A Trace of Hope

by Blake Pierce

  “It’s just that no matter what, I’m ratting out a guy drinking and driving. Would you bust him for that?”

  “Maybe we should,” Keri told him. “But if this is from two nights ago and he wasn’t arrested then, there’s not much we can do about it now. If that’s the extent of what this guy did wrong, then you shouldn’t worry about telling us what you know.”

  “Okay. On the night of the Expedition, one of the guys was really drunk and he started talking about how he was going to follow the sorority’s pledges to the drop-off point on Mulholland, then pick them up and drive them further up the road so that it would be more challenging, to mess with them a bit. He said the whole thing was too easy, not like the stuff we have to do.”

  “Did he do what he said?” Keri asked.

  “That’s the thing, I don’t know. He was talking about it, especially how Tara seemed too cocky, like she wasn’t even worried about the Expedition at all. The next thing I knew, he was gone. No one else really seemed to notice. He might have just gone home. He might have gone to his girlfriend’s. But I guess he could have gone up there and done what he was talking about.”

  “It sounds like you’re leaning that way, Logan,” Ray said. “Any particular reason?”

  “It’s just that the next morning, I saw his car. It was parked at a crazy angle across two spots and it looked like it had been dinged a few times. If he’d gone to his apartment or his girlfriend’s, both of those are walking distance. So that made me think he drove somewhere and that he was probably really wasted on the way back.”

  “What’s this guy’s name, Logan?” Keri asked quietly.

  “Taylor Hunt. He’s a senior. He’s our Rush Chairman.”

  “Pretty powerful guy on campus, I’m guessing?” she asked.

  Logan nodded.

  “You have no idea,” he said and she could hear the anxiety in his voice. It had taken a lot for him to come forward when he could have just kept his mouth shut.

  “Oh, I have a pretty good idea, actually,” she said. “Thanks for telling us, Logan. And we’ll do our best to keep you out of this.”

  “Thank you. I don’t want any trouble. It’s just Tara seems like a really sweet girl. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.”

  “You’re doing the right thing, Logan,” Keri assured him. “Just one more question. Who is Taylor’s girlfriend? We’ll want to talk to her in case he uses her as an alibi.”

  “It’s this girl named Jan, Jan Henley. She’s Tara’s sorority big sister. That’s how Taylor noticed her in the first place.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  Keri, charged up with adrenaline, wanted to turn right back around to campus and confront Taylor Hunt. But Ray convinced her they should at least check in with Hillman before taking that step. Reluctantly, she agreed.

  “It’s a good thing you came back,” Hillman said after they filled him in. “We got a call from Roan Jonas a few minutes ago. He’s anxious and wants an in-person update. I was going to send Brody and Castillo but he’s insisting on you guys. To be honest, I was hesitant to send Brody anyway. Who knows what inappropriate thing he’d say?”

  “I feel for him, Lieutenant,” Keri said. “But we can’t drop a possible lead to go babysit a worried parent, even a movie star. It’s not a constructive use of our time.”

  “Making sure this guy plays ball and doesn’t go to the press is far from babysitting, Locke,” Hillman said, an edge in his voice. “It could be what keeps this case from turning into a circus.”

  “I can go,” Ray interjected, obviously not wanting things to escalate. “Maybe he’ll remember something relevant he didn’t think of yesterday. Keri, why don’t you go talk to Hunt on your own? I have a feeling it might be more effective anyway.”

  “How so?” she asked.

  “He sounds like a rich, entitled little jackass. If he sees some big, intimidating, one-eyed black cop, he’ll probably just clam up. But if it’s some petite, harmless-looking, MILF lady officer talking to him, maybe he’ll drop his guard a bit.”

  “Worth a shot,” Hillman said, shrugging. “Just please don’t go from harmless to assault without justification, Locke. It’s your second day back, after all.”

  “I’ll be a delicate flower,” Keri said, batting her eyes flamboyantly.

  “That would be a first,” Hillman grunted.

  *

  It wasn’t hard to find Taylor Hunt. Keri had Patterson track his cell signal, which led to a sports bar just off campus on Lincoln Boulevard called Tower Pizza. While she was at it, she had him do a little more searching to determine some of Hunt’s recent activity.

  Keri found Hunt seated in a booth with three other guys. He looked vaguely familiar from a group interview back at the fraternity house, although she didn’t remember him actually saying anything at the time. Blandly handsome, with light brown hair and an easy smile that college girls likely found winning, his whole bearing exuded an air of privilege.

  She was surprised at how raucous the guys were in the middle of a school day until she remembered the university was closed for the holiday. Thinking that might work to her advantage, she undid one more button than usual on her shirt, exposing an extra bit of cleavage. Then she tucked the shirt into her pants so the material pressed tight against her chest. Finally, she undid her ponytail, fished a rarely used tube of lipstick out of her purse, and applied it before walking over.

  “Hi, Taylor,” she said warmly, leaning in close and bending over. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  He looked up at her, first noticing her chest through fuzzy eyes before blinking a few times when he got to her face. It took a couple of seconds for him to register where he recognized her from.

  “I know you. You’re the detective lady from this morning.”

  “That’s right. How’s it going?”

  “Good. You look different from before. Better.”

  “I guess this light just suits me. You got a minute? Can we talk in private? Or do you find older women intimidating?”

  One of his buddies elbowed him in the ribs and started hooting mockingly. That was all it took for him to hop up and follow her over to a corner table, his beer still in hand.

  The waiter came over and Keri ordered a beer she knew she wouldn’t drink but figured would set Taylor at ease.

  “So Tara’s your girlfriend’s little sorority sister?” she said, diving right in.

  “Yup,” Taylor said.

  “So does that make you her big brother?” Keri asked, her tone flirtatious.

  “I don’t know about that. I mean, I guess I kind of look out for her a little, but nothing official.”

  “Is that why you went out to Malibu after Jan dropped her off, to make sure she was doing okay on the Expedition?”

  “What?” Taylor asked, looking unsettled for the first time. “I didn’t…”

  “It’s okay, Taylor. I already know you were out there. We can track cell phone records and the GPS in your car shows that you were there. I just assumed that it was so you could make sure the girls were all okay and that no one was messing with them. Is that right?”

  “Uh, sure. I mean, that’s what I was going to do. But when I got out there, I couldn’t find the girls. I guess they had already gotten rides back. So it was kind of a wasted trip.”

  “That is a real bummer, Taylor,” Keri said, putting her hand on top of his sympathetically, before letting it slide over his fingers and back onto the table again. “You know what though? It would really help if you could show me where you were when you checked on the girls. We’re creating a map of Tara’s last known location and knowing where she wasn’t can sometimes be as helpful as knowing where she was. You think you could help me out with that?”

  “You mean, like now?” he asked uncertainly.

  “Sure. No time like the present. Maybe we can even get some seafood and beer on the way back. Besides, it’s not like you have school today, right? What do you say? Care to help a lady
out?”

  *

  About forty-five minutes later, as they passed El Matador State Beach, Keri noticed that Taylor’s buzz seemed to be wearing off slightly. He wasn’t as chatty and his mood had turned slightly sour.

  She glanced at her watch. It was just after 3 p.m. That meant the court-designated custodial appointee was driving Evelyn to Stephen’s house at this very moment. Fighting the strong urge to text her daughter that she loved her, Keri instead focused her attention on the increasingly uncomfortable college student in the passenger seat.

  “So would you say you and Tara were friends?” she asked.

  “Friendly, I guess. I wouldn’t say friends. I mean, she was a freshman and I’m a senior. It’s not like we hung out.”

  “She didn’t look like a freshman though, right?”

  “What do you mean?” Taylor asked suspiciously.

  “I’m just saying, for a girl her age, she looked very…mature. Is that fair to say?”

  “I didn’t really notice,” Taylor said far too defensively.

  “Good call, my man,” Keri said approvingly. “I’ll bet Jan would have been pissed if she thought you were taking an interest in her little sister. The real question is—did Tara ever take an interest in you?”

  “What?”

  “Like, she did ever give you a side-eye glance when Jan wasn’t looking? I mean, you are the Rush Chairman of your fraternity, right? That’s a big deal. And you’re pretty easy to look at. Are you telling me she never tried to get with you? Not even once?”

  “I mean, sure, she gave me looks sometimes,” he said, as if he hated to have the tidbit dragged out of him.

  “I’ll bet. Any chance she told you to visit her after Jan dropped her off so you two could spend a little quality time together? I mean, no prying eyes up there, right?”

  Taylor looked over at her, as if he was deciding if she was messing with him. After a long pause, he spoke.

  “We might have hooked up.”

  “Oh yeah?” Keri said, keeping her suddenly pounding heart under control by focusing on her own voice. “That’s kind of hot. How did it go down?”

  “You won’t tell Jan, right?” he asked.

  “No, of course not. Like I said, we just want to map her last known location, that kind of thing. Besides, I always like a good ‘sex in the woods’ story. I’m divorced myself so I can use the fantasy material, you know? Call me Keri, by the way.”

  She felt borderline sick to her stomach saying this stuff, but every time she did, it seemed to throw the kid off, make his suspicions dissipate, turn his attention to her chest. That was a fair trade-off.

  She saw the sign for the Leo Carrillo Campground and knew the turnoff was imminent. She needed him to start spilling soon.

  “All right,” he said, seeming to decide there was no harm. “After the sisters took the girls, I decided to follow them up. My first plan was to put a few of them in the car and drive them further up the mountain, to make it a bit harder. They’re such wusses.”

  “Right,” Keri said, egging him on as she turned off the Pacific Coast Highway onto Mulholland Highway. “You’ve been through much worse, I’m sure.”

  “Exactly. So by the time I get up there, the only girl I could find was Tara. I was gonna do the whole trick but then at the last minute I started to feel bad and offered to give her a ride back down instead so she could avoid the long walk.”

  “That was cool of you.”

  “I know. So we’re hanging out in the car, kind of talking, and one thing leads to another. Next thing you know, we’re doing it.”

  “Whoa,” Keri said, hoping she wasn’t laying it on too thick.

  “Yeah, it was pretty awesome. Anyway, like I said, afterward I offered to take her back down the mountain. I even said I’d drive her all the way back to campus if she kept it quiet.”

  “So she wouldn’t even have to finish the challenge?”

  “Right,” Taylor said. “I probably went too far with that one. In fact, she said no to all of it. She actually had me drop her off back where I’d picked her up. She said she wanted to finish the challenge for real, which I really admired.”

  “She sounds like one heck of a girl, Taylor.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Well, we’re heading up there now. So just keep your eyes peeled and you can point out the spot where you dropped her off. That will really help us out with our investigation, okay?”

  “Okay,” he agreed.

  The car got quiet as they made their way up the winding road. Keri stole a glance at her phone and saw that she no longer had any reception.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  Evelyn sat curled up on the bathroom floor, her back pressed against the locked door, her body heaving in near silent sobs. It had taken less than an hour for everything to fall apart.

  She really had tried. The court appointee, a mousy woman in her thirties named Carla, had picked her up from school and tried to make small talk on the way to her dad’s house. She explained that the visit would last about two hours and that she would be in the room the whole time.

  That sounded great but it turned out to be only technically true. After they got in the house and settled in the living room, Carla took out her phone and put in her earbuds. Shalene and Sammy hung around for about ten minutes before he had to go down for his nap, which seemed pretty convenient to Evelyn.

  Her dad was pleasant for about a half hour after that—asking how school was, what her friends were like—and completely avoiding the topic of her trying to kill herself after her last visit. But around the forty-minute mark, he started talking, ever so casually, about a really great private school in the area.

  Then he mentioned that Shalene’s sister had a son who saw an amazing therapist—maybe she’d like to meet him. He also let it slip that they were taking a family trip to Europe around the Fourth of July and he’d love for her to come. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible until the custody situation was resolved.

  And then he was asking how her mom was handling being back on the force. Evelyn didn’t mention the incident last night with her pointing a gun at a delivery man. Finally, after a quick glance over at the oblivious Carla, he told her how worried he’d been about her and how he didn’t blame her for what happened and knew that she’d only said and done what she’d said and done because her mom had turned her against him.

  Evelyn stared at him, not sure whether to be horrified or angry. Was this the best he could do after not seeing her for three months? After she’d carefully rebuilt her life since trying to commit suicide? To dive right back into the same crap that screwed her up in the first place?

  She looked at him, no longer hearing his words, trying to picture the man she used to cuddle up with to read at night before bed. Where had that guy gone? This man still looked a lot like that one. But it was like his soul had been sucked out and replaced by someone else she didn’t recognize.

  Her mom was a mess—a raw nerve of violent, hair-trigger emotion. But at least Evelyn still recognized her as the same woman who’d tucked her in at night and braided her hair and sang lame songs from the 1980s. This guy was a stranger.

  And the next thing she knew, she was running down the hall away from him. And then she was in the locked bathroom, with her father banging on door, demanding she open it. She could hear Carla asking him to calm down even as Evelyn tried to call her mom. It kept going straight to voicemail so she called Mags, who picked up right away. She had trouble explaining the situation but Mags seemed to get it anyway.

  “I’m on my way,” she said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  She was there in ten. Evelyn could hear her outside the door, using her honeyed inflection to try to soothe her dad, who seemed immune to her charms. Mags asked her to open the door but she wouldn’t as long as her father was there and he refused to leave.

  Then Evelyn got a text. It was from Mags. It said simply: “Called Ray. Here soon. Hang tight, darling.” />
  Ten minutes after that, she heard Ray’s deep voice. He sounded calm but she had gotten to know him well enough to realize that when he was this calm, it usually meant he was doing all he could to keep his anger in check. His voice resonated clearly through the door.

  “This visit is over, Mr. Locke,” he said, and Evelyn found it interesting that he didn’t call her dad Stephen. “Margaret Merrywether will be taking Evelyn home, as has been agreed upon.”

  “But the visit is supposed to be two hours!” her dad insisted.

  “It’s being cut short,” Ray said evenly. “Surely you don’t want to force your daughter to stay if she isn’t up to it. If that’s a problem for you, take it up with the court.”

  “You better believe I will,” her dad hissed. “Don’t think that badge scares me.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t, Mr. Locke,” Evelyn heard Ray say before his voice dropped nearly to a whisper. “Why would a badge scare a man who’s blind to his own daughter trying to put her life back together, who’s so concerned with his own needs that he can’t be bothered with hers, who has her locked in a bathroom after less than an hour in his company? But you know what I bet does scare you? My fists. And they should, because if you ever make that girl feel unsafe again, you’ll have me to deal with. Am I making myself clear, sir?”

  There was no response, but a few seconds later she heard the sound of footsteps walking away.

  “It’s okay to come out now, darling,” Mags said.

  Evelyn opened the door and threw herself into her open waiting arms. After a long hug, she felt Ray scoop her up and carry her out of the house. She kept her eyes closed the whole time.

  *

  “I think this is the spot,” Taylor said, pointing to a nondescript section of woods not too far from where Keri had found Tara’s phone.

  Keri pulled over and got out. Taylor was now pretty much completely sober and she could sense he knew he’d made a series of terrible mistakes by coming here and being so forthcoming along the way. She suspected he’d just picked a random section of trees in the hopes that Keri wouldn’t find anything and they could be on their way. What he didn’t realize was that she’d intentionally slowed down a half mile back so there was no way they’d overshoot this spot.