Блейк Пирс - A Trace of Hope

“I don’t know,” Ray said skeptically. “It’s hard to see the through line from civil libertarian fighting for the least among us to remorseless legal shark representing pedophiles and possibly coordinating a child sex slave ring. I feel like we’re missing a piece.”

“Well, you’re a detective, Raymond,” said Mags snarkily. “By all means, detect.”

Ray opened his mouth, about to fire back, before realizing that he was being teased. All three of them laughed, glad for the chance to break the tension they hadn’t realized had been building up. Keri jumped back in.

“It has to be related to that serial abductor he represented. That’s when everything changed. We should look into that more.”

“What do you have on him?” Ray asked.

“His case just kind of dead ends,” Mags said, frustrated. “Cave represented the man, got him off, and then that guy dropped off the radar. We haven’t been able to find anything on him since.”

“What was the man’s name?” Ray asked.

“John Johnson,” Mags answered.

“That sounds familiar,” Ray muttered.

“Really?” Keri said, surprised. “Because there’s almost nothing on him. It looks like it was a false identity. There’s no record of him existing after he was acquitted. It’s like he left that courtroom and then completely disappeared.”

“Still, the name rings a bell,” Ray said. “I think it was before you joined the force. Did you try pulling up a mug shot?”

“I started to,” Keri said. “There are seventy-four John Johnsons in the database who had mug shots taken the month of his arrest. I didn’t have a chance to go through them all.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

“Go ahead,” Keri said, punching up the screen and sliding her laptop over to him. She could tell he was on to something but didn’t want to say it out loud yet in case he was wrong. As he scrolled through the images, he spoke almost absent-mindedly.

“You both said it was like he dropped off the radar, like he’d disappeared, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Keri said, watching him closely, feeling her breathing quicken.

“Almost like…a ghost?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” she repeated.

He stopped scrolling and stared at an image on the screen before looking up at Keri.

“I think that’s because he is a ghost; or more accurately, ‘The Ghost.’”

Ray turned the screen so that Keri could see the mug shot. As she stared at the image of the man who first sent Jackson Cave down his dark path, a cold shiver went down her spine.

She knew him.

Keri tried to control her emotions as a shot of adrenaline coursed through her system, making her entire body tingle.

She recognized the man staring back at her. But she didn’t know him as John Johnson. When they’d met, he’d gone by the name Thomas Anderson, but everybody referred to him as The Ghost.

They’d spoken only twice, each time at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles, where he was currently being incarcerated for crimes not unlike those John Johnson had been acquitted of.

“Who is it, Keri?” Mags asked, half concerned, half annoyed by the long silence.

Keri realized she had been mutely staring at the mug shot for the last few seconds.

“Sorry,” she replied, shaking herself back into the moment. “His name is Thomas Anderson. He’s being held at county lockup for the abduction and sale of children, mostly to out-of-state families who didn’t meet adoption qualifications. I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me that Johnson and Anderson could be the same guy.”

“Cave deals with a lot of abductors, Keri,” Ray said. “There’s no reason you should have made that connection.”

“How do you know him?” Mags asked.

“I stumbled across him last year when I was looking through case files about abductors. At one point, I thought he might have taken Evie. I went to Twin Towers to interview him and it became clear pretty quickly that he wasn’t the guy. He even gave me a few leads that helped me ultimately hunt down the Collector. And now that I think about it, he’s the first person who mentioned Jackson Cave to me – he said Cave was his lawyer.”

“You’d never heard of Cave before that?” Mags asked.

“No, I’d heard of him. He’s notorious to Missing Person cops. But I’d never met one of his clients or had reason to think about him as anything other than a generalized scumbag until Anderson made me more aware of him. Until I met Thomas Anderson, Jackson Cave was never on my radar.”

“And you don’t think that’s a coincidence?” Mags asked.

“With Anderson, I’m not sure anything is a coincidence. Isn’t it strange that he gets off scot-free as ‘John Johnson’ but then gets arrested doing the same abduction thing using his real identity, Thomas Anderson? Why didn’t he use a fake identity again? I mean, the guy was a librarian for over thirty years. He basically ruined his life by using his real name.”

“Maybe he thought Cave could get him off a second time?” Ray suggested.

“But here’s the thing,” Keri said. “Even though Cave was technically his defense attorney, at his last trial, the one at which he was convicted, Anderson defended himself. And supposedly, he was great. Word was he was so convincing that if the case wasn’t iron-clad, he would have gotten off.”

“If this guy was such a genius,” Mags countered, “how was the case against him so strong in the first place?”

“I asked him the same thing,” Keri replied. “And he agreed with me that it was odd that someone as clever and meticulous as him would get caught like that. He didn’t come right out and say it but he essentially hinted that he meant to get convicted.”

“But why on God’s green earth!” Mags asked.

“That is an excellent question, Margaret,” Keri said, closing the laptop. “And it’s one I intend to address with Mr. Anderson right now.”

Keri parked her car in the massive structure across from the Twin Towers and made her way to the elevator. Sometimes if she had to visit in the day, the massive county lockup facility was so busy that she had to go all the way to the uncovered tenth floor of the structure to find a parking spot. But it was almost 8 p.m. and she found a spot on the second floor.

As she crossed the street, she went over her plan. Technically, because of her suspension and the IA investigation, she didn’t have authorization to meet with a prisoner in an interrogation room. But that wasn’t common knowledge yet. She was hoping her familiarity with the prison staff would allow her to bluff her way through.

Ray had offered to come along to smooth her path. But she worried that would lead to questions, potentially getting him in trouble. Even if it didn’t, he might be required to sit in on the interview with Anderson. Keri knew the guy wouldn’t open up under those circumstances.

As it turned out, she needn’t have worried.

“How’s it going, Detective Locke?” Security Officer Beamon asked as she approached the lobby metal detector. “I’m surprised to see you up and moving after the run-in with that psycho earlier this week.”

“Oh, yeah,” Keri agreed, deciding to use her earlier confrontation to her advantage, “me too, Freddie. Looks like I was in a prize fight, right? I’m actually still officially on leave until I’m in better shape. But I was getting a little stir-crazy around the apartment so I thought I’d check on an old case. It’s informal so I didn’t even bring the gun and shield. Still cool if I interview someone even if I’m off the clock?”

“Of course, Detective. I just wish you’d take it a little easy. But I know you won’t. Sign in. Get your visitor badge and head to the interrogation level. You know the drill.”