A Trace of Vice

Ray was familiar with how much she was always affected by this moment and sat quietly in the driver’s seat while she worked through the cycle of emotions and gathered herself for what was to come.

“You good?” he asked, when he saw her body finally relax slightly.

“Almost,” she said, pulling down the visor mirror and giving herself one last check to make sure she wasn’t a total mess.

The person staring back at her looked much healthier than she had just a few months ago. The black circles she used to have under her brown eyes were no longer there and they weren’t bloodshot. Her skin was less blotchy. Her dirty blonde hair, while still pulled back in a utilitarian ponytail, wasn’t greasy and unwashed.

Keri was closing in on her thirty-six birthday but she looked better than she had at any point since Evie was taken five years earlier. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the sense of hope she’d had since the Collector had hinted all those weeks ago that he’d be in touch.

Or maybe it was the real possibility of romance with Ray on the horizon. It could also have been recently moving out of the ratty houseboat she’d called home for several years into a real apartment. Or it might have had to do with her reduced consumption of large quantities of single malt scotch.

Whatever it was, she noticed more men than usual turning their heads when she walked by these days. She didn’t mind it, if only because for the first time in forever, she felt like she had some power over her often out-of-control life.

She flipped the visor back up and turned to Ray.

“Ready,” she said.

As they walked up to the front door, Keri took in the neighborhood. This was the northernmost part of Westchester, adjacent to the 405 freeway and just south of the Howard Hughes Center, a large retail and office complex that dominated the skyline in this part of town.

Westchester had a reputation as a working-class neighborhood, and most of the homes were of the modest, one-story variety. But even those had exploded in cost in the last half dozen years. As a result, the community was a mix of old-timers who’d lived here forever and young, professional families who didn’t want to live in cookie-cutter developments but somewhere with personality. Keri guessed these folks were the latter.

The door opened before they even got to the porch and out stepped a clearly worried couple. Keri was surprised at their age. The woman – petite, Hispanic, with a no-nonsense pixie cut – looked to be in her mid-fifties. She wore a nice but well-worn women’s suit and old but immaculately maintained black shoes.

The man was easily half a foot taller than her. He was white, balding with tufts of grayish-blond hair, and spectacles hanging around his neck. He was at least as old as her and probably closer to sixty. He was more casually dressed than she was, in comfortable slacks and a crisp, buttoned-down plaid dress shirt. His brown loafers were scuffed and one of his laces was undone.

“Are you the detectives?” the woman asked, reaching out her hand to shake theirs even before getting confirmation.

“Yes, ma’am,” Keri answered, taking the lead. “I’m Detective Keri Locke of LAPD’s West Los Angeles Pacific Division Missing Persons Unit. This is my partner, Detective Raymond Sands.”

“Good to meet you folks,” Ray said.

The woman beckoned them in as she spoke.

“Thank you for coming. My name is Mariela Caldwell. This is my husband, Edward.”

Edward nodded but didn’t speak. Keri sensed that they didn’t know how to begin so she took the initiative.

“Why don’t we have a seat in the kitchen and you can tell us what has you so concerned?”

“Of course,” Mariela said, and led them through a narrow hallway adorned with photos of a dark-haired girl with a warm smile. There had to be at least twenty photos covering her entire life from birth until now. They came to a small but well-appointed breakfast nook. “Can I offer you anything – coffee, a snack?”

“No thank you, ma’am,” Ray said as he tried to squeeze against the wall to maneuver around and into a chair. “Let’s all just sit down and get as much information as possible as quickly as we can. Why don’t you start by telling us what has you worried? My understanding is that Sarah has only been out of touch for a few hours.”

“Almost five hours now,” Edward said, speaking for the first time as he sat down across from Ray. “She called her mother at noon to say she was meeting up with a friend she hadn’t seen in a while. It’s almost five p.m. now. She knows she’s supposed to check in every couple of hours when she goes out, even if it’s only a text to say where she is.”

“She doesn’t ever forget?” Ray asked, keeping his tone neutral so that only Keri caught his underlying skepticism. Neither of the Caldwells spoke for a moment and Keri worried that Ray had offended them. Finally Mariela answered.

“Detective Sands, I know it may be hard to believe. But no, she doesn’t ever forget. Ed and I had Sarah later in life. After many failed attempts, we were blessed by her arrival. She is our only child and I admit that we are both a little, what’s the word, hovering?”

“Helicopter parents,” Ed added with a wry smile.

Keri smiled too. She could hardly blame them.

“Anyway,” Mariela continued, “Sarah knows that she is our dearest love in the world and amazingly, she doesn’t resent it or feel stifled. We bake together on weekends. She still loves to go to ‘take your daughter to work’ days with her father. She even came with me to a Motley Crue concert a few months ago. She dotes on us. And because she knows how precious she is to us, she is very diligent about keeping us in the loop. We established the ‘text where you are’ policy. But she’s the one who chose the two-hour rule.”

Keri watched both of them closely as they spoke. Mariela’s hand was in Ed’s and he was gently stroking the back of hers with his thumb. He waited until she was done, then spoke up.

“And even if she did forget, for the first time ever, she wouldn’t have gone this long without getting in touch or replying to any of our texts or calls. Between us, we’ve texted her a dozen times and called half a dozen. In my last message I told her I was calling the police. If she had received any of those, she would have reached out. And as I said to your lieutenant, the GPS on her phone is turned off. That’s never happened before.”

That unsettling detail hung in the room, threatening to overwhelm everything else. Keri tried to squelch any movement in the direction of panic by quickly asking the next question.

“Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell, may I ask why Sarah wasn’t in school today? It is a Friday.”

Both of them looked at her with surprised expressions. Even Ray appeared taken aback.

“It’s the day after Thanksgiving,” Mariela said. “There’s no school today.”

Keri felt her heart drop into her gut. Only a parent would know that kind of detail and for all practical purposes, she no longer was one.

Evie would be thirteen now. Under normal circumstances, Keri would have been negotiating how to ensure child care for her daughter so she could work today. But she hadn’t had normal circumstances in a long time.

The rituals associated with school breaks and family holidays had faded away in recent years to the point where something that used to be obvious to her no longer registered.

She tried to respond but it came out as an unintelligible cough. Her eyes got watery and she lowered her head so no one could see. Ray came to her rescue.

“So Sarah had the day off but you didn’t?” he asked.

“No,” Ed answered. “I own a small paint store in the Westchester Triangle. It’s not like I’m rolling around in money. I can’t take many days off – Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s – that’s about it.”

“And I’m a paralegal for a big law firm in El Segundo. Normally I’d be off today but we’re prepping a huge case for trial and they needed all hands on deck.”

Keri cleared her throat and, confident that she had control of herself, rejoined the conversation.

“Who is this friend Sarah was meeting?” she asked.

“Her name is Lanie Joseph,” Mariela said. “Sarah used to be friends with her in elementary school. But when we moved here from our old neighborhood, they lost touch. Frankly, I wish it had stayed that way.”

“What do you mean?” Keri asked.

Mariela hesitated, so Ed jumped in.

“We used to live in South Culver City. It’s not very far away from here but that area is much more hardscrabble. The streets are rougher and so are the kids. Lanie had an edge that always made us a bit uncomfortable, even when she was young. It’s gotten worse. I don’t mean to be judgmental, but we think she’s headed down a dangerous road.”

“We scrimped and saved,” Mariela jumped in, clearly uncomfortable at casting aspersions among strangers. “The year Sarah started middle school we moved here. We bought this place just before the market exploded. It’s small but we’d never be able to buy it now. It was tight even then. But she needed a fresh start with different kids.”

“So they lost touch,” Ray prodded gently. “What made them reconnect recently?”

“They’d see each other a couple of times a year but that was about it,” Ed answered. “But Sarah told us that Lanie texted her yesterday and said she really wanted to meet – that she needed her advice. She didn’t say why.”

“Of course,” Mariela added, “because she’s such a sweet, caring girl, she agreed without hesitation. I remember her telling me last night, ‘What kind of friend would I be, Mama, if I didn’t help someone when they needed it most?’”

Mariela broke off, overcome with emotion. Keri saw Ed give her hand a little squeeze of support. She envied these two. Even in a moment of near-panic, they were a united front, finishing one another’s sentences, backstopping each other emotionally. Somehow their shared devotion and love was keeping them from falling apart. Keri remembered a time when she thought she’d had the same thing.

“Did Sarah say where they were meeting?” she asked.

“No, they hadn’t decided as of noon. But I’m sure it was somewhere close – maybe the Howard Hughes Center or Fox Hills Mall. Sarah doesn’t drive yet so it would have to be somewhere with easy bus access.”

Can you give us a few recent photos of her?” Keri asked Mariela, who immediately got up to get some.

“Is Sarah on social media?” Ray asked.

“She’s on Facebook. Instagram, Twitter. I don’t know what else. Why?” asked Ed.

“Sometimes kids will share details on their accounts that are helpful to investigations. Do you know any of her passwords?”

“No,” Mariela said as she pulled a few pictures from their frames. “We’ve never had cause to ask for them. She shows us posts on her accounts all the time. She never seems to be hiding anything. We’re even Facebook friends. I just never felt the need to ask for that kind of thing. Is there no way you can get access to those?”

“We can,” Keri told her. “But without the passwords, it takes time. We have to get a court order. And right now we don’t have probable cause.”

“What about the GPS being off?” Ed asked.

“That helps make the case,” Keri answered. “But at this point everything’s circumstantial at best. You’ve both made a compelling argument for why this situation is so unusual. But on paper, it might not look that way to a judge. But don’t let that upset you too much. We’re just starting out here. This is what we do – investigate. And I’d like to start by going to Lanie’s house and speaking to her folks. Do you have her address?”

“I do,” Mariela said, handing Keri several photos of Sarah before pulling out her phone and scrolling through her contacts. “But I don’t know how much help it will be. Lanie’s father is out of the picture and her mother is…uninvolved. But if you think it will help, here it is.”

Keri wrote down the information and everyone made their way to the front door. They shook hands formally, which struck Keri as odd for people who’d just been discussing something so intimate.

She and Ray were halfway down the path to his car when Edward Caldwell called out after them with one last question.

“I’m sorry to ask this but you said you were just getting started. That makes it sound like this might be a long process. But my understanding is that in the case of a missing person, the first twenty-four hours are crucial. Is that wrong?”

Keri and Ray looked at each other and then back at Caldwell. Neither was sure who should answer. Finally Ray spoke.

“That’s not wrong, sir. But we don’t yet have any indication that anything suspicious has happened. And in any case, you reached out to us quickly. That helps a lot. I know this is hard to hear but try not to worry. I promise we’ll be in touch.”

They turned and walked back to the car. When Keri was sure they were out of earshot, she quietly muttered, “Good lying.”

“I wasn’t lying. Everything I said was true. She could turn up back home any minute and this will be over.”

“I guess,” Keri conceded. “But all my instincts are telling me this one isn’t going to be that easy.”

CHAPTER THREE

Keri sat in the passenger seat on the way to Culver City, quietly flagellating herself. She tried to remind herself that she hadn’t done anything wrong. But she was wracked by the guilt of forgetting something as simple as today not being a school day. Even Ray hadn’t been able to hide his surprise at it.

She was losing touch with the parent part of her and it scared her. How long would it be before she forgot other, more personal details? A few weeks ago, she’d been given anonymous clues which led to a photo of a teenage girl. But Keri, much to her shame, hadn’t been able to tell if it was Evie.

True, it had been five years and the picture was grainy and taken from far away. But the fact that she just didn’t immediately know if the photo was of her daughter or not had shaken her. Even after the unit’s resident tech guru, Detective Kevin Edgerton, had told her that his digital comparison of the picture to photos of Evie at eight years old was inconclusive for a match, her sense of shame lingered.

I should have just known. A good mother would have known if it was real right away.

“We’re here,” Ray said quietly, snapping her out of her reverie.

Keri looked up and realized they were parked just up the street from Lanie Joseph’s house. The Caldwells had been right. This area, while less than five miles from their home, was much rougher-looking.

It was still only 5:30, but the sun had already mostly set and the temperature was dropping. Small groups of young men in gang attire were gathering in driveways and on stoops, drinking beers and smoking what didn’t look like cigarettes. Most of the lawns were more brown than green and the sidewalks were cracked everywhere, with weeds fighting their way through the spaces. Most of the residences on the block looked to be townhouses or duplexes and all of them had bars on the windows and heavy metal screen doors.

“What do you think – should we call Culver City PD for backup?” Ray asked. “Technically, we’re out of our jurisdiction.”

“Nah. It’ll take too long and I want to stay low profile, get in and out. The more formal we make this, the longer it’s going to take. If something did happen to Sarah, we don’t have time to waste.”

“Okay, then let’s get to it,” he said.

They got out of the car and walked briskly to the address Mariela Caldwell had given them. Lanie lived in the front of a two-unit townhouse on Corinth, just south of Culver Boulevard. The 405 freeway was so close that Keri could identify the hair color of passing drivers.

As Ray knocked on the outer metal door, Keri glanced two houses over at five men huddled around the engine of a Corvette sitting on blocks in the driveway. Several of them cast suspicious looks at the interlopers but no one said anything.

The sound of multiple kids screeching came from inside. After a minute, the inner door was opened by a small blond boy who couldn’t have been more than five. He wore holes-pocked jeans and a white T-shirt with a homemade Superman-style “S” scrawled on it.

He stared up at Ray, his neck craning all the way back. Then he looked over at Keri, and apparently viewing her as less threatening, he spoke.

“What you want, lady?”

Keri sensed that the kid didn’t get a lot of sweetness and light in his life, so she knelt down to his level and spoke in as gentle a voice as she could muster.

“We’re police officers. We need to speak to your mommy for a minute.”

The kid, unfazed, turned and shouted back into the house.

“Mom. Cops are here. Want to talk to you.” Apparently this wasn’t the first time he’d had a visit from law enforcement.

Keri saw Ray glance over at the guys around the Corvette and without looking herself, asked him quietly, “We got a problem over there?”

“Not yet,” Ray answered under his breath. “But we could soon. We should make this quick.”

“What kind of cops are you?” the little boy demanded. “No uniforms. You undercover? You detectives?”

“Detectives,” Ray told him and apparently deciding the boy didn’t need to be coddled, asked his own question. “When’s the last time you saw Lanie?”

“Oh, Lanie’s in trouble again,” he said, a gleeful grin consuming his face. “No surprise there. She left at lunchtime to see her smart friend. I guess she was hoping some of it would rub off on her. Don’t bet on it.”

Just then a woman wearing sweatpants and a heavy, gray sweatshirt that said “Keep Walking” appeared at the end of the hall. As she lumbered toward them Keri took her in. She was about Keri’s height but weighed well over 200 pounds.

Her pale skin seemed to merge with the gray sweatshirt, making it impossible to clearly tell where one ended and the other began. Her grayish-blonde hair was pulled back in a loose bun that was in danger of falling apart completely.

Keri guessed that she was younger than forty but her exhausted, worn face could have passed for fifty. She had bags under her eyes and her puffy face was dotted with gin blossoms, possibly alcohol-induced. It was clear that she had once been quite attractive but the weight of life seemed to have drained her and you could only see flashes of pretty around the edges now.

“What’s she done now?” the woman asked, even less surprised than her son to see police at her door.

“You’re Mrs. Joseph?” Keri asked.

“I haven’t been Mrs. Joseph for seven years. That’s when Mr. Joseph left me for a massage therapist named Kayley. Now I’m Mrs. Hart, although Mr. Hart cleared out without a proper goodbye about eighteen months ago. But it’s too much trouble to change the name again so I’m stuck with it for now.”

“So you’re Lanie Joseph’s mother,” Ray said, trying to get her on track. “But your name is…?”

“Joanie Hart. I’m the mother of five hellions, including the one you’re here about. So what exactly did she do this time?”

“We’re not sure she’s done anything, Ms. Hart,” Keri assured her, not wanting to create unnecessary conflict with a woman who was clearly comfortable with it. “But the parents of her friend Sarah Caldwell haven’t been able to reach her and they’re worried. Have you heard from Lanie since about noon today?”

Joanie Hart looked at her like she was from another planet.

“I don’t keep tabs like that,” she said. “I was working all day; 7-Eleven doesn’t close just cuz yesterday was Thanksgiving, you know? I only got back about a half hour ago. So I don’t know where she is. But that’s not special. She’s gone half the time and she never tells me where she’s going. That one loves to keep secrets. I think she’s got some guy she doesn’t want me to know about.”

“Did she ever mention this guy’s name?”

“Like I said, I don’t even know if he exists. I’m just saying I wouldn’t put it past her. She likes to do things to piss me off. But I’m too tired or busy to get angry so that pisses her off. You know how it is,” she said, looking at Keri, who had no idea how it was.

Keri felt her anger rising at this woman who didn’t seem to know or care where her daughter was. Joanie hadn’t asked about her well-being or expressed any concern at all. Ray seemed to sense how she was feeling and spoke before she could.

“Can we get Lanie’s phone number and a recent photo of her, please?” he asked.

Joanie looked put out but didn’t say so.

“Give me a second,” she said and wandered back down the hall.

Keri looked at Ray, who shook his head in shared disgust.

“You mind if I wait in the car?” Keri said. “I’m worried I’m going to say something…unproductive to Joanie.”

“Go ahead. I got this. Maybe you can call Edgerton and see if he can bend the rules to access their social media accounts.”

“Raymond Sands, my stars,” she said, rediscovering a bit of her sense of humor. “You seem to be adopting some of my more questionable law enforcement methods. I think I like it.”

She turned on her heel and walked off before he could respond. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the men two doors down were all watching her. She zipped up her jacket, suddenly aware of the cold. Late November in Los Angeles was pretty tame, but with the sun gone, the temperature was in the low fifties. And all those eyes on her added an extra shiver.

When she got to the car, she turned and leaned with her back against it so she could maintain a good view of both Lanie’s house and her neighbors as she dialed Edgerton’s number.

“Edgerton here,” came the enthusiastic voice of Kevin Edgerton, the unit’s youngest detective. He may have been only twenty-eight, but the tall, lanky kid was a tech genius who was responsible for cracking many cases.

In fact, he’d been instrumental in helping Keri get in touch with the Collector while shielding her own identity. Keri imagined that right now, he was brushing the longish brown bangs out of his eyes. Why he didn’t just get his sloppy, millennial hair cut was beyond her, as were most of his technical abilities.

“Hey, Kevin, it’s Keri. I need a favor. I want you to see if you can access a couple of social media accounts for me. One is for Sarah Caldwell from Westchester, age sixteen. The other is Lanie Joseph, Culver City, also sixteen. And please don’t give me a hassle over warrants and probable cause. We’re dealing with exigent circumstances here and – ”

“Got it,” Edgerton interrupted.

“What? Already?” Keri asked, stunned.

“Well, not Caldwell. All her accounts are password-protected and require her approval to view. I can crack them if you need. But I’m hoping we can avoid any sticky legal situations just using Joseph’s stuff. She’s an open book. Anyone can look at her pages. I’m doing it now.”

“Do they say anything about where she was today after about noon?” Keri asked, as she noticed three of the men from the Corvette driveway walking toward her.

The two other men remained behind, their focus on Ray, who was still standing at the Hart front door, waiting for Joanie to find a recent photo of her daughter. Keri readjusted herself slightly so that even though she was still leaning against the car, her weight was more evenly distributed in case she had to move suddenly.

“She hasn’t posted on Facebook since last night but there are a bunch of posts on Instagram of her with another girl, I’m assuming Caldwell. They’re from the Fox Hills Mall. One’s in a clothing store. Another’s at a makeup counter. The last one is of her at what looks like a food court table, eating a pretzel. The caption says ‘yummy.’ It’s from two oh six p.m.”

The three men were crossing into the Harts’ yard now and were less than twenty feet from Keri.

“Thanks, Kevin. One last thing – I’m going to send you cell phone numbers for both girls. I’m betting the GPS was shut off in both of them but I need you to track their last known location before that happened,” she said as the men came to a stop in front of her. “I’ve got to go. I’ll get back to you if I need more.”

Keri hung up before he could respond and slid the phone into her pocket. Along the way, she inconspicuously unsnapped the holster of her weapon.

Glancing at the men but not saying a word, she still leaned against the car but lifted her right leg so that her foot rested against the vehicle. That way she would have extra power if she needed to propel herself forward.

“Evening, gentlemen,” she finally said in a firm, friendly tone, “a little nippy out tonight, don’t you think?”