Change, of course, was our only constant.
“Let’s go, Clyde,” I said.
I shoved the rock onto the patio and closed and locked the door. At the Tahoe, I paused with my hand on the door latch. The now familiar feeling dropped on me like a hand pushing down on my neck.
Our watcher was close by.
But he wasn’t near enough for Clyde to sense danger. My partner eyeballed a squirrel in a tree high above while he waited for me to open the door.
I glanced around. The neighborhood lay empty. Gloomy. The only movement came from the fleeing squirrel and the swaying branches and the glossy-winged starlings, which had found perch on the eaves next door—they were irritable and raucous in the cold. The wind suddenly gusted, sending trash skittering down the street, tugging strands free from my braid, and knocking against the houses as it whirled past.
It felt as if Clyde and I were alone in the world.
Just us and an invisible madman.
CHAPTER 23
It took me a long time to make this distinction: The past is not my enemy. It’s my fear of the past that brings me down.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
The Black Egg Diner was a panacea for loneliness and paranoia.
The restaurant catered to the blue-collar crowd, and today it was packed with its usual after-work throng of cops, construction workers, highway-department grunts, landscapers, and mechanics. The smells of paint and plaster and tar fought against those of grease and coffee. The din of voices, clinking flatware, and the cooks shouting, “Order up!” hovered around the decibel level of an orchestra of jackhammers. The stools at the counter were taken, and every table was either filled or being bused by harried waitstaff. But Suzie Blair—an angel in a waitress uniform—managed a miracle and got Clyde and me into our usual booth in the back. She started Clyde on some bacon and me on some coffee without wasting her breath asking.
After she left, I sank into the seat, sucked in the fumes, and let my heartbeat slow to a brisk trot.
Then I pulled out the client list from Kaylee and opened my laptop.
Our killers had spent days torturing Noah. Wherever they’d taken him must have felt secure—no nosy neighbors or prying eyes. No risk of someone walking in.
Helen had said that most of Top-A’s business was cleaning offices. An empty office building could serve as a hideaway for men plotting mass murder, as long as the structures were empty.
Kurt Inger, in his role as the supervisor at Top-A, would know which properties fit the bill.
I started down Kaylee’s alphabetized list.
But by the time Suzie refilled my coffee and left the pot, I had nothing. Comparing Kaylee’s client list with online real-estate listings indicated that all the office buildings cleaned by Top-A were occupied.
I flipped to the last page of the list.
One of Top-A’s clients was Water Resources. They were ensconced in a high-rise in downtown Denver. Julia Asher had mentioned that Noah found new digs for Water Resources, but I couldn’t find a previous address for the company. I called Julia, assured her we were working hard on her son’s case, and asked if she knew where Water Resources had been located before their move. She did not. I asked if she’d heard from Todd. She said no to that as well.
I apologized for bothering her and disconnected.
Maybe Erica or one of the other women would know where they’d been located. If they’d ever answer the phone.
I looked up when I heard a grunt and a snarl and spotted Bandoni elbowing his way through the mob. He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the brass hook next to the booth, then scowled at Clyde and dropped into the seat across from me.
“Having a good day?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes. “Where’s Mike?”
“On his way.” I’d called Cohen from the Black Egg parking lot. “You want coffee?”
“Some questions you don’t have to ask.”
I turned over a clean coffee cup and filled it from the pot. Bandoni took a cautious sip to test the heat, then closed his eyes and drank down most of the cup.
I poured more. “Where are we?”
“David Kelly,” he said. “A.k.a. Damn fucking Fox.”
“Please tell me he decided to cleanse his soul.”
“That would take industrial bleach. I got nothing out of the guy. Nada. Nil. Fucking zero. Whatever that punk is scared of, it’s something worse than a murder charge. I tried everything short of slapping some sense into him.” Bandoni flexed his sausage fingers. “And trust me, the thought crossed my mind.”
“So what scares a guy like Kelly?”
“Something worse than he is.”
“Like Craze.”
Bandoni zeroed in on me. “Yeah. There’s Craze. He’s our wild card. What’d you learn at Ami’s house?”
I filled him in on the open door. The threadbare furniture. The dying father and dead brother and the sketches of a girl in a hero’s cape. “Maybe what her family went through in El Salvador inspired her to live up to her name, protector. Also, one of the photos in the house shows Ami with two of the women from Top-A, Erica and Lupita. They worked together at ColdShip.”
“Speaking of ColdShip, we got no video. A detective took the warrant in. Their security guy showed him around, then showed him the door.”
“You think they erased—”
“Water under the bridge, rookie. We’re already ninety-nine percent sure that Damn Fox and Street Cred hopped on the train up there. And that Noah didn’t. Keep talking.”
I took a breath, nodded. “I think ColdShip is covering up that they hire illegal immigrants. They’ve gotten in trouble before. My guess is that if they do have videos, that’s why they erased them. But . . .”
“But . . . ?”
“It’s about the women. Something made them relocate to Denver. It could be just that they needed jobs and Ami wanted to be close to her father after he got sick.”
“Makes sense.”
“It does make sense. What I’m struggling with is the fact that the boyfriend of one
