Girl Found: A Detective Kaitlyn Carr Mystery Read online

  "What do you mean?" he asks.

  "I don't know. I guess someone had her change out of them for some reason."

  "Her underwear as well?"

  "Yeah. Socks and shoes, everything. Even her necklace. The FBI is investigating it. They're processing the scene right now."

  "So why aren't you rushing over there to be a part of it?" he asks, folding his arms across his chest.

  I shake my head.

  "Did Captain Talarico tell you to stay away because you were interfering with the investigation?" he asks, tilting his head and saying it slowly with great accentuation to drive his point home.

  It's not technically my jurisdiction. Actually, it’s not my jurisdiction there at all.

  I'm just the sister of the missing girl, but I've been investigating and asking questions as if I were a detective on the case. Captain Medvil knows all of this as well as anyone else.

  "I didn't want to drive all the way up there," I say, "in case I had to be back here on another job. Besides, you know as well as I do that they're going to be processing the scene for a while and that's even before it all gets to the lab. I have some time. I thought I'd be of use here."

  “You really can't relax, can you?" he asks. "I mean, don't you have any hobbies?"

  I think back to the hobby that I was just about to start: writing books about the fictionalized cases that I have been working on.

  Is that really a hobby if in your downtime, you do exactly the same thing that you do for your work?

  "Listen, it's just ... all I can do is work, okay? Otherwise, my mind just goes nuts. I get listless. I can't just sit around and do nothing. Since this call came in, I thought that I could go and help them find this guy."

  "Okay, well, I'm doing this as a favor to you. Okay? Don't forget that. I will need you to return sometime. I'm going to call you on it."

  "I understand, Captain." I nod.

  "Go and take this case. Hopefully it'll be a quick one. There's a body in the apartment."

  "Who called it in?"

  "The father of the guy who's renting the place."

  "I got it."

  "If you feel like you're not up to it, you can get off this case anytime," Captain Medvil says. "Suddenly I’m sounding more like a father than a boss. I know that you've been through a lot and I don't want to make things more difficult for you."

  "It's going to be fine. Work is going to do me some good," I say and walk away from him feeling the burn of his gaze in the back of my neck.

  I arrive at a two-story apartment building with low ceilings and thick concrete patios out front. It's an older building with a style that was popular in the 70s.

  I've lived in a building kind of like this one and due to the wideness and the thickness of the concrete patio resulted with very little lighting coming in on the inside.

  I head upstairs through the open lobby door to the second floor. Each apartment door goes straight outside and there's a small, walkable garden in the center of the building exposed to the sky. This kind of structure can only exist in California or the Southwest that gets very little rain.

  On the second landing, I can see the flashing lights below. The police cars are right outside with just the lights on, not the sound. There are deputies sectioning off the scene, preventing people from going up and down the stairs to the apartment.

  Questioning the neighbors, Deputy Olson, who had just recently had his thirtieth birthday party at the department introduces me to a devastated man in his early sixties named Peter Millian.

  "You are the father of Nicholas Millian?" I ask. "He rents this apartment?"

  "Yes," Peter says, shaking his head.

  “He was the one who found the girl,” Deputy Olson whispers into my ear.

  I excuse myself for a moment to take a look at the scene and tell Olson to keep him here. I walk past the crime scene technicians who give me a pair of booties to put on so that I don't contaminate anything in the bedroom.

  The door is open and the lights are on. A small woman's body is lying behind the bed next to the curtains. The curtains are the kind that pool at the bottom, too long for the wall, and she lies on top with her face buried in them.

  Given the trail of blood, she probably rolled off the bed. Dressed in jeans and a tank top with a flannel shirt on top, the dead woman has her hair pulled up into a ponytail. Part of her head is covered in blood from where she was shot in the temple.

  I won't know much about how she was killed or even her name until the scene is properly processed. I walk back out, take off my booties, and pull Peter Millian aside.

  "Can you please tell me everything that happened here, Mr. Millian?" I ask.

  He's dressed in a t-shirt even though it's cold outside. He looks like he works out and takes care of himself. His hair is peppered with gray and he has a nice olive tan to his skin, like he has just gotten back from a tanning salon or a trip to the tropics.

  "I haven't talked to my son for a while," he says.

  "How long was that, Mr. Millian?"

  "Peter, please." He looks up at me, but he doesn't look into my eyes. He looks somewhere past me.

  "When you say that you haven't talked to him for a while, how long was that?"

  "Just a couple of days. He wasn't answering his phone, so I decided to drive up here and see where he is."

  "Where do you live?"

  "Down in Long Beach, so not really far. I should've come up here earlier."

  “Can you tell me a little bit about your son Nick?"

  "Oh, he's such a great kid," Peter says, beaming proudly. "He just came back from active duty. He has all these plans. He is going to West Los Angeles College.”

  "Oh, yeah? Just started?” I ask.

  "Yeah, this semester. Is taking anthropology, calculus, and another class, I can't remember. Yeah, just trying to get his basic coursework out of the way, so he can transfer to a four-year school."

  "Oh, wow."

  "Yeah, he wants to go to University of Southern California."

  "USC?"

  "Yeah, I know. It's expensive and really hard to get into, but he really thinks he can do it."

  "What are his plans after that? What does he want to do for a living?"

  "He isn’t sure. He is all over the place. He's kind of an older student now, twenty-six years old.”

  "Do you happen to know who that girl is in his apartment?” I ask, steering the conversation back to the crime scene.

  Peter shakes his head and looks away from me. I know that her purse and wallet is there along with her phone, so it probably won't be too hard to identify her, but I also want to know how much Peter knows about his son.

  Peter shakes his head and says that he's not sure, his son doesn't have a girlfriend.

  "Does he see many girls romantically?" I ask. “Or boys?”

  "He's straight,” Peter says without missing a beat. “But I haven't heard him talk about too many girlfriends. He's kind of a loner. He likes to play his guitar and he has a few close friends, but that's pretty much it. He likes to play a lot of video games."

  "Got it," I say.

  "I know that word loner probably means something very bad in your line of work.” Peter leans closer to me.

  He puts his hand on my arm and it feels uncomfortable.

  He's trying to convince me of something, make me believe something that he does.

  "I know that my son didn't do this. He's a wonderful sweet boy and I have no idea how that girl ended up in his apartment, dead no less, but my son didn't do this."

  "Will you be able to help us find him?" I ask. "Just to get to the bottom of all of this?"

  "Of course. Of course I will," he says.

  I walk away from him a little bit perplexed. I know that Peter Millian believes that his son didn't kill that girl, but women don't just show up in men's apartments without them having some connection to them.

  Officer Olson walks up to me and asks me what I think. He's the kind of person who lo
oks like he never misses a session at the gym: bulging biceps, a snugly fit uniform, and very earnest expression on his face.

  You'd think that he is a flirt, but he's not.

  He's engaged to be married to his high school girlfriend and they've been together for years. Unlike many others in this department, he’s not just pretending to be faithful, he actually is.

  He's one of those guys who’s a little bit too honest, shoots straight, and isn't a player.

  "What do you think is going on here, Detective?" he asks.

  We walk around the corner to make sure that Peter Millian can't hear us.

  "I'm afraid that it's probably a domestic violence incident."

  He nods.

  "They were probably romantically linked. I don't know, maybe boyfriend and girlfriend or a little more casual. His dad didn't seem to know much about it.”

  He nods.

  “I hate to say this, but he's a Marine and we all know that they struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” I mumble, pacing back and forth. “A lot of them can be quite violent with their significant others and maybe that's the case here. We won't know anything for sure until we find him. I’m leaning toward, they go into a fight, he shot her, and then fled. But we can’t make any assumptions."

  Officer Olson nods his head again in agreement.

  "Will you put out an all-points bulletin on him and his car? I think he drives a Toyota Camry, but double check with the father about the license plate and all of the details. This just happened. I'm not sure how long she's been there, but he probably didn't get out of the state yet or maybe even the county. I wonder if he's just driving around LA thinking of a way to get out of this mess."

  "I would be," Olson says and I give him a little smile.

  "I'm just sorry that his father has to deal with this,” I say. “He really thinks he's a good guy.”

  3

  After processing the body that was found in Nicholas Millian's apartment, it falls on me to notify next of kin about her untimely death. This is a part of the job that I hate the most.

  The girl is twenty-one years old and her name is Janine Sato. From the picture on her driver's license, she looks to be of Japanese descent and I find her mom's phone number on her phone that was also at the apartment.

  I arrive at Mrs. Sato's apartment in Koreatown later that evening and she answers the door wearing nothing but a bathrobe.

  She's a small, frail woman with her hair in curlers and as soon as she sees my face and I tell her who I am, she begins to sob.

  It's never good to have the police show up on your doorstep in the middle of the night, but I have the worst news possible: her only daughter has been murdered.

  She speaks English without even a slight accent. It sounds like she grew up in California.

  There are framed pictures of Janine all over the living room and the console table as well additional ones hanging all over the walls. She has two brothers, both older, both married.

  Through her sobs, Mrs. Sato tells me that her husband had passed away just last year from a sudden heart attack. After she calms down a bit and makes herself a cup of tea, we sit down on the couch and I ask her to tell me about Janine.

  "She was always such a vibrant child, fun, and outgoing. She loved to dance. She had many different groups of friends, all throughout high school."

  "College?" I ask.

  "She went to West Los Angeles College to save some money and her dream was to go to USC."

  That’s exactly where Peter Millian said his son wanted to go.

  "Was Janine seeing anybody," I ask, "romantically?"

  "No, not that I know of. She had a boyfriend from high school for a while, but then things didn't work out."

  "Would you know if she was seeing someone?"

  "What do you mean?" she asks, pulling her bathrobe tight to her neck.

  Dressed in pink slippers, which are a perfect match to her turban, suddenly I become keenly aware of the fact that I'm still wearing my boots even though there is a collection of shoes by the door.

  "Well, please don't take this the wrong way, but your daughter was living at home. What was her dating life like? Did she bring guys back home here or did she spend the night at their place? Did she stay with girlfriends?"

  "She pretty much came and went as she pleased. I didn't have a curfew or anything like that if that's what you're implying."

  I nod.

  "She has a few close friends, but my daughter is twenty-one. I'm very well aware of the fact that kids that age have sex and as long as she was using protection and being safe, I had no problem with that."

  "Did your daughter ever happen to mention the name Nick Millian?"

  "Yes, he was her friend."

  “What did she tell you?”

  "They did theater together. They painted decorations for the plays."

  "Oh, really?" I ask. "Were they ever romantically involved?"

  "I thought that he was a nice kid. He came over a few times for dinner. They seemed to get along really well, but when I asked her about dating him, she said that they weren't good for each other. She said they were just friends."

  "Oh, okay.” I look down at my notepad, keeping my face stoic. “Do you think that he was more into her than she was into him?"

  "I don't know. He seemed friendly and they laughed a lot. We played a few board games after dinner, but I didn’t get the sense that he was into her that way. Actually, I thought he might be gay.”

  "Oh, really?"

  "Well, I didn't want to say anything because he wasn't talking about it publicly, so it's not really any of my business. I thought that maybe he is and I was going to ask Janine about it. That's probably why they weren't together."

  "Huh.” I nod to myself, uncertain as to where to go from here.

  I was so convinced that he was a guy that she said no to and that's why he might've hurt her.

  Now this reminds me why it's so important to keep an open mind, I say to myself.

  You can't ever close yourself off to possibilities just because the case looks like it's something, doesn't mean that it is.

  I wonder if his father knows and write a note to myself to ask him.

  After getting all the possible information I can from Mrs. Sato, I leave her alone in her grief.

  Giving her my card, I promise to be in touch as soon as I know anything. Tomorrow, Mrs. Sato will have to go to the medical examiner's office and do an official identification of Janine’s body.

  I know that she'll spend all night praying that we are wrong.

  I'm also certain that seeing her daughter tomorrow will cause her more pain than she has ever felt in her whole life and yet there's nothing I can do about it except find the guy who did that to her.

  I get home exhausted and worn out, but in the way where I’m emotionally tired rather than physically. I grab my running shoes and change into a pair of my least favorite leggings with a sports bra, pulling a sweatshirt over my head.

  I don't go on runs often or rather I'm trying to get better at it. I'm not much into exercise, and I tend to binge on food which isn't doing me any favors.

  With all of these hours that I put in at work, I need to get some of my energy out in whatever way possible.

  The sun is just starting to set and I head west toward the ocean. I'm too far away from Santa Monica, but I love this time of the day.

  It's warm and comforting. With the sun just hovering over the horizon, the chill is going to take over in a little bit, but not yet.

  We all know it's coming, but it's not here now. I lift my legs slowly at first, but after a few blocks, I pick up the pace.

  When I get a stitch in my side, I slow down again and jog at a comfortable pace.

  I check my watch and when I get to two miles, I celebrate by taking a little bit of a break.

  My time is horrendous. I used to run this distance five minutes faster back in college, but given the fact that I haven't exercised consistently in ages
, I'm proud of myself for doing anything at all.

  My thoughts drift back to Luke and everything that has happened between us. It was supposed to be just a casual relationship, if I can even call it that: nothing serious, just having a little fun.

  I had already sworn off dating anyone in law enforcement after my breakup with Thomas and everything that has happened as a result.

  When I met Luke, I had no expectations. In fact, I promised myself that I wouldn't even go out with him. Naturally, that was one of a number of promises that were broken.

  Luke is a bit of an enigma.

  He's kind and sweet, but also a little bit harsh around the edges. He isn't afraid to challenge me and to tell me the truth. I like that more than I will admit.

  The last time that I seen him, we snuck around. Even though that made it even hotter, the fire and the burn between us was impossible to forget.

  Now I wonder if maybe it was the fact that we were sneaking around. He isn't married or in a relationship.

  I hate men who cheat on their wives and girlfriends. I’m not either. I would never date someone like that.

  You should be able to be honest with who you are and what you want. I'm not interested in people who thrive on dishonesty, but when it came to sneaking around, yes, we did do that.

  The problem is that Violet is my sister and she's a missing person. Luke is one of the FBI agents assigned to her case.

  Being romantically linked to me is a big no-no. The thing is that we weren't in any official relationship when she went missing and when he got sent to Big Bear to work both on her case and Natalie D’Achille’s disappearance.

  My thoughts return to the way we handled our last interaction together. It wasn't my finest hour.

  I was angry and upset. We had just spent some time alone in a hotel room and had the most mind-blowing afternoon.

  Then just as I was about to go back to LA to handle a case for work, he told me that he was going on a date. Apparently, he had been set up by his cousin way before we met.

  That all was true, except I got upset. I got mad at him.

  I told him that he can go on a date with whoever he wants and we had a fight. I said things I didn't mean and then I didn't apologize.