The Wedding Guest

by Jonathan Kellerman

  I said, “Mr. Lotz wasn’t a student.”

  “It’s crazy,” said Pena. “How could I know about him?”

  Milo said, “By that Mr. Pena means Mr. Lotz worked for him.”

  “His sleeves were always down,” said Pena. “Even when it was hot. What do I know about addicts? If I wanted to deal with addicts, I’d work one of those Section Eight dumps downtown. He did his job, stayed in his hole, made no problems.”

  “By hole Mr. Pena means Mr. Lotz’s room here on the ground floor.” Milo’s long arm stretched to the left, behind Pena’s back. Directing me to a fenced-off section, mesh like the gates. High Voltage. HVAC. No Entry.

  Bob Pena said, “It was part of his employment package.”

  I said, “What was his job?”

  “Cleanup, odd jobs, gofer-stuff,” said Pena. Head shake. “Owners aren’t going to like this.”

  I said, “Who are the owners?”

  “Academo, Inc. Big company in Ohio. He came through their human resources, they send me someone, I don’t argue. Like with cleaning companies, electricians, all that good stuff. They send, I take.”

  “Academo,” I said. “They specialize in off-campus housing?”

  “That and some Section Eight and maybe other stuff, I don’t know,” said Pena. “It’s a good business, big schools, you get too many students for the dorms. The U. refers them over here when they’re full up. Also, some of the rich kids don’t want to live in dorms. We’re a lot nicer than a dorm.”

  I said, “Does the company gets subsidized by the U.?”

  Pena frowned. “I don’t know the details, my job is to take care of the physical plant, fix problems. Not problems like this. This is like…I don’t know what it’s like.”

  Milo said, “Where’s Lotz’s car?”

  “I’ll take you,” said Pena, pointing to a far corner. We followed him across the garage to a twenty-year-old gray Volvo squeezed into a space marked No Parking. Dusty, rusted in spots, the tags four years old.

  Milo looked inside the car, walked back to Pena. “Okay, let’s have a look at his place.”

  “I kept it locked for you,” said Pena. Eager to take credit for something.

  “Appreciate it, Bob.”

  “Whatever helps. No one’s been in there since the other cops last night and the EMTs and then the morgue guys. So what was it, heroin?”

  “We don’t know yet, Bob.”

  “Probably heroin,” said Pena. “That needle and spoon next to him?” Head shake. “Go know. You do your best to run a tight ship—I was on a dry cargo in the navy. I know what tight ship really means.”

  “Could we see the hole, Bob?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry, I’ll let you in. Then I got to send an email to Ohio.”

  * * *

  —

  Selecting a key from a clattering ring, Pena unlocked the mesh fence and led us into a dim concrete area half filled with stacks of labeled boxes. Bulbs. Hoses. Filters. Pipes. Fittings.

  A slab-metal door led to a larger storage space throbbing with pneumatic and electric noise. Both side walls hosted equipment: a bank of water heaters, another of A.C. condensers. Electrical panels, a spaghetti snarl of phone hookups, overhead conduits, pipes, insulated ducts.

  Past all that, a wooden door with a cheap lock opened to a windowless afterthought. Michael Lotz’s domicile was ripe with body odor and the vinegary reek of heroin, the walls barely plastered drywall. Generous for a jail cell; as a dwelling, sad.

  A doorway to the left led to a prefab fiberglass bathroom. Toilet, sink, prefab shower, all in need of cleaning. I thought about Red Dress’s final moments.

  In the main room, a single-sized mattress sat on a sagging box spring, next to a fake-wood dresser and chair and a black plastic lamp. Black sheet, purple-and-black quilted covers pushed toward the foot of the bed, much of the cloth dripping onto a vinyl floor. Two pillows bent into kidney-bean shapes, one black, one yellow, leaned against the wall.

  Curling, Scotch-taped posters abounded: naked women, women in bikinis, high-octane race cars and homologated street versions. Grown man living in the fantasy world of a teenage boy.

  On the dresser, a hotplate, a six-pack of Bud Lite, an almost empty bottle of Jose Cuervo, a dozen candy bars, plastic dishes and pot-metal utensils for one. Nearby, tucked in a corner near the entrance to the bathroom, a brown mini-fridge burped and wheezed.

  The room was pleasantly cool, the beneficiary of being belowground plus an industrial-strength ventilation system. Trade-off for the wasp-drone coursing through the walls, bottoming the refrigerator’s percussion.

  Pena pointed to the hotplate. “He’s not allowed to have that.”

  Milo said, “How was he supposed to eat?”

  Pena appeared surprised by the question. “No cooking in here, he knew the rules.”

  Milo sniffed the air, walked to the corner across from the fridge, sighted down at the floor, and pointed. Granules of white powder specked the concrete an inch from the bed. A few inches away, an empty mini-baggie.

  “Don’t imagine rules were that important to him.” He checked his phone. “No reception down here?”

  “Uh-uh,” said Pena. “Sorry.”

  “I’m asking because I’m waiting on a warrant to search this place.”

  “You can try in the garage but it comes and goes there. Best to go outside.”

  Milo said, “We’ll go up to the lobby until the warrant comes in, then come back here.”

  “How long’s that going to take?”

  “Hopefully it’ll be soon.”

  “Okay, I guess,” said Pena. “No offense, but you guys just standing around could make people nervous.”

  “The police make your residents nervous?”

  “You know students, everything bothers them.”

  “Don’t imagine someone dying here last night’s gonna comfort them, Bob.”

  Pena licked his lips. “I was hoping to keep that kind of quiet.”

  “Sirens last night didn’t give it away?”

  “Not really, sir. There’s always ambulance sirens—like I said, we’re close to the med center. ’Specially at night. And when I found him, I opened that gate for them and they rolled right in.”

  “Ten fifteen p.m.,” said Milo. “How’d you come to find him?”

  “I took off to go to the doctor, made up by working late. I came back, checked around, he was supposed to bring the extra garbage to the dumpsters out back and didn’t. I went to talk to him.”

  “You let yourself in here?”

  Pena blinked. “I’m allowed.”

  “All the doors were locked?”

  “The mesh and the metal. The wood one wasn’t. I knocked first. He didn’t answer so I opened it. I needed to talk to him.”

  “He always leave his door unlocked?”

  “Wouldn’t know,” said Pena.

  “You didn’t have a lot of meetings with him down here.”

  “Right, mostly during the day,” said Pena. “After the doctor, I went out to dinner with my wife, then like I said I came back to check and found the extra garbage. She was waiting in the car, I told her I’d be right out.” Long exhalation. “I couldn’t believe it. I told her to go home, I’d be tied up. Had to take an Uber home.”

  “What a thing, Bob.”

  “A big thing.”

  “So you knocked, he didn’t answer—”

  “There was a light on—down there, a crack under the door. I figured he fell asleep. I wanted him to take care of the garbage. So I go in, and he’s there.” Pointing to the bed, then the floor. “Half on, half off, he’s all blue, his mouth’s hanging open. Then I see the spoon and the needle. I couldn’t believe it. I called 911. Not from here, like I said no reception, and like I said the garage isn’t great so
I went outside. Saw my wife in the car, to be honest I’d forgot about her, she says you okay, I say no, tell her what happened, tell her to go home.”

  Pena sucked saliva through his teeth. “What do you need a warrant for? He’s dead. And it was an accident, right?”

  “We like to be careful, Bob. If Mr. Lotz was a longtime user, it could be an accident.”

  “Could be?” said Pena. He gave a sick smile. “Okay, I get it, you guys take all kinds of flak.”

  “Part of the job, Bob. So Mr. Lotz hid his secrets pretty well.”

  “Too well.”

  “Other than that, did he do his job okay?”

  “It’s not rocket science,” said Pena. “Pickup janitorial, odds and ends. Not much heavy lifting, the main cleanup is done by a service. He was quiet—like a loner.”

  “Hired by Academo and sent to you.”

  Pena nodded.

  “Residents pretty happy, overall?”

  Pena’s eyes rounded. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

  “What you said about students,” said Milo.

  “Oh, yeah. What I meant was they got their needs. Got to have the Wi-Fi working, the A.C. going all the time, got to be able to watch their shows and listen to their music.”

  “And no cops. Like the one’s who’d come if there was a noise complaint.”

  Pena shifted his feet. “We don’t have that. We talk to them, it works out.”

  Milo pulled out a photo of Amanda Burdette taken from one of the wedding shots. “This resident happy?”

  Pena squinted. “Left my glasses up in the office.”

  Milo drew the photo back to give him more distance.

  “Her?” said Pena. “Yeah, she’s here. Why’re you asking about her? She in some sort of trouble?”

  “Not at all, Bob. She just happened to be involved in another case—not as a suspect, a witness.”

  “Witness to what?”

  Milo waved off the question. “That’s actually what got me curious about what happened here. I saw the address in Lotz’s file and remembered it from her witness statement. I’m sure it’s nothing. Big city, big building, all kinds of things happen.”

  “Exactly,” said Pena.

  “Long as I’m here, though, I might as well touch base with her. Where’s her unit?”

  “You need to do that? Fine, she’s in C. The third building.”

  I said, “There are two other buildings?”

  Pena smiled like a kid delivering a secret. “It’s one of those optical illusions. From the outside it looks like one building with three entries but it’s really three separates. When they built them, they put on a big front to cut costs. This one’s A, the others are B and C.”

  “Any passage from one building to another?”

  “Nope, structural walls between them.”

  “Did Lotz work in all three buildings?”

  “Yup.”

  “Who lives in the other basement rooms?”

  “No one, they’re storage.”

  Milo tapped Amanda’s photo. “Building C. What unit?”

  “She’s really not in trouble?” said Pena. “That’s all I need, more trouble.”

  Milo said, “Perish the thought, Bob. By the way, how many units are there, total?”

  “Thirty-one times three. Ninety-three total.”

  “Amanda’s been no problem.”

  “That’s her name?” said Pena. “I know it sounds weird but I don’t bother with the names because they come and go. To me she’s C-four-eighteen. Fourth floor.”

  “Do you know if she’s in?”

  “Not a clue, don’t pay attention unless they call with a problem.”

  “No calls from Amanda.”

  “Nothing,” said Pena. “I don’t keep tabs on them, sir. It’s not like they work regular jobs, keep regular hours.”

  “Got it, Bob. Where’s the mailroom?”

  “Downstairs in B. We got a service, delivers to each unit.”

  “Nice.”

  “That’s what they pay for.”

  “Okay, we’ll pay Amanda a visit while we’re waiting for the warrant.”

  “Sure,” said Pena, sounding anything but. He rubbed the top of his head and screwed up his lips.

  “Is there a problem, Bob?”

  “No, no problem—the company likes privacy for the residents, that’s all. It’s like a thing for them.”

  “Privacy.”

  “We need to be better than a dorm.”

  “Don’t worry, we’re not gonna break down her door, Bob. Just a gentle knock.”

  “Sure,” Pena repeated. “And yeah, I never hear from her. To me that’s a good resident.”

  * * *

  —

  The three of us walked outside and over to Building C. Milo pointed to a closed-circuit camera above the door. “Saw that at A. Need the tapes, Bob.”

  “No tapes,” said Pena. “Direct feed to the company computer.”

  “You don’t have a copy?”

  “Nope. There’s a problem, I email them, they look for it and mail it back.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “Stolen bike, that kind of thing. Doesn’t happen a lot.”

  “Okay,” said Milo. “Email the company and get me the past twenty-four hours on all three buildings.”

  “I need to get authorization from one person before I ask another person.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I can try today, sir.”

  “You do that, Bob. Tell all the persons to hurry so we can keep things simple and assure privacy.”

  “I’ll do it but it’s up to the company.”

  “Be convincing, Bob. Now unlock that door. Please.”

  * * *

  —

  Building C’s lobby was pale green, undersized, and unfurnished, lit by LED ceiling cans and carpeted in sand-colored Berber showing its age. At the rear, two elevators.

  Pena said, “I don’t need to come up with you, right?”

  Milo had been working his cell, adding Michael Lotz’s Volvo to his warrant application. He looked up and gave one of his unsettling smiles: timber wolf baring its teeth just before feasting. “Actually, we’d rather you didn’t come up, Bob. In terms of the CCTV, best thing would be the company emails it to me directly.”

  “I don’t know, sir. Never had to do this before.”

  “Thanks for your help, Bob.”

  Pena looked alarmed. “I didn’t really do anything.”

  Milo’s smile held. Pena scurried off, exited back to the street, and turned right.

  Milo said, “Being helpful seems to bother him.”

  I said, “Company man. If things get complicated, he doesn’t want to be seen as allied with you.”

  “Meaning he’d lie to keep his job.”

  “Good bet. You see anything to lie about?”

  “After I toss Lotz’s place, I’ll let you know.”

  I said, “Didn’t see a phone or a laptop in there. No Wi-Fi could explain the computer, but everyone has a phone.”

  “Guy living like that, there’s a good case for burners.”

  “Maybe, but if you need dope, you keep an active phone.”

  “Point made. It’s a hole, all right. What a way to live.”

  I said, “Float away on a heroin cloud and not much matters.”

  He frowned, glanced at his cell. “Judge Klee promised A-sap but nothing yet. Then again, his loyalties are to himself.”

  * * *

  —

  Sluggish elevators, both reluctant to leave the third floor. Finally, they arrived simultaneously. Empty.

  Milo said, “Eenie meenie,” and stepped into the left-hand lift. We took a slow, grinding
ride to the fourth floor, stepped out to a hallway crowded with chain-locked bicycles and scooters.

  More Berber, scuffed and stained and fraying around the seams. The walls were milky gray, the doors deep gray, each furnished with a black button to the right.

  Muffled voices and too-loud music, most of it hip-hop, leaked from behind some of the doors. At the far end of the corridor, a scatter of empty beer cans.

  Behind the door of unit 418, silence. No bike or scooter but something had deposited a strip of tarry grit that ran to the door. Transportation kept inside.

  Milo put his ear up against the door.

  “Someone in there,” he whispered.

  His knock went unanswered.

  Pushing the black button evoked an insectoid buzz—fatigued cicadas.

  No response.

  A door five units down opened and a heavyset girl with yellow cornrows dangling past her waist emerged, stared at us for a moment, then headed for the elevators.

  Milo repeated the knock-and-buzz.

  Nothing.

  He put his ear to the door again, backed away, and talked softly. “She stopped moving around.”

  “Not in a social mood.”

  “Big surprise.” He got close to the door. Cleared his throat and said, “Amanda?” at medium volume.

  Silence.

  We returned to the elevators. Both were lolling on the ground floor. When they didn’t respond, he said, “Let’s take the stairs—no cracks about aerobics.”

  I said, “What aerobics? We’re climbing down.”

  “Everything’s relative.”

  * * *

  —

  Lots of trash in the stairwells, along with a scatter of dead roaches, spiders, and the desiccated remains of other six-legged things.

  I followed as Milo thumped down. He moved stiffly, grunting every third or fourth step, a resentful rhino. Just as we reached the second floor, his cell chirped and he stopped. “Sturgis…oh, hi, Judge Klee…sure, no prob. Sure. Appreciate it…yes, that, too…yes I realize I should’ve included it…got it, thanks, Judge.”

  We resumed our descent. His stride was looser. Happy ungulate.

  I said, “Good news on the warrant.”