Monday
Late Afternoon
Detective Keri Locke pleaded with herself not to do it this time. As the most junior detective in the West Los Angeles Pacific Division Missing Persons Unit, she was expected to work harder than anyone else in the division. And as a thirty-five-year-old woman who'd only joined the force four years ago, she often felt like she was supposed to be the hardest-working cop in the entire LAPD. She couldn't afford to look like she was taking a break.
All around her, the department buzzed with activity. An elderly Hispanic woman was sitting at a nearby desk, giving a statement about a purse snatching. Down the hall, a carjacker was being booked. It was a typical afternoon in what had become her new normal of a life. And yet that recurring urge was eating at her, refusing to be ignored.
She gave in to it. She stood up and wandered over to the window that looked out on Culver Boulevard. She stood there and could nearly see her reflection. With the dancing glare from the afternoon sun, she looked part human, part ghost.
That was how she felt. She knew that objectively, she was an attractive woman. Five foot six and about 130 pounds-133 if she was being honest-with dirty blonde hair and a figure that had escaped childbirth relatively unscathed, she still turned heads.
But if anyone looked closely, they'd see that her brown eyes were red and bleary, her forehead was a knotted mass of premature lines, and her skin often had the pallor of, well, a ghost.
Like most days, she was wearing a simple blouse tucked into black slacks and black flats that looked professional but were easy to run in. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. It was her unofficial uniform. Pretty much the only thing that changed daily was the color of the top she wore. It all reinforced her feeling that she was marking time more than really living.
Keri sensed movement out of the corner of her eye and snapped out of her reverie. They were coming.
Outside the window, Culver Boulevard was mostly devoid of people. There was a running and biking path across the street. On most days in the late afternoon, it was choked with foot traffic. But it was relentlessly hot today, with temperatures in the high nineties and no breeze at all, even here, less than five miles from the beach. Parents who normally walked their kids home from school took their air-conditioned cars today. Except for one.
At exactly 4:12, just like clockwork, a young girl on a bike, about seven or eight years old, pedaled slowly down the path. She wore a fancy white dress. Her youngish mom trailed behind her in jeans and a T-shirt, with a backpack slung casually over her shoulder.
Keri fought the anxiety bubbling in her stomach and looked around to see if anyone in the office was watching her. No one was. She allowed herself to give in to the itch she'd tried not to scratch all day and stared.
Keri watched them with jealous, adoring eyes. She still couldn't believe it, even after so many times at this window. The girl was the spitting image of Evie, right down to the wavy blond hair, the green eyes, even the slightly crooked smile.
She stood there in a trance, staring out the window long after the mother and child had disappeared from sight.
When she finally snapped out of it and turned back to the bullpen, the elderly Hispanic woman was leaving. The carjacker had been processed. Some new miscreant, cuffed and surly, had slid into his spot at the booking window, an alert uniformed officer standing at his left elbow.
She glanced up at the digital clock on the wall above the coffee machine. It read 4:22.
Have I really been standing at that window for ten solid minutes? This is getting worse, not better.
She walked back to her desk with her head down, trying not to make eye contact with any curious co-workers. She sat and looked at the files on her desk. The Martine case was largely wrapped up, just waiting for a sign-off from the prosecutor before she could dump it in the "complete until trial" cabinet. The Sanders case was on hold until CSU came back with its preliminary report. Rampart division had asked Pacific to look into a prostitute named Roxie who had dropped off the radar; a co-worker had told them she'd started working the Westside and they were hoping someone in her unit could confirm that so they didn't have to open a file.
The tricky thing with missing persons cases, at least for adults, was that it wasn't a crime to disappear. Police had more leeway with minors, depending on the age. But in general, there was nothing to prevent people from simply dropping out of their lives. It happened more often than most people would expect. Without some evidence of foul play, law enforcement was limited in what they could legally do to investigate. Because of that, cases like Roxie's often fell through the cracks in the system.
Sighing in resignation, Keri realized that barring something extraordinary, there was really no reason to stick around beyond five.
She closed her eyes and pictured herself, less than an hour from now, kicking back on her houseboat, Sea Cups, pouring herself three fingers-okay, four-of Glenlivet and settling in to an evening of leftover Chinese takeout and a few reruns of Scandal. If that personalized therapy didn't pan out, she might end up back on Dr. Blanc's couch, an unappealing alternative.
She had started to pack up her files for the day when Ray walked in and plopped himself in the chair across the large desk they shared. Ray was officially Detective Raymond "Big" Sands, her partner of nearly a year now and her friend for closer to seven.
He matched his nickname in every way. Ray (Keri never called him "Big"-he didn't need the ego stroking) was a six-foot-four, 230-pound black guy with a shiny bald head, a chipped lower tooth, a meticulously trimmed goatee, and a penchant for wearing dress shirts a size too small for him, just to emphasize his build.
Forty years old now, Ray still resembled the bronze-medal-winning Olympic boxer he'd been at age twenty and the professional heavyweight contender, with a record of 28-2-1, he'd been until the age of twenty-eight. That was when a scrappy little southpaw five inches shorter than him took out his right eye with a vicious hook and brought everything to a screeching halt. He wore a patch for two years afterward, didn't like the discomfort, and finally got a glass eye, which somehow worked for him.
Like Keri, Ray joined the Force later than most, when he was searching for a new purpose in his early thirties. He rose through the ranks quickly and was now the senior detective in Pacific Division's Missing Persons Unit, or MPU.
"You look like a woman dreaming of waves and whiskey," he said.
"Is it that obvious?" Keri asked.
"I'm a good detective. My powers of observation are unmatched. Also, you mentioned your exciting evening plans twice today already."
"What can I say? I'm dogged in pursuit of my goals, Raymond."
He smiled, his one good eye betraying a warmth his physical demeanor hid. Keri was the only one allowed to call him by his proper name. She liked to mix it up with other, less flattering, titles. He often did the same to her.
"Listen, Little Miss Sunshine, maybe you'd be better off spending the last few minutes of your shift checking in with CSU on the Sanders case instead of daydreaming about day drinking."
"Day drinking?" she said, mock offended. "It's not day drinking if I start after five, Gigantor."
He was about to come back at her when the line rang. Keri picked up before Ray could say anything and stuck her tongue out at him playfully.
"Pacific Division Missing Persons. Detective Locke speaking."
Ray got on the line as well but didn't talk.
The woman on the phone sounded young, late twenties or early thirties. Before she even said why she was calling, Keri noted the worry in her voice.
"My name is Mia Penn. I live off Dell Avenue in the Venice Canals. I'm worried about my daughter, Ashley. She should have been home from school by three thirty. She knew I was taking her to a four forty-five dentist appointment. She texted me just before she left school at three but she's not here and she's not responding to any of my calls or texts. This isn't like her at all. She's very responsible."
"Ms. Penn, does Ashley usually drive or walk home?" Keri asked.
"She walks. She's only in tenth grade-she's fifteen. She hasn't even started Driver's Ed yet."
Keri looked at Ray. She knew what he was going to say and she couldn't really argue the point. But something in Mia Penn's tone got to her. She could tell the woman was barely holding it together. There was panic just below the surface. She wanted to ask him to dispense with protocol but couldn't come up with a credible reason why.
"Ms. Penn, this is Detective Ray Sands. I'm conferencing in. I want you to take a deep breath and then tell me if your daughter's ever been home late before."
Mia Penn launched in, forgetting the deep breath part.
"Of course," she admitted, trying to hide the exasperation in her voice. "Like I said, she's fifteen. But she's always texted or called if she wasn't back within an hour or so. And never if we had plans."
Ray responded without glancing at what he knew would be Keri's disapproving glare.
"Ms. Penn, officially, your daughter is a minor and so typical missing person laws don't apply as they would for an adult. We have broader authority to investigate. But speaking to you honestly, a teenage girl who isn't responding to her mother's texts and isn't home less than two hours after school lets out-that's not going to command the kind of immediate response you're hoping for. At this point there's not much we can do. In a situation like this, your best bet is to come down to the station and file a report. You should absolutely do that. There's no harm in it and it could expedite things if we need to ramp up resources."
There was a long pause before Mia Penn responded. Her voice had a sharp edge that wasn't there before.
"How long do I have to wait before you 'ramp up,' Detective?" she demanded. "Is two more hours enough? Do I have to wait until it gets dark? Until she's not home in the morning? I'll bet that if I was-"
Whatever Mia Penn was about to say, she stopped herself, as if she knew that anything else she added would be counterproductive. Ray was about to respond but Keri held up her hand and gave him her patented "let me handle this" look.
"Listen, Ms. Penn, this is Detective Locke again. You said you live in the Canals, right? That's on my way home. Give me your e-mail address. I'll send you the missing persons form. You can get started on it and I'll stop by to help you finish it up and expedite getting it in the system. How does that sound?"
"It sounds good, Detective Locke. Thank you."
"No problem. And hey, maybe Ashley will be home by the time I get there and I can give her a stern lecture on keeping her mom better informed-free of charge."
Keri gathered her purse and keys, preparing to head to the Penn house.
Ray hadn't said a word since they'd hung up. She knew he was silently seething but she refused to look up. If he caught her eye, then she'd be the one getting the lecture and she wasn't in the mood.
But Ray apparently didn't need to make eye contact to say his piece.
"The Canals are not on your way home."
"They're only a little out of my way," she insisted, still not looking up. "So I'll have to wait until six thirty to get back to the marina and Olivia Pope and associates. No big deal."
Ray exhaled and leaned back in his chair.
"It is a big deal. Keri, you've been a detective here almost a year now. I like having you as my partner. And you've done some great work, even before you got your shield. The Gonzales case, for example. I don't think I could have solved that one and I've been investigating these cases for a decade longer than you. You have a kind of sixth sense about these things. That's why we used you as a resource in the old days. And it's why you have the potential to be a truly great detective."
"Thanks," she said, though she knew he wasn't finished.
"But you have one major weakness and it's going to ruin you if you don't get a handle on it. You have got to let the system work. It's here for a reason. Seventy-five percent of our job will work itself out in the first twenty-four hours without our help. We need to let that happen and concentrate on the other twenty-five percent. If we don't, we end up running ourselves ragged. We become unproductive, or worse-counterproductive. And then we're betraying the people who really end up needing us. It's part of our job to choose our battles."
"Ray, I'm not ordering an Amber Alert or anything. I'm just helping a worried mother fill out some paperwork. And truly, it's only fifteen minutes out of my way."
"And…" he said expectantly.
"And there was something in her voice. She's holding something back. I just want to talk to her face to face. It might be nothing. And if it is, I'll leave."
Ray shook his head and tried one more time.
"How many hours did you waste on that homeless kid in Palms you were certain had gone missing but hadn't? Fifteen?"
Keri shrugged.
"Better safe than sorry," she muttered under her breath.
"Better employed than discharged for inappropriate use of department resources," he countered.
"It's after five," Keri said.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I'm off the clock. And that mother is waiting for me."
"It would appear that you're never off the clock. Call her back, Keri. Tell her to e-mail the forms back when she's done. Tell her to call here if she has any questions. But go home."
She'd been as patient as she could but as far as she was concerned, the conversation was over.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Clean," she said, giving him a squeeze on the arm.
As she headed for the parking lot and her ten-year-old silver Toyota Prius, she tried to remember the quickest shortcut to the Venice Canals. She already felt an urgency she didn't understand.
One she didn't like.
