Blake Pierce - A Trace of Murder

After Evelyn was taken, Keri tumbled down a black hole of despair. Her marriage fell apart, and she took to drinking heavily and sleeping with multiple students at the university. Eventually she was fired.

It was soon thereafter, when she was nearly broke, drunk, and living on a decrepit old houseboat in the marina that he came by again. He convinced her to enroll in the police academy as he had done when his life had fallen apart. Ray had offered her a lifeline, a way to reconnect with the world and find meaning in her life. She took it.

After graduating and serving as a uniformed officer, she was promoted to detective, and she asked to be assigned to Pacific Division, which covered much of West Los Angeles. It was where she lived and the area she knew best. It was also Ray’s division. He requested her as a partner and they’d been working together for a year when the Pachanga case put them both in the hospital.

But it wasn’t the status of Ray’s recovery that had Keri feeling nervous. It was the status of their relationship. Something more than friendship had developed in the last year, as they worked so closely together. They both felt it but neither was willing to acknowledge it out loud. Keri felt pangs of jealousy when she called Ray’s apartment and a woman answered. He was a notorious and unrepentant ladies’ man so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her, but the feeling of envy was still there, despite her best efforts.

And she knew he felt the same way. She’d seen his eyes flash when they were on a case and a witness came on to her. She could almost feel him tense up beside her.

Even with him so close to death after getting shot, neither of them had been willing to address the issue. Part of Keri thought it was inappropriate to focus on such trivialities when he was recovering from life-threatening injuries. But another part of her was simply terrified of what would happen if things were out in the open.

So they both ignored it. And because neither was used to hiding things from the other, it had gotten awkward. As Keri listened to the ringing phone in Ray’s hospital room, she half hoped he’d pick up and half hoped he wouldn’t. She needed to talk to him about the anonymous call and what she’d discovered at the warehouse. But she didn’t know how to start the conversation.

It ended up not mattering. After ten rings, she hung up. There was no voicemail on the hospital phone, which meant Ray likely wasn’t in bed. She decided not to try his cell. He was probably in the bathroom or at a physical therapy session. She knew he’d been itching to get moving again and had finally gotten the go-ahead to start two days ago. Ray was a former professional boxer and Keri was certain he’d spend every available moment working to get back in fighting, or at least working, shape.

Unable to bounce her thoughts off her partner, Keri tried to force the warehouse trip out of her head and focus on the case at hand—missing person Kendra Burlingame.

With one eye on the road and the other on her phone’s GPS, Keri quickly wound her way through the twisty Beverly Hills streets up into the secluded part of the community above the city. The higher into the hills she got, the more winding the roads were and the further back the homes got from the street. Along the way, she reviewed what she knew about the case so far. It wasn’t much.

Jeremy Burlingame, despite his profession and where he lived, liked to keep a low profile. It took some quick digging by co-workers back at the station to learn the forty-one-year-old was a renowned plastic surgeon known both for doing cosmetic work on celebrities and for offering pro-bono surgery to children with facial deformities.

Kendra Burlingame, thirty-eight, had once been a Hollywood publicist. But after marrying Jeremy, she’d created and put all her energy into a non-profit called All Smiles, which raised money for the children’s surgeries and coordinated all of their pre- and post-op care.

They’d been married for seven years. Neither had an arrest record. There was no known history of marital discord, nor of drug or alcohol abuse. On paper at least, they were the perfect couple. Keri was immediately suspicious.

After several wrong turns, she finally pulled up to the house at the end of Tower Road at 1:41, eleven minutes late.

To call it a house was an understatement. It was more of a compound on a property that seemed to cover several acres. From her vantage point, she could see the entire city of Los Angeles splayed out below her.

Keri took a moment to do something rare for her—put on extra makeup. Removing the sling had helped her appearance, but the yellowish bruise near her eye was still noticeable. So she dabbed it with some concealer until it was almost invisible.

Satisfied, she pushed the buzzer next to the security gate. As she waited for a response, she noticed Detective Frank Brody’s maroon and white Cadillac parked in the roundabout.

A female voice came over the gate intercom.

“Detective Locke?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Lupe Veracruz, the Burlingames’ housekeeper. Please enter and park next to your partner. I’ll meet you and take you to him and Dr. Burlingame.”

The gate opened and Keri eased in, parking next to Frank’s immaculately maintained vehicle. The Caddy was his baby. He was proud of its outdated color scheme, its poor gas mileage, and its whale-like size. He called it a classic. To Keri, the car, like its owner, was a dinosaur.

As she opened her car door, a petite, pleasant-looking Hispanic woman in her late forties came out to meet her. Keri got out of the car quickly, not wanting to let the woman see her struggle to navigate around her injured right shoulder. From this point on, Keri considered herself on enemy territory and at a potential crime scene. She didn’t want to betray any sense of weakness to Burlingame or anyone in his orbit.

“This way, Detective,” Lupe said, getting straight to business as she turned on her heel and led Keri along a cobblestone path, surrounded by immaculately manicured flowers. Keri tried to keep up while stepping carefully. With the injuries to her eye, shoulder, and ribs, she still felt uncertain on uneven ground.

They passed a huge pool with two diving boards and a lap lane. Next to it was a large pit, with a massive pile of dirt beside it. A Bobcat excavator sat idle nearby. Lupe saw her curiosity.

“The Burlingames are having a hot tub put in. But the Moroccan tile they ordered is on hold so the whole project is delayed.”

“I’m having the same problem,” Keri said. Lupe didn’t laugh.

After several minutes, they reached a side entrance to the main house, which led into a large, airy kitchen. Keri could hear male voices nearby. Lupe directed her around the corner to what looked to be the breakfast room. Detective Brody was standing, facing in her direction, speaking to a man with his back to her.

The man seemed to sense her arrival and turned around before Lupe had the chance to announce her. Keri, in full investigative mode, focused on his eyes as he took her in. They were brown and warm, with just a hint of redness around the rims. He either had bad allergies or he’d been crying recently. He forced an awkward smile to his face, seemingly trapped between the expected responsibility to be a good host and the anxiety of the situation.

He was a nice-looking man, not quite attractive but with an open, friendly face that gave him an eager, boyish quality. Despite his sport coat, Keri could tell he was in good shape. He wasn’t overtly muscular but had the lean wiry frame of an endurance athlete, maybe a marathoner or a triathlete. He was of average height, maybe five foot ten, and about 170 pounds. His short-cropped brown hair had the first, tiniest hints of gray.