case, I lifted out what locksmiths call a pick gun. Next, I pulled on some latex gloves.
With the pick gun in hand, I got out of the car again and crossed the street. The sidewalks were empty. People were at work or indoors with their AC’s running.
On the bottom floor, I found the unit I was looking for and knocked.
I listened, my senses alive and crackling. I could have heard a desert muskrat scratch its balls.
Nothing. No desert muskrats and no yipping dog, either.
Good.
Nowadays, pick guns are the way to go for any locksmith. They operate on the laws of physics: action verses reaction, using the transfer of energy to compromise most locks. At the door, I slipped a slim needle into the keyhole and pulled the pick gun trigger, releasing the internal hammer, which caused the needle to snap upward, throwing the top pins away from the bottom pins. Now I adjusted the thumbwheel, then the tension wrench-and heard a satisfying click.
I turned the doorknob and stepped inside.
Chapter Forty-one
The condo was stifling, and very still, which led me to believe it was empty. I clicked the door shut behind me, turned, and found myself standing in the living room. A massive mahogany entertainment center was to my immediate right. There was an old couch in front of me, and the kitchen was to my left. Sweat immediately trickled down my sides. The air was thick and hard to breathe. I considered opening the freezer door and sticking my head inside.
Nervous excitement fluttered in my stomach. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for, but finding Willie’s cell phone would be a start.
The living room was cluttered with fast food wrappers. Hell, there were fast food wrappers on top of fast food wrappers. In New York, rats would have had a field day in here. But out here in the desert, the remains of his meals had gone to a regiment of ants.
I stepped over the trail of ants and headed to the first bedroom. The room itself was a disaster, clothes everywhere. Ironically, the hamper was empty. Jarred must have been a lousy shot. The bed was so unmade it appeared to have never been made. Three of the five drawers in his dresser were empty. The other two were full of socks and boxers. I looked under the bed. More clothes.
Next was the adjoining bathroom. The light and fan were both still on, and the air was thick with mildew, despite the fan. Water pooled in the center of the bathroom floor. Five or six colognes lined the cabinet below the mirror; three of them toppled over on their sides. The lower half of the mirror was filmy with dried water spots. Shaving scum lined the sink bowl. On the other side of the mirror was a rusted fingernail clipper, Band-aides and wrinkle cream. Maybe it was a man’s wrinkle cream.
The second bedroom was used as an office, and apparently it was Jarred’s Holy of Holies. Utterly immaculate. Hell, it even looked freshly vacuumed. His computer was on a desk in one corner of the room. I considered going through his computer files, but doubted I would find the cell phone there. Piles of research books were stacked next to his printer, along with dozens of manila folders. A trashcan next to the desk was filled to overflowing with wadded paper. I un-wadded a few. These appeared to be false starts to the history he was writing on Rawhide. From what I could tell, he had a fair command of the English language, although he used too many commas for my taste. I opened the cupboard above his computer desk. It was mostly empty, other than a small pile of blank CD-ROMs ready to be burned.
I left the study and went back through the kitchen and out through the sliding glass door to the backyard. It wasn’t a real backyard. It was a condo backyard, with just enough dirt and grass to give the impression of a backyard. Parallel brick fences ran from the sides of the condo to an attached building. I crossed the yard in three strides and stepped into the semi-attached garage.
I flipped a light switch, and a dusty bulb over the doorway sputtered to life.
The garage was mostly empty, apparently primarily used to house Jarred’s truck. There was a washer and a dryer and a folded up ping-pong table. The table was covered with cobwebs. Damn waste. Next to the ping-pong table was a dartboard bristling with plastic red and yellow fletches. Boxes were stacked here and there.
I decided to check the boxes stacked here, rather than there, and within minutes sweat was dripping steadily from my brow and I felt as if I were being slowly cooked to death in this sweat box of a garage. I imagined my corpse being found hours from now, baked to perfection.
Most of the boxes were filled with books. Others were home to black widow spiders. I shuddered. Enough with the spiders, already. I stood there in the garage, hands on hips, wondering if I was barking up the wrong Joshua tree.
Maybe Willie Clarke really did run out of gas. And maybe Jarred had nothing to do with it.
Maybe.
I needed a better plan. There were too many boxes. And certainly too many spiders. If Jarred had indeed sabotaged Willie’s truck, how would he have done it?
Standing in the middle of the garage, I closed my eyes. Sweat trickled down my spine. Hell, sweat trickled down everywhere.
I pictured Jarred heading back up to Willie’s truck. Pictured Jarred using the keys to unlock Willie’s truck door. Pictured Jarred stealing the bottles of water and cell phone. Pictured Jarred using a siphon hose, sucking on one end, getting the gas flowing, and nervously standing there in the desert while the precious fuel pumped out. Pictured Jarred using some of the water from the bottles to clean out the siphon hose. Pictured Jarred putting the empty bottles and the hose and a cell phone into a…what?
I opened my eyes.
A gym bag. At least, that’s what I would have used.
I would have ditched the gym bag in the desert, but Jarred had Patricia with him. So the gym bag probably went home with him. Where it has stayed because the last thing Jarred expected was a search of his home.
I scanned the garage again. There, on some plastic storage shelves in the far corner, was a red gym bag.
I sucked in some air and, mentally preparing myself for the possibility of more black widows, crossed the length of the garage, pulled down the gym bag. I set it on some boxes and opened it.
Inside were two empty one-gallon bottles of Arrowhead water, a five-foot length of garden hose cut on both ends, and a cell phone. I flipped open the cell phone, turned it on, waited. Music chimed. It still had one bar of battery power left.
Using my own phone, I dialed Willie Clark’s number. My finger shook while I dialed. When finished, I pressed send. More shaking. I sucked in some hot air, waited.
Waited.
The phone in my hand came to life, vibrating and ringing.
Chapter Forty-two
I met Detective Sherbet at a McDonald’s in downtown Fullerton across the street from the local junior college. The Fighting Hornets, or something. Half the customers who weren’t Fighting Hornets were fighting mothers with kids. I came back carrying a tray filled with burgers and fries and sugar cookies to the table we had staked out in the corner of the dining area.
“Sugar cookies?” said Sherbet.
“With sprinkles,” I said. “The sprinkles, of course, do not imply I am a homosexual.”
Sherbet started on the fries. He ate three at a time, mashing them together to form one huge super fry. Grease glistened between his thumb and forefingers.
“Why would you say something like that?” he asked.
