back end of the Burg. The house had been posted as collateral on the bond. It was owned by Stewart's cousin Trevor.
I heard a sharp rap on my door and went to look out the security peephole. It was Joyce.
'Open this door,' she yelled. 'I know you're in there.' She tried to rattle the door, but it held tight.
'What do you want?' I called through the door.
'I want to talk to you.'
'About what?'
'About Dickie, you moron. I want to know where he is. You found out about the money and you somehow managed to snatch him, didn't you?'
'Why do you want to know where he is?'
'None of your business. I just need to know,' Joyce said.
'What's with the knit hat on your head?' I asked her. 'I almost didn't recognize you. You never wear a hat.'
Joyce fidgeted with the hat. 'It's cold out. Everyone wears a hat in this weather.'
Especially everyone who has beaver fur stuck to their hair.
'So where the frig is he?' Joyce asked.
'I told you, I don’t know. I didn't kill him. I didn't kidnap him. I have no clue where he is.'
'Great,' Joyce said. 'That's how you want to play it? Okay by me.'
And she stomped away.
'What's wrong with this picture?' I asked Rex. 'How did this happen?'
Rex was asleep in his soup can. Hard to have a meaningful conversation with a hamster in a can.
I thought that with the way my morning was running, it wouldn't hurt to have Lula along when I went to see Stewart. Lula wasn't much good as an apprehension agent, but she understood the need for a doughnut when a takedown went into the toilet.
'So what did this guy do?'
Lula was in the passenger seat of Rangers Cayenne, looking through Stewart Hansen's file. 'It just says controlled substance here. Who wrote this? It don't tell you anything.'
I turned onto Myrtle and drove by the house. It looked benign. Small cottage. Small plot of land. Indistinguishable from every other house on the street. Christmas lights still up, outlining the front door. Not lit. I circled the block and parked one house down. Lula and I got out and walked up to Stewart Hansen's house.
'This house is closed up tight,' Lula said. 'It got blackout drapes on all the windows. Either they're trying to conserve energy, or else they're running around naked in there.'
I had new cuffs and a stun gun from Connie. 'Easier to stun-gun someone when he’s naked.'
'Yeah, you got a lot to choose from. You ready to do this?'
I gave her a thumbs-up, and she hauled out her gun and jogged around the house to secure the back door. I felt comfortable she wouldn't have to shoot anyone because Lula, holding her big Glock, dressed in her Sasquatch boots, poison-green tights, and matching spandex mini skirt, topped off with a shocking-pink rabbit fur jacket, was enough to make a strong man faint.
I had my cell phone on speaker, clipped to my jacket, the line open. 'Are you in place?' I asked Lula.
'Yep,' Lula said from the back of the house.
I rapped on the front door with my two-pound Maglite. No one answered, so I rapped again, and yelled, 'Bond enforcement!'
'Shit,' Lula said on speakerphone. 'Turn your head when you do that. You just about busted my eardrum.'
'I'm going in,' I told her.
'Don't exert yourself breaking the door down. The back is open.'
I heard a gunshot and had a moment of panic.
'Oops,' Lula said. 'Ignore that.'
The front was locked, so I waited for Lula to open the door for me. She was smiling wide when she let me in.
'You're not gonna believe this,' she said. 'We hit the jackpot on this one. We must have died and gone to heaven, and no one told us.'
I stepped into a small foyer constructed of raw wall-board. A door opened off the foyer, and beyond the door was cannabis. The house was a pot farm. Grow lights, silver reflective walls, fans and vents, and racks and more racks of shelves filled with plants in various stages of growth.
'Wait until you see the dining room,' Lula said. 'They got primo shit growing in the dining room.'
I gave her a raised eyebrow.
'Not that I would know,' Lula said.
'There's weed sticking out of the pockets of your jacket.'
'I gathered some evidence on my way through the house.'
'I assume you didn't see any Hansens?'
'No, but there's a car back there. And the back door to the house was open. I wouldn't be surprised there's someone hiding in here.'
'Do we have to worry about them getting away in the car?'
'No. Someone shot a hole in the right front tire.'
I locked and bolted the front door, and Lula and I began working our way through the house.
'You go first and open the doors, and I'll be behind you with my gun,' Lula said. 'I'd go first, but its hard to hold a gun and open a door. I want to be able to concentrate on the gun. It's not like I'm afraid or anything.'
'Just don't shoot me in the back.'
'Have I ever shot you? Honest to goodness, you'd think I didn't know what I was doing.'
We searched the living room, dining room, and kitchen.
'At least these boys are neat,' Lula said. 'They got their empty beer bottles all lined up. Guess that's so they have room in here for planting the little seedlings and weighing and bagging. And they got a nice digital scale here. You could see they put some thought to this.'
I poked around in the collection of pots and pans and bottles and jars by the stove. 'Looks like they have a science experiment going on. Alcohol, coffee filters, ether.'
'These guys are nuts,' Lula said. 'They're making hash oil. You could turn yourself into a barbecue making that stuff.'
We moved down the hall to the bedrooms. No need to search under beds because there weren't any. Two sleeping bags were thrown against a wall in one of the bedrooms. A television sat on the floor. The closet was filled with clothes. The rest of the room was cannabis.
'This is kind of cozy,' Lula said. 'I bet it's like sleeping in the jungle.'
We checked out the bathroom and the second bedroom. Lots of weed drying out in the second bedroom, but no Hansens.
'We're missing something,' I said to Lula, going back to the kitchen.
'We opened every door,' Lula said. 'We looked around all the racks. We looked behind the shower curtain, and we moved the clothes all around in the closet. There's no cellar and no garage and no attic.'
'There's a cup of coffee sitting on the counter, and the coffee is still warm. Someone was in here, and I don't think they had time to leave. You were at the back door, and I was at the front door. We checked the windows. No one went out through a window.'
Lula cut her eyes to the cupboard over the counter.
'Maybe he left just before we got here. You know, lucky coincidence for him.'
'Yeah,' I said, cuffs in one hand, stun gun in the other, attention focused on the cupboard. 'That could be it.'
Lula stepped back and two-handed the Glock, aiming it at the cupboard. I reached up and opened one of the doors. And Stewart Hansen tumbled out, crashing onto the counter, sending the science experiment flying. He flopped off the counter onto the floor and scrambled like a cat on black ice-legs moving but no intelligent forward motion.
In the excitement of the moment, Lula squeezed off a shot that went wide of Hansen but knocked out the ether
