“Uh-huh.”
“So I’m officially asking you out on a date, Keri. I’d like to take you out this weekend. Would you like to go to dinner with me?”
There was a long pause before she responded. When she opened her mouth, she wasn’t entirely sure what would come out.
“I don’t think so, Ray. Thanks though.”
Ray sat in the driver’s seat, his eyes straight ahead, his mouth agape, saying nothing.
Keri, also stunned at her own response, stayed silent as well and fought the urge to jump out of the moving car.
CHAPTER TWO
Without another word between them, they turned right off Pershing Drive onto the steep incline of Rees Street and then left onto Ridge Avenue. Keri saw the Crime Scene Unit truck in front of a big house at the top of the hill.
“I see the CSU truck,” she said dumbly, just to break the silence.
Ray nodded and pulled up behind it. They got out and headed for the house. Keri fiddled with her gun belt to allow Ray to get ahead of her a bit. She could sense he wasn’t in the mood to walk side by side.
As she followed him down the walk to the front door, she once again marveled at the sheer physical specimen he was. Ray was a six-foot-four, 230-pound, bald, forty-one-year-old African-American former professional boxer.
Despite the challenges he’d faced since retiring from the sport, including a divorce, getting a glass eye, and being shot, he still looked like he could step into the ring. He was muscular but not heavy, with a lithe agility unexpected for a man his size. There was a reason he was so popular with women.
A few months ago, she might have wondered why he’d be into her. But lately, despite nearing her thirty-sixth birthday, she’d recaptured some of the youthful zest that had made her pretty popular herself.
She would never be a supermodel. But since she’d resumed Krav Maga and cut down on the drinking, she had lost almost ten pounds. She was back to her pre-divorce fighting weight of 125, which looked pretty darned good on her five-foot-six frame. The bags under her eyes had disappeared and she occasionally wore her dirty blonde hair down instead of in her usual ponytail. She was feeling good about herself these days. So why had she said no to the date?
Deal with your personal issues later, Keri. Focus on your job. Focus on the case.
She forced all extraneous thoughts out of her head and glanced around as they approached the house, trying to get a sense of the Raineys’ world.
Playa del Rey wasn’t a large neighborhood but the social divisions were quite stark. Down near where Keri lived, in an apartment above a cheap Chinese restaurant, most folks were working class.
The same was true of the small residential streets heading inland off Manchester Avenue. They were almost all populated by the residents of huge condominium and apartment complexes. But closer to the beach, and on the large hill where the Raineys lived, the homes varied from big to massive, and almost all of them had ocean views.
This house was somewhere in between big and massive, not truly a mansion, but as close as one could get without the protective outer wall and the huge pillars. Despite that, it felt like a genuine home.
The grass on the front lawn was a little long and it was littered with toys, including a plastic slide and a tricycle that was currently lying upside down. The path they took to reach the house was covered in colored chalk designs, some clearly the work of a six-year-old. Other sections were more sophisticated, done by a preteen.
Ray rang the bell and stared straight at the peephole, refusing to glance over at Keri. She could feel the frustration and confusion emanating from him and chose to stay quiet. She didn’t know what to say anyway.
Keri heard the rapid footsteps of someone running to the door and seconds later it opened to reveal a woman in her late thirties. She was dressed in slacks and a casual but professional top. She had short dark hair and was attractive in a pleasant, open-faced way that even her tear-stained eyes couldn’t hide.
“Mrs. Rainey?” Keri asked in her most reassuring voice.
“Yes. Are you the detectives?” she asked pleadingly.
“We are,” Keri answered. “I’m Keri Locke and this is my partner, Ray Sands. May we come in?”
“Of course. Please. My husband, Tim, is upstairs gathering pictures of Jess. He’ll be down in a minute. Do you know anything yet?”
“Not yet,” Ray said. “But I see our crime scene unit has arrived. Where are they?”
“In the garage – they’re checking Jess’s things for fingerprints. One of them told me I shouldn’t have moved them from where I found them. But I was afraid to just leave them on the street. What if they were stolen and we lost any evidence?”
As she spoke, her voice got higher and the words started tumbling out at a frenzied pace. Keri could tell she was barely holding it together.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Rainey,” she assured her. “CSU will still be able to get any potential prints and you can show us where you found her things later.”
Just then they heard footsteps and turned to see a man walking down the stairs holding a stack of photos. Skinny, with a bird’s nest of unruly brown hair and thin wire-rimmed glasses, Tim Rainey wore khakis and a button-down shirt. He looked exactly as Keri imagined a tech industry executive would.
“Tim,” his wife said, “these are the detectives here to help find Jess.”
“Thank you for coming,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
Keri and Ray shook his hand and she noticed that the other hand holding the pictures was shaking slightly. His eyes weren’t red like his wife’s but his brow was furrowed and his whole face looked pinched. He seemed like a man overwhelmed by the stress of the moment. Keri couldn’t blame him. After all, she’d been there.
“Why don’t we all sit down and you can tell us what you know,” she said, noting that his knees seemed close to buckling.
Carolyn Rainey led them all to the front sitting room where her husband dropped the pictures on a coffee table and slumped heavily onto a couch. She sat beside him and put her hand on his knee, which was bouncing up and down wildly. He got the message and sat still.
“I was walking to meet Jess after school,” Carolyn began. “We have the same routine every day. I walk. She rides her bike. We meet up somewhere in between and come back together. We almost always connect around the same spot, give or take a block.”
Tim Rainey’s knee started bouncing again and she gave him a gentle pat to remind him to collect himself. Once again, he stilled. She continued.
“I started to worry when I got two-thirds of the way to school and hadn’t seen her. That’s only happened twice before. Once was because she forgot a textbook in her locker and had to go back. The other time she had a bad stomachache. Both times she called me to let me know what was going on.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Ray said. “But can you give me her cell number? We might be able to trace it.”
“I thought of that first thing. In fact, I called her as soon as I saw her stuff. It started ringing right away. I found it under the same bush her backpack was in.”
“Do you have it now?” Keri asked. “There might still be valuable data to gather from it.”
“The crime scene people are dusting it too.”
“That’s great,” Keri said. “We’ll look at it when they’re done. Let’s go through a few basic questions if you don’t mind.”
“Of course,” Carolyn Rainey said.
“Had Jessica mentioned anything recently about having a falling out with a friend?”
“No. She did change who she had a crush on recently.