Monday
Early Evening
Outside, as she hurried back to the car, Keri tried to ignore the heat reflecting off the sidewalk. Beads of sweat formed on her brow after only a minute. As she dialed Ray's number, she cursed quietly to herself.
I'm frickin' six blocks from the Pacific Ocean in mid-September. When is this going to let up?
After seven rings, Ray finally picked up.
"What?" he demanded, sounding winded and annoyed.
"I need you to meet me on Main, across from West Venice High."
"When?"
"Now, Raymond."
"Hold on a second." She could hear him moving around and muttering under his breath. It didn't sound like he was alone. When he got back on the line, she could tell he'd changed rooms.
"I was kind of otherwise engaged, Keri."
"Well, disengage yourself, Detective. We've got a case."
"Is this that Venice thing?" he asked, clearly exasperated.
"It is. And could you please cut it with the tone. That is, unless you think the daughter of a US senator disappearing into a black van isn't worth checking out."
"Jesus. Why didn't the mother mention the senator thing on the phone?"
"Because he asked her not to. He was as dismissive as you, maybe even more so. Hold on a second."
Keri had reached her car. She put the phone on speaker, tossed it in the passenger seat, and got in. As she pulled out onto the street, she filled him in on the rest-the fake ID, the shell casing, the girl who saw Ashley getting in the van-possibly against her will-the plan to coordinate interviews. As she was finishing up, her phone beeped and she looked at the screen.
"That's Suarez calling in. I want to fill him in on the details. We good? You disengaged yet?"
"I'm getting in the car now," he answered, not taking the bait. "I can be there in fifteen minutes."
"I hope you offered her my apologies, whoever she was," Keri said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
"She wasn't the kind of girl who needs apologies," Ray replied.
"Why am I not surprised?"
She switched calls without saying goodbye.
*
Fifteen minutes later, Keri and Ray walked the stretch of Main Street where Ashley Penn may or may not have been abducted. There was nothing obviously out of the ordinary. The dog park next to the street was alive with happy yips and owners shouting out to pets with names like Hoover, Speck, Conrad, and Delilah.
Rich bohemian dog owners. Ah, Venice.
Keri tried to force the extraneous thoughts out of her head and focus. There didn't seem to be much to go on. Ray clearly felt the same way.
"Is it possible she just took off or ran away?' he mused.
"I'm not ruling it out," Keri replied. "She's definitely not the innocent little princess her mom thinks she is."
"They never are."
"Whatever happened to her, it's possible she played a role in it. The more we can get into her life, the more we'll know. We need to talk to some people who won't give us the official line. Like that senator-I don't know what's going on with him. But he definitely wasn't comfortable with me probing into their life."
"Got any idea why?"
"Not yet, other than a gut feeling that there's something he's hiding. I've never met a parent so blasé about their missing child. He was telling stories about pounding beers at fifteen. He was trying too hard."
Ray winced visibly.
"I'm glad you didn't call him on it," he said. "The last thing you need is an enemy who has the word Senator in front of his name."
"I don't care."
"Well, you should," he said. "A few words from him to Beecher or Hillman, and you're history."
"I was history five years ago."
"Come on-"
"You know it's true."
"Don't go there," Ray said.
Keri hesitated, glanced at him, then turned her gaze back to the dog park. A few feet from them, a little brown-furred puppy was happily rolling on its back in the dirt.
"Want to know something I never told you?" she asked.
"I'm not sure."
"After, what happened, you know-"
"Evie?"
Keri felt her heart clench at her daughter's name.
"Right. There was a time right after it happened, when I was trying to get pregnant like crazy. It went on for two or three months. Stephen couldn't keep up."
Ray said nothing. She continued.
"Then I woke up one morning and hated myself. I felt like someone who'd lost a dog and went straight to the pound to get a replacement. I felt like a coward, like I was being all about me, instead of keeping the focus where it belonged. I was letting Evie go instead of fighting for her."
"Keri, you got to stop doing this to yourself. You're your own worst enemy, you really are."
"Ray, I can still feel her. She's alive. I don't know where or how, but she is."
He squeezed her hand.
"I know."
"She's thirteen now."
"I know."
They walked the rest of the block in silence. When they got to the intersection at Westminster Avenue, Ray finally spoke.
"Listen," he said in a tone that indicated he was focusing on the case again, "we can follow every lead that turns up. But this is a senator's daughter. And if she didn't just go for some joyride, the claws are going to come out on this one. Sometime soon, the Feds are going to get involved. The brass downtown are going to want in too. By nine tomorrow morning, you and I will be kicked to the curb."
It was probably true but Keri didn't care. She'd deal with the morning in the morning. Right now they had a case to work.
She sighed deeply and closed her eyes. After partnering with her for a year, Ray had finally learned not to interrupt her when she was trying to get in the zone.
After about thirty seconds she opened her eyes and looked around. After a moment, she pointed to a business across the intersection.
"Over there," she said and started walking.
This stretch of Venice north of Washington Boulevard up to about Rose Avenue was a weird crossroads of humanity. There were the mansions of the Venice Canals to the south, the fancy shops of Abbot Kinney Boulevard directly east, the commercial sector to the north, and the grungy surf and skate section along the beach.
But throughout the entire area were gangs. They were more prominent at night, especially closer to the coast. But LAPD Pacific Division was tracking fourteen active gangs in greater Venice, at least five of which considered the spot Keri was standing on as part of their territory. There was one black gang, two Hispanic ones, a white power motorcycle gang, and a gang comprised primarily of drug-and gun-dealing surfers. All of them existed uneasily on the same streets as millennial bar-goers, hookers, wide-eyed tourists, homeless vets, and long-time granola-chomping, tie-dyed T-shirt-wearing residents.
As a result, business in the area comprised everything from hipster speakeasies to henna tattoo parlors to medicinal marijuana dispensaries to the place Keri stood in front of now, a bail bondsman's office.
It was on the second story of a recently restored building, just above a pressed juice bar.
"Check it out," she said. Above the front door, the sign read Briggs Bail Bonds.
"What about it?" Ray said.
"Look right above the sign, above 'Bail.'"
Ray did, confused at first, then squinted his one good eye to see a very small security camera. He looked in the direction the camera was pointing. It was trained on the intersection. Beyond that was the stretch of Main Street near the dog park, where Ashley had allegedly entered the van.
"Good catch," he said.
Keri stepped back and studied the area. It was probably busier now than it had been a few hours ago. But this wasn't exactly a quiet area.
"If you were going to abduct someone, is this where you'd do it?"
Ray shook his head.
"Me? No, I'm more of an alley guy."
"So what kind of person is so brazen as to snatch someone in broad daylight near a busy intersection?"
"Let's find out," Ray said, heading for the door.
They walked up the narrow stairwell to the second floor. The Briggs Bail Bonds door was propped open. Immediately inside that door to the right, a large man with an even larger gut was settled into a recliner, perusing Guns & Ammo magazine.
He looked up when Keri and Ray walked in, made the snap decision that they weren't a threat, and nodded to the back of the room. A long-haired man with a scruffy beard sitting at a desk waved them over. Keri and Ray sat in the chairs in front of the man's desk and waited patiently as he worked the phone with a client. The issue wasn't the ten percent cash down, it was the collateral for the full amount. He needed a deed of trust on a house, or possession of a car with a clean title, something like that.
Keri could hear the person on the other end of the line pleading but the long-haired guy wasn't moved.
Thirty seconds later he hung up and focused on the two people in front of him.
"Stu Briggs," he said, "what can I do for you, Detectives?"
Nobody had flashed a badge. Keri was impressed.
Before they could answer he looked more closely at Ray, then nearly shouted.
"Ray Sands-The Sandman! I actually saw your last fight, the one with the southpaw; what was his name?"
"Lenny Jack."
"Right, right, yeah, that's it, Lenny Jack-the Jack Attack. He was missing a finger or something, wasn't he? A pinky?"
"That was after."
"Yeah, well, pinky or not, I thought you had him, I really did. I mean, his legs were rubber, his face was a bloody pulp. He was tripping all over himself. One more good punch, that's all you needed; just one more. Hell, a half-punch would have been enough. You probably could have just blown on him and he would have fallen over."
"That's what I thought too," Ray admitted. "In hindsight, that's probably why I let my guard down. Apparently he had one punch left he wasn't telling anyone about."
The man shrugged.
"Apparently. I lost money on that fight." He seemed to realize that his loss wasn't as great as Ray's and added, "I mean, not that much. Not compared to you. It's not that bad, though, the eye. I can tell it's fake because I know the story. I don't think most people could though."
There was a long silence as he caught his breath and Ray let him twist awkwardly. Stu tried again.
"So you're a cop now? Why exactly is the Sandman sitting in front of my desk with this pretty little lady, excuse me, pretty little peace officer?"
Keri didn't appreciate the condescension but let it slide. They had bigger priorities.
"We need to look at your security camera footage from today," Ray said. "Specifically from two forty-five to four PM."
"Not a problem," Stu answered as if he got this kind of request every day.
The security camera was operational, necessary, actually, given the establishment's clientele; it wasn't just live-time to a monitor but streamed to a hard drive where it was recorded. The lens was wide angled and picked up the entire intersection of Main and Westminster. The video quality was exceptional.
In a back room, Keri and Ray watched the footage on a desktop monitor. The section of Main Street in front of the dog park was visible to about halfway up the block. They could only hope that whatever happened took place on that stretch of road.
Nothing eventful happened until about 3:05. School had obviously just let out as kids began streaming across the street, headed in all directions.
At 3:08, Ashley came into view. Ray didn't recognize her immediately so Keri pointed her out-a confident-looking girl in a skirt and tight top.
Then, just like that, there it was, the black van. It pulled up next to her. The windows were heavily tinted, illegally so. The driver's face wasn't visible as he wore a cap with the brim pulled low. Both sun visors were down and the glare from the bright afternoon sunlight made getting a clear view of the interior of the vehicle impossible.
Ashley stopped walking and looked in the van. The driver seemed to be speaking. She said something and moved closer. As she did, the vehicle's passenger door swung open. Ashley continued to speak, appearing to lean in toward the van. She was engaged in a conversation with whoever was driving. Then, suddenly, she was inside. It wasn't clear if she got in voluntarily or was pulled in. After a few more seconds, the van casually pulled out into the street. No peeling out. No speeding. Nothing out of the ordinary.
They watched the scene again at regular speed, and then a third time, in slow motion.
At the end Ray shrugged and said, "I don't know. I still can't tell. She ended up inside, that's all I can say for certain. Whether it was against her will or not, I'm not sure."
Keri couldn't disagree. The clip was maddeningly indeterminate. But something about it wasn't right. She just couldn't put her finger on it. She rewound the footage and let it replay to the point when the van was nearest the security camera. Then she hit pause. It was the only moment when the van was completely in shadow. It was still impossible to see inside the vehicle. But something else was visible.
"You seeing what I'm seeing?" she asked.
Ray nodded.
"The license plate is covered," he noted. "I'd put that in the 'suspicious' category."
"Same here."
Suddenly Keri's phone rang. It was Mia Penn. She dove right in without even saying hello.
"I just got a call from Ashley's friend Thelma. She says she thinks she just got pocket-dialed from Ashley's phone. She heard a bunch of shouting like someone was yelling at someone else. There was loud music playing so she couldn't tell exactly who was doing the shouting but she thinks it was Denton Rivers."
"Ashley's boyfriend?"
"Yes. I called Denton on his phone to see if he'd heard from Ashley yet, not letting on that I'd just talked to Thelma. He said he hadn't seen or heard from Ashley since school but he sounded squirrelly. And this Drake song, "Summer Sixteen," was playing in the background when I called. I called Thelma back to see if that was the song she heard when she got butt-dialed. She said it was. So I called you right away, Detective. Denton Rivers has my baby girl's phone and I think he might have her as well."
"Okay, Mia. This is really helpful. You did a great job. But I need you to stay calm. When we hang up, text me Denton's address. And remember, this could all be completely innocent."
She hung up and looked at Ray. His one good eye suggested he was thinking the same thing she was. Within seconds, her phone buzzed. She forwarded the address to Ray as they hurried down the stairs.
"We need to hurry," she said as they ran to their cars. "This is not innocent at all."