heard me coming up the stairs and is staying still, waiting behind the door to blast me when I come in.
Boone opens the door a little, then quickly shuts it again. Doesn't hear anything, so he kicks the door wide open and goes in hard, hands up and ready.
Nothing.
Whoever was here came and went. Which is really bad news, because whoever was here might have taken Tammy with him.
Boone has a sickening thought.
Killers usually kill the same way. They don't mix it up. A guy who fucked up and tossed the wrong woman off a balcony would probably try to redeem himself by tossing the right woman off a balcony.
Boone sees the slider that opens off the small living room. The slider is open; a slight breeze blows the curtain back.
He walks across the room, steps out onto the balcony, and looks down.
Nothing but the little garden.
No woman's body, splayed and broken.
Boone takes a deep breath and steps back inside. It's your typical one-bedroom San Diego apartment-a living room with a small kitchenette attached, separated by a breakfast bar. Furniture from Ikea. There are, as Boone might have noted in his cop days, no signs of a struggle. Everything looks tidy-magazines neatly arranged on the coffee table, no drag marks on the blue carpet.
If someone took her, she went without a fight. Which she would have done, Boone thinks, if they had a gun pointed at her.
The bad news is that whoever broke in didn't toss the place. Wasn't looking for clues to Tammy's whereabouts, maybe because he already had her.
He steps into the kitchenette. Most of a pot of coffee sits in the white Krups automatic maker. The little red light shows it's still on. A half-full cup sits on the counter. Cute little mug with smiling hippos holding red balloons. Coffee with milk in it. A half piece of wheat toast, no butter, on a small orange plate.
And a small jar of nail polish.
The lid on, but not tight.
She left, willingly or not, in a hurry.
He goes into the bedroom.
The bed's unmade.
And smells like a woman.
What is it Johnny B. calls me when he wants to bust my chops? “Sheet sniffer”? It's true. And the bed does smell like a woman slept in it recently. One woman, alone. It's a double bed, but the covers are only pulled back on the left side.
The room is very feminine. Frilly, girlie, pink. A teddy bear with a red ribbon around its neck sits on the right side of the bed, up against the headboard. Strippers, Boone thinks, and their stuffed animals.
He checks out the framed photos on top of the chest of drawers. Angela and what looks to be her mother. Angela and a sister. Angela and Tammy. It's weird, sad, to look at these pictures of a smiling woman with her family and friends and think of the body lying by the pool, her head in a halo of blood.
Boone studies the picture of Tammy-long red hair, a chiseled face with a long nose that totally works for her, thin lips.
But it's her eyes that get to you.
Cat-shaped green eyes that glow out of the photo.
Like a big dangerous cat staring at you from out of the dark. A lot of strength in those eyes, a lot of power. It surprises him. Her MySpace photo that he'd had Hang pull up had showed the typical dumb stripper. This picture shows something else, and he's not sure what that is.
She's smiling in this picture, her arms around Angela's shoulders. The picture looks like it was taken on some sort of outing-biking, maybe. Angela has a white ball cap jammed on her head, her red ponytail sticking out through the back. She's laughing, happy-Boone can understand why she framed this picture. A good memory of good times. He'd bet that he'd find the same picture at Tammy's place.
He opens the closet and flips through the clothes. They're all in Angela's size, not Tammy's, who's a good couple of inches taller, and also a little thinner. So if Tammy was here, she brought an overnight bag, didn't unpack it, and left with it. Which is a good sign, because kidnappers don't usually let their victim take along luggage. Unless they played her, told her she was just going on a vacation until things blew over, let her take her bag to reassure her.
Boone goes into the bathroom.
Opens the shower curtain. It's still wet on the inside, as are the shower walls. The toothbrush on the sink is still moist. So is the cap on the tube of facial cleanser.
She slept alone, Boone thinks, got up late, showered, cleaned up, made toast and coffee, and sat down on a stool at the kitchen counter to do her nails while she ate.
But she didn't finish.
Neither her nails nor the meal.
He opens the medicine cabinet. The usual array of girl stuff on the shelves. Only one prescription bottle for Biaxin, written for Angela-an antibiotic that she didn't finish taking. Some Tylenol, aspirin, makeup bottles… no birth-control pills, which he would have expected to find.
He walks out of the bedroom and heads out, stopping to take the bottle of nail polish and put it in his pocket. He also shuts the slider door.
Even in San Diego, you never know when it might rain.
32
“Well?” Petra asks when he gets back to the van.
“You're sort of a woman,” Boone says. “Do you remember what kind of scent Tammy wears?”
“CK,” Petra replies, ignoring the insult. “Why?”
He pulls out the bottle of nail polish and shows it to her.
“That's what she wore to our meeting.”
“She was just there,” Boone says, slamming his hand into the wheel. “She was just there. ”
Petra is a bit surprised, and pleased, to see him display a little frustration. My God, she thinks, could it be a sign of some drive in the man? She's also amused, and a little intrigued, that he has a knowledge of women's perfumes.
“They might have her,” Boone says. He explains what he saw in Angela's apartment.
“What do we do?” she asks.
“We cruise the neighborhood,” he says, “in case she's still around, not knowing what to do or where to go next. If we don't see her, you take a taxi back to your office while I canvass the neighborhood.”
He would have just said “while I hang out and talk to people,” but he thought she'd like “canvass the neighborhood” better. Besides, it might distract her from the “back to your office” part.
It doesn't.
“Why is my absence required?” she asks.
“Because no one will talk to you,” Boone says. “And they won't talk to me if I'm with you.”
“I'm some sort of social leper?”
“Yes.”
Sort of a woman, she thinks. Social leper. Then she says, “Men will talk to me.”
Pleased by his lack of response, she adds, “Hang Twelve talked to me. Cheerful talked to me. They gave you up to me in a heartbeat.”
They did, Boone thinks. In less than a heartbeat.
“Okay,” he says. “You can hang.”
Lovely, she thinks. I can hang.
