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The metal curtain ran along tracks in the floor and ceiling so that you couldn't climb over or under, and was stretched between two metal pipes anchored into the walls. We used the crowbar and the jack handle to break away pieces of the wall from under one of the pipes, then pried the pipe from the wall. It bent at a crazy angle and we pushed it aside.
Outside, someone shouted, 'Hey, look at that!' People were gathering in the parking lot. They crouched behind cars or stood in small groups, pointing at the shop and craning their heads to try to see what we were doing. Two men gawked through what was left of the front door, then hurried away. I didn't know how long Pike and I had been inside, but it couldn't have been long: forty seconds; a minute. The alarm clouded the little store with noise. It was so loud that it would cover the sound of approaching sirens.
We shoved through the collapsing curtain and into the office. Towering stacks of packages crowded the floor and an enormous bag of Styrofoam packing peanuts hung from the ceiling. A file cabinet stood in the corner beside a small desk cluttered with what looked like unsorted mail and UPS receipts. Pike checked the service door as I went to the files.
Pike shouted over the alarm that the way was clear. 'We're good. The deadbolts open with levers.'
I opened the top file drawer expecting to see folders filled with paperwork, but the drawer contained office supplies. I pulled the next two drawers, but they only held more supplies. Pike peeked out the back door to see
if anyone was coming. Our time was running out. 'Faster.'
'I'm looking.'
I scattered papers, magazines, and envelopes from the
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desk, then opened its drawer. It was the only drawer left. The drawer had to contain rental agreements for the customers who rented the boxes, but all I found were ordering records for the services and supplies that Stars & Stripes needed to conduct its business; nothing referred to the boxes or the clients who rented them.
Pike tapped my back, and looked toward the parking lot.
'We got a problem.'
An overweight man in a yellow knit shirt was surrounded by people in the parking lot, all of them pointing our way. The shirt was too tight, so his belly bulged over his belt like a Baggie filled with jelly. The word SECURITY was stenciled on the shirt over his heart like a badge, and he wore a pistol in a black nylon holster clipped to his right hip. So much flab spilled from his pants that the pistol was almost hidden. He crept forward with his hand on his gun. He looked scared.
I said, 'Jesus Christ, where'd he come from?'
'Keep looking.'
Pike slipped past me with his pistol out. I caught his arm.
'Joe, don't.'
'I'm not going to hurt him. Keep looking.'
The guard knelt behind a car and peered over the trunk. Pike moved into the door so that the guard saw him. That was enough. The guard threw himself to the ground and curled up behind the tire. At least he didn't start shooting. Discretion is the better part of valor when all you get is minimum wage.
Pike and I heard the sirens at the same time. He glanced back at me, and I waved him back. We had run out of time.
'Let's go.'
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'Did you find it?'
'No.'
Pike fell back past the counter to the service door. 'Keep looking. We have a few seconds.' 'We can't find him from jail.' 'Keep looking.'
That's when I saw the brown cardboard box under the desk. It was just the right size and shape for storing file folders. I pulsed it out from under the desk, and pushed off the top. It was filled with folders that were numbered from one to six hundred, and I knew that each number
corresponded to a box. I pulled the folder marked 205. 'We're out. Go!'
Pike jerked open the door. Outside, the air was cool and the alarm wasn't so loud. The two men with their potatoes shouted into their kitchen when they saw us, and others came out as we left. We turned our cars onto a service street behind a Cineplex theater eight blocks away, and looked through the file. It contained a rental agreement for Eric Shear. The rental agreement had a phone number and his address.
time missing: So hours, 3 7 minutes
Eric Shear lived in a four-story apartment building on the western edge of San Gabriel called the Casitas Arms, less than ten minutes from the mail drop. It was a large building, the kind that packed a hundred apartments around a central atrium and billed itself as 'secure luxury living.' Places like that are easy to enter.
We parked in a red zone across the street, then Pike got into my car. When I turned on my phone I found three messages from Starkey, but I ignored them. What would I
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tell her, that the next BOLO she received would be about me? I dialed Schilling's number. An answering machine
