Keri Locke 02-A Trace of Muder

by Blake Pierce

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Keri tried to keep her cool but it wasn’t easy. As she sat in her car in the police station parking lot and listened to her psychiatrist, she was getting more anxious, not less.

  Isn’t therapy supposed to reduce my stress, not increase it?

  “Keri,” Dr Beverly Blanc said in her perpetually cool but concerned tone, “Lieutenant Hillman really sounded like he was on the verge of dismissing you. I’ve never heard him so angry.”

  Keri hated that she was required to see a mental health professional but all things considered, she could do worse than Beverly Blanc. The woman was no-nonsense. She genuinely seemed to care about Keri’s well-being. And she didn’t pester her with annoying calls all the time. But her description of Hillman set Keri on edge.

  “No offense, Doc. But I hear him that angry multiple times a day. It’s not that big a deal.”

  “Have you ever considered why you always seem to be there when he blows his stack? Do you think there might be some connection there?”

  Keri considered it. As usual, Dr. Blanc might have a point.

  “What are you asking me to do?” she asked as she started her car and pulled out of the lot.

  “Listen, you’ve told me about this Burlingame case and I can tell you’re frustrated that you’re not being allowed to pursue it. I can also sense that there’s something else going on that you’re not telling me about. I suspect it has to do with Evie but I’m not going to take that up for now.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “What I am doing is asking you to follow your boss’s orders,” Dr. Blanc said. “Go home. Rest. Or go to a support group meeting. It’s five thirty-five right now. There are several six p.m. meetings I can direct you to. Or come in and see me. I’m through with appointments for the day.”

  “Thanks, Doc. That’s very generous of you. But I’m good.”

  “Are you, Keri? You say that but you’re still so closed off. When are you going to come out of your cocoon?”

  “With you on my side, I’ll be a beautiful butterfly in no time.”

  “I feel like you’re not taking me seriously.”

  “I am but I have to go. You know, to nap.”

  “Keri…” Dr. Blanc started to say.

  “Thanks, Doc. Got to go.”

  Keri hung up and pulled over on the side of the road. Something Dr. Blanc had said about cocoons had triggered a vague memory for her.

  It was a couple of years ago. She had been on the houseboat late one night, channel surfing and scarfing down pizza, when she’d stumbled across a reality show about women unhappy with their appearance. They all agreed to undergo a weight loss and exercise program and to have plastic surgery. The show was called Butterfly.

  Keri realized that was what the word in the corner of those photos in Burlingame’s office referred to. Those women were contestants on the show and he must have been one of the plastic surgeons.

  She did a search on her phone to see what reality shows Jennifer Horner had worked on as a makeup artist. Sure enough, there it was. She was credited as “head makeup artist” on the show’s one season before it was cancelled due to poor ratings.

  There was no proof yet that she and Burlingame had ever interacted. That would require interviews with the crew of the show. But finding and interviewing those people, all now working on other series, would require time and manpower, neither of which she currently had.

  If the woman at that bus station and on the flight to Barcelona was Jennifer Horner, then Kendra Burlingame was missing. And someone wanted to keep that from the world. Keri didn’t have enough to arrest Jeremy Burlingame or even to get a search warrant. She didn’t have the support of her superior or anything other than circumstantial evidence and her gut instinct.

  But that was enough for her. So she turned her car around and headed north, in the direction of Beverly Hills. She was going to the Burlingame mansion.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  Keri was in serious discomfort. She had been kneeling in the bushes near the outer gate of the Burlingame compound for nearly fifteen minutes. Her thighs were burning and her ribs were starting to throb under the strain of being in a crouch for so long. It didn’t help that she was wearing her bulletproof vest, which weighed her down even more.

  She could see Lupe, the maid, going back and forth to her car in the roundabout and suspected she was preparing to leave for the night.

  But she was taking her sweet time and Keri was running out of it. She looked at her watch. It was 6:29 p.m. Burlingame had told her he had appointments today until seven. That didn’t give her a ton of time to search the house for evidence and get out undetected before he got home.

  At 6:30 p.m. exactly Lupe walked out for what appeared to be the last time and got in her car. Apparently she was a real stickler for not leaving early, even when she was the only one there. As she approached the gate, she clicked a remote to open it. She eased out onto the driveway connected to the residential street.

  Keri forced herself to stay low and still, even though she desperately wanted to dash through the gate. She checked her waistband for about the fifth time. Everything was still there—her gun, her handcuffs, her Taser.

  Halfway down the driveway, Lupe saw the large rock Keri had placed there earlier. She put her car in park and got out to move it. Only when Keri was sure the maid was focused on that task and couldn’t just glance back in the rearview mirror did she rush from her hiding spot, dart through the gate just before it slammed shut, and hide behind a large stone pillar.

  She peeked out in time to see Lupe toss the rock into the grass. The maid gave one last look back at the mansion, returned to her car, and drove off. Keri was alone.

  She moved quickly. The sun was already starting to set and within the next half hour she’d be in relative darkness. If Kendra Burlingame was being kept hidden somewhere on the compound, she only had a short time to find her.

  She started outside, checking a gardening shed and then the pool house. There was nothing out of the ordinary in either. She banged on the walls of each and stamped on the floors, feeling for hollow spots that might suggest hidden rooms. Nothing.

  Then she moved to the house itself. She’d checked on the drive up to the mansion to see if the Burlingames used a security system. Apparently they had one but only used it when they were traveling. Still a little worried, she delicately jimmied the lock to the kitchen door, opened it, and waited for any beeping or siren. She heard nothing.

  After a minute, she felt confident enough to enter. She used the floor plans she’d downloaded earlier to make her way straight to Dr. Burlingame’s study. She didn’t bother going through his papers. If he was behind this, it was highly unlikely that he’d leave proof of it in easily discovered documents in his office.

  Instead, she looked around for anything that seemed out of the ordinary: Indentations on the hardwood floor that might suggest furniture had recently been moved. Unusual drafts of air that might indicate a hidden room. She again knocked on the walls, but they were all solid.

  Next she moved upstairs to the bedroom to get a better look around than the last time she was there.

  Arguments often started in the bedroom and could easily escalate. If there was some kind of physical altercation, this might be the best place to find evidence of it.

  But nothing seemed odd. No picture frames were out of place, no wall paintings were askew, no bloodstains were hidden under area rugs. Of course, Lupe would have corrected the first two, so drawing any conclusions was probably pointless.

  Keri moved into the bathroom and looked around. Nothing jumped out at her. There was a long counter with dual sinks. One side was immaculate, with everything—razor, toothbrush, comb, hand towel—it its proper place. The other looked like a tornado had ripped through it.

  Keri moved closer to the section that Kendra obviously used and studied it. Strewn out next to the sink were a hair dryer, a plastic tub full to the brim with makeup,
two hairbrushes, and a long lonely strand of floss. The only things obviously missing were a toothbrush, toothpaste, and any medication.

  That made sense if one bought the theory that Kendra had bailed and only taken the essentials. It also made sense if one suspected that the sink was carefully set up to create that impression.

  Keri turned off the light and pulled her trusty flashlight out of her pocket. In one mode it was a traditional flashlight. But push a button and it became a black light, which used UV rays to detect material invisible to the naked eye.

  She shined it carefully over the floor, searching for any hint that blood might have been spilled in the room. Finding nothing, she moved over to the tub and shower. Still nothing.

  Keri looked at her watch. It was 7:04 p.m. Burlingame would be done with his final appointment of the day by now. If he headed back immediately, he could be back at the house in thirty to forty-five minutes. She had to be long gone by then. Running out of time, she tried to focus.

  Where else might a meticulous, controlling type do his dirty work?

  And then it popped into her head, so obvious that she felt like kicking herself. Keri rushed down the stairs, ignoring her still-sore ribs and shoulder, and made her way to the garage. She opened the door and turned on the light. It was empty, of course. Kendra’s car was with the Palm Springs police and Jeremy was currently driving his here.

  But even so, it looked like it was rarely used for the cars. The floor was spotless and the tools along the far wall were perfectly organized.

  Excited, Keri turned off the overhead light and tried her black light again. But there wasn’t a hint of blood anywhere on the floor. Keri turned the main light back on and sat on the garage step, trying not to let her frustration overwhelm her investigative sense.

  Was it possible that she was wrong about all of this? That it was all just a big coincidence and Kendra had really run off to Spain? While it didn’t seem likely, it wasn’t inconceivable that both Kendra and Jennifer Horner had been at the Palm Springs bus station in the last few days.

  There was even the chance that Jennifer had developed some sort of fixation on the Burlingames and pulled some kind Talented Mr. Ripley–style identity theft scheme. Keri doubted it but if she was honest, she’d never really even thought to chase that lead.

  For that matter, she’d never seriously pursued the possibility that Lupe the maid was somehow involved; or Becky, the cokehead friend; or even Mags. She’d left a lot of stones unturned.

  Regardless of what had happened, she had to admit that she hadn’t found a single definitive shred of evidence that Jeremy Burlingame had done anything wrong.

  She stood up and wandered over to the wall of tools, absently perusing them as she turned over the possibilities in her head. Most of them, despite being well organized, were caked in dirt. Apparently cleaning gardening tools wasn’t in Lupe’s job description. Considering how worn and grimy many of them were, Keri suspected that the less fastidious Kendra had the family’s green thumb.

  Finally, she came to the shovel at the far end of the wall. Surprisingly, it looked to be in pretty good shape. In fact, it was so clean that it appeared like it had never been used. Keri turned it over and saw that it still had the barcode and Home Depot stickers on the back.

  Every other tool in this garage is dirty. But this shovel has never been used. It looks like it was just bought to replace an old one. But why would the old one need to be replaced? Unless it was broken. Or there was something incriminating about it.

  Suddenly Keri realized she’d been searching in the wrong place.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  She grabbed the shovel and ran outside, trying to control the adrenaline shooting through her system. It was almost completely dark now and she struggled to find her way to the spot she was looking for.

  Eventually she got sight of the lighted pool in the distance and used that to guide her to her destination. When she got there she knew she had the right place.

  She stared down into deep pit beside the pool that had been excavated to make room for the hot tub that was being built. The pit was a good five feet deep now. But there was no reason the Bobcat couldn’t have created a hole much deeper, where a body could be buried and covered over.

  But using an industrial excavator to pour the dirt back over the hole would have been risky. If something went wrong, it could accidentally dig back into the hole, risking cutting into the body below.

  Better to use a shovel to cover it up and just use the Bobcat to pat the earth down firmly afterward. But who knows what human DNA might accidentally get on that shovel when it was burying the body? The safe move was to dispose of it and just get a new one.

  Keri was just about to jump into the hole and start digging when her phone buzzed. It was Edgerton. She picked up,

  “What is it, Kevin? I’m a little busy here.”

  “You said to call when I had some information. So I’m calling.”

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “We just got a hit on Jennifer Horner,” he said.

  “Great. Where is she?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “What?” Keri asked, unsure if she’d heard him right.

  “She was found in a Barcelona hotel a few hours ago. The full autopsy results won’t be ready for weeks but the pathologist told me it looks like she’s been poisoned.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “They found massive amounts of potassium in her system.”

  “Potassium? Like in bananas?”

  “Yes, but this was over five hundred times what you’d find in a banana. In doses that high, it causes kidney and heart failure. But it was slow-acting, so it took about three days to have its full effect. That explains why she was able to travel for a while. And Keri, only a medical professional could access it in amounts that large.”

  “You know what this means, right, Kevin?”

  “It means Burlingame was eliminating the one person who could rat him out.”

  “Exactly. And I found a connection between the two of them. They both worked—”

  Keri head a twig snap behind her and started to turn around. But before she could, she felt a massive explosion of pain in the back of her head and then everything went black.

  *

  She heard sounds before she could see anything.

  Keri wasn’t sure how long she’d been unconscious. But she knew it hadn’t been a fainting spell. Someone had whacked her in the head.

  As she lay there trying to get her bearings and ignore the screaming agony in her skull, Keri could tell somebody was moving around nearby. There was also a loud humming sound, metallic in nature.

  Then she felt a sudden shock of weight land on her. It took everything she had not to grunt audibly. The stab of pain that shot through her body immediately cleared her ringing head.

  She could smell something familiar in the air and kind of taste it too. After a moment, she realized what it was—dirt. She was being covered in dirt.

  And then she recognized what the metallic humming was—the Bobcat. Someone had turned it on and was using it to dump the extra dirt on top of her.

  She squinted her eyes open just a bit. It took a second to understand what she was seeing. She was in the hot tub hole, lying on her back. Most of her body was covered in dirt. She couldn’t see her legs but she could tell they’d been somehow bound at the ankles. Her hands were free but weighed down by dozens of pounds of dirt.

  No one was visible but she heard the Bobcat getting closer. The lights of the machine grew brighter. All of a sudden it was right above her, at the edge of the hole. The bucket dumped a huge mound of earth on top of her and she felt it starting to crush her chest. She couldn’t tell whether the pain she felt was her ribs being destroyed anew or a brand new kind of torture.

  As she tried to inhale, some of the dirt went down her throat and she coughed involuntarily. The Bobcat engine suddenly eased down and she heard footsteps.

 
“Look who’s awake,” she heard a familiar voice say.

  The figure stepped in front of the excavator’s headlights and she saw him: Jeremy Burlingame. He appeared calm and impassive, as if burying an LAPD detective alive was just a regular evening’s activity.

  He was dressed in his dress shirt and slacks from this afternoon, although he’d removed the jacket and tie. There was a thin line of sweat on his brow and tiny stains under his armpits. But otherwise, he looked unruffled.

  “I’m so sorry it had to come to this, Detective Locke. It’s not how I wanted this to go at all. It’s just that I heard you talking on the phone. I heard the word ‘potassium’ and realized you had to know about Jennifer. And here I thought I had planned that out so well. But I guess it’s true what they say—there really is no such thing as the perfect crime. That’s really disappointing, considering all my hard work. I just have to know, how did you find out about her?”

  Keri coughed some more, then spit out the remaining dirt in her mouth before whispering to him.

  “Hard…to …speak with…this on…chest.”

  “I would imagine so. Just shimmy a little and it should fall to the sides a bit. That should help.”

  While he waited, she rocked her shoulders a bit and some of the dirt did slide off enough for her to breathe a little easier. As the weight subsided, she shoved her hands through the dirt until they were at her waistband. She felt around but couldn’t find what she was searching for.

  “Looking for this?” Burlingame asked as he held up her belt with her gun, cuffs, and Taser attached. “Or maybe you were after your phone? Here it is.”

  With that he kicked the smashed wreckage of her phone into the pit with her. She saw he was holding something between his thumb and forefinger. He continued.

  “Sorry. I had to remove the locater. Can’t have your police buddies finding you too soon, you know. I mean, they’re going to find you eventually. But it’ll be too late to do you much good—or to do me much harm.”