A Trace of Crime

by Blake Pierce

  “We get lots of false leads,” Keri told her, trying to tamp down the enthusiasm. “We’ll definitely check it out. But I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions at this point.”

  “I wish you would have told me that last night,” Tim Rainey suddenly said, his tone full of bitterness.

  Keri bit her tongue, refusing to remind him that she had done exactly that.

  “We’re going to go check this out,” Ray said quickly. “I know it’s difficult but try to get a little sleep. Even a few hours might help.”

  Tim Rainey opened his mouth to respond but his wife put her hand on his and he stopped himself.

  “Thank you, Detectives,” she said. “Please let us know if you learn anything.”

  Keri and Ray both nodded, hurrying out before they said something else to upset her husband.

  *

  Dawn was just on the verge of breaking when Keri and Ray pulled up in front of the home of Enrique Hernandez just off La Brea in Mid-City. According to Martin Salter, owner of Salter Home Improvement, Hernandez had done the work on Marcy Price’s awning on October twenty-sixth.

  He’d given them Hernandez’s address without any fuss, clearly hoping to be helpful and avoid any culpability for whatever his employee might have done. Ray warned him not to call Hernandez to tip him off but it was clearly unnecessary. His voice on the phone suggested the idea had never occurred to him.

  Officer Jamie Castillo pulled up next to them a moment later and got out. She wasn’t in uniform but she was wearing her gun belt.

  “So, did you guys call me just because this dude’s got a Hispanic surname and you need me to translate?”

  “No,” Ray said defensively. “We called you because we didn’t want to go through the hoops of involving the Mid-City precinct and we wanted some reliable backup. Besides, according to his boss, this guy’s English is fine.”

  “She was teasing you, Ray,” Keri noted.

  “Yeah, I was teasing you, Ray,” Castillo said.

  “That’s Detective Sands to you, Officer Castillo,” he responded gruffly.

  “I’m not on the clock,” she replied huffily.” I can call you Ray-Ray if I want.”

  “Now he’s teasing you, Jamie,” Keri said. “Man, am I the only one with a sense of humor around here?”

  She saw Ray and Jamie exchange glances that suggested they didn’t think her sense of humor was her most notable trait but neither said anything.

  “So what’s the lowdown?” Castillo asked.

  “According to his boss, Hernandez has lived alone since his wife left him last summer and he apparently hasn’t been dating. So we think he’s by himself in there,” Keri said.

  “He’s had two arrests,” Ray added. “Once for peeping, very similar situation to what Carolyn Rainey described. The other was for exposing himself to a woman in a mall. In both cases he pleaded down to probation—never served any time.”

  “So nothing with kids?” Castillo asked, sounding surprised.

  “No, but there’s a first time for everything,” Ray said.

  “I say we smoke him out,” Keri suggested. ‘We don’t have a warrant or a big team so we need to get him outside. If Ray knocks on the door with his chest puffed out and you stand next to him looking surly, he may try to run out the back. I’ll be waiting there to take him down. Attempting to evade should be enough to get us an arrest.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Ray said. “Just please don’t try to use yourself as a battering ram with this guy. You’ve suffered enough damage for one year.”

  He was referring to the multiple injuries she’d incurred in the last year, including a cracked rib, a broken collarbone, a fractured eye socket, a badly strained neck, more bruises than she could count, and at least two verified concussions.

  “I’ll do my best, Coach,” she said.

  “Now she’s teasing you,” Castillo said to Ray, getting into the swing of things.

  “Thanks for heads-up, Officer. Shall we get started? It’s going to be daylight in a few minutes and the darkness is our friend.”

  “Let’s do it,” Keri agreed.

  Castillo nodded and they all moved toward the house. Ray and Jamie hung back near the mailbox at the front of the walk while Keri skirted along the side of the house, keeping low enough to avoid being seen out a window. She kept her eyes peeled for any lights but saw none.

  There was a wooden fence at the side of the property but it was only five feet high and she was able to scramble over it without much trouble. She stood there silently for a moment, listening for any sound inside.

  In her experience, if Hernandez had a dog, this was around the time it would start barking. She heard nothing and proceeded cautiously around the back, undoing her holster and removing her weapon.

  The sun was now peeking over the horizon and Keri zipped up her jacket. Dawn was usually the coldest part of the day and this was no exception. The temperature was in the mid-40s and she could see her breath as she inched along the back of the house.

  She was reluctant to climb up on the back porch as it was wooden and she didn’t know how creaky it might be. She looked around and saw a hose attached to a spigot at one end of the porch and grabbed the end, pulling it gently along the length of the porch before assuming a spot at the other end. In position and certain that Ray was getting antsy, she texted him that she was good to go.

  A second later she heard a rap on the front door.

  “Police,” she heard Ray say in his deepest voice. “We need to speak to Enrique Hernandez. Please come to the front door, sir.”

  Keri heard stirring inside and then something more like scurrying.

  “Please come to the door, Mr. Hernandez,” Ray said again, louder and more forcefully.

  Keri imagined Hernandez slipping on some shoes and creeping toward the front room, where he could peek through the curtains. Seeing Ray and Jamie, he would have three choices: open the door, demand to see a warrant, or make a run for it.

  If he didn’t have Jessica in the house or anything to hide, his best bet was to just open the door. If he didn’t have Jessica but there was something illegal he wanted to keep hidden, he’d be better off demanding the warrant.

  There was almost no circumstance in which it was advisable to run for it, barring holding a preteen girl held against her will inside his home. Then all bets were off. Keri waited anxiously to see which way it would go. It didn’t take long to find out.

  Within a few seconds, she heard the pitter-patter of heavy footsteps headed in her direction. A moment later, Hernandez shot out the back door. He was a heavy guy, especially for his modest height. He sported an impressive potbelly and wisps of hair clung to his mostly bald head. He had on only boxer shorts and a white tank top that was more holes than shirt.

  Despite all that, he was moving fast. Keri barely had time to yank the hose up and clip his left foot as he started down the stairs. He lost his balance and careened forward, landing hard on his stomach and sliding the rest of the way until he came to a stop and the bottom.

  Keri rushed around from the side of the porch and moved toward him briskly, her gun aimed directly at him.

  “Stay down on the ground,” she ordered.

  Hernandez glanced up at her and, without a moment’s hesitation, turned and started back up the stairs. Part of her wanted to just shoot him. But if he was hiding Jessica somewhere else, they’d need to interrogate him. So instead she chased him back up the stairs and into the house. These were now exigent circumstances and the search warrant could be damned.

  The second she stepped through the door, she realized she was at a disadvantage, even with her gun. The sun was coming up outside but it was still dark inside and she didn’t know the place. She stopped where she was, squinting in the gray darkness of the room, listening for Hernandez trying to escape.

  But she heard nothing. He had only been about ten paces ahead of her when he’d entered the house, which meant he had to be nearby, either hiding or waiting to
attack.

  She was in the kitchen. There was a small table in a nook to her right. The fridge, stove, and oven were all to her left. The kitchen had two exits besides the back door. One opened into a large living room directly in front of her. The other, to the left next to the fridge, led down a hall that she imagined housed the bedrooms.

  There’s no way he went down that hall. I was in here before he could have gotten out of sight.

  She could hear Ray yelling from outside. He was threatening to break down the door. Castillo was silent and Keri suspected she was making her way around back to enter that way. She didn’t know if either of them had heard her order to Hernandez or realized she was already in the house.

  They would both be inside soon, but she wasn’t sure how soon. And if Hernandez was armed, they could be walking into an ambush, just as she feared she might be.

  Certain that Hernandez was in the big room in front of her, she moved to the wall abutting it and held still there for a moment, listening for a creaky floorboard, heavy breathing—anything.

  She thought she heard something like grunting on the other side of the wall but she couldn’t be sure. As she inched closer to the open doorway, she decided her best option was to roll into the room and aim back at the wall she suspected he was leaning against.

  She took a moment to gather herself and was about to dive into the living room when she heard a noise behind her. She swiveled her body around just in time to see Hernandez throwing himself at her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In the fraction of a second before they collided, Keri reminded herself not to overreact.

  She saw that his hands were empty so she resisted the urge to shoot. Instead, she lifted her gun so that its butt slammed into Hernandez’s forehead as he leapt at her. It smacked square in the middle but that didn’t stop his momentum from moving forward. He slammed into her and they both fell back into the main room with him on top of her.

  As she fell, Keri let go of her gun so she could use her arms to brace her fall. Luckily Hernandez’s living room floor was carpeted and the bulk of his weight landed on her lower half so she was able to lessen the impact as she hit, allowing her elbows and upper arms to take the brunt of it instead of her head.

  Without waiting to check if she was injured, Keri looked down at the man collapsed on top of her waist and legs. He appeared dazed from the blow to the head and winded from the fall to the ground. Despite his arms clinging to her, Keri managed to free her right leg and slam it hard into his left shoulder.

  His grip immediately relaxed and she was able to wriggle free. She got to her knees and grabbed her gun, which was resting on the carpet dangerously close to Hernandez’s left hand. She was just getting to her feet when Ray was finally able to break in the front door. A few seconds later Jamie was in the room too, having entered from the backyard.

  “You okay?” Ray asked, his eyes wide with worry.

  Keri took a second to make sure. She shook her arms and rolled her shoulders. No damage there. Her lower half had taken most of the impact and she seemed to have survived that as well.

  “I’m good,” she finally said before looking at Hernandez. “But I’m not so sure about this guy. How about it, Enrique—that shoulder doing okay? You got a bit of a headache?”

  Enrique, still out of it, groaned unintelligibly.

  “I’ll cuff him,” Castillo said. “Why don’t you take a moment, Keri?”

  She was about to when her eye caught a panel jutting out from the wall of the living room. She wandered over and immediately realized how Hernandez had gotten the jump on her. The panel was hinged like a door, essentially allowing a narrow pathway between that room and the bedroom hall. He’d snuck through and come around behind her as her attention was focused on the living room.

  She noticed something else about the panel. It was hollow. She turned on her phone flashlight and shined it through the gap. The whole wall between the living room and the bedroom hall wasn’t dry walled but hollow as well with a space about fifteen inches wide. She was able to step easily through the gap, although she imagined it might be a challenge for Hernandez.

  Could someone be hidden between these walls?

  “Found something,” she called out. Soon Ray was peering through the gap.

  “What do you see?” he shouted. “It’s too narrow for me to get through.”

  She thought about making a crack about how Hernandez seemed to have been able to but didn’t think it would be well received so she held back.

  “It gets wider the further back I go,” she called back to him. And then without warning, she found herself in a small room, about the size of a closet, lit by a tiny lamp on the floor in the corner. But it wasn’t the room itself that grabbed her attention. It was what was on the walls.

  They were all plastered with dozens of photos of what appeared to be unsuspecting women in various states of undress. Some were taken through blinds, others through glass, and still more through clearly open windows. She recognized Carolyn Rainey in several. Clearly none of the women were aware that they were being photographed.

  For a moment Keri felt sure that they had their man. But upon closer inspection, her heart began to sink. She took a few photos of the walls with her phone before snaking her way back through the passage and returning to the living room.

  “What did you find?” Ray asked hopefully.

  “Give me a second,” she said and walked over to couch where Castillo had instructed Hernandez to sit.

  “Have you Mirandized him?” she asked the officer.

  Castillo nodded. Keri looked at the pitiful man in front of her, sweating profusely despite the cold and being barely clothed.

  “Why do you think we’re here?” she asked him.

  “Because of what I did?” he asked more than said. He had a strong accent but no trouble making himself understood.

  “And what was that?” she pressed.

  “Taking the girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “The one in Playa; the one whose mother has dark hair—Rainey.”

  “Are you confessing to taking her?” Castillo demanded, unable to control herself. But it wasn’t her interrogation and Keri shot her a look that reminded her of that fact.

  “Yes, yes. I took the girl,” Hernandez said, almost giddy.

  “Then where is she?” Keri asked, studying him closely.

  “Can’t say,” he insisted. “I can only tell you under conditions.”

  “And what are your conditions?” Keri asked warily. Nothing about this felt right.

  “I want to talk to my wife.”

  “You mean your ex-wife,” Ray interjected. “Your boss said she left you because you couldn’t stop peeping in women’s windows.”

  “We’re only separated,” Hernandez insisted. “It’s not your business anyway. If you ever want to see the girl alive again, let me talk to my wife. Make her come to see me.”

  Keri motioned for Castillo to keep an eye on him and she and Ray retreated to the kitchen.

  “It’s worth a try,” Ray said when they were out of earshot.

  “Does this seem legit to you?” Keri asked. “Does this seem like the kind of guy who pulled off the abduction and that whole scene at the park last night?”

  “Frankly, no,” Ray admitted. “But people can be surprising. Maybe this is an act. Or maybe he just stumbled into it. Either way, we’ve got a guy confessing to a crime. We can’t just ignore that.”

  “Ray, I’m ninety-five percent sure this guy is just confessing so he can get in a room with his ex. He’s clearly a pervert. And he may not be all there. But a child abductor—I don’t see it.”

  “What then? What was in that room back there?”

  “Pictures—tons of pictures of naked and nearly naked women.”

  “That’s awesome,” he said. “I mean, not awesome. But it’s compelling evidence, right?”

  “I don’t think so,” Keri said reluctantly as she pulled out her phon
e to show him the pictures she’d taken.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because they were all picture of women—full-grown adult women. I’d be surprised if there’s a female under twenty-five in the lot. It’s not a lair back there. It’s where he keeps his stash of amateur masturbation material.”

  She handed over her phone and Ray scrolled silently through the images, processing it all. He was about to reply when his phone rang. He returned hers.

  “It’s Hillman,” he said and picked up. After listening for about twenty seconds, he answered “Yes, sir” and hung up.

  “What is it?” Keri asked.

  “He said to get over to the Rainey house. They just received another FedEx package.”

  “What else?” she asked. It was clear he was holding something back.

  Ray let out a long sigh before responding.

  “In addition to another letter, there was a piece of the clothing Jessica was wearing yesterday in the package. It had blood all over it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Keri glanced up to realize they were back in Playa del Rey. She’d let Ray drive and gone into some kind of trance on the way over. She wasn’t sure what she’d been thinking about on the forty-five-minute trip. She could guess it had something to do with brutalized children and devastated parents but she had no memory of it.

  And yet, somehow they were here now. Ray hadn’t spoken at all on the way over. During their time as partners, he’d learned that sometimes it was better to leave her alone to chart her way through her thoughts and emotions. He knew she usually made it out the other side. Usually.

  There was a time, not so long ago, when moments that intensely reminded Keri of losing her daughter would send her into incapacitating panic attacks. Sometimes she would hyperventilate. Other times she would have trouble breathing at all. A few times, she lost the strength in her legs and collapsed to her knees. On at least one occasion, she’d actually passed out. Luckily she was alone and woke up after just seconds.

  But that hadn’t happened in months, not since she had made a conscious decision to refuse to let her fear of a horrible outcome trump her determination to reach a positive one. She hoped this extended blackout wasn’t a sign that her resolve was slipping.