I could say that it started out as an ordinary day, but that’s not entirely true. Evidence Response Team (think CSI) is a peripheral duty at the FBI, which means I’m usually following paper trails in Organized Crime and only sometimes get to snap photos and pull out the fingerprint powder.
So I jumped at the chance to respond to a kidnapped baby case on the outskirts of DC, though I rethought that leap when I saw the size of the place. It could have been the parliament building of a small country, all multi-panel windows and stone lintels, nestled in rolling green hills next to the Potomac. I would need more fingerprint powder.
What sort of people could live there? No one I knew. The homes I’d grown up in tended to need a second bathroom and a little paint. There had been more than one home like that, as my childhood was a bit—unusual.
I wondered who had that kind of money and agents at the scene gave me the answer: the head of a lobbying firm and a Congressional assistant. Who were home, with their eleven-year-old, when the baby disappeared. And the outdoor video cameras show absolutely nothing. Middle of the day. No ransom note. The kid is just—gone.
Right, I think. An impossible crime.
When something impossible happens, there can be only one of two explanations. It wasn’t really impossible. Or it didn’t really happen.
So I took my camera and a few pieces of heavy, bulky equipment and climbed the forty-‘leven steps to the grand foyer with more marble than the Sistine Chapel, and met the parents.
And then I realized we had already met. In fact, they were family.
And family wouldn’t lie to me. Would they?
Red Flags, A Locard Institute Thriller #1
Genre: Police procedural
Release: July 2022
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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. Like a sister to Ellie during their impoverished childhoods, Rebecca is now half of a Washington power couple, and she and her lobbyist husband, Hunter, have been living a charmed life in an opulent mansion—until their infant son is taken.
Ellie is reluctantly teamed with Dr. Rachael Davies of the prestigious Locard Forensic Institute, employed by Hunter to help with the investigation–but this investigation 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. . .
About the author
Lisa Black is the New York Times bestselling author of 15 suspense novels, including works that have been translated into six languages, optioned for film, and shortlisted for the inaugural Sue Grafton Memorial Award. She is also a Certified Latent Print Examiner and a Certified Crime Scene Analyst, beginning her forensics career at the Coroner’s office in Cleveland Ohio and then the police department in Cape Coral, Florida. She has spoken to readers and writers at numerous conferences, been a consultant for CourtTV, and was a Guest of Honor at 2021 Killer Nashville.
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