CHAPTER FOUR

Twenty anxious minutes later, Keri pulled up to the Rainey house. Once again a CSU truck was already out front. She knocked on the front door. Ray opened it almost immediately and she could tell from the look on his face that the situation was grim. She glanced over his shoulder and saw the Raineys sitting together on a couch. She was weeping. He looked shell-shocked.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Ray said sincerely. “I’ve only been here five minutes but I’m having a hard time keeping them from going off the rails.”

“Is there a clock on the note?” Keri asked quietly as she stepped inside.

“Yeah. The guy wants the transfer to happen tonight at midnight. He’s demanding a hundred grand.”

“Jeez.”

“That’s not the worst of it,” Ray said. “You need to read the letter. It’s…weird.”

Keri walked into the room. One CSU investigator was dusting what looked like a FedEx envelope. She looked back at Ray, who nodded.

“Crazy, huh?” he said. “I’ve never heard of a ransom note come via FedEx before. It was same-day. I already gave the tracking number to Edgerton. He says it was posted from a location in El Segundo. The time stamp was one fifty-eight p.m.”

“But that’s before Jessica was taken,” Keri said.

“Exactly. The abductor must have sent it before he grabbed her – pretty brazen. Suarez is headed over there now to look for any potential footage from the place.”

“Sounds good,” Keri said as she headed to the living room where the Raineys sat. She was reassured that some of their best people were in the mix. Detective Kevin Edgerton was a tech wizard and Detective Manny Suarez was a dogged, experienced cop. Nothing would slip by them.

“Hi,” she said softly and the Raineys both looked up at her. Carolyn’s eyes were puffy and red but there were no tears left. Tim was ghostly pale, his face dour and tight.

“Hello, Detective,” Carolyn managed to whisper.

“May I take a look at the letter?” she asked, glancing at the sheet of paper on the coffee table. It was already in a clear evidence envelope.

They nodded wordlessly. She moved closer to get a better look. Even before reading the contents, she could tell that the letter hadn’t been printed using a computer. It had been typed on a standard 8 x 11 sheet of paper. That immediately concerned her.

Every computer printer had its own identifiable signature, represented through a pattern of dots not recognizable to the undiscerning eye. The dots printed out in a code along with the text of the document and provided the make, model, and even the serial number of the printer used. If the person who typed this letter knew enough to avoid a computer printer, it suggested he probably wasn’t an amateur.

The letter itself was equally troubling. It read:

Your child has a dark spirit. The spirit must be pruned so that a healthy child can grow in its place. That will destroy the body of the child but save its soul. So sad but it must be done. The hothouse desire of the creator demands it. I can free this child of the spirit with my holy shears, the mechanism of the Lord. The demons must be uprooted from within her.

However, if you promise to redeem her yourself through bloodletting purification as he has commanded, I will return her to you for the procedure. But you must compensate me for my sacrifice. I demand $100,000 to be made whole. It must be cash, untraceable. Do not involve the authorities, the filthy purveyors of sordid wretchedness upon this world. If you do, I will return the child to the soil from which she came. I will employ the machinery of the Lord to spread her dripping remains among the spoiled weeds of the city. I have provided proof that I am sincere in my claims.

Midnight. Father only. For fathers alone will save this world from impurity.

Chace Park. The bridge by the water.

$100,000. Midnight. Alone.

The flesh of your flesh depends on your supplication.

Keri looked up at Ray. There was so much to process that she chose to set most of it aside for the time being and focus on the clearest elements of the letter.

“What does he mean about providing proof?” she asked him.

“There were several strands of hair in a baggie in the package as well,” he answered. “We’re having them tested to see if they’re a match.”

“Okay, there’s a lot to pore over in that thing,” Keri said, turning to the Raineys. “But for now let’s focus on the non-psycho stuff. First off, you made the right choice by reaching out to us. Parents who follow instructions not to contact authorities usually have worse outcomes.”

“I didn’t want to call you,” Tim Rainey admitted. “But Carrie insisted.”

“Well, we’re glad you did,” Keri reiterated, then turned to Ray. “Have you talked to them about the money?”

“We were just about to when you got here,” Ray said, then focused his attention on the Raineys. “It’s not a bad idea to secure the money, even if we hope not to hand it over. It gives us more options. Have you thought about how you might get it?”

“We have the money,” Tim Rainey said, “but not in cash. I called our bank to talk about transferring some securities over. They said that it’s hard to do that kind of transaction after hours and impossible on such short notice.”

“I’ve reached out to our fund managers and they say the same thing,” Carolyn Rainey added. “They might be able to get it for us by early tomorrow morning, but not by midnight and not in cash.”

Keri turned to Ray.

“It is odd that he had the letter arrive so late,” she said. “He had to know it would be almost impossible to get the money in time. Why make it so difficult?”

“This guy doesn’t sound like he’s operating from a full deck,” Ray noted. “Maybe he’s not up to speed on the timing challenges of financial institutions.”

“There is another option,” Tim Rainey interrupted.

“What’s that?” Ray asked.

“I work for Venergy, the new mobile gaming platform based in Playa Vista. I work directly for Gary Rosterman, the guy who runs the company. He’s filthy rich and he likes me. Plus Jessica and his daughter went to the same Montessori school until last year. They’re friends. I know he has cash on hand. Maybe he’d front me.”

“Call him,” Ray said. “But if he agrees, ask him to be discreet.”

Rainey nodded aggressively. His dark visage lifted slightly. He seemed heartened by having renewed hope. Or maybe it was just having something on which to focus his attention.

As he dialed the number, Ray turned back to Keri and nodded for them to step away from the Raineys. When they were out of earshot, he whispered, “I think we should take the letter back to the station. We need to have the whole unit on this, get their ideas on what it means; maybe bring in the psychologist. We should check for recent similar cases in the area.”

“Agreed,” Keri said. “I also want to filter the letter through the federal database to see if it matches anything else. Who knows what we’ll find? I’ve got a really bad feeling about this one.”

“More than usual? Why?”

Keri explained her concerns about typing the letter versus using a computer. It resonated with Ray.

“Whether this guy is crazy or crazy like a fox, he seems like a pro,” he said.

Tim Rainey ended his call and turned to them.

“Gary said he’ll do it,” he said. “He said he can have the cash in hand in about three hours.”

“That’s great,” Ray said. “We’ll send someone to collect it when it’s ready. We don’t want a civilian transporting that kind of money if we can avoid it.”

“We’re going to head back to the station now,” Keri told them. Seeing the sudden anxiety in their faces, she quickly added, “We’re going to leave two uniformed officers here with you, as a precaution. They can reach us any time.”

“But why are you leaving?” Carolyn Rainey asked.

“We want to run the ransom note through our databases and talk to some experts. We’re getting our entire Missing Persons Unit involved in your case. But I promise we’ll be back in a few hours. We’ll lay out the whole plan for the park with you and explain exactly what we’re doing. As soon as we leave you, I’m going to call to have surveillance set up there right away. Everything will be in place well in advance of the meet. We’ve got this.”

Carolyn Rainey stood up and gave her a surprisingly powerful hug. She did the same to Ray. Tim Rainey nodded politely at both of them. Keri could tell that his brief respite from his angst had faded and he was back in permanent crisis mode.

She understood his position better than most and knew that trying to talk him down or tell him to try to be calm was a waste of time. His daughter was missing. He was freaking out. He just did it more quietly than most.

As they left, Ray muttered under his breath, “We better find her quick. If we don’t, I’m worried her dad is going to have a stroke.”

Keri wanted to disagree but couldn’t. If she’d gotten a letter like this when Evie was taken, she might have literally lost her mind. But the Raineys had something going for them, even if they didn’t know it. They had Keri.

“Then let’s find her quick,” she said.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’m telling you, it’s just a cover,” Detective Frank Brody shouted indignantly. “All that blather about mechanisms and the Lord is just to throw us off. This guy is a con man, pure and simple!”

The station conference room was a mass of noisy, angry voices and it was starting to piss Keri off. She was tempted to yell at everyone to shut up, but painful experience had taught her that some of these people needed to wear themselves out before anything useful could be accomplished.

Brody, an old-school veteran of the unit less than a month from retirement, was convinced the letter was a sham. As usual, he had some kind of sauce on his shirt, which was tucked in but missing a button so that part of his large stomach was exposed. And as usual, Keri thought, he was more interested in being loud than in being right.

“You don’t know that!” shouted back Officer Jamie Castillo. “You just want it to be true because that makes the case easier to understand.”