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Book 1: Locard Institute Thriller

by Lisa Black

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling author Lisa Black launches a pulse-pounding new series with a taut, compelling forensic thriller that introduces Dr. Ellie Carr and Dr. Rachael Davies, who must combine their expertise to solve deadly crimes …
When D.C. crime scene analyst Dr. Ellie Carr is called to investigate the heartrending case of a missing baby, she’s shocked to discover that the child’s mother is her own cousin. Close during their impoverished childhoods, Ellie and Rebecca eventually drifted apart. Rebecca
is now half of a Washington power couple, and she and her wealthy lobbyist husband, Hunter, have been living a charmed life in an opulent mansion—until their infant son is taken.
“Every contact leaves a trace.” That’s the basic principle of forensic science followed by pathologist Dr. Rachael Davies. A reluctant Ellie is teamed with Rachael, employed by Hunter to help with the investigation. Rachael is assistant dean at the prestigious Locard
Forensic Institute, named in honor of the French criminologist who inspired the profession.
But in this case, discovering where those traces lead quickly becomes a dangerous journey through a web of greed and deadly ambition.
At first antagonists, then allies, Ellie and Rachael race to find the baby alive and bring the kidnappers to justice. What seemed like a simple ransom grab reveals links to a lobbying effort to loosen regulations on a billion-dollar gaming empire. Unless they can piece
together the evidence before the Senate hearing, Rebecca’s son—and others like him—will face an unthinkable fate …

Release date: July 26, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Thursday, 2:10 p.m.

Few things mobilize people more quickly than a missing child. Usually, that meant scores of volunteers sweeping through the woods, or friends and relatives combing the city streets while the parents made frantic phone calls to every schoolmate the kid had.

Things progressed a little differently when the child in question was only four months old and had not even mastered crawling, much less walking, and hadn’t disappeared from a city street but a palatial mansion large enough to house the parliament of a small country.

Ellie Carr parked in the sweeping, curving driveway behind five unmarked but official-looking cars she pegged as fellow FBI. They were too clean for any other agency. A side drive had been turned into a parking lot by the small army of agents now grid-searching the lawn and surrounding woods. Their uniformed bodies walked in straight rows, two outstretched arms apart.

Her white van had been painted with an understated banner reading FBI EVIDENCE RESPONSE TEAM. It wasn’t nearly stylish enough for the premises but she didn’t care about that. She did care about the size of the place—white stone walls and a black slate roof, a center section connecting symmetrical wings, huge windows made up of small panes, second-floor balconies and small dormer windows at the top that must be attic spaces complete with skeletons and ghosts. She estimated thirty rooms, not counting any basement space, and at least fifty windows, and today, thanks to multiple shots fired at a 6th District mall, the “team” consisted of her.

The single available ERT coworker would have been Adam, busying himself with the paperwork that would accompany his promotion to supervisor. Their divorce had been finalized only a few months before, and though they got along quite civilly in the workplace, she had no desire to go elbow-to-elbow dusting windowsills with fingerprint powder or casting shoeprints.

Besides, she had been expecting a regular place, maybe three or four bedrooms and two baths, the kind of house normal people lived in. Even in DC.

She snapped a few photos, pivoting to get all of the house exterior, juggling her basic crime scene supplies in a canvas workman’s toolbox, her camera, and a clipboard with a scene worksheet attached. The sun beat down through the late summer humidity and she didn’t envy the searchers. One good thing about large, wealthy homes—the air conditioners usually worked.

And clearly no one cared about the bill, as the door stood open on this hot day. The foyer she entered could have been featured in House Beautiful and smelled of citrus. It had a curved marble staircase she could swear she had seen in a movie. She saw checked tile under a chandelier that appeared too heavy for its chain and a direct view to, after a few more rooms, French doors leading out the back to another green lawn and the Potomac River. Ellie heard emotional voices elsewhere in the house, upstairs—no doubt the parents.

“Dr. Carr.”

The man at the foot of the steps introduced himself as special agent in charge Michael Tyler—tall, with somewhat-thinning black hair and a bad scar on his temple, as if someone had once caught him there with a broken bottle. “The parents believe the baby’s been kidnapped, but there’s no note and nobody on video. CARD is searching—thoroughly—but nothing so far.” That did not bode particularly well for the missing child. This very private home wasn’t a crowded marketplace where a kid could be snatched in less time it took for their parents to decide on a cheese; and with no obvious outside culprit . . . when bad things happen to small children, it was usually because their parents did bad things to them. Ellie never let herself leap to conclusions, but after nearly eight years in forensics, the thoughts crept in unbidden.

“Though,” he added, “ransom would not be a crazy idea—obviously they can afford it. The dad’s a big lobbyist and the mom’s in Congress.”

Ellie felt her eyebrows rise. “Senator? Representative?”

“No, works for a committee.”

The FBI’s CARD—Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team—could step into any missing-child case, even without a ransom demand or waiting twenty-four hours, and given the proximity to DC, the myriad implications of the political world would always be considered.

Michael Tyler didn’t have to emphasize a thorough search for her to catch his drift, the same current on which her own thoughts already sailed. Vanished child, no real proof of kidnapping—likely that one of the parents had shook the tiny body too hard, left it unattended in a bath, panicked, and came up with a kidnapping story to protect their reputations in the cutthroat world of Washington, DC. In their turmoil they wouldn’t have gone far with the miniature corpse, so the baby might turn up in the back of a closet, the trunk of a car, or somewhere among the trees outside. It was a horrible thought, but not a unique one.

A less malevolent explanation might involve a custody battle, or a disturbed acquaintance who wanted a child and couldn’t have their own. Or ransom would be demanded—obviously, anyone who lived here could afford it. Much nicer theories, with the baby (boy? girl?) remaining safe and healthy.

She said, “Well, I’m it today. So this might take a while.”

“Not a problem. I don’t think there will be much to do, forensically speaking—the whole place is in real estate open house order, all apparent openings secure.” He meant doors and windows showed no signs of forced entry. “No footprints or tire tracks, and no one larger than a rabbit on the video. Throw some powder in the baby’s room, download the video and that should be it.”

She just loved it when non-forensic people told her where she’d find forensic evidence, but chose to believe he was trying to be helpful . . . or he had already decided that no outside party had taken the baby at all.

Which did seem the most logical conclusion—but then a woman’s voice from above said, “Ellie?”

Ellie tilted her head to see the speaker, though light from the chandelier and the white stone dazzled her eyes.

Rebecca Carlisle had not changed much in the five or six years since they’d last seen each other. Jet-black hair past her shoulder blades and high cheekbones, slender, slightly athletic—very much like Ellie, except for Ellie’s auburn hair and blue eyes.

Ellie couldn’t think of a single reason why she’d be there. “Becca?”

The woman swept down the steps with unladylike haste, followed by three more men in suits.

“What are—” Ellie’s words were cut off as Becca clutched Ellie to her chest with arms packed full of muscle and desperation. “I’m so glad to see you! What are you doing here? Oh—your job. You didn’t know this was my house?”

“No! Last time I saw you, you had that pretty row house.”

“It has been a while—we, um, moved.”

Up, Ellie thought. Very definitely up.

“You two know each other?” Tyler asked. “How long have you been acquainted?”

“Since birth,” Ellie said, thinking that if he hadn’t been about to ask her to leave, he would now.

Becca said, “We’re cousins. Our mothers are sisters. Ellie used to live with us.”

“Cousins,” Tyler said, as if hearing other words instead. Family member. Investigational bias. Conflict of interest. Ellie would have to recuse herself from the case.

She looked at her cousin, with whom she’d celebrated teenage birthdays and gone roller-skating at the tiny, run-down rink in Haven, West Virginia. She would be staying in an official capacity or an unofficial one, but she would be staying. To know which it would be, she said to Tyler: “If you want me to recuse myself—”

He exchanged a quick look with one of the other agents, a wiry guy with dark hair, communicating without words.

Then Michael Tyler surprised her by saying: “No. We want you to stay.”

She used a trip to the van to get supplies as cover to call the ERT supervisor—who was, as so often happened in this lame-duck stage of his career, out celebrating his impending retirement while leaving his handpicked successor in charge: her ex-husband, Adam. “Moved into the office already?” she asked him.

“I heard the phone ringing. Thought I’d take a message.”

Too discombobulated to apologize, she summarized the situation.

“And CARD wants you to stay?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” Adam said. “That’s kinda cool.”

“Not really. I would have been okay to stay here as a family member only, but by leaving me in my official capacity, they’re setting me up as either spy or scapegoat. Becca and Hunter are automatically suspects, so I can be their inside man. They solve it, then it’s ‘Yay, FBI!’ If they don’t, they can let everyone assume it’s because I helped Becca cover it up, or simply didn’t give it my all. If Tyler and his partner— guy named Alvarez—want to, they can ruin my reputation just to get their own supervisors off their backs.”

“Want me to tell them they can’t have you? I could switch you over to the mall shooting. They could use some extra hands out there.” He spoke kindly. Adam might have more interest in ambition than effort, but he wasn’t a bad guy.

“Not a chance.” She rubbed one eye, feeling the pinch of a “rock” on one side of her and a “hard place” on the other. “I’m not leaving Becca.”

“The family thing again.”

“Yup. If it weren’t for them, I’d lack a decent education, soul mates, and a really great cheesecake recipe.” The whole Beck clan—the maternal tribe of Ellie and Becca’s mothers—had kept her warm and dry and incredibly loved. They were a structure unto themselves, a network of intelligent resources from tying her shoes to where to go for fun, to a couch to flop on to basic auto mechanics.

She heard the soft clink of a coffeepot pulled from its burner. “You don’t owe them anything, Ellie. It’s just cheesecake.”

Just cheesecake? No wonder they’d divorced.

“Besides, you don’t even like Becca.”

“Of course I do! That—that was just normal girl stuff.”

“Glad I was a boy, then. Okay, keep me posted. I could send out someone from swing shift later if you need help, but you should look at this as an opportunity to get CARD in your debt. They’re high profile. Can’t hurt to have them owe you a favor.”

A master class in ambition. She thanked him, picked up an extra roll of fingerprint tape, and went in to find out what had happened to her cousin’s child.

The baby’s room echoed with a purposeful and malignant emptiness, a beautiful trap. But it was her job to enter such places, and Becca had already pushed past her with customary impatience.

Lush white carpeting spread across the floor like a field of unbroken snow to a credenza full of toys waiting for their owner to get big enough to play with them. Blackout curtains for naptime were hidden behind ruffled baby blue drapes; two dressers painted in whimsical pastels held the tiny wardrobe. The room could have enveloped half the entire footprint of her temporary, post-divorce apartment.

The crib rested in the center of the room like a display case in a museum. Ellie tiptoed over to look inside, as if the four-month-old might have magically reappeared and she didn’t want to wake him.

But she knew better than to hope for magic.

She did not touch the railings. The white wood had been rounded and topped with a glossy protective covering, which should hold prints well.

Becca hovered halfway between the door and the crib, glancing at it and then away, as if it were a shameful light that hurt her eyes. Then she turned and crossed to a window.

“This is gorgeous,” Ellie told Becca. “Your whole house is . . . amazing. You and Hunter are both lobbyists, I remember that—”

“He’s still got the firm, but I’m now policy advisor to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Look at our lawns—there’s five hundred feet of grass in every direction, so how would anyone even get to one of our doors without a camera picking them up?”

“Do you have any cameras in here?”

“In the bedrooms?” Becca looked disgusted.

“In the house.”

“Of course not. Outside only, over the exterior doors. Why do you think no one has called for a ransom? I keep checking for missed calls.”

“Has the FBI set up—”

“No. We don’t have a landline, and Hunter won’t let them tap our cells.”

Ellie didn’t hide her surprise. “But . . . surely . . .”

“I’m not letting people tap my phone! Once they get in there . . . we’ll let them know if someone makes contact.”

“But—”

Becca rushed on. “I checked my email, and there’s no weird notes shoved under the door. Hunter’s office has been alerted and so has mine. With the recess about to end there’s hardly anyone there, anyway, but my assistant will keep an eye out. And why not just leave a note here when they took him?”

Luis Alvarez, handsome and friendly and obviously destined to play Good Cop to his partner’s Bad during interrogations, appeared in the doorway. “Dr. Carr? Are you going to be processing the exterior doors? We didn’t want to touch any until you had—”

“Yes, thank you. I would appreciate you holding off until I can get that done.”

“No problem.”

He disappeared, his dress shoes clacking down the polished hardwood floors.

“Since when are you a doctor?” Becca asked.

She couldn’t blame her cousin for her surprise. Few people held a doctorate in forensic science at all—still a relatively new degree for the planet, despite the field having grown by leaps and bounds since the TV show CSI first aired and ushered in a national craze. “It’s a PhD. Not strictly necessary to stay in ERT, but it gave me something to focus on during the divorce.”

“You’re divorced?”

“And that gave me something to focus on while getting through my thesis.” Ellie didn’t bother with her personal backstory. Plenty of time for that later. “I know you’ve probably been through this five times by now, but can you tell me what happened today? Start from the beginning.”

Becca obediently began. “I got up with the baby—Mason, did I tell you that? His name is Mason—about six, fed him, he’s on formula. Got Taylor up, gave her the usual toast and hot chocolate, with marshmallows, let her linger over the Post. She reads it every day. She’s precocious. She loves being precocious, and I love that she loves being precocious.”

“And how old is Taylor?” Embarrassing to have to ask.

“Eleven. Taylor’s eleven, going on forty-five.” A bit of a gap between the two kids. Perhaps Mason had been a beautiful surprise. Ellie had last seen Becca at a dinner party at their old house in Georgetown, and she could not remember the occasion or why Becca had invited her to hobnob with the movers and shakers of the country. They had been like sisters, once, the closest thing to a sibling Ellie would have, with Aunt Katey as substitute mother, through most of middle school. Ellie had sent letters and cards, but eventually gave up the one-sided relationship. They hadn’t truly communicated in over fifteen years.

Taylor would have been about six at the dinner party. Ellie had only a vague memory of a solemn girl with a long brown braid, quickly packed off to bed by a nanny.

Speaking of which—“You have a nanny.” Not a question.

“Yes, but don’t even go there. It’s not Jenny. She’s been with us since Taylor was eight, and right now, she’s been in South Korea for over a week, and not due back for five more days. The FBI’s checking that she’s actually, physically, on the other side of the world, but I’m sure she is. Horrific timing. We should never have let her go with the committee hearing this week, but her grandmother was turning one hundred or some such thing.”

Ellie moved over to one of the dressers, topped with an adorable Noah’s Ark–themed lamp and three framed photos. Mason beamed a toothless grin up at her, all dark eyes and long lashes and chubby cheeks. All babies were beautiful to Ellie, but Mason could have won contests—though, as always with the very young, the true appeal of the fresh skin and the wide gaze lay in his utter innocence, his deep faith in his world. His future held infinite possibilities, all of them good and never bad. A sharp hope pierced her heart—let him not find that faith might be false. She had been to too many such crime scenes.

A stack of Pampers (with wetness indicator) topped with Bambo Nature Organic Overnight sat in a neat pile alongside La Mer diaper cream and other accoutrements on the dresser. No matter how much money one had, everybody pooped.

Ellie touched nothing, planning to fingerprint it all, even though none of the items seemed out of place. Two pictures of Mason, one of him with Becca in perfectly coiffed hair and the remaining flush of pregnancy. No pictures with Becca’s husband, Hunter, or the sister. Ellie always took keen interest in displayed photos when she made scene visits, who appeared and who didn’t, locations and demeanors. They told more than the owners intended, yet never the whole story.

Her cousin continued. “After I dropped her off, Mason and I puttered around until about ten-thirty, when Tara came over.”

“Who?”

“Tara Esposito. She’s about my best friend. And financial advisor—every DC relationship has to do double duty, after all. We don’t have friends we can’t use.”

Ellie had no idea why that might be significant, but they could get to that. She moved to the large windows with old-fashioned diamond-shaped panes and wondered if the house was truly a hundred or so years old or had been designed to look that way. Outside, the sun turned the beginning-to-change leaves to bursts of red and gold. The nursery sat on a second floor which, in a normal house, would sit high enough to be the third floor. From this window one could fall a sheer twenty or thirty feet to the ground and the architect had left one no drainpipes, balconies, or handy gargoyles to swing from. The windows looked delicate, but the frames were thick, the latches heavy and closed tight with a minuscule white sliver of plastic on the upper corner. The windows had alarms, but no cameras.

Maybe a trained acrobat could have shimmied along the ledges carrying a baby . . . maybe. Still, she would process all the windows and the sills inside and outside with black powder. Surely, the acrobat would have worn gloves to grab the rough stone and turn the latch, but one never knew.

Becca went on. “Tara and I were in the sitting room, having some coffee and just yakking. Then Gabriel showed up. That was, maybe, eleven?”

“And who is that?”

“Gabriel Haller, Hunter’s BFF—and biggest client, but, honestly, they were friends before he was a client. Maybe I sounded a little cynical about relationships. With this hearing coming up, he and Hunter have been running around like toddlers at Chuck E. Cheese. We all have, really.”

“So he came to meet with Hunter?” Ellie photographed each of the four windows, making sure to take a close-up of each latch.

“Hunter wasn’t here this morning. He’d been in Missouri, didn’t arrive back until—let me go in order.”

“Sure, of course. How long had he been there?”

“Two days . . . why?”

“Just placing everyone.” Standard part of scene work, trying to picture where people, animals, weapons, vehicles were when the victim died. Except in this case the house went on forever and the victim—she hoped—wasn’t dead.

Becca gave a little huff of annoyance, a sound Ellie hadn’t heard since the ninth grade, as her body sketched out parts of the story with elbows and fingers. “I put Mason down for a nap, but then remembered I had to pick up Taylor. They had early dismissal today—with the tuition we pay those teachers they have more time off than they have on—but Tara said she’d stay with him. I checked on him, he was sleeping, so I left him here.” She halted again, no doubt remembering the last time she’d seen her infant son. Ellie could picture him herself, the tiny, curled fingers, the peach-fuzz hair, the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his fragile chest. She didn’t rush her cousin. The time to rush had passed.

“Gabriel drove out at the same time, right behind me. That was probably eleven-fifty?”

“How far away is the school?”

“About eight miles. Potomac Lakes Academy, training future captains of industry for fifty years. The pickup line was a nightmare, as usual . . . I don’t know why that place even bothers to provide a bus service that none of the kids will deign to use, including mine. I was stressing because I didn’t want to hold Tara up too much. Harper’s such a fussy baby—that morning she had been super mellow, sleeping through everything, but once she decides she is over it, she is over it.”

“Harper?”

“Tara’s little girl. And Tara hates breast-feeding anywhere except home—I tell her she’s crazy, but it is what it is. So she hustled out of here, Hunter pulled in about five minutes later—that was maybe twelve-thirty? We unpacked him and he disappeared into the basement with the treadmill. He likes to blast seventies rock when he does that. The workout room is right under the kitchen and I thought I might not hear Mason if he cried, the music was that loud. So I went upstairs.”

Becca’s words ended in an odd little strangled sound. She stood still and listless next to the large white bassinet.

“And?” Ellie prompted.

She seemed to push herself through the next part. “I stood there like an idiot for a second. I actually touched the mattress, even though I could see he wasn’t there. Then I started screaming. You know how sometimes your brain works something out long before you do? It was like my head sped through every possible explanation in one instant and I knew, knew, that there was no logical explanation. So I screamed. Next thing I knew, Taylor stood here shaking my arm . . . I must have scared the crap out of her, I’m sure she’ll be describing that to a therapist someday. I told her to run down the back staircase to get Hunter. He couldn’t hear me over the stereo.”

“He came up . . . but his bed was just like you see it. Empty.” Becca wrapped her arms around herself and Ellie saw emotions she never expected to find in her tough, stubborn cousin’s face: grief, and a very real fear. “He was just gone. Where is my son, Ellie? Where is my baby?”

2:30 p.m.

Dr. Rachael Davies felt the usual apprehension before meeting a potential client to discuss what the Locard Institute called “private cases.” Clients too often had wildly inaccurate expectations of what the Locard could do for them . . . but they also had deep pockets, so the director insisted she at least take the meeting.

The Locard Institute had been founded to conduct research in forensic topics, from ballistics to DNA analysis, and to train scientists and technicians and law enforcement personnel from around the country in those same areas. Its reputation had grown to the point that those training classes were not cheap, and between those fees, foundation money, and government grants, the Locard had the funds to assemble a smorgasbord of equipment and experts—the envy of labs everywhere.

Yet, given the proximity to Washington, DC, too many government leaders and high-placed CEOs considered them a private detective agency, one that could track down cheating spouses and embezzling employees and all under an inviolable nondisclosure policy. Rachael often took these meetings only to disabuse them of that notion. Gently, of course.

At the first sight of Hunter Carlisle, the former forensic pathologist began rehearsing her speech. We can conduct any kind of forensic testing, including those often missed in routine law enforcement or insurance investigations—check for obscure poisons or reexamine accident calculations. Translation: If you really believe your great-uncle Frederick was done in by the private nurse to whom he left his entire estate, we can help set your mind at ease. We have always honored our nondisclosure agreements and have never had information leaked to the likes of Access Hollywood, though, of course, we would have to report any crime uncovered to the authorities. Translation: We’re not here to help you hide your offshore accounts or tailor our reports to assist your defense team. The Locard Institute exists to share our advances in anthropology, electronic and digital analysis, chemistry, botany, and biophysiology with the general public. Translation: We don’t really care if your wife/husband is cheating on you . . . maybe they had a good reason.

Hunter Carlisle’s manicured blond hair and Brioni suit made her think she should lead with the last one. From the way he stood in the waiting room instead of sat, then pacing with impatient twitches, she thought he’d understand directness tinged with entitlement.

But as she got close enough to shake his hand, she saw the red-veined eyes and the sagging skin of a deep worry, the hy-peralertness that came from consuming lots of coffee, but not food. A cheating spouse could produce that in some people . . . but so could real trouble.

“Mr. Carlisle,” she said, “I’m Dr. Davies. My office is this way.”

He nodded, but not before his face and body gave away the usual surprise at the position of assistant director being held by a woman, and a Black one at that. Not to mention one that didn’t even have gray hair, though at thirty-eight, Rachael wondered how much longer that would last.

Hunter Carlisle got over it quickly, however, and she waved him toward one of the armchairs in front of her desk. He sank into it with an expelled breath as if he hadn’t realized how tired he’d become. Shock, she thought. The man was in shock. “Our director tells me this involves your son.”

“Yes. Mason.” A pause, and then the words spilled out. The boy disappeared from his crib in the middle of an ordinary afternoon, with no trace, no strangers on the property, no ransom demand . . . yet. The police and the FBI’s CARD team had been called immediately.

“The cops and the feds . . . it already seems like they can’t do much, other than check with informants and police reports across the nation. Without a ransom demand, they don’t know what to do next. They don’t say so, of course, but I can see it.”

Rachael’s mind raced ahead: Who and how? They now knew when and where, and “how” could wait until, and if, . . .