A Trace of Crime

“We want to run the ransom note through our databases and talk to some experts. We’re getting our entire Missing Persons Unit involved in your case. But I promise we’ll be back in a few hours. We’ll lay out the whole plan for the park with you and explain exactly what we’re doing. As soon as we leave you, I’m going to call to have surveillance set up there right away. Everything will be in place well in advance of the meet. We’ve got this.”

Carolyn Rainey stood up and gave her a surprisingly powerful hug. She did the same to Ray. Tim Rainey nodded politely at both of them. Keri could tell that his brief respite from his angst had faded and he was back in permanent crisis mode.

She understood his position better than most and knew that trying to talk him down or tell him to try to be calm was a waste of time. His daughter was missing. He was freaking out. He just did it more quietly than most.

As they left, Ray muttered under his breath, “We better find her quick. If we don’t, I’m worried her dad is going to have a stroke.”

Keri wanted to disagree but couldn’t. If she’d gotten a letter like this when Evie was taken, she might have literally lost her mind. But the Raineys had something going for them, even if they didn’t know it. They had Keri.

“Then let’s find her quick,” she said.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’m telling you, it’s just a cover,” Detective Frank Brody shouted indignantly. “All that blather about mechanisms and the Lord is just to throw us off. This guy is a con man, pure and simple!”

The station conference room was a mass of noisy, angry voices and it was starting to piss Keri off. She was tempted to yell at everyone to shut up, but painful experience had taught her that some of these people needed to wear themselves out before anything useful could be accomplished.

Brody, an old-school veteran of the unit less than a month from retirement, was convinced the letter was a sham. As usual, he had some kind of sauce on his shirt, which was tucked in but missing a button so that part of his large stomach was exposed. And as usual, Keri thought, he was more interested in being loud than in being right.

“You don’t know that!” shouted back Officer Jamie Castillo. “You just want it to be true because that makes the case easier to understand.”

Castillo wasn’t a detective yet, but because of her competence and enthusiasm, she’d become essentially a junior member of the unit, almost always assigned to their cases. And despite her junior status, she was no shrinking violet.

Right now, her dark eyes were blazing and her black hair, tied back in a ponytail, was bobbing up and down along with her animated responses. Her muscular arms and athletic frame were both tightly coiled in frustration.

“None of us are experts in this sort of thing,” Detective Kevin Edgerton insisted. “We need to bring in the police psychologist.”

Keri wasn’t surprised that Edgerton wanted to go that route. Tall and skinny with perpetually unkempt brown hair, he was a computer genius who knew the ins and outs of everything from a smartphone to the utility grid. But not yet thirty years old, he didn’t always trust his instincts when it came to things with less clear-cut solutions. It was his nature to defer to expertise, if it was available.

The problem was that Keri wasn’t confident the police psychologist would have any more insight into the letter than the rest of them. Any conclusions he was likely to draw would just be speculation. If that was the case, she trusted her own speculation more than most others’.

Lieutenant Hillman held up his hands in an appeal for calm and quiet. To Keri’s surprise, everyone complied.

“I sent a copy of the letter to Dr. Feeney at home. He’s looking at it now. We’ll probably get feedback soon. In the meantime, any other thoughts? Sands?”

Ray had been sitting quietly, rubbing the top of his bald head, taking it all in. From this angle, Keri could clearly see the reflection of the station lights off the glass left eye that replaced the eye he’d lost boxing. He looked up and she could tell where he stood before he even spoke.

“I’m inclined to agree with Frank. That letter is just so over the top that it’s hard to buy. Everything is so overheated. That is, except for the part about wanting the money and where to bring it. That section is completely straightforward; pretty convenient, if you ask me. Still…”

“What?” Hillman asked.

“Well, I’m just not sure whether it makes any difference. We know so little and don’t have much time. Regardless of whether he’s a psycho or a con artist, there’s still a drop with him in a few hours.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” Keri finally said. She didn’t love contradicting her partner publicly under any circumstances and especially not with the way things were between them at the moment. But it wasn’t about that right now. It was about the job and finding this girl. Keri had never held her tongue about a case before and she wasn’t about to start now, regardless of the personal consequences.

“Look, I don’t know for sure if this guy is faking or for real. But I think it does matter which is true. If he’s just pretending to be some kind of religious fanatic and this is all just about money, I’d prefer it. Then this is transactional for him, not personal. And that scenario is way more predictable. It means he’s more likely to show up. And it’s more of a priority for him to keep Jessica alive.”

“But you don’t buy it,” Ray said, proving he knew her as well as she knew him.

“I’m skeptical. I think it’s possible that money stuff was so straightforward because he didn’t really believe in it and was just saying what he was supposed to in a ransom note. What if that’s the fake part and the real part is the crazy stuff? I mean the contrast between those sections is so dramatic as to be ridiculous. The ‘overheated’ language seems to be where his passion is.”

“Seems to be,” Brody interrupted. Keri reminded herself to keep a level head. The short-timer was baiting her, hoping he could rile her up to make her argument seem less credible. She nodded politely and continued.

“Yes, Frank, seems to be. I don’t pretend to know anything for sure. But all that talk of freeing her from her own evil spirit, of the machinery of the Lord, it’s pretty detailed, like he’s developed some kind of personal liturgy to reflect his own warped religion – one where he’s in control, like he’s the Pope of his own demented faith. And if that’s true, we’ve got a much bigger problem.”

“How so?” Edgerton asked.

“Because if this is all truly about cleansing spirits and pleasing his deity, then he doesn’t really care about the money. It might just be a way to justify the abduction to himself in societal terms. He tells himself it’s about the money so he can function in some kind of normal way. But deep down, he knows that’s just an excuse, that the real reason he took her is much deeper and darker.”

“So Locke,” Hillman said, “you’re suggesting this guy is having some internal struggle and that the money is just a way for him to hide what he really wants to do to the girl from himself?”

“Maybe.”

“That seems like a stretch,” he said. “Other than the language he used, what do you have to support the theory?”

“It’s not just the language, Lieutenant. The very fact that he offered to return her, to let her own father purify her, suggests that he might be trying to fight this thing, that he’s trying to find an ‘out,’ some way to not free her from the demon by killing her.”

She stopped talking and looked around at the faces of her co-workers, which were a mix of skepticism and genuine intrigue. Even Hillman seemed to be reconsidering.

“Or he could just be after the money and your mumbo-jumbo is as full of BS as he is,” Brody said derisively. His comment seemed to drain the room of goodwill and Keri felt everyone retreating to their safe corners.

“You’re a Neanderthal!” Castillo said, disgusted.

“Yeah?” he spat back. “I think you could use a good hair dragging.”

“You want to go right now, old man?” Castillo said, taking a step toward him. “I’ll knock your beached whale ass back in the ocean.”

“Enough!” Hillman shouted. “We’ve got a twelve-year-old girl to save and we don’t have time for this crap. And Brody, another sexist comment like that and I’ll dock your pay for the rest of your frickin’ career, even if that’s only a month, you got me?”

Brody reluctantly shut his mouth. Castillo looked like she wasn’t done yet so Keri put her hand on her shoulder and led her away.

“Let it go, Jamie,” she muttered under her breath. “The guy’s one more burrito away from a heart attack. You don’t want to get blamed when he keels over.”

Castillo chuckled despite her anger. She was about to reply when Detective Manny Suarez walked into the room. Manny wasn’t much to look at, with his longish stubble, his love handles, and his heavy-lidded eyes that reminded Keri of Sleepy the dwarf. But he was a tough, able detective. And most importantly right now, he was returning from the FedEx office where the ransom note had been dropped off. Keri hoped he had good news.

“Give me something good,” Hillman said.

Suarez shook his head as he sat down at the conference room table and pulled out one lonely receipt from the manila envelope he was holding. He slammed it on the table.

This is it,” he said. “This is the one piece of meaningful evidence I was able to retrieve from the FedEx store. It has the time and date of the purchase, which was made with cash. That’s it.”

“Wasn’t there any security footage you could match to the time of purchase?” Hillman asked.

“There is, but it’s mostly useless. The exterior footage from the place shows someone walking in. But that person is wearing a bulky sweatshirt with a hoodie and sunglasses. I’m having it circulated but it won’t be much help. It’s hard to even tell whether it’s a male or female.”

“What about inside the FedEx store?” Castillo asked.

Suarez pulled out a second sheet of paper from the envelope and put it on the desk too. It looked like a photo but it was basically white with black around the edges.