"Oh man," he said as he got up.
He came around the desk and picked up the crumpled ball of paper. Rather than drop it into the trash can, he took it back with him to his seat. He opened the paper and tried to smooth it out on the desk.
"Believe nothing," he said.
The words on the wrinkled page defied him. They meant nothing. In a sweeping move of his arm he grabbed the page and balled it in his hand again. He cocked his elbow, ready to make the basket on the retry, when he realized something. He brought his hand down and unwrapped the page again. He looked at one line he had written.
Car —second time —material evidence Believe nothing. That meant not believing the police had searched the car the first time.
A spark of energy exploded inside. He thought he might have something. What if the police had not searched his car? Then who had?
The next jump became obvious. How did he know the car had been searched at all? The truth was he didn't. He only knew one thing: someone had been inside his car while it had been parked in the alley. The dome light had been switched. But had the car actually been searched?
He realized that he had jumped the gun in assuming that the police —in the form of Renner —had searched his car. He actually had no proof or even any indication of this.
He only knew one thing: someone had been in the car. This conclusion could support a variety of secondary assumptions. Police search was only one of them. A search by a second party was another. The idea that someone had entered the car to take something was also another.
And the idea that someone had entered the car to put something in it was yet another.
Pierce got up and quickly left his office. In the hallway he punched the elevator button but immediately decided not to wait. He charged into the stairwell and quickly took the steps to the first floor. He went through the lobby without acknowledging the security man and into the adjoining parking garage.
He started with the trunk of the BMW. He pulled up the lining, looked under the spare, opened the disc changer and the tool pouch. He noticed nothing added, nothing taken. He moved to the passenger compartment, spending nearly ten minutes conducting the same kind of search and inventory. Nothing added, nothing taken.
The engine compartment was last and quickest. Nothing added, nothing taken.
That left his backpack. He relocked the car and returned to the Amedeo building, choosing the stairs again over a wait for an elevator. As he passed by Monica's desk on his way back to his office he noticed her looking at him strangely.
"What?"
"Nothing. You're just acting . . . weird."
"It's not an act."
He closed and locked his office door. The backpack was on his desk. Still standing, he grabbed it and started unzipping and looking through its many compartments. It had a cushioned storage section for a laptop computer, a divided section for paperwork and files, and three different zippered compartments for carrying smaller items such as pens and notebooks and cell phone or PDA.
Pierce found nothing out of order until he reached the front section, which contained a compartment within a compartment. It was a small zippered pouch big enough to hold a passport and possibly a fold of currency. It wasn't a secret compartment but it could easily be hidden behind a book or a folded newspaper while traveling. He opened the zipper and reached in.
His fingers touched what felt like a credit card. He thought maybe it was an old one, a card he had put in the pocket while traveling and then forgotten about. But when he pulled it out he was looking at a black plastic scramble card. There was a magnetic strip on one side. On the other side it had a company logo that said U-STORE-IT. Pierce was sure he had never seen it before. It was not his.
He put the card down on his desk and stared at it for a long moment. He knew that UStore-It was a nationwide company that rented trucks and storage spaces in warehouses normally siding freeways. He could think of two U-Store-It locations visible from the 405
Freeway in L.A. alone.
A foreboding sense of dread fell over him. Whoever had been in his car on Saturday night had planted the scramble card in his backpack. Pierce knew he was in the middle of something he was not controlling. He was being used, set up for something he knew nothing about.
He tried to shake it off. He knew fear bred inertia and he could not afford to be standing still. He had to move. He had to do something.
He reached down to the cabinet beneath the computer monitor and pulled up the heavy Yellow Pages. He opened it and quickly found the pages offering listings and advertisements for self-storage facilities. U-Store-It had a half-page ad that listed eight different facilities in the Los Angeles area. Pierce started with the location closest to Santa Monica. He picked up the phone and called the U-Store-It location in Culver City.
The call was answered by a young man's voice. Pierce envisioned Curt, the acne-scarred kid from All American Mail.
"This is going to sound strange," Pierce said. "But I think I rented a storage unit there but I can't remember. I know it was U-Store-It but now I can't remember which place it was I rented it at."
"Name?"
The kid acted like it was a routine call and request.
"Henry Pierce."
He heard the information tapped onto a keyboard.
"Nope, not here."
"Does that connect with your other locations? Can you tell where —"
"No, just here. We're not connected. It's a franchise."
Pierce did not see why that would disqualify a centrally connected computer network but didn't bother asking. He thanked the voice, hung up and called the next geographically closest franchise listed in the Yellow Pages.
He got a computer hit on his third call. The U-Store-It franchise in Van Nuys. The woman who answered his call told him he had rented a twelve-by-ten storage room at the Victory Boulevard
facility six weeks earlier. She told him the room was climatecontrolled, had electric power and was alarm-protected. He had twenty-four-hour-a-day access to it.
"What address do you have for me on your records?"
"I can't give that out, sir. If you want to give me your address, I can check it against the computer."
Six weeks earlier Pierce had not even begun the apartment search that would eventually put him into the Sands. So he gave the Amalfi Drive
address.
"That's it."
Pierce said nothing. He stared at the black plastic card on the desk.
"What is the unit number?" he finally asked.
"I can only give you that if I see a photo ID, sir. Come in before six and show me your driver's license and I can remind you what space you have."
"I don't understand. I thought you said I had twenty-four-hour service."
"You do. But the office is only open nine till six."
"Oh, okay."
He tried to think of what else he should ask but he drew a blank. He thanked the woman and hung up.
He sat still, then slowly he picked up the scramble card and slid it into his shirt pocket.
He put his hand on the phone again but didn't lift it.
Pierce knew he could call Langwiser but he didn't need her cool and calm professional manner, and he didn't want to hear her tell him to leave it alone. He knew he could call Nicole but that would only lead to raised voices and an argument. He knew he would get that anyway when he told her about the impending police search.
And he knew he could call Cody Zeller but didn't think he could take the sarcasm.
For a fleeting moment the thought of calling Lucy LaPorte entered his mind. He quickly dismissed the idea but not the thought of what it said about him. Here he was, in the most desperate situation of his life, and who could he call for help and advice?
The answer was no one. And the answer made him feel cold from the inside out.
32
With his sunglasses and hat on, Pierce entered the office at the U-Store-It in Van Nuys and went to the counter, his driv
er's license in his hand. A young woman in a green golf shirt and tan pants was sitting there reading a book called Hell to Pay. It seemed to be a struggle for her to take her eyes from it and bring them up to Pierce. When she did her chin dropped, as she was startled by the ugly stitch zipper that wandered down Pierce's nose from beneath his sunglasses.
She tried to quickly cover up like she hadn't noticed anything unusual.
"That's okay," Pierce said. "I'm getting that a lot."
He slid his license across the counter.
"I called a little while ago about the storage space I rented. I can't remember the number."
She picked up the license and looked at it and then back up at his face, studying it. Pierce took off his hat but not the sunglasses.
"It's me."
"Sorry, I just had to be sure."
She used her legs to kick backwards, rolling and spinning on her chair until she came to the computer that was on a table on the other side of the office.
The screen was too far away for Pierce to read. He watched her type in his name. In a few moments a data screen appeared and she started checking information from his driver's license against the screen. He knew his license still had the Amalfi Drive
address, which she had earlier informed him was on the rental record for the storage unit.
Satisfied, she scrolled down and read something. Running her finger across the screen.
"Three three one," she said.
She kicked off the opposite wall and came rolling and spinning back to the counter. She slapped the driver's license down on the surface and Pierce took it back.
"Just take the elevator up, right?"
"You remember the code?"
"No. Sorry. I guess I'm pretty useless today."
"Four five four plus the last four digits of your license number."
He nodded his thanks and started to turn from the counter. He looked back at her.
"Do I owe you any money?"
"Excuse me?"
"I can't remember how I paid for the unit. I was wondering if I have a bill coming."
"Oh."
She kicked her chair back across the floor to the computer. Pierce liked the way she did it. One smooth, turning move.
His information was still on the screen. She scrolled down and then said without looking back at him, "No, you're fine. You paid six months up front in cash. You still have a while."
"Okay. Great. Thank you."
He stepped out of the office and over to the elevator area. After punching in the call code, he rode up to the third floor and stepped out into a deserted hallway as long as a football field with roll-down doors running along both sides. The walls were gray and the floor a matching linoleum that had been scuffed a million times by the black wheels of movers' dollies. He walked down the hall until he came to a roll-down door marked 331.
The door was a rusty brown color. There were no other markings on it but the numbers, painted in yellow with a stencil. To the right of the door was a scramble card reader with a glowing red light next to the reader. But at the bottom of the door was a hasp with a padlock holding the door secure. Pierce realized that the scramble card he had found in his backpack was only an alarm card. It would not open the door.
He pulled the U-Store-It card from his pocket and slid it through the reader. The light turned green —the unit's alarm was off. He then squatted down and took hold of the lock.
He pulled it but it was secure. He couldn't open the door.
After a long moment of weighing his next move, he stood up and headed back toward the elevator. He decided he would go to the car and check the backpack again. The key to the padlock must be there. Why plant the scramble card and not the key? If it was not there, then he would return to the U-Store-It office. The woman behind the counter would surely have a lock cutter he could borrow after explaining he had forgotten his key.
In the parking lot Pierce raised his electronic key and unlocked his car. The moment he heard the snap of the locks disengaging he stopped in his tracks and looked down at his raised hand. A memory vision played through his mind. Wentz walking in front of him, moving down the hallway to his apartment door. Pierce reheard the sound of his keys in the little man's hands, the comment on the craftsmanship of the BMW.
One by one Pierce turned the keys on the ring, identifying them and the locks they corresponded to: apartment, garage, gym, Amalfi Drive
front and back, office backup, desk, lab backup, computer room. He also had a key to the house he had grown up in, though it had long ago been passed from his family. He'd always kept it. It was a last connection to that time and place, to his sister. He realized he had a habit of keeping keys to places where he no longer lived.
He identified all keys on the ring but two. The strangers were stainless steel and small, not door locks. One was slightly larger than the other. Stamped on both along the circumference of the tab was the word MASTER.
His scalp seemed to draw tight on his skull as he looked at it. Instinctively he knew that one of the keys would open the lock on the storage room door.
Wentz. The little man was the one. He had slipped the keys on the ring as they had moved down the hall. Or maybe afterward, while Pierce had been dangled off the balcony. When he had returned from the hospital he had to be let into his apartment by building security. He found his keys on the living room floor. He knew Wentz had had plenty of time to slip the keys on the ring.
Pierce couldn't fathom it. Why? What was going on? Though he had no answers, he did know where he would find them —or begin to find them. He turned and headed back to the elevator.
Three minutes later Pierce slid the larger of the two stranger keys into the padlock at the bottom of the door to storage unit 331. He turned it and the lock snapped open with tooled precision. He pulled it out of the hasp and dropped it on the floor. He then gripped the door handle and began to raise it.
As the door rolled up it made a loud metallic screech that echoed right through Pierce and all the way down the hallway. The door banged loudly when it reached the top. Pierce stood with his arm raised, his hand still attached to the handle.
The space was twelve by ten and dark. But the corridor threw light in over his shoulder.
Standing at center in the room was a large white box. There was a low humming sound coming from the room. Pierce stepped in and his eyes registered the white string of a pull cord for the overhead light. He pulled it and the room filled with light.
The white box was a freezer. A chest freezer with a top door that was held closed with a small padlock that Pierce knew he would be able to open with the second stranger key.
He didn't have to open the freezer to know what was in it but he opened it anyway. He felt compelled, possibly by a dream that it might be empty and that this was all part of an elaborate hoax. More likely it was simply because he knew he had to see with his own eyes, so that there would be no doubts and no going back.
He raised the second stranger key, the smaller one, and opened the padlock. He removed it and flipped up the latch. He then lifted the top of the freezer, the air lock breaking and the rubber seal making a snik sound as he raised it. He felt cold air puff out of the box and a damp, fetid smell invaded his nose.
With one arm he held the lid open. He looked down through the mist that was rising up out of the box like a ghost. And he saw the form of a body at the bottom of the freezer. A woman naked and crumpled in the fetal position, her neck a terrible mess of blood and damage. She lay on her right side. Blood was pooled and frozen black at the bottom of the freezer. White frost had crusted on her dark hair and upturned hip. Hair had fallen across her face but did not totally obscure it. He readily recognized the face. He had seen it only in photos but he recognized it.
It was Lilly Quinlan.
"Ah, Jesus . . ."
He said it quietly. Not in surprise but in horrible confirmation. He let go of the lid and it slammed closed with a heavy thump that was louder than he had
expected. It scared him, but not enough to obscure the complete sense of dread that had engulfed him. He turned and slid down the front of the freezer until he was sitting on the floor, elbows on his knees, hands gathering the hair at the back of his head.
He closed his eyes and heard a rising pounding sound like someone running toward him down the hallway. He then realized it was internal, blood pounding in his ears as he grew light-headed. He thought he might pass out but realized he had to hold on and stay alert.
Chasing the Dime Page 27