“Still here.”
“Amy Patterson wasn’t—”
He sighs. “A customer? No. I checked. Just out of curiosity.” He sounds disappointed.
“Okay, Hector. Thanks.”
I take my wine back to the dining room. French doors open onto a small deck where I have potted plants. I open them and take a moment to enjoy the evening’s breeze. My thoughts drift to Zack. And how much—or how little—I
There are the usual stats: he’s thirty-two years old, six foot three, two hundred and ten pounds. His most recent fitness scores are off the charts. Not surprising. While in the Academy he achieved a perfect marksmanship score. Nothing I didn’t already know. What I really want to know about is what he did before the Academy. He’d previously made reference to being a soldier. I’d been under the impression he’d served in the marines. But I can’t find a matching service record. Maybe it was the Army? I go back to check out his SF-86, knowing it will be there from when he applied to the FBI Academy. There isn’t one on record. There’s always an SF-86 on record. Something in it must be highly classified. But what?
Out of curiosity, I run his ex’s plate. Sarah Marie Louis. Also thirty-two. Born and raised in Hilton Head, South Carolina. No arrests. No warrants. Not even a traffic ticket. I check employment records and come up empty. The address on her driver’s license is the same today as it was when she first got her permit at fifteen. I pull up an image of the house on satellite. It’s a sprawling beachfront estate a stone’s throw from the Atlantic. A quick title search reveals it to be in the name of Charles Louis, the colorful and notoriously conservative Republican senator from South Carolina—Sarah’s father.
Just as I’m about to enter Zack’s last-known address into the satellite search, my doorbell rings. It’s time for dinner and time to get back to work on the other background check. The clock is ticking for Amy Patterson. She’s already been gone two weeks. The odds of finding her alive decrease with time, so the mystery of Zack Armstrong will have to wait for now.
I’ll unravel it eventually.
I always do.
CHAPTER 4
I’m at the office early—but evidently not early enough. Zack has beaten me in. He is engrossed in what he’s reading but that doesn’t stop him from noticing my arrival.
“Morning, Monroe,” he says as I approach, not bothering to look up.
Pesky Were senses.
He lays down the folder he’d been studying and zeroes in on the file I’m carrying. He raises an eyebrow and holds out a hand. “Homework?”
I place it on his palm. “Amy Patterson in word and deed.”
He turns the folder around. “What’s this?” he asks, pointing to a stain on the cover.
I shrug. “Looks like the sweet red sauce that came with the spring rolls. Did you make coffee?”
Zack waves a hand toward the break room. “The pot’s fresh.”
I pick up his empty cup, then find my own buried under another stack of old cases and head for the break room.
I return with two steaming mugs.
Zack accepts his and then holds up the page he’s been perusing. “Good work.” He takes a tentative sip. “You remembered how I take my coffee? I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. I’m a trained observer. I remember lots of things.”
Zack grins and turns back to the file. “This was an excellent idea—listing Amy’s appointments for the last month. If we work backward—”
“We might be able to better pinpoint the exact time of her disappearance.”
The cell sitting on his desk rings. “Armstrong.” He listens intently, then scribbles something on a bright pink sticky note. When he hangs up, he looks at me, eyes shining. “Armstrong: two for two,” he says. “There was blood mixed in with the paint scrapings from the floor of the studio. It will take a little longer to determine whose, but it’s a good guess it will be Amy’s. And we have a hit on the fingerprint from the paintbrush.”
He sits down, and seconds later there’s an old arrest record on the screen.
I look over his shoulder. “Michael Dexter. He was arrested for a DUI five years ago. Anything since?”
Zack shakes his head. “Not even a parking ticket.” He turns to look at me. “What do you think?”
“I think we question him.” I make a mental note of his current address. “I’ll drive.”
• • •
Michael Dexter lives on Crown Point Drive in Pacific Beach. The street is wide and lined with palm trees. Every other house is a newly constructed two-story minimansion squeezed into a lot sized for the Craftsman bungalows originally built here. Most have been scrapped to pay homage to the god of greed. It breaks my heart because I remember what the neighborhood was like when it was new. In the nineteen thirties—I didn’t live here then, but I had a friend who did. That friend, like so many others, is long dead. I struggle for a moment, trying to remember the details of her face, the sound of her voice. They’re lost to me now. Peggy? Patsy? Penelope. I called her Penny. We met at the opening of the San Diego Yacht Club in ’twenty-eight and shared a love for sunset sails, bathtub gin, and a man named Jacob—in another life.
“Looks like Dexter’s place is up there on the left. The one with the red Prius in the driveway,” says Zack.
I pull in behind it. We both climb out of the Suburban and head for the front door. Turns out Dexter lives in one of the original cottages, a block away from Penny’s old place. The architecture is almost identical. Memories long buried threaten to stay my hand, but I push them down and ring the bell. After a short wait, I ring again. No one comes to answer.
Zack backs down the steps. “Sounds like there’s a compressor running in the back.”
I hadn’t noticed initially. Now I hear a low, rhythmic hum. We follow the brick walkway to the side of the house, where a wooden gate set in a stucco wall stands open.
“Hello?” I call out.
I see a man, his back to me, covered in a leather apron, welder’s mask down over his face, working on what looks like a free-form bronze sculpture. It’s while I watch him that I realize I recognize his work. I know who he is. I’ve seen his sculptures in galleries both downtown and in La Jolla, read about him in the Arts section of the local paper. Michael Dexter is a young artist of some local renown, his works commanding five and six figures.
I circle to approach him from the front. Don’t want to startle someone with a blowtorch in his hand. It takes a moment, but he does finally see me. The blowtorch is extinguished. The welder’s mask is pushed up and back.
“Can I help you?”
“Agent Emma Monroe.” I flash my badge and introduce myself. “This is my partner, Agent Armstrong. We have a few questions about Amy Patterson.”
“Amy? Why on earth would the FBI be interested in Amy?” he asks.
Zack doesn’t answer. Instead he asks another question. “We need to know about the last time you saw her in as much detail as you can remember.”
Dexter sets the blowtorch he’s been using on a stand, removes the mask, pulls off his gloves and apron. “That would have been a couple weeks ago.” He squints up at the sun. “It’s hot. Mind if we go inside?”
“I bet it’s even hotter under that mask,” I say.
He wipes his brow with the back of his hand. “Usually the climate is perfect for this kind of work. Today it’s
