A Trace of Hope

“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 Kiley, 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.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Keri hurried back to her car, hoping to leave the parking structure before anyone noticed she was gone. Her heart was beating in time with her shoes, pounding hard and fast on the concrete.

Her trip to the infirmary had been a gift from Anderson. He knew that after a hostage situation, she was sure to face hours of interrogation, hours she didn’t have to spare. By demanding she be allowed to go to the infirmary, he was ensuring her a window in which she would have little supervision and possibly be able to leave before being cornered by a bunch of Downtown Division detectives.

That’s exactly what she had done. After a nurse had cleaned up the small puncture wound on her neck and bandaged it, Keri had feigned a brief post-hostage-crisis panic attack and asked to use the bathroom. Since she wasn’t an inmate, it was easy to slip out after that.

She made her way down in the elevator with the janitorial staff who got off at 9 p.m. Security Officer Beamon must have been on break because there was some new guy manning the lobby and he didn’t give her a second look.

Once out of the building, she started across the street to the parking structure, still expecting some detective to come racing outside after her demanding to know why she’d been interrogating a prisoner when she was on suspension. But she heard nothing.

In fact, she was completely alone with her footsteps and heartbeat as all the off-duty janitors headed down the street to the bus stop and metro station. Apparently none of them drove to work.