“Oh, yeah,” Keri agreed, deciding to use her earlier confrontation to her advantage, “me too, Freddie. Looks like I was in a prize fight, right? I’m actually still officially on leave until I’m in better shape. But I was getting a little stir-crazy around the apartment so I thought I’d check on an old case. It’s informal so I didn’t even bring the gun and shield. Still cool if I interview someone even if I’m off the clock?”

“Of course, Detective. I just wish you’d take it a little easy. But I know you won’t. Sign in. Get your visitor badge and head to the interrogation level. You know the drill.”

Keri did know the drill and fifteen minutes later she was seated in an interrogation room, waiting for the arrival of inmate #2427609, or Thomas “The Ghost” Anderson. The guard had warned her that they were getting ready for lights out and it might take a little extra time to collect him. She tried to stay cool as she waited but knew it was a losing battle.

Anderson always seemed to get under her skin, as if he was secretly peeling back her scalp to reveal her brain and read her thoughts. Oftentimes, she felt like she was a kitten and he was holding one of those laser pen lights, sending her scampering in random directions at his whim.

And yet, it was his information that sent her down a road that had gotten her closer to finding Evie than anything else had. Was that by design or just luck? He’d never given her any indication that their meetings were anything other than happenstance. But if he was that far ahead of the game, why would he?

The door opened and he stepped through it, looking much as she remembered. Anderson, in his mid-fifties, was on the shorter side, about five foot eight, with a square, well-built frame that suggested he used the prison gym regularly. The manacles on his muscled forearms looked tight. Still, he appeared leaner than she remembered, as if he’d missed a few meals.

His thick hair was parted neatly but much to her surprise, it was no longer the jet black she remembered. Now it was mostly a salt-and-pepper combination. At the edges of his prison jumpsuit, she could still see portions of the multiple tattoos that lined the right side of his body all the way up his neck. His left side was still unblemished.

As he was directed to the metal chair across the table from her, his gray eyes never left her. She knew he was taking her in, studying her, sizing her up, trying to learn as much as he could about her situation before she said a word.

After he was seated, the guard took a position by the door.

“We’re fine, Officer…Kiley,” Keri said, squinting at his nametag.

“Procedure, ma’am,” the guard said brusquely.

She glanced over at him. He was new…and young. She doubted he was on the take yet but she couldn’t afford for anyone, corrupt or clean, to hear this conversation. Anderson smiled slightly at her, knowing what was coming. This would probably be entertaining for him.

She stood up and stared at the guard until he sensed her eyes on him and looked over.

“First of all, it’s not ma’am. It’s Detective Locke. Second, I don’t give a rat’s ass about your procedure, newbie. I want to talk to this inmate in private. If you can’t accommodate that, then I need to talk to you in private and it’s not going to be a comfortable chat.”

“But…” Kiley started to stammer as he shifted from foot to foot.

“But nothing, Officer. You have two choices here. You can let me speak to this inmate privately. Or we can have that chat! Which is it gonna be?”

“Maybe I should get my superviso – ”

“That’s not on the list of choices, Officer. You know what? I’m deciding for you. Let’s step outside so I can chat you up a little. You’d think taking down a religious zealot pedophile would give me a pass for the rest of the week but I guess now I have to instruct a corrections officer as well.”

She reached for the door handle and started to pull when Officer Kiley finally lost what was left of his nerve. She was impressed at how long he’d lasted.

“Never mind, Detective,” he said hastily. “I’ll wait outside. Just please use caution. This prisoner has a history of violent incidents.”

“Of course I will,” Keri said, her voice now all buttered honey. “Thank you for being so accommodating. I’ll try to keep it brief.”

He stepped out and shut the door and Keri returned to her seat, filled with a confidence and energy that had been lacking only thirty seconds earlier.

“That was fun,” Anderson said mildly.

“I’m sure,” Keri replied. “You can bet I expect some valuable information in return for providing you with such quality entertainment.”

“Detective Locke,” Anderson said in a tone of mocked indignation, “you offend my delicate sensibilities. It’s been months since we’ve seen each other and yet your first instinct upon seeing me is to demand information? No hello? No how are you?”

“Hello,” Keri said. “I’d ask how you are, but it’s clear you’re not great. You’ve lost weight. The hair has gone gray. The skin near your eyes has gotten saggy. Are you ill? Or is something weighing on your conscience?”

“Both actually,” he admitted. “You see, the boys in here have been treating me a little rough lately. I’m no longer in the popular crowd. So I have my dinner ‘borrowed’ occasionally. I get an unrequested rib massage now and then. Also, I have a touch of the cancer.”

“I didn’t know,” Keri said quietly, genuinely taken aback. All the physical signs of wasting away made more sense now.

“How could you?” he asked. “I didn’t advertise it. I might have told you at my parole hearing in November but you weren’t there. I didn’t get it, by the way. Not your fault though. Your letter was lovely, thank you very much.”

Keri had written a letter on Anderson’s behalf after he’d helped her before. She didn’t advocate for his release but she had been generous in her description of his assistance to the force.

“You weren’t surprised you didn’t get it, I gather?”

“No,” he said. “But it’s hard not to hope. It was my last real chance to get out of here before the sickness takes me. I had dreams of wandering on a beach in Zihuatanejo. Alas, it’s not to be. But enough small talk, Detective. Let’s get down to why you’re really here. And remember, the walls have ears.”

“Okay,” she started, then leaned in and whispered, “do you know about tomorrow night?”

Anderson nodded. Keri felt a surge of hope rise in her chest.

“Do you know where it’s happening?”

He shook his head.

“I can’t help you with the where,” he whispered back. “But I might be able to help you with the why.”

“What good will that do me?’ she demanded bitterly.

“Knowing why might help you find out where.”

“Let me ask you a different why,” she said, realizing her anger was getting the best of her but unable to contain it.

“All right.”

“Why are you helping me at all?” she asked. “Have you been guiding me all along, since I first met you?”

“Here’s what I can tell you, Detective. You know what I did for a living, how I coordinated the theft of children from their families to be given to other families, often for massive fees. It was a very lucrative business. I was able to conduct it from a distance using a false name and live a happy, uncomplicated life.”

“As John Johnson?”

“No, my happy life was as Thomas Anderson, librarian. My alter ego was John Johnson, abduction facilitator. When I was caught, I turned to someone we both know to ensure that John Johnson was exonerated and that Thomas Anderson was never connected to him. This was almost a decade ago. Our friend didn’t want to do it. He said he only represented those mistreated by the system and that I was, and this is funny to think about now, a cancer on that system.”

“That is funny,” Keri agreed, not laughing.

“But as you know, I can be convincing. I persuaded him that I was taking children from wealthy, undeserving families and giving them to loving families without the same resources. Then I offered him an enormous amount of money to get me acquitted. I think he knew I was lying. After all, how could these low-income families afford to pay me? And were the parents who lost their children all really terrible? Our friend is very smart. He had to have known. But it gave him something to hold on to, something to tell himself when he took six figures in cash from me.”

“Six figures?” Keri repeated, disbelieving.

“As I said, it’s a very lucrative business. And that payment was just the first. Over the course of the trial, I paid him about half a million dollars. And with that, he was on his way. After I was acquitted and resumed work under my own name, he even started helping me facilitate the abductions to these ‘more deserving’ families. As long as he could find a way to justify the transactions, he was comfortable with them, even enthusiastic.”

“So you gave him that first bite of forbidden fruit?”

“I did. And he found that he liked the taste. In fact, he discovered that he had a taste for a great many things he hadn’t been aware that he might like.”

“What exactly are you saying?” Keri asked.

“Let’s just say that somewhere along the way, he lost the need to justify the transactions. You know that event tomorrow night?”

“Yes?”

“It was his brainchild,” Anderson said. “Mind you, he doesn’t partake. But he realized there was a market for that sort of thing and for all the smaller, similar festivities throughout the year. He filled that niche. He essentially controls the upscale version of that…market in the Los Angeles area. And to think that before me, he was working out of a one-room office next to a doughnut shop representing illegal immigrants being randomly charged with sex crimes by cops looking to make quotas.”

“So you developed a conscience?” Keri asked through gritted teeth. She was disgusted but she wanted answers and worried that being too overt with that disgust might shut Anderson down. He seemed to sense how she felt but proceeded anyway.

“Not yet. That’s not what did it for me. It happened much later. I saw this story on the local news about a year and a half ago about a female detective and her partner who rescued this little girl who was kidnapped by her babysitter’s boyfriend, a real creep.”

“Carlo Junta,” Keri said automatically.

“Right. Anyway, in the story, they mentioned that this detective was the same woman who had joined the police academy a few years earlier. And they showed a clip from an interview after her academy graduation. She said she’d joined the force because her daughter was abducted. She said that even though she couldn’t save her own daughter, maybe by being a cop, she could help save some other family’s daughter. Does that sound familiar?”

“Yes,” Keri said softly.

“So,” Anderson continued, “because I worked in a library and had access to all kinds of old news footage, I went back and found the story from when this lady’s daughter was abducted and her news conference right afterward when she pleaded for her daughter’s safe return.”

Keri flashed back to the news conference, which was mostly a blur. She remembered speaking into a dozen microphones jammed in her face, begging the man who had snatched her daughter in the middle of a park, who had tossed her in a van like a rag doll, to return her.

She remembered the scream of “Please Mommy, help me” and the bobbing blonde pigtails getting farther away as Evie, only eight at the time, disappeared across the green field. She remembered the bits of gravel that were still embedded in her feet during the news conference, trapped there when she ran barefoot through the parking lot, chasing after the van until it left her in the dust. She remembered it all.

Anderson had stopped talking. She looked at him and saw that his eyes were rimmed with tears, just as hers were. He pressed on.

“After that, I saw another story a few months later where this detective rescued another kid, this time a boy grabbed while he was walking to baseball practice.”

“Jimmy Tensall.”

“And a month later, she found a baby girl that had been snatched right out of a carrier at the supermarket. The woman who stole her had a fake birth certificate made and was planning to fly with the baby to Peru. You caught her at the gate as she was about to board the plane.”

“I remember.”

“That’s when I decided I couldn’t do it anymore. Every transaction reminded me of that news conference where you were begging for your daughter’s return. I couldn’t keep it at arm’s length anymore. I got soft, I guess. And right around then, our friend made a mistake.”

“What was that?” Keri asked, feeling a tingly sensation that only came when she sensed something big about to be revealed.

Thomas Anderson looked at her and she could tell he was wrestling with some kind of big internal decision. Then his brow unfurrowed and his eyes cleared. He seemed to have made up his mind.

“Do you trust me?” he asked quietly.

“What the hell kind of question is that? No friggin’ w – ”

But before she had finished the sentence, he had pushed away the table that separated them, swung the manacles on his wrists around her neck, and pulled her to the ground, sliding back into a corner of the interrogation room.

As Officer Kiley burst into the room, Anderson used her body as a shield, keeping her in front of him. She felt a sharp prick at her neck and glanced down to see what it was. It looked like a shaved-down toothbrush handle. And it was pressed against her jugular.