Читать книгу A Trace of Crime - Блейк Пирс - Страница 12

Even though she didn’t really feel it, Keri pretended to stay calm and collected for the sake of her passenger.

Tim Rainey was so shell-shocked that she had to drive him home in his own car. Ray said he wanted to check on some leads at the station so Manny Suarez followed her and picked her up to drive her back.

On the way, she tried to tell Rainey that there was still hope, that they still had lots of leads to follow. But she could tell he wasn’t really listening and stopped trying after a few minutes. When they got to his house, he got out of the car and closed the door behind him without saying a word.

Back at the station, Keri was surprised to find there was very little in the way of investigative activity. That was until she remembered that it was after 1 a.m. and there wasn’t much more that could be done until morning.

“How’s Rainey doing?” Hillman asked when he saw Keri and Manny walk in.

“Not great,” Keri admitted. “He was equal parts pissed and stunned. I’d expect it to tip more toward pissed by morning. Do we know what gave us away? How the hell did this guy know we were there?”

“I’m reviewing the footage from the scene,” Edgerton said. “So far, I can’t find any errors on our part.”

Hillman sighed heavily. He’d seen a lot of these situations and Keri noticed that he wasn’t as quick to place blame as usual.

“Folks, we may not have done anything wrong at all. This guy has clearly been planning this for a long time. It’s reasonable to think he prepared for this contingency as well.”

“It’s like Keri mentioned to me earlier,” Ray added. “He gave us a lot of lead time on the drop area. It’s possible he had already set up cameras in the area or at the Rainey house. If he was testing them to see if they’d call us, it wouldn’t have been hard to discover they had.”

Keri appreciated that even though he was upset with her, Ray was willing to acknowledge that her misgivings hadn’t been misplaced.

“I’m just worried we might not get another chance,” Manny said. “He may not want to risk another attempt.”

Keri was tempted to remind them about her doubts that the kidnapper ever intended to show up but decided now wasn’t the time.

“What happened with the motorcyclist?” she asked instead.

“Nothing,” came a voice from the couch in the corner. Keri looked over and saw that it was Frank Brody, sprawled out lazily.

“Can you be a bit more specific?” she asked, trying to keep her tone non-confrontational. She hadn’t even realized he had been part of the operation.

“He was just some joyriding teenager. We pulled him over a few blocks away. We checked and he has no record other than two speeding tickets for the same sort of thing. He goes to high school in Venice – no obvious connection to the girl or anything else in the area.”

Garrett Patterson, who had remained back at the station to help with coordination, cleared his throat.

“If you got something to say, Patterson, just spit it out,” growled Brody. “This isn’t a finishing school.”

For once Keri agreed with him. Patterson was great at sifting through data but his reticence to go in the field or even speak up in meetings was getting tiresome. Patterson swallowed hard and spoke.

“I was just going to say that we traced the phone that texted Mr. Rainey. It was a burner. Its last GPS location was in the marina, not too far from the park. We think it was dumped in the ocean after it was used.”