Blake Pierce - A Trace of Murder

“Dr. Burlingame?” Keri asked again softly.

“Um, yeah,” he said, rousing himself. “Her best friend is Becky Sampson. They’ve known each other since college. They went to a high school reunion together a couple of weeks ago and Kendra seemed a little rattled after she came back but wouldn’t say why. She lives off Robertson. Maybe Kendra mentioned something to her.”

“All right, we’ll get in touch with her,” Keri assured him. “In the meantime, we’re going to have a crime scene unit come in and do a thorough rundown of your house. We’ll follow up on the last known location of your wife’s car and phone before the GPS was disabled. Are you hearing me, Dr. Burlingame?”

The man appeared to have gone into a numbed stupor, staring straight ahead. At the sound of his name, he blinked and seemed to return to the moment.

“Yes, crime scene unit, GPS check. I understand.”

“We’ll also need to verify everything about your whereabouts yesterday, including your time in San Diego,” Keri said. “We’ll need to contact everyone you dealt with down there.”

“We just have to do our due diligence,” Brody added, in a clunky attempt to be diplomatic.

“I understand. I’m sure the husband is usually the main suspect when a woman disappears. It makes sense. I’ll make a list of everyone I interacted with and give you their numbers. Do you need that now?”

“The sooner the better,” Keri said. “I don’t mean to be harsh but you’re right, Doctor—the husband is typically a prime suspect. And the sooner we can eliminate you as one, the quicker we can move on to other theories. We’re going to have some officers come out and secure the entire area. In the interim, I’d appreciate it if you and Lupe could join us in the courtyard where Detective Brody and I parked. We’ll wait there until backup can arrive and CSU can begin processing the scene.”

Burlingame nodded and shuffled out of the room. Then, suddenly, his head popped up and he asked a question.

“How long does she have, Detective Locke, assuming she was taken? I know there’s a ticking clock on these things. How much time do you realistically think she has?”

Keri looked at him hard. There was no guile in his expression. He seemed to genuinely be clinging to something rational and factual to hold on to. It was a good question and one she needed to answer for herself.

She did some quick mental math. The numbers she came up with weren’t good. But she couldn’t be that blunt with a potential victim’s husband. So she softened it a bit without lying.

“Look, Doctor. I’m not going to lie to you. Every second counts. But we still have a couple of days before the evidence trail starts to grow cold. And we’re going to pour major resources into finding your wife. There’s still hope.”

But internally, the calculation was much less encouraging. Usually, seventy-two hours was the outer limit. So assuming she was taken sometime yesterday morning, they had a little less than forty-eight hours to find her. And that was being optimistic.

Keri walked down the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center hallway as quickly as her aching body would allow. Becky Sampson’s house was only blocks away from the hospital so Keri didn’t feel too guilty about making a quick pit stop to check on Ray.

But as she approached his room, she could feel the recent, familiar nervousness start to churn in her gut. How were they going to make things normal between them again, when there was this silent secret they shared but couldn’t acknowledge? As she reached his room, Keri resolved on what she hoped would be a temporary solution. She’d fake it.

The door was open and she could see that Ray was asleep. There was no one else in the room. The latest labor contract with the city stipulated that hospitalized officers got private rooms whenever available, so he had it pretty sweet. The room had a view of the Hollywood Hills and a big-screen TV, which was on but muted. Some old movie with Sylvester Stallone competing in an arm-wrestling competition filled the screen.

No wonder he fell asleep.

Keri walked over and studied her sleeping partner. Lying in bed, with a floral hospital gown loose about his body, Ray Sands looked much more frail than usual. Normally his six-foot-four, 230-pound African-American frame was intimidating, as was his completely bald head. He’d more than earned his sometime nickname of “Big.”

With his eyes closed, his right glass eye, the one he’d lost in a boxing match years ago, wasn’t noticeable. No one would guess that the forty-year-old man now lying in a hospital bed with an untouched bowl of red Jell-O next to him had once been Ray “The Sandman” Sands, an Olympic bronze medalist and professional heavyweight contender once considered a frontrunner to win the title. Of course, that was before an underrated southpaw with a brutal left hook had destroyed his eye and ended his career at age twenty-eight with one punch.

After flailing about for a while, Ray found policing and worked his way up to become one of the most highly regarded Missing Persons investigators in the department. And with Brody’s imminent retirement, he was in line to take over his position in Robbery-Homicide.

Keri glanced out at the distant hills, wondering what their status would be in six months, when they were no longer partners or even in the same unit. She pushed the thought away, unwilling to imagine life without the one steadying influence in her life since Evie was taken.

Suddenly she sensed she was being watched. She glanced down and saw that Ray was awake, quietly staring at her.

“How’s it going, Smurfette?” he asked playfully. They loved teasing each other about their dramatic size difference.

“Okay, how are you feeling today, Shrek?”

“A little tired, to be honest. I had a big workout a while ago. I walked all the way down the hallway and back. Look out, LeBron James, I’m on your heels.”

“Did they give you a timetable for when they’re letting you out?” she asked.

“They said maybe end of the week, if things keep progressing. Then it will be two weeks of bed rest at home. If that goes well, I’ll be allowed to assume desk duty on a limited basis. Assuming I haven’t shot myself from boredom before then.”

Keri sat quietly for a moment, mulling over how to continue. Part of her wanted to tell Ray to take it slow, not to push too hard to get back to work. Of course, saying that would be hypocritical, as that was exactly what she’d done. And she knew he’d call her on it.

But he had been shot while helping save her life. She felt responsible. She felt protective of him. And she felt other things she wasn’t quite prepared to think about at the moment.

Ultimately, she decided that giving him a distraction to focus on might be a better way to go than lecturing him.

“Along those lines, I could use your help with a case I just landed. You willing to mix in a little analysis with your Jell-O?” she asked.

“First of all, congrats on getting back on field duty. Second, how about we skip the Jell-O and go straight to the case?”

“Okay. Here are the basics. Kendra Burlingame, Beverly Hills socialite wife of a successful plastic surgeon, hasn’t been heard from since yesterday morning—”

“What was yesterday again?” Ray interrupted. “The pain meds have me a little loopy when it comes to, you know, days of the week.”

“Yesterday was Monday, Sherlock,” Keri said snarkily. “Her husband says he last saw her at six forty-five a.m. before he went to San Diego to supervise a surgery. It’s currently two forty on Tuesday afternoon, so that’s about thirty-two hours missing.”