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CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

THE KELLERS

Keller walks up the steps at the front of the house. The porch light is out, windows dark. She’d hoped to see Bob’s sister, but everyone must be asleep. It’s nearly ten o’clock; she spent the better part of the evening at the campus station. The mood there was dark, deflated, particularly after the attempted abduction of Judge Akana’s wife, the death of Bruce Lockwood, a now-disgraced fellow law enforcement officer.

Keller tries to shake the image of the pool of blood around Lockwood’s head on the concrete of the motel parking lot. The shattered judge and his wife holding each other in the motel room.

After, the task force continued to brainstorm, share intel, and try to connect the dots. Her boss finally insisted she leave, get some rest. Keller resisted until he made it an order. Peters still hasn’t taken to Keller.

She finds the key to the unfamiliar lock—there’s a trick to it, Bob told her—and manages to get the door open.

From the foyer, she hears whispered voices. Sees a light burning from the living room. She finds Bob and Janet, cocktails in hand.

“Hey!” Janet says, already on her feet. She gives Keller a tight hug.

Bob rises too. “Did you ever get dinner?”

“No. Wasn’t hungry after that burger, and we’ve been running nonstop.”

Bob is adamant that she eat, and they all converge in the kitchen, where he heats up a serving of lasagna. He says he made it for Janet, since it’s her favorite.

He pours her a glass of wine, tops off Janet’s whiskey, as they sit at the kitchen table. They catch up on Janet’s life: still single, and still loving it. Still too much travel for the firm, and still loving it. She coos about the kids.

“I can’t believe how big they are. It’s only been—what?—a year since I saw you in New York? They’ve grown so much.”

Keller nods. She’s trying to stay focused, to remain in the present, but her mind is elsewhere. With the bloody body in a motel parking lot. With five college students who are unlikely to have a happy ending.

“Any developments in the case?” Janet asks, perhaps sensing Keller’s mind is there anyway.

“Mostly dead ends,” Keller replies.

“Those poor parents,” Janet says. “I don’t have kids, but if I did, I’d make anyone who hurt them pay. Make them suffer the same fate… no, a worse fate.”

“I told you she has a dark side,” Bob says.

Janet punches him in the arm.

Likely sensing Keller’s stress, Janet steers the conversation back to the twins. “It was so cute: Michael asked me why Bob and I don’t look alike. It didn’t dawn on him we were adopted.”

Bob says, “She told him I got hit with an ugly stick. But honestly, how did he not put that together?”

“He’s not always quick on the uptake,” says Keller with a smile.

“Like his father,” Janet adds.

“Truth,” Bob says.

Later, Keller washes her face in the small bathroom. She excused herself, told Bob and Janet she was wiped out. Bob’s always been a night owl from his years working with musicians when he was a recording engineer. Janet also likes the night. She’s been known to go to clubs after midnight, keeping up with women half her age. Keller smiles, thinking about her son’s question: Why don’t Bob and Janet look alike? Beyond Michael’s sweet obliviousness, it’s funny because the siblings are so much alike in other ways: both aggressively positive, both kind, both spreading light wherever they go. Pops and Ruth should’ve written a parenting book.

Keller is exhausted but too wired to sleep. Not even the glass of wine made her drowsy. But she needs to be sharp tomorrow, so she gets into bed, turns off the lights.

And she lies there, hoping to drift off. But her mind churns backward through the day. Get to sleep, she tells herself. When it’s plain that’s not going to happen, she checks her email for any developments. A screen is the worst thing to put in front of your eyes if you’re trying to sleep, but she can’t help herself.

There’s a message from that cocky AUSA who got taken down a few sizes by Judge Romero on the golf course. Keller sits up, clicks on the light. The geofence report must be in.

The report is short. It lists the time and date for the searches: Friday night, 7 to 9 p.m., within a 50-yard radius of the parking lot of Rancho San Antonio County Park. The report has overlapping circles with blue dots inside them representing the phones within each area. Keller pinches the screen of her phone to zoom in on the smallest circle, the one with the most blue dots clustered together.

She feels a prickling of excitement when she sees only six phones in that area at that precise time, the phones within the “fence.” Four from the missing students, either under their own names or their parents’ accounts. The fifth, an account for Deepa Patel, Libby Akana’s roommate. That’s consistent with what they know: Stella smashed Libby’s phone and Libby borrowed her roommate’s.

But what gets Keller’s adrenaline soaring is the outlier number. There’s only one other phone in the smallest circle in the geofence at the time the kids disappeared.

Her heart bangs in her chest as she sees the account holder. It’s registered to Natasha Belov.