A Trace of Crime

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.”