by Blake Pierce
She reached the cabinet and turned her attention to it, hoping to find something there that she could use to keep her host’s self-esteem levels inappropriately high.
“This picture looks recent,” she said, pointing to one of the framed photos. “Do you do a lot of competitions these days?”
“That one’s from four months ago. I got the silver in my age group, forty-five to forty-nine. But I’m forty-eight and the guy who got the gold had just turned forty-five the week before the event. So you know, not the fairest.”
“Totally not fair,” Keri agreed, before adding with as straight a face as she could muster, “It’s hard to believe you’re forty-eight.”
“Hard work and healthy living,” Rafe said. “In fact, I was about to make myself a kale, banana, and pear smoothie. You want one?”
“Is it good?” Keri asked, scrunching up her nose in a way she hoped came across as cute. Clearly this guy liked his ladies on the younger side, but she got the sense that he was happy to be fawned over by any woman he considered conquest-worthy.
“It’s great. And so good for you.”
Keri followed him to the kitchen and leaned against the counter across from him, pretending to listen while he blathered on about nutrients and restorative powers. As he spoke and prepped the drinks, she pondered the best way to start asking her questions. She’d loosened him up, but was pretty sure he’d shut down if she just dived right in.
He handed her the smoothie and she took a sip, nodding appreciatively. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world but it wouldn’t be replacing her bottle of Glenlivet any time soon. As Rafe chugged his drink, Keri decided she couldn’t stall any longer.
“So Rafe—is it okay if I call you Rafe?” She pressed on without getting permission. “Anyway Rafe—and you should feel free to call me Keri—remember I said I had a few questions for you? I feel kind of bad about it now and about how hard I came at you when I first knocked on the door. You never know what kind of guy you’re dealing with, right?”
Rafe nodded.
“Some guys are real dicks,” he said.
“Exactly. So I didn’t know if you were a dick too. But obviously you’re not. And I feel like I can ask you these questions I have in a more casual way, you know, not so adversarial. Most of it is pretty basic stuff. And then you can get back to your evening—no harm, no foul. How does that sound?”
“It sounds okay. But I’m still not going to answer anything I’m not comfortable with. And I’m still not giving you permission to search my place without a warrant, okay?”
“Rafe, you’re so silly with all the search warrant stuff. You should have been on Law & Order or something. You’d be very commanding as the wronged suspect, you know—the tough guy who seems guilty but is really a softie at heart. People ever tell you you’re that type?”
“I’ve heard it from time to time.”
“Speaking of acting, I know you’re a photographer and it looks like you have a lot of experiences with actresses. You must be pretty good because it looks like a lot of them signed their photos. They must be happy with your work.”
“I don’t get a lot of complaints.”
“No?” Keri asked, letting the question hang in the air.
Rafe looked at her, not sure if that was a serious question or just conversation. He said nothing. Keri placed her smoothie cup on the counter between them.
“Because here’s the thing, Rafe—I know of at least one complaint. It was from a woman named Kendra Burlingame. Ever hear of her?”
Rafe put down his cup as well and waited several seconds before responding.
“If you’re here, you obviously know I have. What is she complaining about?”
“Well, she hasn’t filed a formal police complaint yet, if that’s what you’re worried about. But she has complained to friends. I think you know what about.”
“So if she hasn’t filed an official complaint, why are you here?”
“I’m here because she’s missing, Rafe. She’s been missing for over a day and a half. And I have it on good authority that you were one of the last people she spoke to before she disappeared. So I figured I’d come by and, you know, see what’s up with that.”
“Kendra’s missing?” he asked. Keri couldn’t tell if he was actually surprised or just stalling for time. In either case, she double checked that the clasp on her holster was free and that her Taser was loose too.
“She is. What did you two discuss when she came by this weekend?”
“She didn’t come by,” he said defiantly. She could tell he was getting agitated.
“You weren’t supposed to meet with her this weekend?”
“I was. She was going to come by on Sunday afternoon. But she called at the last minute and said her sister would be coming instead.”
“Did she say why?”
“No. She was super vague. I told her I didn’t like dealing with anyone but her but I could tell she wasn’t going to budge.”
“Was this the first time anyone other than Kendra had been involved in…your arrangement?”
“Yeah. I never dealt with anyone but her this whole time.”
“So her sister came over on Sunday afternoon?”
“Yeah, around four or five. I think her name is Catherine. She knocked on the door. I opened it. She handed me the envelope. I took it and closed the door. We never even spoke.”
“And where were you yesterday, Rafe?”
“I was here almost all day. I had a bunch of shoots.”
“I’m going to need the names and numbers of all your…clients from yesterday, to verify your alibi.”
“That’s not a problem.”
“Good. While you’re writing those down. I’m going to take a little look around. It’s not an official search, just a walkabout. If what you’re telling me is true, you shouldn’t have any problem with that.”
Rafe looked reluctant so Keri continued before he could respond.
“Rafe, honey. We both know the deal you had with Kendra. If I wanted to take you in for that, I could do it right now. But I haven’t. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in finding Kendra Burlingame. Unless there’s something you have in this apartment that suggests you were in involved in her disappearance, I’m going to overlook anything I find. This is a good deal for you.”
Rafe seemed to see the logic of her words and nodded. While he wrote down the girls he’d photographed the day before, Keri checked out the rest of his place, starting with the bedroom he’d converted into his studio. She moved on to his bedroom and the bathroom, then the hall closet. She looked up every few seconds to make sure Rafe was still seated at the kitchen counter.
The place wasn’t very big and the whole search took less than ten minutes. She found nothing—no blood, no sign of struggle, no secret torture chamber. It was just the bachelor apartment of a sleazy, over-the-hill photographer who engaged in a little blackmail on the side. Keri doubted Kendra was his only victim. She returned to the kitchen, where Rafe was waiting with the completed list of names.
“Thanks, sweetie,” she said as she pocketed it. “There’s just one more thing I need from you.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“The pictures of Kendra—all of them, including the negatives.”
“What?” His face dropped.
“Every picture you ever took of Kendra and every negative. I need them—now. I’m sure you’ve got all of them in some precious file somewhere. So please hand it over.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can—they’re my prop—I just won’t.”
“Sure you will, Rafe. You see, I’m not going to just leave them here and let you potentially destroy evidence of your connection to someone who’s been abducted. If it turns out your alibi is bullshit, I’ll need them to prosecute you.”
“But you need a warrant…” he said less confidently than he had the first time.
“We’r
e back to that again? Nothing’s changed, Rafe. I can still get that warrant. I can still haul you back to the station. The only way you stay in this apartment tonight is if you give me Kendra’s complete file right now.”
Rafe seemed to be weighing his options. At a certain point, she saw something click for him. She didn’t like it. His body, which had been tense, appeared to relax a bit.
“I’ve been wondering why you keep asking me to give you the stuff and didn’t just come here with a bunch of cops, bust down the door with a search warrant, and look for it yourself. And I think I know why.”
“Why is that?” she asked.
“Because that would mean bad publicity for Kendra. And you’re trying to protect her from that. You know she’s been paying up for years and you don’t want what she did to come out if you can avoid it. But if you come in here hard, it’ll get out and be in the papers and stuff. You’re a softie, Keri.”
He took the tiniest step toward her. Keri felt her skin crawl and tingle at the same time.
“You’re not thinking clearly, Rafe. I did it this way because getting a warrant takes a while and every second counts when you’re trying to save a missing person’s life. Besides, if this goes public, every girl you photograph will know what you did to Kendra. I wonder how your business will do once you’re tagged as a blackmailing pornographer.”
“It might improve,” he said, taking another step forward.
Keri could tell talk wasn’t going to work anymore. Rafe, despite her best efforts, felt trapped. And he thought he sensed weakness in her. It was a dangerous combination, especially considering that she was physically weaker than usual.
He was only about four feet away from her now and she could see the growing agitation in Rafe’s eyes. He was no longer thinking about the consequences of what he was about to do. He felt threatened. He thought he could defeat that threat. And any second he would try.
“Rafe…” she started to say, hoping to deescalate the situation. But it was too late. He leapt at her in a forceful but controlled way.
He was surprisingly fast but Keri had been expecting something and stepped back quickly. Sure, her ribs and shoulder hurt like hell but her legs worked just fine. Rafe may have been a black belt in karate but Keri had extensive training in Krav Maga, and one of her favorite lessons from her instructors was to let your opponent be the aggressor and react to that aggression.
As Rafe continued to move forward, his fists striking out toward her, Keri pulled out the Taser she’d quietly removed from its holster and jabbed it hard against her attacker’s left forearm. He didn’t stop completely but his frenzied eyes looked confused and he glanced down to see why his arm felt so funny.
At that moment, Keri moved forward and jabbed the Taser to his neck. His body shivered involuntarily before he crumpled to the ground. Keri leaned down and jabbed him once more between the shoulder blades, just to be sure.
Rafe stopped moving. As quickly as she could, Keri holstered the Taser, pulled out her handcuffs, and secured his arms behind his back. Then she rolled him over. He offered no resistance.
When Rafe came to a few moments later, Keri was sitting a chair beside him, Taser still in hand.
“How ya feeling, Rafe?” she asked casually. “Looks like your big boy belt didn’t get the job done this time.”
Rafe shook his head as if he were trying to get rid of invisible cobwebs.
“Whaa…?” he muttered.
“Your brain working okay there, fella? Let me explain the situation to you. But know that I’m only going to do this once. You just attempted to assault a police officer. That was a bad choice. I mean ‘forget about competing in the fifty-to-fifty-four-year-old division’ bad. We’re one phone call away from you finding out how much that black belt helps when you go up against Big Tiny and his crew in the prison yard.
“But I’m giving you one last literal get out of jail free card. Before, all I wanted were Kendra’s photos and negatives. But now you’re going to hand over the materials for every woman you’ve been blackmailing. I know there are others. You do that and I’ll forget about what just happened.”
Rafe grunted inaudibly and tried to shake his head. Keri decided he needed some added incentive.
“Otherwise,” she continued, “you’ll be cancelling all your photo sessions for the next five to eight years. And don’t leave out even one woman. If you do, I’ll find out and I’ll come back to arrest you and confiscate every photo you’ve taken in your entire career. Your call—one time only offer. And it expires in three, two, one…”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
With a deep sense of satisfaction, Keri locked the photos and negatives of Kendra and sixteen other women in the small file cabinet by her office desk and headed over to the tech room. She had been tempted to burn them on the drive over. But if Rafe Courtenay turned out to be Kendra’s abductor, they’d be needed as evidence.
For the time being all she could do was hold on to them. That and give Rafe one last jolt before she took off the cuffs and left him lying on the floor in a pool of his own urine.
The tech room was a large, darkened office filled with computers connected to numerous city, state, and federal databases. There were multiple sizeable monitors affixed to various walls throughout the room. Detectives Edgerton and Suarez were currently staring at one with some grainy black-and-white footage.
“What are we looking at, boys?” she asked.
“We pulled up the footage from the Palm Springs bus station for you,” said Manny Suarez, a short, roundish forty-something guy with three days of beard growth and sleepy eyes that hid a sharp intellect.
“I hope it’s useful or I’m going to have to head out there myself,” Keri said.
“Lieutenant Hillman’s already grumbling that you haven’t done that yet,” Suarez said. “That reminds me. He wanted me to tell you he set up an interview for you with Kendra’s sister, Catherine. It’s at her house in West Adams tomorrow morning at eight a.m.”
“Yeah, he said that if you missed it, he’d have you put back on desk duty,” added Kevin Edgerton, the baby of the Pacific Division detective squad. Tall and lanky, with light brown hair that he was always brushing out of his eyes, he was only twenty-eight.
But he’d already distinguished himself with his incredible technical expertise. He had a way of navigating databases, sifting through statistical data and cracking computer information that rivaled Keri’s ability to understand and predict human behavior. He was her best hope of finally cracking the code to Pachanga’s laptop.
Right now, he was typing furiously away at a keyboard, clearly annoyed by something.
“What is it, Kevin?” Keri asked.
“I’m just frustrated. Look here—this is when we see Kendra’s car pull into the bus station parking garage. There’s her license plate in the freeze frame. It’s kind of hard to see because the ticket dispenser is blocking her face, but there she is reaching for the parking ticket at the entry gate. The time is nine thirty-one a.m.”
“That fits. If she left her house soon after her husband did, she could reasonably get to Palm Springs by then,” Keri noted.
“Right,” Suarez agreed. “Then we see her here, here, and here as she makes her way to the third level of the structure. But that’s the last image we have of the car. And it’s right around then, at nine thirty-six a.m., that the GPS goes off in both the car and her phone. Palm Springs police found it in one of the few spots in the garage that isn’t covered by security cameras. What are the chances of that?”
“Not very high,” Keri said. “Look at all the available parking spots her car passed by on the way to the third level. It was a conscious choice to park in the spot where the car ended up. The question is why.”
“That’s not the only question,” Edgerton added. “I’m wondering where the hell she went. There’s no definitive video of her leaving the garage or entering the bus station.”
“Nothing at all?” Keri asked, flummoxed.
“Well, not quite nothing,” said Suarez. “We used the photos you sent us of her and we found a couple of images that could be her. But we never see her clearly so we can’t do facial recognition.”
“Pull up your likely suspects and let’s check them out,” Keri said.
While Edgerton did that, Keri turned to Suarez.
“I assume you guys already pulled up cell phone records for Kendra from yesterday. Anything interesting?”
“Nope,” he said. “She didn’t make a single call from Beverly Hills to Palm Springs.”
“What about Jeremy Burlingame?”
“His records are clean too,” Suarez said, clearly disappointed. “There are several texts and missed calls from him to her today, but nothing suspicious. And nothing much at all yesterday, which makes sense considering he was in surgery most of the time.”
As Keri turned that over in her head, Edgerton pulled up the surveillance clips. They showed four women entering the bus station within ten minutes of the car pulling into the garage. Keri understood why the guys thought they might all be options but she immediately dismissed two of them.
One was about five foot three and Kendra was closer to five foot ten. Another, even without seeing her face, was obviously in her early twenties. Keri couldn’t have explained how she knew—something about the taut skin and the bouncy walk told her this was not a mature woman.
It took her a second longer to dispense with the third. The height and build were right. But something was off. Finally, it hit her. The woman’s hair was dark blonde. Since the footage was black and white, she didn’t register the hair color consciously at first. But glancing back at a photo of Kendra and her jet black hair, she realized it couldn’t be the same person.
The last woman had on sunglasses and a headscarf that reminded Keri of something Audrey Hepburn would wear while hiding herself from the press circa 1959.
She was the right height and her bearing fit with a woman in her late thirties or early forties. Her outfit—casual slacks, long gloves, and a loose, sophisticated blouse—suggested a woman going on vacation or spending a day at the country club. It felt like it could be her.
