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CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

THE KELLERS

It’s just past eight in the morning and Keller is fighting fatigue. She’s getting too old to operate on only a few hours of sleep. She and McCray chug along the 101 to East Palo Alto.

“You always this bright-eyed so early?” she asks.

McCray smiles like he’s heard this before.

Keller continues, “Have you ever had so many leads so fast, but not one of them pans out?”

McCray thinks on this. “Before I joined the university, I contemplated working with a cold-case squad as a kind of retirement gig—those officers live and breathe dead-end leads.”

“I’ve had a cold case, fifteen years cold, and it was a doozy.” She doesn’t mention it nearly killed her, something Bob won’t let her forget. She shakes the memory, says, “You’re pretty young to retire.”

“That’s what my wife said when I put in my papers and was home all day driving her crazy. I met with the cold-case detectives and they said most of their time is spent running down leads that go nowhere. I decided I’d had enough frustration in my life, so it wasn’t for me. Then I heard SCU’s chief was retiring, and I liked the idea of being around young people, helping them navigate their inevitable mistakes.”

Keller likes that idea too.

On the drive, they rehash their dead ends: The Maldonados— a cheating husband who got more than he anticipated when his paramour’s husband killed himself and his son fixated on revenge. Nothing. The Roosevelts—a bitter divorce, a cheating husband, and a son abducted nearly a decade ago. Nada. The Akanas—a more sympathetic infidelity story, but again, nothing so far. They’ve got a BOLO out for Bruce Lockwood, the cop who’s stalking Amy Akana. Is he the key to what happened to the students? Obsession does strange things to people. But it doesn’t add up. Why would he take five students? Libby Akana, maybe, but four others? No, Lockwood’s obsession seems limited to Amy Akana.

“How’s the geofence data coming?” McCray asks. “If we know who was at the park when the phones went dark, it could break this wide open.”

“The judge signed the warrant yesterday. Just waiting on our friends at Google. I’m told we should get the results today, tomorrow at the latest.”

Until the electronic data comes in, they’ll have to rely on shoe leather.

Keller checks the GPS. Fifteen minutes until they arrive at the halfway house where Mark Wong’s father lives.

“This guy have a history of violence?” McCray asks, probably wondering if they need backup.

“Only if you’re a thirteen-year-old girl.”

“Lovely.”

Keller shakes her head. Andrew Wong is anything but lovely. According to his file, nearly a dozen girls he coached over the years on the swim team came forward, but he was convicted of only two assaults. Keller hasn’t had a lot of experience with sexual predators. One of the benefits of working financial crimes. What she does know dumbfounds her. She’s convinced it’s some type of brain disorder. They’re hardwired to be attracted to kids. Worse, they tend to have an insatiable appetite—a singular focus—on finding ways to abuse the most innocent. They pick careers to be near victims: coaches, scout leaders. Like a famous bank robber said when asked why he chose banks: because that’s where the money is.

Keller believes that pedophiles are incurable—they are certainly among the few criminal types who don’t “age out” of crime. You don’t see many eighty-year-old bank robbers. Keller isn’t a law-and-order maniac; she understands that often crime is the result of poverty, a lack of opportunity. If she had her way, drug offenders crowding prisons would be released. Incarceration would be reserved for the violent. But sex offenders, particularly child sex offenders, would receive the same life sentence they’ve given their victims.

But the law doesn’t reflect Keller’s worldview: Andrew Wong did less than ten years.

She asks, “His parole officer ever get back to you?”

“Nope. I get it, they’re overworked and it’s the weekend, but I said it was urgent, so I’d at least expect a call.” McCray shakes his head.

They pull up to the ramshackle house in East Palo Alto. The neighborhood is like many that have slid into a decline: lopsided porches, rusted chain-link fences, overgrown yards.

In the common area, they’re met with nervous stares from recent inhabitants of various correctional institutions. It’s easy to tell which ones were inside for a long stretch. The way they watch their surroundings, the way they carry themselves. Like elk tiptoeing in mountain lion territory. Years of having to be on alert.

The house’s director says Andy Wong isn’t there. He’s allowed to go on a walk in the morning before his shift at the moving company, a job he secured through an organization that helps ex-cons find work. He’s approved to go to Bay Road, but not past the intersection of Bay and University.

“You’re welcome to wait,” the director says.

Keller looks around the drab house. She gestures at Jay that they’ll find Wong themselves, and he nods agreement. They’re risking Wong returning and taking off when the others tell him the FBI was looking for him. But Keller thinks that’s low-risk. It’s a manageable area to find him in. And Wong’s file says he was a model inmate. As they leave, the director says that Wong often goes to the convenience store on Gloria Way, so they’ll start there.

Five minutes later, they pull to the curb. The small market is crowded with teenagers, peculiar for a Sunday morning. McCray jumps out of the car to check out the store but returns quickly.

“Just a bunch of squirrely middle-schoolers,” he says. “Some of them are wearing soccer uniforms, must be a game nearby.”

Keller gets a pit in her gut. Middle-school kids. She searches her phone quickly. “We’re near a school.”

Jay gives her a look like he’s thinking the same thing: How on earth could a child sex offender be placed in a halfway house near a school?

She finds the school on her maps app and drives faster than she should in the residential neighborhood.

That’s when she sees him. Sitting on a bench at a bus stop. Watching a group of young girls stroll to the soccer field. They stare at their phones and laugh and are oblivious.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Keller says. She feels rage erupting in her chest and brings the car to a screeching halt in front of the bench.

She and McCray step out.

Andrew Wong sees them.

And he runs.

So much for being a model inmate.

She and Jay exchange an exasperated look: Really?

She yells for Jay to take the car and sprints after Wong.

Ahead, Wong cuts left onto a side street. By the time Keller makes the corner, he’s scrambling over a six-foot fence surrounding someone’s backyard. Keller continues after him, cursing herself for skipping the gym the last few weeks. It’s been hard with work and shuttling the children around and preparing for the move, but she didn’t think she was this out of shape.

A dog barks as she gets closer, and she watches the mangy mutt snap at Wong’s ass as he clumsily heaves himself over the fence on the other side of the yard. Now well behind, Keller veers through the alley to intercept him.

But Wong has disappeared. She stops, bends over, hands on her thighs, catching her breath. That’s when he darts out from a cluster of trash cans, and she’s off again. She tries to head him off, but he’s gaining ground.

Wong makes it to a busy street. He’s running toward a crosswalk where vehicles are stopped at the light. If he crosses and Keller doesn’t make it before the light turns green, there’s no way she’ll catch him. Her breaths are coming in rasps now, but she pushes herself to make it before that light changes.

She’s too late.

But then something bizarre happens: Andrew Wong doesn’t head to the other side of the street but instead dives into the flatbed of a tow truck.

Keller sprints toward the truck, bellows “FBI! Stop!” But the driver can’t hear her above the noise of traffic.

The truck is moving fast, disappearing.

Wong is getting away.

It’s then that she sees the tow truck’s brake lights glow red.

She races along the side of the street behind the truck and watches as the driver’s door flies open. A heavyset guy stomps to the back of his truck.

Keller’s getting closer, about to yell for the driver to stop Wong. But she doesn’t need to. He yanks Wong out of the flatbed by the back of his shirt collar. When Keller reaches the truck, Wong is face down on the ground. When he tries to spring to his feet, the driver puts a heavy work boot on his back.

Jay pulls up, flies out of the car.

Keller’s perspiring, her breath shallow from the chase. She holds up her badge and thanks the driver.

He nods and gets in his truck and drives away like it’s any other Sunday.

“I didn’t do anything!” Wong says as McCray hoists him to his feet.

“Where are they?” Keller says. “It will go much better for you if you tell us now.”

“Where are who? What are you—”

“Where’s your son? Where’s Mark?” Keller demands.

“Mark?” Wong asks, seeming genuinely confused. “I have no idea.”

The worst part? She believes him.