling the boss she’d delayed an investigation by arriving late to a witness interview was right up his alley. That left her only a few minutes to check out the warehouse.

  She parked on the street and headed for the main gate. The warehouse was in between a self-storage place and a U-Haul rental outlet. The hum of the generating station across the street was disturbingly loud. Keri wondered if she was risking cancer just standing there.

  The warehouse was surrounded by cheap fencing designed to keep vagrants and druggies out, but it wasn’t hard for Keri to slide through the gap between the poorly locked gates. As she approached the front door of the complex, she noticed the sign for the place lying on the ground, covered in dust. It read Priceless Item Preservation.

  There was nothing priceless inside the empty, cavernous warehouse. In fact, there was nothing inside at all other than a few turned over metal folding chairs and some mounds of crumbled drywall. The whole place had been cleared out. Keri walked the entire complex, looking for any clue that might relate to Evie, but couldn’t find anything.

  She knelt down, hoping that a different perspective might offer something fresh. Nothing jumped out at her, although there was something slightly odd at the far end of the warehouse. One metal folding chair was sitting upright with a pile of drywall debris resting on the seat, delicately balanced over a foot high. It seemed unlikely that it would have gotten that way without help.

  Keri walked over and looked more closely. She felt like she was searching for connections where there were none. Still, she moved the chair aside, ignoring the drywall that teetered briefly before tumbling to the floor.

  She was surprised by the sound when it hit the concrete. Instead of the expected thud, there was a hollow echo. Feeling her heart suddenly begin to beat faster, Keri kicked the debris away and stomped on the spot where it had fallen—another hollow echoing sound. She ran her hand along the floor and discovered that the spot that had been under the metal folding chair was not actually concrete but wood painted gray to blend in with the rest of the flooring.

  Trying to control her breathing, she searched the wooden piece with her fingers until she felt a small raised bump. She pushed in on it, heard the sound of a latch opening, and felt one end of the wood piece pop up. She reached under and pulled the square chunk of wood, about the size of a manhole cover, from its grooved slot.

  Below it was a space about ten inches deep. There was nothing inside. No papers, no equipment. It was too small to hold a person. At most, it could maybe have housed a small safe.

  Keri felt around the edges for another hidden button but found nothing else. She wasn’t sure what could have been here before but it was gone now. She sat down on the hard concrete next to the hole, not sure what to do next.

  She looked at her watch. It was 1:15. She was supposed to be in Beverly Hills in fifteen minutes. Even if she left now, it would still be close. Frustrated and annoyed, she quickly put the wooden cover back in place, slid the chair back where it had been, and left the building, glancing at the sign on the ground once more.

  Priceless Item Preservation. Is the name of the business some kind of clue or am I just being punked by some cruel asshole? Is someone telling me what I have to do to preserve Evie, my most precious item?

  The last thought sent a wave of anxiety through Keri. She felt her knees buckle and dropped to the ground awkwardly, trying to prevent any further damage to her left arm, which was nestled uselessly in the sling across her chest. She used her right hand to stop herself from completely collapsing.

  Bent over, with a cloud of dust rising around her, Keri closed her eyes tight and tried to force away the dark thoughts closing in on her. A brief vision of her little Evie forced itself into her brain.

  She was still eight in the vision, her blonde pigtails bouncing on her head, her face white with terror. She was being tossed inside a white van by a blond man with a tattoo on the right side of his neck. Keri heard the thud as her tiny body slammed against the wall of the van. She saw the blond man stab a teenage boy who tried to stop him. She saw the van pull out and tear off down the road, leaving her far behind as she chased after it with bloodied, bare feet.

  It was all still so vivid. Keri choked back tears as she pushed the memory away, trying to force herself back into the present. After a few moments she got control again. She took a few long, slow breaths. Her vision cleared and she felt strong enough to push herself upright.

  This was the first flashback she’d had in weeks, since before the confrontation with Pachanga. Part of her had hoped they were gone for good—no such luck.

  She felt the ache in her collarbone from the jarring when she’d reached out to brace herself as she fell. In frustration, she pulled off the sling. It was more of a hindrance than a help at this point. Besides, she didn’t want to look weak in any way when she met with Dr. Burlingame.

  The interview with Burlingame—I’ve got to go!

  She managed to stumble back to her car and pull out into traffic, this time without the siren. She needed quiet for the call she was about to make.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Keri felt a nervous pit in her stomach as she punched in the number of Ray’s hospital room and waited while it rang. Officially, there was no reason for her to feel nervous. After all, Ray Sands was her friend and her partner in the Missing Persons Unit of LAPD’s Pacific Division.

  As the phone continued to ring, her mind drifted back to the time before they were partners, when she was a professor of criminology at Loyola Marymount University and served as a consultant for the department, helping him out on a few cases. They had hit it off immediately and he’d returned the professional favor by occasionally speaking to her classes.

  After Evelyn was taken, Keri tumbled down a black hole of despair. Her marriage fell apart, and she took to drinking heavily and sleeping with multiple students at the university. Eventually she was fired.

  It was soon thereafter, when she was nearly broke, drunk, and living on a decrepit old houseboat in the marina that he came by again. He convinced her to enroll in the police academy as he had done when his life had fallen apart. Ray had offered her a lifeline, a way to reconnect with the world and find meaning in her life. She took it.

  After graduating and serving as a uniformed officer, she was promoted to detective, and she asked to be assigned to Pacific Division, which covered much of West Los Angeles. It was where she lived and the area she knew best. It was also Ray’s division. He requested her as a partner and they’d been working together for a year when the Pachanga case put them both in the hospital.

  But it wasn’t the status of Ray’s recovery that had Keri feeling nervous. It was the status of their relationship. Something more than friendship had developed in the last year, as they worked so closely together. They both felt it but neither was willing to acknowledge it out loud. Keri felt pangs of jealousy when she called Ray’s apartment and a woman answered. He was a notorious and unrepentant ladies’ man so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her, but the feeling of envy was still there, despite her best efforts.

  And she knew he felt the same way. She’d seen his eyes flash when they were on a case and a witness came on to her. She could almost feel him tense up beside her.


  Even with him so close to death after getting shot, neither of them had been willing to address the issue. Part of Keri thought it was inappropriate to focus on such trivialities when he was recovering from life-threatening injuries. But another part of her was simply terrified of what would happen if things were out in the open.

  So they both ignored it. And because neither was used to hiding things from the other, it had gotten awkward. As Keri listened to the ringing phone in Ray’s hospital room, she half hoped he’d pick up and half hoped he wouldn’t. She needed to talk to him about the anonymous call and what she’d discovered at the warehouse. But she didn’t know how to start the conversation.

  It ended up not mattering. After ten rings, she hung up. There was no voicemail on the hospital phone, which meant Ray likely wasn’t in bed. She decided not to try his cell. He was probably in the bathroom or at a physical therapy session. She knew he’d been itching to get moving again and had finally gotten the go-ahead to start two days ago. Ray was a former professional boxer and Keri was certain he’d spend every available moment working to get back in fighting, or at least working, shape.

  Unable to bounce her thoughts off her partner, Keri tried to force the warehouse trip out of her head and focus on the case at hand—missing person Kendra Burlingame.

  With one eye on the road and the other on her phone’s GPS, Keri quickly wound her way through the twisty Beverly Hills streets up into the secluded part of the community above the city. The higher into the hills she got, the more winding the roads were and the further back the homes got from the street. Along the way, she reviewed what she knew about the case so far. It wasn’t much.

  Jeremy Burlingame, despite his profession and where he lived, liked to keep a low profile. It took some quick digging by co-workers back at the station to learn the forty-one-year-old was a renowned plastic surgeon known both for doing cosmetic work on celebrities and for offering pro-bono surgery to children with facial deformities.