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A Trace of Murder

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.

Kendra Burlingame, thirty-eight, had once been a Hollywood publicist. But after marrying Jeremy, she’d created and put all her energy into a non-profit called All Smiles, which raised money for the children’s surgeries and coordinated all of their pre- and post-op care.

They’d been married for seven years. Neither had an arrest record. There was no known history of marital discord, nor of drug or alcohol abuse. On paper at least, they were the perfect couple. Keri was immediately suspicious.

After several wrong turns, she finally pulled up to the house at the end of Tower Road at 1:41, eleven minutes late.

To call it a house was an understatement. It was more of a compound on a property that seemed to cover several acres. From her vantage point, she could see the entire city of Los Angeles splayed out below her.

Keri took a moment to do something rare for her—put on extra makeup. Removing the sling had helped her appearance, but the yellowish bruise near her eye was still noticeable. So she dabbed it with some concealer until it was almost invisible.

Satisfied, she pushed the buzzer next to the security gate. As she waited for a response, she noticed Detective Frank Brody’s maroon and white Cadillac parked in the roundabout.

A female voice came over the gate intercom.

“Detective Locke?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Lupe Veracruz, the Burlingames’ housekeeper. Please enter and park next to your partner. I’ll meet you and take you to him and Dr. Burlingame.”

The gate opened and Keri eased in, parking next to Frank’s immaculately maintained vehicle. The Caddy was his baby. He was proud of its outdated color scheme, its poor gas mileage, and its whale-like size. He called it a classic. To Keri, the car, like its owner, was a dinosaur.

As she opened her car door, a petite, pleasant-looking Hispanic woman in her late forties came out to meet her. Keri got out of the car quickly, not wanting to let the woman see her struggle to navigate around her injured right shoulder. From this point on, Keri considered herself on enemy territory and at a potential crime scene. She didn’t want to betray any sense of weakness to Burlingame or anyone in his orbit.

“This way, Detective,” Lupe said, getting straight to business as she turned on her heel and led Keri along a cobblestone path, surrounded by immaculately manicured flowers. Keri tried to keep up while stepping carefully. With the injuries to her eye, shoulder, and ribs, she still felt uncertain on uneven ground.

They passed a huge pool with two diving boards and a lap lane. Next to it was a large pit, with a massive pile of dirt beside it. A Bobcat excavator sat idle nearby. Lupe saw her curiosity.

“The Burlingames are having a hot tub put in. But the Moroccan tile they ordered is on hold so the whole project is delayed.”

“I’m having the same problem,” Keri said. Lupe didn’t laugh.

After several minutes, they reached a side entrance to the main house, which led into a large, airy kitchen. Keri could hear male voices nearby. Lupe directed her around the corner to what looked to be the breakfast room. Detective Brody was standing, facing in her direction, speaking to a man with his back to her.

The man seemed to sense her arrival and turned around before Lupe had the chance to announce her. Keri, in full investigative mode, focused on his eyes as he took her in. They were brown and warm, with just a hint of redness around the rims. He either had bad allergies or he’d been crying recently. He forced an awkward smile to his face, seemingly trapped between the expected responsibility to be a good host and the anxiety of the situation.

He was a nice-looking man, not quite attractive but with an open, friendly face that gave him an eager, boyish quality. Despite his sport coat, Keri could tell he was in good shape. He wasn’t overtly muscular but had the lean wiry frame of an endurance athlete, maybe a marathoner or a triathlete. He was of average height, maybe five foot ten, and about 170 pounds. His short-cropped brown hair had the first, tiniest hints of gray.

“Detective Locke, thank you for coming,” he said, walking forward and extending his hand. “I’ve just been speaking to your colleague.”

“Keri,” Frank Brody said, nodding curtly. “We haven’t gotten into any details yet. I wanted to wait until you arrived.”

It was subtle dig about her lateness masked by what seemed like professional courtesy. Keri, pretending not to notice, kept her focus on the doctor.

“Nice to meet you, Dr. Burlingame. I’m sorry it’s under such difficult circumstances. If you don’t mind, why don’t we get started right away? In a missing persons case, every minute is crucial.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Keri saw Brody scowl, clearly annoyed that she had taken over. She didn’t really give a shit.

“Of course,” Burlingame said. “Where should we begin?”

“You gave us a rough outline of the timeline over the phone. But I’d like you to walk us through it in more detail if you could. Why don’t you start with the last time you saw your wife?”

Okay, it was yesterday morning and we were in the bedroom—”

Keri jumped in.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but can you take us there? I’d like to be in the room as you describe the events that occurred there.”

“Yes, of course. Should Lupe come as well?”

“We’ll speak to her separately,” Keri said. Jeremy Burlingame nodded and led the way up the stairs to the bedroom. Keri continued to watch him closely. Her interruption a moment earlier was only in part for the reason she gave.

She also wanted to gauge how a well-regarded, powerful doctor reacted to being repeatedly ordered around by a female. At least so far, it didn’t seem to faze him. He appeared willing to do or say whatever she asked of him if it would help.

As they walked she peppered him with additional questions.

“Under normal circumstances, where would your wife be right now?”

“Here in the house, I imagine, preparing for tonight’s fundraiser.”

“What fundraiser is that?” Keri asked, feigning ignorance.

“We have a foundation that funds reconstructive surgery, mostly for children with facial irregularities, but sometimes for adults recovering from burns or accidents. Kendra runs the foundation and holds two major galas a year. One was scheduled for tonight at the Peninsula Hotel.”

“Is her car here at the house?” Brody asked as they started up a long flight of stairs.

“I honestly don’t know. I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to check. Let me ask Lupe.”

He took out his cell phone and used what appeared to be a walkie-talkie function.

“Lupe, do you know if Kendra’s car is in the garage?” The response was almost immediate.

“No, Dr. Burlingame. I checked when you called earlier. It’s not there. Also, I noticed one of her small travel bags was missing from her closet when I was hanging some clothes.”

Burlingame looked perplexed.

“That’s odd,” he said.

“What is?” Keri asked.

“I just don’t see why she would have had reason to take a travel bag anywhere. She has a duffel that she uses when she goes to the gym and she uses a garment bag if she plans to change into a gown at a gala location. She only uses the travel bags as carry-ons when we’re actually traveling.”

After climbing the flight of stairs and going down a long hallway, they reached the master bedroom. Brody, winded from the long trip, put his hands on his hips, stuck his chest out, and breathed in heavily.

Keri took the room in. It was enormous, bigger than her entire houseboat all by itself. The four-poster king bed was made. A willowy, sheer canopy surrounded it, making it look like a square cloud. The large balcony, with its door wide open, faced west, offering a view of the Pacific Ocean.

A massive flat-screen TV, easily seventy-five inches, hung on one wall. The other walls were tastefully decorated with paintings and photos of the happy couple. Keri walked over to look at one.

They seemed to be on vacation, somewhere warm with an ocean in the background. Jeremy wore an untucked, wrinkle-free button-down pink shirt with fitted plaid shorts. He had on sunglasses and his smile was slightly goofy and forced, that of a man uncomfortable having his picture taken.

Kendra Burlingame wore a turquoise sundress with stacked, block-heeled cage sandals that looped around her ankles. Her tanned skin popped against the dress. Her black hair was tied in a loose ponytail and her sunglasses rested on her head. She wore a broad smile, as if she’d just been laughing and had only barely managed to contain it. She was as tall as her husband, with long legs and aquamarine eyes that matched the water behind her. She was leaning into him and his arm was casually wrapped around her trim waist. She was stunningly beautiful.

“So the last time you saw your wife was when?” she asked. Her back was to Burlingame but she could see his reflection in the glass frame.

“In here,” he said, his worried face hiding nothing from what she could tell. “It was yesterday morning. I had to leave early to go to San Diego to supervise a complicated procedure. She was still in bed when I kissed her goodbye. It was probably around six forty-five.”

“Was she awake when you left?” Brody asked.

“Yes. She had the TV on. She was watching the local news to see what the weather would be like for tonight’s gala.”

“And that’s the last time you saw her, yesterday morning?” Keri asked again.

“Yes, Detective,” he said, sounding slightly annoyed for the first time. “I’ve answered that question several times now. May I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“I know we have to go through everything methodically here. But in the meantime, can you please have your people check the GPS in Kendra’s phone and car? Maybe that will help locate her.”

Keri had been waiting for him to ask this question. Of course, Hillman had ordered the techs back at the station to begin that process the moment they got the case. But she’d been holding that detail back for this very moment. She wanted to gauge his response to her answer.

“It’s a good idea, Dr. Burlingame,” she said, “which is why we’ve already done it.”

“And what did you find?” Burlingame asked hopefully.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? How could there be nothing?”

“It would appear that in both the phone and the car, the GPS has been turned off.”

Keri, on full alert, watched closely for Burlingame’s reaction.

He stared at her, stunned.

“Turned off? How is that possible?”

“It’s only possible if it was done intentionally, by someone who didn’t want either the phone or the car to be found.”

“Does that mean it was a kidnapper who didn’t want her found?”

“That’s possible,” Brody answered. “Or it could be that she didn’t want to be found.”

Burlingame’s expression went from stunned to disbelieving.

“Are you suggesting that my wife left on her own and tried to hide where she was going?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Brody said.

“No. That doesn’t make any sense. Kendra isn’t the kind of person to do that. Besides, she had no reason to. Our marriage is good. We love each other. She loves her work for the foundation. She loves those kids. She wouldn’t just up and abandon all of that. I would know if there was something wrong. I would know.”

To Keri’s ear, he sounded almost pleading, like a man trying to convince himself. He looked utterly lost.

“Are you sure about that, Doctor?” she asked him. “Sometimes we keep secrets, even from the ones we love. Is there someone else she might have confided in, other than you?”

Burlingame seemed not to hear her. He sat down on the end of the bed, shaking his head slowly, as if that might somehow drive the doubt from his mind.

“Dr. Burlingame?” Keri asked again softly.

“Um, yeah,” he said, rousing himself. “Her best friend is Becky Sampson. They’ve known each other since college. They went to a high school reunion together a couple of weeks ago and Kendra seemed a little rattled after she came back but wouldn’t say why. She lives off Robertson. Maybe Kendra mentioned something to her.”

“All right, we’ll get in touch with her,” Keri assured him. “In the meantime, we’re going to have a crime scene unit come in and do a thorough rundown of your house. We’ll follow up on the last known location of your wife’s car and phone before the GPS was disabled. Are you hearing me, Dr. Burlingame?”

The man appeared to have gone into a numbed stupor, staring straight ahead. At the sound of his name, he blinked and seemed to return to the moment.

“Yes, crime scene unit, GPS check. I understand.”

“We’ll also need to verify everything about your whereabouts yesterday, including your time in San Diego,” Keri said. “We’ll need to contact everyone you dealt with down there.”

“We just have to do our due diligence,” Brody added, in a clunky attempt to be diplomatic.

“I understand. I’m sure the husband is usually the main suspect when a woman disappears. It makes sense. I’ll make a list of everyone I interacted with and give you their numbers. Do you need that now?”

“The sooner the better,” Keri said. “I don’t mean to be harsh but you’re right, Doctor—the husband is typically a prime suspect. And the sooner we can eliminate you as one, the quicker we can move on to other theories. We’re going to have some officers come out and secure the entire area. In the interim, I’d appreciate it if you and Lupe could join us in the courtyard where Detective Brody and I parked. We’ll wait there until backup can arrive and CSU can begin processing the scene.”

Burlingame nodded and shuffled out of the room. Then, suddenly, his head popped up and he asked a question.

“How long does she have, Detective Locke, assuming she was taken? I know there’s a ticking clock on these things. How much time do you realistically think she has?”

Keri looked at him hard. There was no guile in his expression. He seemed to genuinely be clinging to something rational and factual to hold on to. It was a good question and one she needed to answer for herself.

She did some quick mental math. The numbers she came up with weren’t good. But she couldn’t be that blunt with a potential victim’s husband. So she softened it a bit without lying.

“Look, Doctor. I’m not going to lie to you. Every second counts. But we still have a couple of days before the evidence trail starts to grow cold. And we’re going to pour major resources into finding your wife. There’s still hope.”

But internally, the calculation was much less encouraging. Usually, seventy-two hours was the outer limit. So assuming she was taken sometime yesterday morning, they had a little less than forty-eight hours to find her. And that was being optimistic.