Monday
Night
Keri waited at the front door, trying to maintain her patience. She'd been standing here for over two minutes.
After the Johnnie Cotton lead had turned up nothing, Hillman told them to start from scratch. They still had to run down everything Cotton had said for confirmation. Patterson was supervising the CSU search of Cotton's van, just in case something turned up. Sterling was headed to Rick's Autos in Cerritos to meet up with Cotton's boss to review his surveillance video and confirm his alibi.
Edgerton, the tech expert, had taken the cell phone Cotton had happily given him to try to trace the phone of the mysterious caller who wanted to meet up for a drug sale in the mall parking lot. An officer was also bringing him Ashley's home laptop so he could do a deep scan to discover anything she might be hiding.
Suarez was typing up the reports from his interviews with Thelma Gray and Miranda Sanchez. Cantwell was doing a search of sales of black vans matching the abductor's in LA County over the last month and checking the owners for criminal records.
Ray had gone back to Ashley's high school to meet with the principal and review surveillance footage of the surrounding streets in recent days. They hoped the abductor had cased the school and made some kind of mistake, maybe gotten sloppy and gotten out of the van so he could be identified.
Brody had been pulled from the search entirely to investigate a drive-by shooting in Westchester. Hillman himself was reviewing recent cases of teen abductions in the county, looking for similarities.
Keri got Hillman to let her check out Walker Lee, the older guy Ashley seemed to have taken up with in recent weeks. She knew he'd said yes just to get her out of the station and away from the heart of the investigation. But she didn't mind. She didn't have much hope for any of those other areas of pursuit and figured she may as well try a fresh lead.
Walker Lee lived in North Venice just off Rose Avenue. The area was teeming with art galleries, vegan brunch spots, organic spas, and hundreds of artist lofts, which was just a fancy way of describing unfurnished, bare bones studio apartments. But because they were called "lofts" and were located in Venice, the building owners could charge $2,500 a month for 500 square feet. The same place in Sherman Oaks would go for under $1,000.
Lee's place appeared to be a variation on the theme. It was in what looked like an old auto body shop, in which each repair station had been walled off from the others and transformed into a living space. Keri doubted the loud music his neighbors heard coming from his unit was in any way diminished by the cheap drywall separators.
She banged on the front door again. Minutes earlier, Walker Lee had shouted that he'd just gotten out of the shower and needed a minute to get dressed.
"It's been long enough, Mr. Lee. Open up now or I'm going to open this door for you."
A second later, the door opened.
Walker Lee-Ashley's new boyfriend-stood in front of her. He looked like the guy in the photos. As in many of them, he was currently wearing no shirt or shoes, only a pair of jeans with an open button and a half-zipped fly that showcased his six-pack abs. His long blond hair was damp and water dripped from a few strands onto the concrete floor at his feet. He was so beautiful that it took effort for Keri not to stare.
"Come on in. You said you had some questions about Ashley?" he said as he rubbed a towel through his hair.
Keri nodded and followed him into the loft, trying not to stare at his backside. No wonder Ashley had been smitten. This guy was eye candy even by Hollywood standards. He led her through the main area, which served as the bedroom, through the kitchen that used to be a body shop office, and into what she guessed had once been the break room. Keri noticed that the door and walls were padded. Her internal alert system went off briefly as she wondered why he was guiding her into a soundproof room. But when she looked inside, she understood. It had been converted into a tiny rehearsal studio, complete with speaker towers, drums, microphones, soundboards, amplifiers, guitars, boxes, crates, endless wires, and even a couch to crash on. There was barely room to move. Lee plopped down on the couch and waited for Keri to speak. She took a seat in a metal folding chair across from him.
"As I said before, the reason I'm here is Ashley Penn. Do you know where she is?"
The man raked his fingers through his hair, a confused look on his face.
"Home?"
"No."
"She's not here if that's what you're getting at."
"Do you own a black van?"
"No."
"Do you know anyone who owns a black van? Someone in the band, maybe?"
"No. I don't get it. Do you want to tell me what's going on?"
"You don't watch the news?"
"I don't have a TV and since we weren't gigging tonight, I've been rehearsing in here all evening. I only quit to shower fifteen minutes ago."
"Were you alone? Can any of your band mates verify your whereabouts?"
"No. I like to work on new material by myself. Are you asking if I have an alibi? Seriously, what is going on?"
Keri explained how Ashley went missing after school this afternoon, all the while studying his face, trying to detect if he already knew what she was talking about. He betrayed nothing suspicious, only shock. She didn't know if it was genuine or if his performance skills extended to police interviews.
As she spoke he grabbed two shot glasses, splashed whiskey into both, and handed one to Keri.
She shook her head so he set it on a speaker.
"Thanks, but no."
"You don't drink?"
"Not when I'm on duty," she lied. "Who'd want to take Ashley?"
Walker drained his glass.
"There's some stuff going down," he said. "But man, I can't be talking to the cops about it."
"Why not?"
"Because it could all come back to bite me in the ass."
"Look, nothing personal but I don't give a rat's ass about your ass," Keri said. "Unless you had something do with it, I'm not interested in you. So drop the drama and just talk to me."
"Ah, man-"
"You want to help her, right?"
"Of course I do."
"Then talk. Tell me what you know."
He seemed to be contemplating his options, then looked Keri straight in the eyes and said, "Drink your glass first."
"I told you-"
"Yeah, I know, you're on duty," he said. "You want me to talk and tell you stuff that might come back to bite me? Fine, then let's even the score. You do something that can come back to bite you. You drink, I talk. That's the deal."
Keri sized him up. Then she picked up the shot glass and leaned in toward him, putting on some of the flirty airs she remembered from a previous lifetime.
"Let me ask you a question first," Keri said, already aware of the answer, "you're how old?"
"Twenty-three. Is that too young for you, Detective?"
"You'd be surprised," she told him, leaning back again. "And Ashley's fifteen, if I recall. So what you've been doing to her is technically statutory rape. I assume that's one of the things you're worried about getting bit by."
The man nodded. Keri put the shot glass back down and stared at him hard.
"Let's be clear, Walker. You don't mind if I call you Walker, do you?"
He shook his head, unsure whether she was still flirting or not. She cleared it up for him.
"Walker, in addition to statutory rape, I'm guessing your phone has a number of nude photos of Ashley. That's possession of child pornography, which is also a sex crime. In fact, each photo is a separate count. Ordinarily I'd call my very large partner and let him punch you until your internal organs oozed out in your stool, but right now I don't have time. The only thing I have time for is finding Ashley. So talk. Tell me something, tell me anything, and stop worrying about yourself for ten seconds. If you're straight with me, you won't have anything to worry about. If you're not, I'm going to be your worst nightmare, I guarantee it."
Walker gulped. It was nice to see the smirk disappear from his face, if only briefly. After he regained his composure, he spilled everything.
According to him, even though his band, Rave, was doing decently here in LA-they even had a single in rotation on KROQ-he didn't think they could break out of the pack. There was just too much competition here. Walker-the lead singer and songwriter-was thinking of dumping the band and going to Vegas to try to make it solo. He was the face of the band, he wrote the songs, he played lead guitar. He figured he'd be a big fish in a smaller pond in the desert. Once he established himself, he could come back and fill theatres instead of clubs. Ashley was going to come with him.
"So you two were going to run away?"
Walker shrugged. "Start living is more like it. I'm going to be huge. She is too. You've seen her, right? She's gorgeous. She'd been looking into some modeling agencies there. They were interested."
His information fit with the web searches Keri had found on the laptop in Ashley's room.
"There was just one little wrinkle," he continued. "She's always had money-never had to ask for it. She knew her parents wouldn't give her any if she just took off. So she started to joke about faking her own abduction and ransoming them."
Keri tried to hide the shock she felt. Could Ashley actually be behind her own disappearance? That didn't fit with anything about the case so far.
"Do you think that's what happened?"
He shook his head.
"No, it was just a joke. If I had to lay money down, I'd put all this crap at the feet of Artie North."
Keri had never heard the name before.
"Who's Artie North?"
"He's a super creepy security guard at Ashley's school. He caught me and Ashley one day, out behind the bleachers, you know, being…affectionate. He got video of it on his phone. Then the little freak tried to bribe Ashley into having sex with him. Otherwise he said he'd upload it to a bunch of porn sites."
"So did she? Have sex with him?"
"No. Someone beat the shit out of him instead."
"You?"
He shrugged.
"I can't recall. The important thing is, she told me he's been giving her dirty looks ever since."
Keri turned it over in her head, trying to make sense of everything she'd been told. Predatory rock star boy toys, creepy security guards, possible faked abductions-she'd just gone from no leads to too many. She stood up.
"Don't leave town, Walker. I'm going to check out every one of these leads. And if it turns out you've been lying to me, I'm going to bring my partner back for an up close and personal visit, you understand?"
He nodded. She grabbed the shot off the speaker, downed it in one swallow, and tossed him the empty glass as she walked out the door.
"And for Christ's sake, put on a frickin' shirt."
Outside, she called Suarez and asked him to work up anything he had on Artie North and get back to her right away. Then she called Ray.
"Where are you?" she asked.
"I just wrapped up at the school. I'm headed back to the station."
"I'll meet you there and pick you up. Don't even go inside."
"What's up?'
"We've got a new suspect. And I'd like your company when I have a little chat with him."
"Okay. You sound peppy."
"I got multiple new leads while getting hit on by a himbo, so you know, confidence boost."
"I'm so happy for you," Ray said sarcastically.
"I knew you would be. See you in five."
Keri hung up, put the siren on her roof, and turned it on. She loved driving with the siren on.