Keri Locke 02-A Trace of Muder

by Blake Pierce

  As she got in the car, Keri wondered if she might be better off replacing some of her Glenlivet time with visits to other kids she’d helped. It was definitely a healthier way to get a rush.

  Of course, not every kid bounced back like Ashley had. And not every vengeful control freak acted out by pushing for foreclosures and zoning violations. Some of them took their revenge in more personal, intimate ways.

  A thought began to dart in and out of Keri’s mind, just out of reach, like a wisp of smoke she couldn’t quite grab hold of. Keri closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to force all the extraneous junk out and focus on the idea that was teasing her, so close to showing itself.

  Control is everything. Order must be maintained. Chaos must be punished. Vengeance must be had. Personal. Intimate. Retribution.

  Without warning, an image popped into her head, seemingly out of nowhere. It was of the receptionist in Dr. Burlingame’s office earlier. She’d looked almost frightened when she’d realized she hadn’t seen the note about Keri’s appointment in the computer. And then there was the nurse, so hesitant to interrupt their conversation, so quick to leave once she’d been rebuked.

  What made them both so edgy? Lots of doctors are short with their staff. There is that whole God Complex thing. But this somehow seemed like something more.

  Keri remembered how Mags had said Jeremy wasn’t interested in kids. And that made sense. Children are messy, not just physically but emotionally. They disrupt an ordered life.

  But to reject your wife’s desire to have a child under any circumstances—no adoption, no surrogate—just because it would be a hassle? That’s taking the need for a tidy life to another level.

  Still, none of these things were crimes. They weren’t evidence of anything more than him being an ultra-anal, type-A asshole.

  Besides, Jeremy Burlingame wanted to pursue his wife’s case even as the police were planning to close it. He offered to take a polygraph. He seemed truly devastated at the news that Kendra had cheated. And he had an alibi.

  Or did he? Keri remembered that his alibi had been verified by Detective Frank Brody, the laziest, most slovenly cop she’d ever met and one who was just months from retirement. It wasn’t a stretch to think he might not have pursued every lead vigorously.

  Keri picked up her phone and searched for the number she needed. After she found it, she punched in the digits and waited. While the phone rang, it occurred to her that she was about to violate Hillman’s specific directive not to pursue the case.

  A male voice picked up and said, “Hello.”

  It wasn’t too late. She could still hang up. She could still just go home and sleep.

  “Hello?” the voice said again.

  Last chance, Keri. Just hang up.

  She didn’t hang up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Keri gulped hard, ignored the part of her that said she was making a career-ending mistake, and spoke.

  “Hello, this is Detective Keri Locke of the LAPD. To whom am I speaking?”

  “This is Dr. Vijay Patel of San Diego Plastic Surgery Associates. What can I do for you, Detective?”

  “I’m calling about a colleague of yours, Dr. Jeremy Burlingame.”

  “Yes, another detective from your department was here the other day asking questions about Dr. Burlingame as well.”

  “Right, I’m just following up. My understanding is that he was in surgery the whole time he was down there. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. That was my recollection and I conferred with several other doctors and nurses to be sure. He arrived at the hospital around nine thirty in the morning. We began the procedure just after ten a.m. It ran until around two thirty p.m. He was there the whole time, except for one very brief break.”

  “I guess everyone needs a bathroom break,” Keri joked.

  “I suppose that’s possible, Detective,” Dr. Patel answered without a trace of humor, “although it would have been an extremely brief one.”

  “What do you mean?” Keri asked politely, although she felt her breathing quicken.

  “I suppose I’m just being temperamental. You see, the closest restroom is a good three-minute walk from the surgical suite. It’s something we’ve repeatedly complained about to the administration.”

  “I’m not sure I take your point, Doctor,” Keri said, confused.

  “It’s just that he was gone less than five minutes. Not really enough time to do much of anything, if you get my meaning.”

  Keri let that sink in.

  What other reason could Burlingame have for stepping out in the middle of an involved procedure?

  “I see,” she said. “Is it possible he stepped out to take a call or check a voicemail or text?”

  “It would be unusual to have a phone in the operating room at all,” Dr. Patel said. “Generally it’s not allowed. They’re not sterile and sudden ringing or buzzing can be a big deal when you have a scalpel in your hand.”

  “Did you hear any buzzing?” Keri asked hopefully.

  “No, I didn’t. And to be honest, Detective Locke, I probably wouldn’t have said anything even if I had. Dr. Burlingame made a special trip down to assist us. He did it completely pro bono. No one was going to make a fuss over any of his peculiarities. If he needed to take a half dozen breaks during the procedure, we would have been happy to accommodate him.”

  Keri could sense the doctor getting impatient and decided to wrap things up.

  “Of course. How nice of him to go all the way down to San Diego and spend so many fully accounted-for hours with your team. One more thing, when did he step out?”

  “It was pretty early on. Maybe ten thirty a.m. give or take.”

  “And you said he was gone less than five minutes?”

  “Yes, and that includes having to re-gown and scrub back in.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Patel. You’ve been very gracious. We’ll try not to bother you again.”

  Keri hung up and sat quietly in the car for a moment.

  Why am I still obsessing over Jeremy Burlingame? Is it because things went sideways with the Collector and I have to have someone else to pick on? The man has been more supportive of my investigation than my own boss. And yet I keep coming at him. This is turning into a witch hunt.

  After a minute, she started the car, pulled into traffic, and dialed Kevin Edgerton’s number.

  If this doesn’t pan out, let it go.

  “Edgerton here.”

  “Kevin, I need a favor.”

  “Keri, what are you doing calling in? The lieutenant said not to call you about the case.”

  “I’m calling you, so you’re not in trouble. Why would you call me? Do you have new info or something?”

  “No,” Edgerton said unconvincingly.

  “You’re a terrible liar. Just tell me what it is.”

  “No way. What if Hillman comes back and hears me? He’ll kill me.”

  “So he’s not there—great. You have no excuse now.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Kevin, tell me what you have or I’m coming into the station right now. And when Hillman sees me, I’ll rat you out.”

  “Okay, jeez. It’s just the fingerprints. We’ve got IDs on every recognizable print.”

  “And…?”

  “Kendra Burlingame isn’t among them. Although Palm Springs PD says there were still nine partial prints they just couldn’t ID.”

  “So we still don’t know definitively if Kendra was ever in that bus station or if the woman we saw was her,” Keri said.

  “Hillman thinks she was one of those nine partials. He’s ready to close the case. In fact, I think he’s going to sign the paperwork when he gets back.”

  “Where is he now?” she asked.

  “He went to get a bite—left a few minutes ago.”

  “Good,” Keri said, “then you have to do that favor I asked of you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I know Suarez already did this. But I want you to che
ck Jeremy Burlingame’s cell phone records again, specifically for any incoming or outgoing calls on Monday morning between ten and eleven a.m.”

  “Come on, Keri. I could hear Hillman screaming at you earlier about bothering that guy.”

  “No one’s bothering him,” Keri insisted. “We’re just looking up some phone numbers. It’s harmless. And while you’re at it, I need you to do one more thing.”

  “You’re killing me. I literally feel the life force leaving my body.”

  “Don’t be a wuss, Kevin. I need you to go back through the train station footage,” she said, ignoring him. “You’re looking to see if the headscarf woman ever makes a phone call. I don’t remember one and I think I would have noticed it. But just in case.”

  “Anything else?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Yes, please. Pull up the photos of the folks who were identified from the fingerprints.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to want to look at them when I get to the office in five minutes.”

  She hung up before he could respond.

  *

  No one said anything to Keri as she walked across the bullpen to Edgerton’s desk, but she could see a bunch of people looking at her in shock out of the corner of their eyes. She ignored them all.

  “Give me good news,” she said as she pulled up a chair and sat down next to Edgerton, who was staring at his computer monitor.

  “I don’t know if it’s good, but I have news,” he said, pointing at a phone number on the screen. “There’s no call to or from Dr. Burlingame’s cell phone during the window you gave me.”

  Keri’s heart sank. She had been sure he’d made or received a call or text. What other reason would he have for stepping out of surgery for such a brief period?

  Maybe he had a cramp. Maybe he had to fart. Maybe he just needed a private moment to regroup. You do that all the time.

  “Could he have used a burner phone?” she asked, aware that she sounded desperate now.

  “Sure. But I’d have no record of that,” Edgerton answered.

  “Okay, were you able to check the bus station footage to see if our mystery woman was on the phone in the time window around ten thirty a.m.?”

  “I was not.”

  “Why not?” she demanded, her voice rising.

  “Why don’t I just show you?” he said, pulling up the video, which was cued to 10:22 a.m.

  He hit play and Keri watched as the woman walked down a hall and rounded the corner. Another camera picked her up as she turned right and walked through a door marked “Women.” Edgerton hit pause. The time on the screen read 10:23 a.m.

  “She was in the bathroom?” Keri asked.

  “She was in the bathroom,” Edgerton confirmed, smiling. “And look what time she leaves.”

  He fast-forwarded until the woman left the bathroom, notably not wearing her gloves. The time said 10:31 a.m.

  “So she could have made a call during that time?” Keri said.

  “It’s not definitive. It’s not proof of anything. But yes, she could have. Or she could have just had digestive problems.”

  “And there’s no way to track if a call made from that bathroom on a burner phone went to a burner phone at the hospital in San Diego?”

  “That’s a real stretch, Keri. First of all, there’s no evidence that anyone made any calls on any phone at any time. It’s all just your speculation.”

  “Wow—that’s a little harsh,” Keri said, though she knew he was right.

  “I’m just stating the facts, Keri. Even if that was our working theory, it would require weeks to untangle call records. Even then, we couldn’t identify who made any of those calls. And need I remind you, Hillman’s closing this case completely when he gets back.”

  Keri slumped in the chair. She was out of ideas. In addition to having no reason to suspect Burlingame, it seemed there was no way to prove anything even if she did.

  People do sometimes just run away. Not everyone is a victim.

  “But…” Edgerton said quietly, hesitantly, almost in a whisper.

  Keri’s head popped up immediately. There was something in Edgerton’s voice. It reminded her of Evie’s voice when she found an unexpected cookie at the bottom of the jar. It was the sound of someone who’d discovered buried treasure.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Keri’s whole body tingled. All the aching seemed to have subsided. She looked at Edgerton excitedly and could tell immediately that there was more.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He sighed heavily before pulling up a series of DMV photos.

  “What are these?”

  But then she realized what she was looking at. These were all the people whose fingerprints had been identified on the snow globes in the bus station gift shop. There were sixty-seven photos in all.

  “Can you screen out all the men and any women not between thirty and fifty years old?”

  The speed with which he completed the task suggested to Keri that this wasn’t the first time he’d tried this filter.

  After he was done, the monitor displayed eight women. Five of them were clearly not a match. Four were seriously overweight. One’s license listed her as five foot two.

  Of the three remaining women, none fit perfectly. One was blonde and at forty-six, was at the outer range of the age limit. Another was probably too short at five foot seven and at thirty, she just looked too young. The final woman was brunette and about the right height. But her jaw line was so square and pronounced that even without ever getting a clear look at the woman in the bus station footage, it was clear that they weren’t the same person.

  “I’m sorry, Keri. I checked all of them earlier. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you were hoping. But none of them looks to be a match, not even close. This just reinforced the lieutenant’s confidence that it was Burlingame herself in the video. That’s why he was so comfortable closing the case.”

  Keri stared at the screen, going over each of the women more closely. She felt that itch again, the sense that there was something right in front of her if she could just look at it from the proper perspective.

  Her mind drifted to her own recent adventure, trying to avoid detection as she navigated her way through a building littered with security cameras.

  I managed to get away with it—at least so far. It is possible.

  “Show me the blonde again,” she said suddenly. Edgerton pulled up her license full screen. It read:

  JENNIFER HORNER, 46 YRS OLD, 5 FOOT 9, 125 LBS., SHERMAN OAKS, CA

  Horner had renewed her license just two years ago so it wasn’t too dated. Her short pixie-style haircut flattered her, making her look younger than her age, as did her immaculate makeup. It was one of the best DMV photos Keri could recall ever seeing.

  “What does Jennifer do for a living, Kevin?” Keri asked as she looked into the woman’s eyes.

  “She’s a makeup artist. It looks like she mostly works on crappy reality shows. The license says Sherman Oaks but she lives in Silverlake now. She’s single. Has a sister who also lives in town. No obvious connections to the Burlingames as far as I can tell.”

  “Are you able to make alterations to her DMV image, Photoshop it a bit?”

  “I guess but it’ll be pretty rough.”

  “That’s okay. Give her long dark hair.”

  Edgerton’s fingers zipped around the keyboard and mouse. It took less than thirty seconds for Jennifer to become a brunette.

  “Now give her sunglasses and a headscarf like the other woman.”

  That process took only two minutes. Without being asked, Edgerton pulled up a screen grab of the woman in bus station footage and placed it side by side with Horner’s retouched DMV photo.

  Keri stifled a gasp, not wanting to influence her colleague.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think maybe we shouldn’t close this case. They could be twins.”

  Keri nodded, trying to keep c
ool and not let the sudden rush of euphoria she felt overwhelm her. The train station footage was grainy but there was no doubt that these two women looked shockingly similar.

  Finally, a break!

  “You willing to say that to Hillman?” Keri asked. Seeing him hesitate, she continued before he could reply. “How about before we take that step, you call Ms. Horner? Hillman says I can’t do it…or anything. Let’s find out where she is now. If she picks up the call and agrees to come in for an interview this afternoon, we know we have the wrong gal.”

  “I’m still not sure any of this is enough to go after Burlingame.”

  “It’s not. Technically, these things are completely unrelated. Just like it may only be bad luck that the bus station woman never, not once, looks up so we can get a quality, head-on shot of her.”

  “Awfully suspicious though,” Edgerton said.

  “Yep,” Keri agreed. “Just like it’s suspicious that she never takes off her sunglasses or headscarf the whole morning, even though she’s indoors. And maybe it’s only a coincidence that the camera angles that would best help us ID this woman—the ones at the entrance to the bus station and on the bus itself—were both down that morning. None of it is enough to take to a prosecutor. There’s no evidence that any crime has taken place.”

  “So what do we do now?” Edgerton asked.

  Keri sat quietly beside him pondering the same question. An idea started to form in her head but before she could get it out, her phone rang. It was from her department-assigned psychiatrist, Dr. Beverly Blanc. Keri was required to check in with her periodically.

  “I’ve got to take this,” she told Edgerton as she got up to leave. “But here’s what you should do. Try to contact Jennifer Horner. If you can’t, reach out to her sister and her employer. If they can’t account for her whereabouts, let Interpol know to be on the lookout for her, specifically in Barcelona.”

  “And I assume you’re going home to take a nap?” he said sarcastically.

  “That’s right, Kevin. I’m certainly not going to look for evidence that a crime has taken place. At least as far as Hillman knows.”