Racing the Light (Elvis Cole #19; Joe Pike #8)(23)

Skylar might be anywhere, but Josh had been seen at her apartment twice in the prior week, and the most recent time had been after Skylar had left. Maybe I’d find a clue at her apartment. Maybe I’d even find Josh.

I bought two tacos for the road and drove to Studio City.

Skylar’s neighborhood was as peaceful as before. A woman with curly black hair walked a German shepherd. A jogging man in his sixties braved the heat in a UCLA T-shirt darkened with sweat. I parked up the block, walked back, and checked the property for people and movement. The lawn and courtyard were empty. No braided blondes or women in green bikinis. I went up the sidewalk and crossed the courtyard to Skylar’s alcove. I pressed the buzzer one time, listened, and checked the courtyard. Nobody screamed for the police. I used a pick gun and opened the dead bolt in forty seconds. The knob lock turned in twenty. I readied to run if an alarm went off, but when I opened the door nothing happened. The alarm panel on the wall was dead. I stood very still. I pushed the door closed with my foot, pulled on a pair of gray nitrile gloves, and locked the door.

The organized workspace of Skylar’s studio in the photos had been upended. Her tables and drawing boards lay on their sides, and the vertical projectors and enlargers were floor junk. Paint thinner fumes burned my nose. I wanted to leave, but I didn’t.

I slipped the Dan Wesson from its holster, held it along my leg, and picked my way through the rubble.

I saw no streaks or splatter patterns on the walls or floor or on the paintings. The paintings stacked on the floor and those on the walls were mostly undisturbed. A few had fallen or been knocked over, but not many. I found no body or body parts or blood smears indicating a body had been dragged. A small couch and two lounge chairs at the turret corner were overturned and the bottoms were slashed. This wasn’t vandalism. Her apartment had been searched.

I could see the kitchen from the living room. The drawers had been dumped and the cabinets left open, but I went to the kitchen anyway. I opened the fridge and the dishwasher and the oven and the large cabinet beneath the sink. These spaces were large enough to hide a body. I checked. Clear.

I checked a small bathroom beneath the wrought iron stair, and moved up the stairs. I found no blood on the steps or the rail and none on the landing. The stairs led to a large master bedroom with windows overlooking the courtyard and a master bath and three closets, two in the bedroom and one at the end of the landing. They had been searched. Clothes had been dumped from drawers and thrown from the closets. The bed and dresser had been pulled from the wall, and the mattress pulled from the box spring. I heard a voice below and peeked out the window.

The braided blonde crossed the courtyard toward the street. She was on her phone. I watched until she disappeared, took two photographs of the bedroom, a shot of the landing, and three shots looking down at the living room. I hurried downstairs, checked to be sure the blonde was gone, and let myself out. I wiped the outside knob, peeled off the gloves, and walked away.

Nobody shouted and no one tried to stop me. Nobody saw me. I walked directly to my car, but I didn’t leave. I didn’t even start the engine. I sat in my car and thought about Joshua Schumacher.

I wondered if he had done this.

If he hadn’t, I wondered who did, and why.





14





I was thinking through the timeline when Leon Karsey called. He shouted through the phone.

“Who’s this? Hello? This is Leon Karsey. I’m calling the detective.”

Karsey was so loud I moved the phone.

“This is the detective.”

“I guess you haven’t found Mr. Beevo, huh?”

Josh.

“Not yet. You calling to tell me he’s home?”

One could only hope.

“Nah. Listen, the old lady offer up some cash yet?”

“Still no reward. Why?”

“What a cheapskate. Can you imagine what she spent on Gerbers?”

“I’m in the middle of something.”

“They came back.”

I didn’t understand.

“The cow and her cuck?”

It was like speaking in code. Like we were Cold War spies in a John le Carré novel.

“Nah, nah. The scarecrow and the meatball.”

“They’re at the bungalow?”

“Not now. This morning. Three-thirty, maybe, a quarter of four. I don’t sleep so good, and here they come, sneaking around, cramping my ass.”

“Like before? Sneaking around Josh’s bungalow?”

I wondered if they worked with Wendy and Kurt. Maybe Wendy and Kurt pulled the day shift, and the scarecrow and the meatball worked nights.

“Nah, uh-uh. They went in this time. Right through the front. I saw’m.”

“They entered his bungalow.”

“And get this, they were wearing those bug-eye goggles let you see in the dark. How about that, huh? Looked like a couple of spacemen.”

Probably weren’t working with Wendy.

“How long were they inside?”

“Nineteen minutes on the dot. I clocked’m.”

Nineteen minutes was long enough to ransack an apartment.

“Could you see what they were doing?”

“It was dark.”

“They didn’t turn on the lights?”

“Not even a flashlight. Place was as black as my butt crack.”