A Trace of Death

Gun. Must be security.

Once Keri sat, her hostess didn’t waste any time.

“Ashley’s still not answering my calls or texts. She hasn’t tweeted since school let out. No new Facebook posts. Nothing on Instagram.” She exhaled and added, “Thanks for coming. I can’t even begin to tell you how much this means to me.”

Keri nodded slowly, studying Mia Penn, trying to get a sense of her. Just as on the phone, the barely concealed panic felt real.

She seems to genuinely fear for her daughter. But she’s holding something back.

“You’re younger than I expected,” Keri finally said.

“I’m thirty. I had Ashley when I was fifteen.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what everyone says. I feel like because we’re so close in age, we have this connection. I swear sometimes I know what she’s feeling even before I see her. I know it sounds ridiculous but we have this bond. And I know it’s not evidence but I can feel that something’s wrong.”

“Let’s not panic quite yet,” Keri said.

They went over the facts.

The last time Mia saw Ashley was that morning. Everything was fine. She had yogurt with granola and sliced strawberries for breakfast. She’d left for school in a good mood.

Ashley’s best friend was Thelma Gray. Mia called her when Ashley didn’t show up after school. According to Thelma, Ashley was in third-period geometry like she was supposed to be and everything seemed normal. The last time she saw Ashley was in the hall around 2 PM. She had no idea why Ashley didn’t make it home.

Mia had also spoken to Ashley’s boyfriend, a jock-type named Denton Rivers. He said he saw Ashley in school in the morning but that was it. He texted her a few times after school but she never answered.

Ashley didn’t take any medications; she had no physical ailments to speak of. Mia said she’d gone through Ashley’s room earlier in the afternoon and everything was normal.

Keri scribbled it all down on a little pad, making specific note of names she’d follow up with later.

“My husband should be home from the office any minute. I know he wants to speak with you as well.”

Keri looked up from her pad. Something in Mia’s voice had changed. It sounded more guarded, cautious.

Whatever she’s hiding, I bet it’s related to this.

“And what’s your husband’s name?” she asked, trying to keep it light.

“His name’s Stafford.”

“Wait a minute,” Keri said. “Your husband is Stafford Penn, as in United States Senator Stafford Penn?”

“Yes.”

“That’s kind of important information, Mrs. Penn. Why didn’t you mention it before?”

“Stafford asked me not to,” she said apologetically.

“Why?”

“He said he’d like to address that with you when he arrived.”

“When did you say he’d be here again?”

“Less than ten minutes, for sure.”

Keri looked at her hard, trying to decide whether to push. Ultimately, she chose to hold off for now.

“Do you have a picture of Ashley?”

Mia Penn handed over her phone. The background photo was of a teenage girl in a sundress. She looked like Mia’s younger sister. Other than Ashley having blonde hair, they were hard to tell apart. Ashley was slightly taller, with a more athletic frame and a deeper tan. The dress couldn’t hide her muscular legs and powerful shoulders. Keri suspected she was a regular surfer.

“Could she just have forgotten about the appointment and be out catching waves?” Keri asked.

Mia smiled for the first time since Keri met her.

“I’m impressed, Detective. You made that guess based on one picture? No, Ashley likes to surf in the mornings – better swells and fewer troublemakers. I checked the garage just in case. Her board’s in there.”

“Can you send me that photo as well as a few close-ups with and without makeup?”

While Mia did that, Keri asked another question.

“Where does she go to school?”

“West Venice High.”

Keri couldn’t hide her surprise. She knew the place well. It was a large public high school, a melting pot of thousands of kids, with everything that entailed. She had arrested many a student who attended West Venice.

Why the hell is the wealthy daughter of a US senator going there instead of a fancy private school?

Mia must have read the surprise on Keri’s face.

“Stafford’s never liked it. He’s always wanted her in private schools, on track to Harvard, where he went. But it wasn’t just for better academics. He also wanted better security,” she said. “I’ve always wanted her in public schools, to be in the mix of real kids where she could learn about real life. It’s one of the few battles I’ve actually won with him. If Ashley ends up hurt because of something at school, it will be my fault.”

Keri wanted to nip that kind of thinking in the bud fast.

“One – Ashley is going to be fine. Two – if anything were to happen to her it would the fault of the person who hurt her, not the mother who loves her.”

Keri watched to see if Mia Penn bought it but she couldn’t tell. The truth was, her reassurance was intended to keep a valuable resource from falling apart more than to buck her up. She decided to press on.

“Let’s talk about that for a second. Is there anyone who would want to hurt her, or you or Stafford, for that matter?”

“Ashley, no; me, no; Stafford, nothing specific that I’m aware of, other than what comes with the territory of doing what he does. I mean he gets death threats from constituents who claim to be aliens. So it’s hard to know what to take seriously. “

“And no one’s called demanding ransom, right?”

The sudden stress on the woman’s face was palpable.

“Is that what you think this is?”

“No, no, no, I’m just covering the bases. I don’t think it’s anything yet. These are all just routine questions.”

“No. There have been no ransom demands.”

“You obviously have some money – ”

Mia nodded.

“I come from a very wealthy family. But no one really knows that. Everyone assumes our money comes from Stafford.”

“Out of curiosity, how much are we talking about, exactly?” Keri asked. Sometimes this job made discretion impossible.

“Exactly? I don’t know – we have a beachfront house in Miami and a condo in San Francisco, both owned under company names. We’re active in the market and have lots of other assets. You’ve seen all the art in the house. Altogether we’re probably talking about fifty-five to sixty million.”

“Does Ashley know?”

The woman shrugged.

“To a point – she doesn’t know the exact figures but she knows there’s a lot of it and that the public isn’t supposed to know about all of it. Stafford likes to project a ‘man of the people’ persona.”

“Would she talk about it? Just to her friends, maybe?”

“No. She’s under strict instructions not to.” The woman exhaled and said, “God, I’m really shooting my mouth off. Stafford would be livid.”

“Do you two get along?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How about Ashley? Do you get along with her?”

“There’s no one in the world I’m closer to.”

“Okay. Does Stafford get along with her?”

“They get along fine.”

“Is there any reason she’d run away from home?”

“No. Not even close. That’s not what’s going on here.”

“How’s her mood been lately?”

“It’s been good. She’s happy, stable, all of it.”

“No boy trouble – ”

“No.”

“Drugs or alcohol?”

“I can’t say never. But in general, she’s a responsible young lady. This summer she trained as a junior lifeguard. She had to be up at five in the morning every day for that. She’s not a flake. Besides, she hasn’t even had time to get bored yet. This is her second week back to school.”

“Any drama there?”

“No. She likes her teachers. She gets along with all the kids. She’ll be going out for the girls’ basketball team.”

Keri locked eyes with the woman and asked, “So what do you think is going on?”

Confusion washed over the woman’s face. Her lips trembled.

“I don’t know.” She turned her eyes to the front door, then back, and said, “I just want her to come home. Where the hell is Stafford?”

As if on cue, a man appeared from around a corner. It was Senator Stafford Penn. Keri had seen him dozens of times on TV. But in person, he gave off a vibe that didn’t come through onscreen. About forty-five, he was muscular and tall, easily six foot two, with blond hair like Ashley’s, a chiseled jaw, and piercing green eyes. He had a magnetism that seemed to almost vibrate. Keri gulped hard as he extended his hand to shake hers.

“Stafford Penn,” he said, although he could tell she already knew that.

Keri smiled.

“Keri Locke,” she said. “LAPD Missing Persons Unit, Pacific Division.”

Stafford gave his wife a quick peck on the cheek and sat down beside her. He didn’t waste any time with pleasantries.

“We appreciate your coming down. But personally, I think we can let it rest until the morning.”

Mia looked at him in disbelief.

“Stafford – ”

“Kids break away from their parents,” he continued. “They wean themselves. It’s part of growing up. Hell, if she was a boy, we would have been dealing with days like this two or three years ago. That’s why I asked Mia to be discreet when she called you. I doubt this is the last time we’ll be dealing with this kind of thing and I don’t want to be accused of crying wolf.”

Keri asked, “So you don’t think anything’s wrong?”

He shook his head.

“No. I think she’s a teenager doing what teenagers do. To be honest, I’m sort of glad this day has come. It shows she’s getting more independent. Mark my words, she’ll show up tonight. Worst case, tomorrow morning, probably with a hangover.”

Mia stared at him incredulously.

“First of all,” she said, “it’s a Monday afternoon during the school year, not Spring Break in Daytona. And second, she wouldn’t do that.”

Stafford shook his head.

“We all get a little crazy sometimes, Mia,” he said. “Hell, when I turned fifteen, I drank ten beers in a couple of hours. I was literally heaving my guts out for three days. I remember my dad got a good chuckle out of that. I think he was pretty proud of me, actually.”

Keri nodded, pretending that was completely normal. No point in alienating a US senator if she could avoid it.

“Thanks, Senator. You’re probably right. But as long as I’m here, would you mind if I took a quick peek in Ashley’s room?”

He shrugged and pointed to the staircase.

“Go for it.”

Upstairs, at the end of the hall, Keri entered Ashley’s room and closed the door. The decor was about what she expected – a fancy bed, matching dressers, posters of Adele and one-armed surfing legend Bethany Hamilton. She had a retro lava lamp on the bedside table. Resting on one of her pillows was a stuffed animal. It was so old and tattered that Keri couldn’t tell if it was a dog or a sheep.

She fired up the Mac laptop on Ashley’s desk and was surprised to find it wasn’t password protected.

What teenager leaves her unprotected laptop sitting out on her desk for any nosy adult to check?

The Internet history showed searches for only the last two days; the priors had been cleared. What was left mostly appeared to relate to a biology paper she was researching. There were also a few visits to websites for local modeling agencies, as well as a few in New York and Las Vegas. Another was to the site for an upcoming surfing tournament in Malibu. She had also gone to the site of a local band called Rave.

Either this girl is the most boring goody two-shoes of all time or she’s leaving this stuff out on purpose to present an image she wants her folks to buy.

Keri’s instinct told her it was the latter.

She sat down at the foot of Ashley’s bed and closed her eyes, trying to channel the mindset of a fifteen-year-old girl. She’d been one once. She still hoped to have one of her own. After two minutes, she opened her eyes and tried to look at the room fresh. She scanned the shelves, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

She was about to give up when her gaze fell on a math book at the end of Ashley’s bookshelf. It read Algebra for 9th Grade.

Didn’t Mia say Ashley was in tenth grade? Her friend Thelma saw her in geometry class. So why is she holding on to an old textbook? Just in case she needs a refresher?

Keri grabbed the book, opened it, and began paging through it. Two-thirds of the way through, easy to miss, she found two pages carefully taped together. There was something hard in between them.

Keri sliced open part of the tape and something fell out onto the floor. She picked it up. It was an extremely authentic-looking fake driver’s license with Ashley’s face on it. The name on it was Ashlynn Penner. The date of birth indicated she was twenty-two.

More confident that she was now on the right track, Keri moved quickly through the room. She didn’t know how long she had before the Penns got suspicious. After five minutes, she found something else. Tucked in a tennis shoe in the back of the closet was a spent 9mm casing.

She got out an evidence bag, pocketed it along with the fake ID, and left the room. Mia Penn was walking down the hall toward her as she closed the door. Keri could tell something had happened.

“I just got a call from Ashley’s friend Thelma. She’s been talking to people about Ashley not making it home. She says another friend named Miranda Sanchez saw Ashley get into a black van on Main Street next to a dog park near the school. She said she couldn’t be sure if Ashley got in on her own or if she was pulled in. It didn’t seem that weird to her until she heard Ashley was missing.”

Kerry kept her expression neutral despite the sudden increase in her blood pressure.

“Do you know anyone who has a black van?”

“No one.”

Keri started briskly down the hall toward the stairs. Mia Penn tried desperately to keep up.

“Mia, I need you to call the detectives’ line at the station – the one you reached me on. Tell whoever picks up – it’ll probably be a guy named Suarez – that I said to call. Give him Ashley’s physical description and what she was wearing. Also give him the names and contact information for everyone you mentioned to me: Thelma, Miranda, the boyfriend Denton Rivers, all of them. Then tell him to call me.”

“Why do you need all that info?”

“We’re going to have them all interviewed.”

“You’re starting to freak me out. This is bad, isn’t it?” Mia demanded.

“Probably not. But better safe than sorry.”

“What can I do?”

“I need you to stay here in case Ashley calls or shows up.”

They got downstairs. Keri looked around.

“Where’s your husband?”

“He got called back into work.”

Keri bit her tongue and headed for the front door.

“Where are you going?” Mia shouted after her.

Over her shoulder Keri called back:

“I’m going to find your daughter.”