A Trace of Hope

by Blake Pierce

“What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think our basket of suspects just got a lot bigger,” she said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  As they drove past the security gate and up the Jonas property to the house, Keri couldn’t help but notice how cleverly the size of the place was hidden. Because of all the foliage, nothing was visible from the street. Even overhead helicopter shots would be misleading, as much of the house was covered under a canopy of tall trees.

  But the house was gigantic. As Ray and Keri got out of the car, an assistant was already walking toward them, wearing a headset and holding a clipboard. A short, sinewy twenty-something guy wearing wire-rimmed glasses, he introduced himself as Jeremy.

  “Roan is in his office working on location prep,” he said. “I can take you back there now.”

  “I thought he’d be preparing for the governor’s fund-raiser,” Keri mused as they were led through the front door into a long hallway.

  “Oh, that’s all set to go,” Jeremy said casually, “at least on his end. All that’s left now is buttoning up catering, valet, security, that kind of thing. He leaves that to the professionals.”

  Jeremy moved at a shockingly brisk pace and it was hard for Keri to keep up. She barely had time to take in any of the noteworthy features of the house, although she was pretty sure some of the art on the walls was museum-worthy.

  “So he’s prepping for the movie he’s directing?” Ray asked, unable to help himself.

  “Yes, it starts shooting next month in Estonia,” Jeremy answered as if it wasn’t any kind of secret at all. “He’s just trying to nail down a few tricky location approvals.”

  They came to a small sitting room outside what was clearly Jonas’s office.

  “Just give me a moment to let him know you’re here,” Jeremy said, “Can I get you anything, by the way? Coffee, tea, water?”

  “We’re good,” Ray and Keri said in unison.

  Thirty seconds later they were ushered into Roan Jonas’s office, a gorgeous, thickly carpeted room comprised mostly of dark wood and windows. Jonas stepped forward to greet them and Keri realized why Tara’s large, inviting eyes had seemed so familiar in the photo she’d seen. They were exactly the same as her famous father’s.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said warmly, shaking their hands. “I’m Roan. Please sit down.”

  “Thank you,” Ray said as they both sat in the plush seats across from his massive mahogany desk. Keri settled in as Jonas returned to his seat. Despite all her mockery earlier, she had to admit the man was stunning, even in jeans and a casual buttoned-down shirt.

  He looked to be in his mid-forties, about six foot two and maybe 190 pounds. His black hair was dotted with bits of gray that he seemed self-deprecatingly uninterested in hiding. He had the start of wrinkles that crinkled charmingly when he smiled broadly, which seemed to be often. But more than his physical handsomeness, he exuded a vibe of effortless self-assurance that was confident without slipping into arrogance.

  “Maybe you can fill me in on what this is all about,” Jonas said as he sat down. “The police liaison was a little cryptic on the phone. She just said it was related to a credible threat made against me.”

  Ray and Keri looked at each other, debating who should go first. Keri started to open her mouth when her partner dived in. She actually preferred that, partly so she could observe Jonas more closely. But partly, she hated to admit, because she didn’t want to be the one to give him the bad news.

  “We’d like to keep this conversation confidential, Mr. Jonas,” he said, glancing in Jeremy’s direction.

  “Of course. Give us a few minutes, would you, Jeremy?”

  If Jeremy felt put out, he didn’t show it. He stepped outside, closing the door without a word.

  “I’m afraid the threat we’re dealing with isn’t about you,” Ray said. “Your daughter Tara is missing, Mr. Jonas.”

  “What?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard the words correctly.

  “Your daughter was participating in a sorority initiation event last night,” Ray said slowly and clearly. “She was dropped off on a mountain road in Malibu around ten p.m. and hasn’t been seen in over fifteen hours.”

  “Have you tried calling her cell phone?” Jonas asked, his words sounding calm but his eyes indicating he was having trouble processing what had been said.

  “We found her phone just off the road,” Keri said. “We have teams looking for her right now throughout the area. And we know this is a lot to take in, Mr. Jonas. We’re sorry to throw this at you so suddenly. But we didn’t realize until very recently that Tara was even your daughter. So we hadn’t considered the possibility of an abduction somehow related…to you.”

  “Me?”

  “We have to consider that someone might be using Tara to get to you. Has anyone reached out to you recently, asking for money or making any other kind of demands?”

  “No. Nothing. Nobody has….” He looked up at Keri. “Are you sure it was Tara? Maybe there was a mistake and it was a different girl?”

  “We’re sure, Mr. Jonas,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know this is overwhelming. But we need a few things from you. I want you to get out a pen and piece of paper and write these down. I’ve found that writing things down helps.”

  “Okay,” Jonas said absentmindedly as he grabbed a pen and a notepad. He looked up at her again, waiting for instructions.

  “Once we’re done,” she said, “I want you to write down a list of everyone in your personal and professional life who might have a vendetta against you for any reason. You may not have received a ransom call yet. But it’s still possible that you will. We need to be prepared for that. We’re going to have a team bug your phones in case. Okay?”

  “Yes,” he said. She saw him write down the words “enemies list” and “bug phones.” At least he was functioning on that level. She continued.

  “All right. I realize this may be painful. But I need you to explain to me why Tara changed her name and kept her family identity hidden from people at college.”

  Jonas sighed deeply. He seemed to find some semblance of his old self for a moment.

  “She said it was because she wanted to be her own person, apart from my fame, and this was the only way she could do it. But that wasn’t the real reason.”

  “What was the real reason?” Keri asked softly.

  Jonas lowered his head, unable to make eye contact.

  “It was me,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “She said she was ashamed of me. When she was sixteen, she saw me with…someone other than her mom. She walked in on us. She had heard stories before then. But she could always ignore them, as my wife had for years. But after that day, she couldn’t ignore them. She wouldn’t speak to me for three months and when she did, it was to hand me paperwork changing her name. She said she couldn’t bear to share the same last name as me, that it stained her.”

  “So you signed it?” Keri asked.

  “I did. She said she needed to know we didn’t share that connection anymore, even though she didn’t start officially using the name ‘Justin’ until she left for college.”

  “Things didn’t improve then?” Ray asked.

  “Not really. After that, she spoke to me occasionally, perfunctorily. My wife demanded to know what happened but neither of us would say. I think she knew anyway. She just wouldn’t admit it. Tara’s younger brother was mostly oblivious, thank god. But it tore the rest of us up. Eventually she said she was going to LMU. We said we’d pay and agreed to do it through some Delaware-based LLC she set up so my name wouldn’t be involved. It was very impressive actually, how organized she was.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?” Ray asked.

  “She was here in February for her little brother’s birthday. She was thinking of coming back this weekend for Easter but couldn’t make it because of some sorority event. I guess this was that.”

  They peppered him with a few more questions, none of which revealed an
ything new. Eventually he asked a question of his own.

  “Should I hire an investigator?”

  “I wouldn’t do that at this point, Mr. Jonas,” Ray said. “Right now, you’ve got the resources of the LAPD at your disposal. A private investigator would likely only get in the way. And truthfully, the quieter we can keep this for the time being, the better for Tara. Once word gets out that a movie star’s daughter is missing, there will be a media frenzy. That whole area will be crawling with rubberneckers. I wouldn’t tell anyone you don’t absolutely have to.”

  “Is that how you handled it, Detective Locke?” Jonas asked Keri, indicating for the first time that he knew who she was. The look in his eyes suggested he was hoping she could provide him some kind of reassurance. Unfortunately, years of personal and professional experience had taught her that offering hope, justified or not, was usually a mistake.

  “I wasn’t famous, Mr. Jonas,” she said evenly. “So our situations aren’t really comparable. In any case, I think my partner’s advice is the best way to go at this point.”

  “You’ll let me know if that changes?” he said.

  “Of course,” Keri promised him, standing up. “We’re going to have a couple of local units come up and stay with you if that’s all right—one in the house and one outside.”

  “Okay. Can I ask one more question?”

  “Absolutely,” Ray said.

  “You said she was dropped off in Malibu. Where exactly?”

  “On Mulholland Drive,” Ray said, “just up from the Carrillo Beach Campground.”

  “Oh,” Jonas replied, clearly disappointed.

  “Tara’s roommate said your family used to hike in Malibu a lot,” Keri noted. “Is that close to where you usually went?”

  “No, not really. I mean, we’ve been there. But we spent more time in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreational Area. That’s miles away from the campground. We once hiked the entire Backbone Trail—sixty-seven miles—in a long weekend…” He trailed off, remembering.

  “That must have been fun,” Ray said gently, trying to bring him back to the present.

  “It was. I remember her favorite spot was Sandstone Peak—highest spot in the Santa Monica Mountains, she used to say. She loved it because she could sit up there on a clear day and see from the Channel Islands in the Pacific all the way to the snow-covered San Bernardino Mountains. I loved it too. I always assumed she’d eventually forgive me and we’d get to do it again someday.”

  Keri wanted to tell him that maybe he would. But again, experience suggested that wasn’t a good idea. As often as not, all a parent was left with were memories and regrets. They left Roan Jonas alone in his study and silently followed Jeremy, who led them back to their car.

  When they got in, Ray checked a message he’d missed when they were in Jonas’s office.

  “That was Hillman. He said the Coast Guard boats haven’t turned up anything in the water for miles near the campground. Copters have been searching the wilderness for miles around and haven’t come across anything. They’ll keep looking for another hour or so but then they have stop before it gets dark. And the campground cameras were no help. None of them were pointed in the area where Marla and Nicky say they ran into Tara. Hillman thinks we’ll have more success putting resources into a possible ransom call.”

  “What do you think?” Keri asked.

  “I think if someone was holding her ransom, Jonas would have gotten a call already.”

  “He didn’t seem like a guy who had gotten that call,” Keri said.

  “True,” Ray agreed. “But he is an Oscar-winning actor. If he believed his daughter’s life depended on deceiving the cops, maybe he decided to deliver the performance of a lifetime.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  Keri and Ray ambled along the sidewalk, licking their ice cream cones, with Evelyn ten paces ahead of them. Now over three months free of captivity, her daughter still had the capacity for wonder at the smallest things.

  She would stop at a business and window shop with such intensity that it was borderline scary. She’d stare at a law office or a barber shop with the same focus as she would a toy store.

  Keri found it adorable while trying not to think too much about why Evelyn found everything so fascinating. Despite that, watching her made Keri forget the ugliness and uncertainty of the day. Hillman had told her there was nothing more for her to do tonight and she’d decided to believe him. She hadn’t thought about work more than fleetingly since she’d picked Evelyn up.

  Apparently her first day at school had gone well. Nobody had made fun of her, at least not to her face. People had been nice, but not so nice that it made things awkward. Jess had been really great, introducing her around and referencing the two of them as the “survivor twins.” Apparently she was a minor celebrity.

  “I wanted to show you something,” Ray said to Keri when he was sure Evelyn was out of earshot, handing over several unopened envelopes. They were all addressed to her “care of Raymond Sands” at his address.”

  “What are these?” she asked as she started to rip them open. Within seconds, she realized they were brochures for the Criminology departments at UCLA, USC, and several other local universities.

  “I remember you talking about the old days when you used to teach and I thought it was something you might want to reconsider again at some point.”

  “I was just reminiscing, Ray—not trying to hint at anything. Are you trying to get rid of me, partner?” she asked, nudging him playfully in the ribs.

  “Not in a million years,” he said. “I just know that you’re concerned about the custody issue and how being a cop fits into that and, well, I just wanted you to know I’m cool with whatever you need to do. This is just my way of saying I’ve got your back.”

  “That’s very sweet and forward-thinking of you, Detective Sands. You know, you could have my back on a more regular basis if we reworked our living arrangement a bit.”

  “That’s something else I was hoping to discuss with you once you resolved the whole custody thing.”

  “It would seem we have a lot of issues to discuss, Gigantor,” Keri said, standing up on her tiptoes to kiss him, getting mint chocolate chip all over his lips.

  “It would seem so, Dory,” he agreed, kissing her back. “So are you ready to tell her yet? Or do you want to stall a little bit longer?”

  Keri glanced over at her daughter and sighed, knowing that their pleasant evening reverie was about to end.

  *

  Evelyn pretended to look through the window at the computers in the accounting office, pretended not to notice them kissing. Not because she was embarrassed by it; she was long past that. But because every time they saw her watching, they stopped. And she liked for them to kiss. She could see it made her mom happy, which she deserved, especially considering the last few months.

  She still wasn’t positive what made her do it, cut her wrists that night, three months ago. Part of it was the argument with her dad for sure. He had been awful—the way he’d talked about taking her away from her mom.

  But it was something more than that, something she was still trying to work out. The way he’d tried to just take over her life like that, when she finally thought she had some say over it, reminded her of the cruel men that had passed her around the previous six years.

  Obviously it wasn’t the same. But it felt the same. And it had taken her to a dark place that she’d only just barely been keeping at bay. The empty, helpless, shameful feeling that she’d known all those years crept back inside of her and threatened to consume her. And for a moment, she thought that if she could make the world go away, at least then that awful feeling would go away.

  It was complicated and confusing and she still didn’t totally understand it. But Evelyn felt pretty good after today. With her mom and Ray and Mags and Jessica and Susan and Rita and her therapist, whose name was Joan but who let her call her JoJo, she felt like she had a team on her side, ready t
o fight for her when the going got rough.

  “Ev,” her mom said, calling her over. “I’m glad you had such a good day today, sweetie. I’m hoping tomorrow is good too, even though it might be a bit more…challenging.”

  “What do you mean?” Evelyn asked, feeling a little pit of anxiety pop into her stomach right near where the ulcer the doctor had diagnosed used to be.

  “The court says your father is entitled to a visit with you. I didn’t tell you until now because I’ve been fighting it, trying to prevent it from happening. I’ve actually gotten it postponed twice. But the court finally said you’re required to see him tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. It’s going to be supervised by someone appointed by the court. They’ll drive you there and be in the house the whole time. And Mags has agreed to pick you up since she lives so close. It won’t be so bad.”

  “Not as bad as last time, you mean?” Evelyn said icily, letting the statement hang in the air.

  “Swee...” her mom started to say but Evelyn turned her back on her and stomped off ahead, throwing what was left of her ice cream cone at the wall of a nearby building.

  In the window, she saw her mom start to come after her before Ray put a hand on her shoulder and quietly said, “Give her a minute.”

  Yeah. Give me a minute. Don’t I deserve a minute to deal with you sending me back into that house of walking vampires?

  She stormed ahead for another minute before she got tired and decided to sit on a bench. Looking back, she saw her mom and Ray slowly making their way over to her. A van that had been leisurely moving down the road stopped near her and the driver looked in her general direction, squinting. Suddenly she heard footsteps and looked up.

  Her mom was sprinting toward her, moving faster than she’d seen since…that day when she was taken, being carried through the park, her mom fading into the distance despite chasing after her.

  A second later, her mom was in front of the van, a gun pointed at the driver.