Amanda.Three other girls.All gone without explanation.
Kari thought about the pattern her mother had documented in her files.Seventeen deaths over five decades, all ruled accidents or natural causes, all involving people who had stumbled onto something dangerous.Indigenous people killed to protect corporate secrets, their deaths disguised and dismissed.
This was different.This was Los Angeles, not the reservation.These were models, not activists or researchers.But the shape of it felt familiar.People disappearing when they became inconvenient.A trail of missing women that no one seemed to notice or care about.
She needed more information.She needed to know who Amanda was, and what had happened to the other missing models.And she needed to find Tayen before she became another name on a list of vanished women that no one was looking for.
Kari pulled out her phone and dialed Ben's number.He answered on the second ring.
"How's L.A.?"he asked.
"Complicated."Kari started walking toward her rental car."I need you to run some names for me.See if anything pops."
"You found something."
"Maybe.Probably.I don't know yet."She unlocked the car and slid into the driver's seat."The agency Tayen works for, Elite Vision Modeling.I need to know everything about it.Who owns it, who runs it, any complaints or lawsuits.And a woman named Diana Shepherd, their talent coordinator."
"I'll see what I can find.Anything else?"
"A model named Amanda.Last name unknown.She disappeared from the agency a few weeks ago.And there might be others."
Ben was quiet for a moment."Kari, what exactly are you getting into out there?"
"I'm not sure yet.But it's bigger than one missing girl."She started the engine."I'll call you tomorrow.And Ben?Check on Ruth for me."
"Yes, ma'am."
Kari ended the call and pulled into the stream of traffic, the lights of Koreatown reflecting off her windshield like scattered stars.Somewhere in this city of angels, Tayen Chee was either hiding or being hidden.
Either way, Kari was going to find her.And to do that, she was going to need help from someone who actually had jurisdiction here.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Detective Rachel Carter had the look of someone who'd seen too much and stopped being surprised by any of it.She sat across from Kari in a cramped interview room at L.A.PD's Missing Persons Unit, a paper cup of cold coffee untouched beside her elbow, her eyes sharp despite the exhaustion that lined her face.
The room itself was a study in institutional neglect.Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, one of them flickering in a rhythm that was already giving Kari a headache.The walls were painted a shade of beige that might once have been cheerful but had long since faded to something closer to despair.A water stain in one corner suggested maintenance requests went unanswered here.
"So let me make sure I understand," Carter said, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms."You're a tribal police detective from Arizona, you have no jurisdiction here, and you want me to open a missing persons case on an adult woman who's been gone for two days and has a history of running away."
"That's the gist of it."
Carter was in her mid-forties, Kari guessed, with short gray-streaked hair and the kind of no-nonsense demeanor that came from decades of police work.She wore no jewelry except for a simple watch, and her blazer had the slightly rumpled look of something that had been lived in for too many hours.Everything about her suggested competence worn down by chronic understaffing and impossible caseloads.
"You know how many missing persons reports we get in this city every year?"Carter asked.
"I can imagine."
"Twelve thousand.Give or take.That's about thirty-three people every single day who someone thinks have vanished."Carter picked up her coffee cup, seemed to remember it was cold, and set it back down."Most of them walk back through their front doors within forty-eight hours.Runaways who change their minds.Spouses who needed a break.Adults who decided to ghost their families for a while.The ones who don't come back..."She shrugged."We do what we can with what we have.Which isn't much."
"I'm not asking you to drop everything and search for Tayen.I'm asking you to listen to what I've found and tell me if it sounds like nothing."
Something in Kari's tone must have registered, because Carter's expression shifted from weary dismissal to reluctant interest.She uncrossed her arms and leaned forward.
"Alright, Detective Blackhorse.I'm listening.But I've got a meeting in twenty minutes, so make it count."
Kari laid it out as concisely as she could.Tayen's disappearance the same day her aunt reached out.The deleted Glimmer account that had been active for eighteen months.The roommate's revelation that other models from Elite Vision had vanished without explanation over the past year and a half.A girl named Amanda who'd been Tayen's friend, who the agency claimed had gone back home but whose roommate didn't believe it.
"The roommate said Amanda was scared before she left," Kari continued." Scared of what, she wouldn't say, but something had her spooked.And now Tayen's gone too, right after Amanda."
