A Trace of Hope Page 5

  “So you developed a conscience?” Keri asked through gritted teeth. She was disgusted but she wanted answers and worried that being too overt with that disgust might shut Anderson down. He seemed to sense how she felt but proceeded anyway.

  “Not yet. That’s not what did it for me. It happened much later. I saw this story on the local news about a year and a half ago about a female detective and her partner who rescued this little girl who was kidnapped by her babysitter’s boyfriend, a real creep.”

  “Carlo Junta,” Keri said automatically.

  “Right. Anyway, in the story, they mentioned that this detective was the same woman who had joined the police academy a few years earlier. And they showed a clip from an interview after her academy graduation. She said she’d joined the force because her daughter was abducted. She said that even though she couldn’t save her own daughter, maybe by being a cop, she could help save some other family’s daughter. Does that sound familiar?”

  “Yes,” Keri said softly.

  “So,” Anderson continued, “because I worked in a library and had access to all kinds of old news footage, I went back and found the story from when this lady’s daughter was abducted and her news conference right afterward when she pleaded for her daughter’s safe return.”

  Keri flashed back to the news conference, which was mostly a blur. She remembered speaking into a dozen microphones jammed in her face, begging the man who had snatched her daughter in the middle of a park, who had tossed her in a van like a rag doll, to return her.

  She remembered the scream of “Please Mommy, help me” and the bobbing blonde pigtails getting farther away as Evie, only eight at the time, disappeared across the green field. She remembered the bits of gravel that were still embedded in her feet during the news conference, trapped there when she ran barefoot through the parking lot, chasing after the van until it left her in the dust. She remembered it all.

  Anderson had stopped talking. She looked at him and saw that his eyes were rimmed with tears, just as hers were. He pressed on.

  “After that, I saw another story a few months later where this detective rescued another kid, this time a boy grabbed while he was walking to baseball practice.”

  “Jimmy Tensall.”

  “And a month later, she found a baby girl that had been snatched right out of a carrier at the supermarket. The woman who stole her had a fake birth certificate made and was planning to fly with the baby to Peru. You caught her at the gate as she was about to board the plane.”

  “I remember.”

  “That’s when I decided I couldn’t do it anymore. Every transaction reminded me of that news conference where you were begging for your daughter’s return. I couldn’t keep it at arm’s length anymore. I got soft, I guess. And right around then, our friend made a mistake.”

  “What was that?” Keri asked, feeling a tingly sensation that only came when she sensed something big about to be revealed.

  Thomas Anderson looked at her and she could tell he was wrestling with some kind of big internal decision. Then his brow unfurrowed and his eyes cleared. He seemed to have made up his mind.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked quietly.

  “What the hell kind of question is that? No friggin’ w—”

  But before she had finished the sentence, he had pushed away the table that separated them, swung the manacles on his wrists around her neck, and pulled her to the ground, sliding back into a corner of the interrogation room.

  As Officer Kiley burst into the room, Anderson used her body as a shield, keeping her in front of him. She felt a sharp prick at her neck and glanced down to see what it was. It looked like a shaved-down toothbrush handle. And it was pressed against her jugular.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Keri was totally bewildered. A moment earlier, Anderson had been tearing up at the thought of her missing daughter. Now he was holding a razor-sharp piece of plastic to her throat.

  Her first instinct was to make a move to break his grip. But she knew it wouldn’t work. There was no way she could do anything before he’d be able to jam the plastic spike into her vein.

  Besides, something about this wasn’t right. Anderson had never given her any sense that he had malice toward her. He seemed to actually like her. He seemed to want to help her. And if he really had cancer, this was a fruitless exercise. He said himself that he’d be dead soon.

  Is this way of avoiding the agony, his version of suicide by cop?

  “Drop it, Anderson!” Officer Kiley screamed, his weapon pointed in their general direction.

  “Put your gun down, Kiley,” Anderson said surprisingly calmly. “You’re going to accidentally shoot the hostage and then your career will be over before it’s even started. Follow procedure. Alert your superior. Get a negotiator over here. It shouldn’t take long. The department always has one on call. Someone can probably be in this room in ten minutes.”

  Kiley stood there, uncertain how to proceed. His eyes darted back and forth between Anderson and Keri. His hands were shaking.

  “He’s right, Officer,” Keri said, trying to match Anderson’s soothing tone. “Just follow standard procedure and this will all work out. The prisoner isn’t going anywhere. Step outside and make sure the door is locked. Make your calls. I’m okay. Mr. Anderson isn’t going to hurt me. He clearly wants to negotiate. So you need to bring in someone who has authorization to do that, okay?”

  Kiley nodded but his feet remained rooted in place.

  “Officer Kiley,” Keri said, this time more firmly, “step outside and call your supervisor. Right now!”

  That seemed to snap Kiley out of it. He backed out of the room, closed and locked the door, and grabbed the phone on the wall, never letting them out of his sight.

  “We don’t have much time,” Anderson whispered in Keri’s ear as he relaxed the plastic pressing against her flesh slightly. “I’m sorry about this but it’s the only way I could be sure we could speak in complete confidence.”

  “Really?” Keri whispered back, half furious, half relieved.

  “Cave has people everywhere, in here and out there. After this, I’m done for sure. I won’t last through the night. I might not last the hour. But I’m more worried about you. If he thinks that you know everything I know, he might just have you eliminated, regardless of the consequences.”

  “So what do you know?” Keri asked.

  “I told you Cave made a mistake. He came to me and said he was worried about you. He had done some checking and found out that one of his guys had kidnapped your daughter. As you found out, it was Brian Wickwire—the Collector. Cave didn’t order it or know about it. Wickwire operated on his own a lot and Cave would often help facilitate moving the girls after the fact. That’s what he did with Evie and he never gave it a second thought.”

  “So he wasn’t targeting her?” Keri asked. She had suspected as much but wanted to be sure.

  “No. She was just some cute blonde girl that Wickwire thought he could fetch a nice price for. But after you started rescuing girls and generating headlines, Cave went back through his records and saw that he was connected to her abduction through Wickwire. He was worried you’d eventually find your way to him and he asked me to help stash Evie somewhere well-hidden and to keep him out of it. He didn’t want to know.”

  “He was covering his tracks even before I suspected he was involved?” Keri asked, marveling at Cave’s foresight.

  “He’s a clever guy,” Anderson agreed. “But what he didn’t realize was that he was asking the exact wrong person for help. He couldn’t have known. After all, I’m the one who corrupted him in the first place. Why would he suspect me? But I made up my mind to help you. Of course, I did it in a way that I thought would keep me protected.”

  Just then Kiley opened the door a crack.

  “Negotiator’s on his way,” he said, his voice quavering. “He’ll be here in five minutes. Just stay calm. Don’t do anything crazy, Anderson.”

  “Don’t yo
u make me do anything crazy!” Anderson screamed back at him, pulling the toothbrush back up to Keri’s neck and inadvertently poking her skin. Kiley quickly shut the door again.

  “Ow,” she said.” I think you drew blood.”

  “Sorry about that,” he said, sounding surprisingly sheepish. “It’s hard to maneuver splayed out on the floor like this.”

  “Just rein it in a little, okay?”

  “I’ll try. There’s just a lot going on, you know? Anyway, I talked to Wickwire and told him to place Evie at a location somewhere in LA where she’d be well taken care of, in case we needed her later on. I wanted to make sure she didn’t leave the city. And I didn’t want her to go through… more than she had to.”

  Keri didn’t respond but they both knew there was nothing he could do about the years prior to that, and the horrors her daughter must have suffered in that time. Anderson continued quickly, clearly not wanting to linger on the thought any more than she did.

  “I didn’t know what he did with her but it turned out he put her with the older guy you eventually found out she was staying with.”

  “If you had decided to help me, why didn’t you just find out her location and get her yourself?”

  “Two reasons,” Anderson said. “First, Wickwire wasn’t going to give up her location to me. It was prized info and he kept it closely guarded. Second, and I’m not proud of this, I knew that I’d get arrested if I came to you with your daughter.”

  “But you got arrested intentionally anyway a few months later for child abductions,” Keri protested.

  “I did that afterward, when I realized I had to take drastic action. I knew that eventually you’d research child abductors and traffickers and find your way to me. And I knew that I could set you on the right path without making Cave suspicious of me. As to getting arrested intentionally, that’s true. But you may recall that I defended myself in court. And if you check the court record closely, you’ll discover that both the prosecutor and the judge made several errors, errors I baited them into, that would almost certainly lead to my conviction being overturned. I was just waiting until the right time to appeal the case. Of course that’s all moot now.”

  Keri looked up and saw a commotion outside the window of the room. She could see multiple officers passing by, at least one of whom was carrying a long gun. He was a sniper.

  “I don’t mean to be cold but we need to wrap this up,” she said. “There’s no telling if someone out there has an itchy trigger finger or if Cave has ordered one of his minions to put you down as a precaution.”

  “Quite right, Detective,” Anderson agreed. “Here I am blathering on about my moral conversion when what you want to know is how to get your daughter back. Am I right?”

  “You are. So tell me. How do I get her back?”

  “I genuinely don’t know. I don’t know where she is. I don’t believe Cave knows where she is. He might know the location of the Vista event tomorrow night but there’s no chance he’ll attend. So it’s pointless to have him followed.”

  “So you’re saying I have no hope of getting her back?” Keri demanded, disbelieving.

  Have I been through all this for that answer?

  “Likely not, Detective,” he admitted. “But maybe you can get him to give her back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jackson Cave used to consider you an annoyance, an obstacle to running his business. But that has changed in the last year. He’s become obsessed with you. He not only thinks you are out to destroy his business. He thinks you want to destroy him personally. And because he has twisted reality to make himself the good guy, he thinks you are the bad guy.”

  “He thinks I’m the bad guy?” Keri repeated, incredulous.

  “Yes. Remember, he manipulates his moral code as he sees fit so that he can function. If he thought he was doing evil things, he couldn’t live with himself. But he’s found ways to justify even the most heinous of acts. He told me once that the girls in these sex slave rings would be starving on the streets if not for him.”

  “He’s gone mad,” Keri said.

  “He’s doing what he can to look himself in the mirror each morning, Detective. And these days, part of that means believing that you are on a witch hunt. He views you as the enemy. He sees you as his nemesis. And that makes him very dangerous. Because I’m not sure what lengths he’ll go to in order to stop you.”

  “So then how can I get a guy like that to give Evie back to me?”

  “If you went to him and convinced him that you’re not after him, that all you want is your daughter, maybe he’d relent. If you could persuade him that once you had your daughter safe in your arms you would forget about him forever, maybe even leave the police force, he might be convinced to lay down his arms. Right now he thinks you want his destruction. But if he could be made to believe that you don’t want him, that you only want her, perhaps there’s a chance.”

  “You think that would really work?” Keri asked, unable to hide the skepticism in her voice. “I just say ‘give me my daughter back and I’ll leave you alone forever’ and he goes for it?”

  “I don’t know if it will work. But I know that you’re out of options. And you have nothing to lose by trying.”

  Keri was turning the idea over in her head when there was a knock on the door.

  “The negotiator’s here,” Kiley yelled. “He’s coming down the hall now.”

  “Wait a minute!” Anderson yelled. “Tell him to stay back. I’ll tell him when he can come in.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Kiley said, though his voice indicated he was desperate to hand over communication as soon as possible.

  “One last thing,” Anderson whispered in her ear, even more quietly than before if that was possible. “You have a mole in your unit.”

  “What? West LA Division?” Keri asked, stunned.

  “In your Missing Persons Unit. I don’t know who it is. But someone is feeding information to the other side. So watch your back. More than usual, I mean.”

  A new voice called out from the other side of the door.

  “Mr. Anderson, this is Cal Brubaker. I’m the negotiator. May I come in?”

  “Just one second, Cal,” Anderson called out. Then he leaned in even closer to Keri. “I have a feeling this is the last time we’ll talk, Keri. I want you to know that I think you’re a very impressive person. I hope you find Evie. I really do. Come in, Cal.”

  As the door opened, he brought the toothbrush back up to her neck but didn’t actually touch the skin. A pot-bellied man in his mid to late forties with a mop of bushy gray hair and thin, circular-framed glasses that Keri suspected were just for show eased into the room.

  He was wearing blue jeans and a rumpled lumberjack-style shirt, complete with the red and black checkerboard pattern. It was borderline laughable, like the “costumed” version of what a nonthreatening hostage negotiator might look like.

  Anderson glanced at her and she could see that he felt the same way. He seemed to be fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

  “Hi, Mr. Anderson. Can you tell me what’s bothering you this evening?” he said in a practiced, unaggressive tone.

  “Actually, Cal,” Anderson replied mildly, “while we were waiting for you, Detective Locke talked some real sense into me. I realized I was just letting myself get a little overwhelmed by my situation and I reacted…poorly. I think I’m ready to surrender and accept the consequences of my choices.”

  “Okay,” Cal said, surprised. “Well, this is the most painless negotiation of my life. Since you’re making things so easy on me, I have to ask: are you sure there’s nothing you want?”

  “Maybe a few small things,” Anderson said. “But I don’t think you’ll take issue with any of them. I’d like to make sure Detective Locke gets taken straight to the infirmary. I accidentally poked her with the point of the toothbrush and I’m not sure how hygienic it is. She should get it cleaned up right away. And I’d appreciate it if you had Officer Ki
ley, the gentleman who brought me in here, cuff me and take me wherever I’m headed. I have a feeling some of those other guys might be a little rougher than needed. And maybe, once I drop the pointy object, you could ask that sniper to clear out. He’s making me a bit nervous. Reasonable requests?”

  “All reasonable, Mr. Anderson,” Cal agreed. “I’ll do my best to accommodate them. Why don’t you start the ball rolling by dropping the toothbrush and letting the detective go?”

  Anderson leaned in close so only Keri could hear him.

  “Good luck,” he whispered almost inaudibly before dropping the toothbrush and lifting his arms high so that she could slip under the manacles. She slid away from him and slowly got to her feet with the aid of the overturned table. Cal reached out his hand to offer assistance but she didn’t take it.

  Once she was standing upright and felt steady she turned to face Thomas “The Ghost” Anderson for what she was certain would be the last time.

  “Thanks for not killing me,” she muttered, trying to sound sarcastic.

  “You bet,” he said, smiling sweetly.

  As she stepped toward the interrogation room door, it opened wide and five men in full SWAT gear burst in, tearing past her. She didn’t look back to see what they did as she stumbled out the door and into the hallway.

  It looked like Cal Brubaker had been true to at least part of his word. The sniper, leaning against the far wall, with his gun at his side, had stood down. But Officer Kiley was nowhere in sight.

  As she walked down the hall, escorted by a female officer who said she was taking her to the infirmary, Keri was pretty sure she could hear the sound of gun butts slamming into human bone. And while she didn’t hear any subsequent screaming, she did hear grunting, followed by deep, ceaseless moaning.