After six straight hours of mindless nonsense, I finally turned the TV off and staggered to the bathroom. Once done, I plopped down in front of my computer and spent the next two hours looking up everything I could find about Miranda Scott. In the end, after perusing hundreds of articles and dozens of unofficial websites, I was no closer to finding her than when I had started the evening.
But I was thorough, dammit.
Drunk, but thorough.
Chapter Twenty-three
It was noon and the day was warm and I was dressed in jeans and a Polo shirt and white sneakers. After a quick stop at the pet supply store for my shiny new crime-fighting tool, I parked my car in the Trader Joe’s parking lot, next to the spot where Miranda’s car had been found.
I sat in my old car, in the heat, and studied the scene. I knew Miranda’s car was now in a police-impound yard, being thoroughly scoured for any forensic evidence. I wished them luck. She had come alone, and left by other means. I was confident her vehicle would turn up nothing, but you never knew. Then again her assailant, for all I knew, had leaned a hand on her hood or inadvertently lost a nose hair. We’ll see.
According to the police file, it was unknown what she had purchased that day at Trader Joe’s. Her credit card showed no activity, so it was assumed she had paid with cash. Her cell phone records indicated nothing out of the ordinary, although she did place one call to a close female friend about an hour before her trip to the market. That friend, of course, had been thoroughly interviewed, and it turns out the conversation had only lasted three minutes. Just a quick hello call. Miranda’s last hello call.
So where were the groceries? They hadn’t been in or around her car. The car itself had been found locked and secured. Which means she took them with her, wherever she had gone.
Which means she never made it back to her car.
There was an exterior surveillance camera, which was only pointed at the front entrance, and which only Detective Colbert had been privy to. According to the detective, Miranda could be seen entering Trader Joe’s through the automatic sliding doors. Nineteen minutes later she is seen leaving alone, exiting with a single bag of groceries. Ten seconds later, a man does indeed follow her out, a tall blond man who may or may not have been a bum. At any rate, the blond man had entered the store about five minutes prior to Miranda’s arrival, and so the police had dismissed him as a possible suspect, or even a person of interest.
But I knew otherwise. I knew the man was no doubt the same man, the bum, Ed had seen following her around the store, the same guy who had taken a keen interest in her after her arrival. He had followed her out, and what happened next I didn’t know, except that she had apparently disappeared from the face of the earth.
True, I didn’t know what happened to her, but I was figuring the bum probably did.
Trader Joe’s, at the time of her disappearance, had been damn busy. At that hour cars would have been trawling the parking lot in search of a spot. Having shopped here often myself, I knew the feeling of desperation to find a spot. So, more than likely, she had not been hauled kicking and screaming into some unknown car. There would have been too many witnesses for such a brazen kidnapping.
So what does that mean?
“It means she knew the guy,” I said to myself.
How do you know it’s a guy?
“Call it a hunch.”
No groceries in the car. No keys in the door. No sign of a scuffle. No report of foul play, no report of a girl needing help, and no report of someone being abducted.
Which is why Detective Colbert figured she had split on her own accord, a twenty-two year old runaway.
It was a nice theory and it made his job easier.
But I had a different theory. Then again, my theory was a work in progress.
I stepped out of my car and shut the door behind me. Heat waves rose off the baking pavement. There was no reason to search the crime scene—if it was a crime scene—as it had been thoroughly scoured by the SID investigators; so far, no physical evidence of any type had turned up.
Trader Joe’s was quiet at this early hour, an ideal time to shop. I strolled past the long line of grocery carts, crossed in front of the sliding doors, although I didn’t go in, and kept going until I was standing on the sidewalk that ran in front of the store. In front of me was a street called Rowena Ave.
Now, if I were a bum, where would I go?
Across the street was another, bigger, grocery store. Although bigger, my impression of it was that it wasn’t as popular as the Trader Joe’s. I continued scanning. There were three, yes three, video rentals stores all within a stone’s throw of each other. Grocery stores and video stores, yes. Bums, no. The street, as far as I could tell, was presently bum-free, but that didn’t mean they weren’t here, somewhere. Hiding. Drinking. Bumming.
Silver Lake is comprised mostly of young Hollywood types. The assistant directors, the TV writers, the up-and-coming actors and film students. Young Hollywood aside, the area was not immune to its share of the housing impaired. Hey, if you’re gonna go homeless somewhere, might as well do it in southern California, right? Sand, sunshine, and babes. And enough money floating around to keep you fat and happy forever.
The day was warming and the sun was hot on my face. Sweat was building up between my shoulder blades. Any movement at all would probably jiggle the sweat droplets free.
If I were a bum, where would I go?
My scanning eyes found a small, rundown convenience store about a half a block down the street. The hand-painted sign out front read simply: “Liquor”. Graffiti covered the wall facing me, and I had no doubt that graffiti covered the other walls, too. A thin black man was hunkered down near a payphone that I seriously doubted worked, and next to him was a full to overflowing shopping cart. Not surprisingly, the shopping cart wasn’t full to overflowing with groceries.
If I was a bum, I suddenly knew where I would go. A bum-friendly liquor store.
Chapter Twenty-four
The liquor store was in shambles. Dirty floors, narrow aisles, messy shelves. If I owned the place I would be embarrassed. The man behind the counter, a very small, older Korean man, did not appear embarrassed. Instead, he appeared very interested in the newspaper he was reading. Sitting on a shelf behind him was a flickering, black and white, closed-circuit television. Framed within in it, I could see myself standing at the counter, sporting my striking head of gray-brown hair, looking a little heavy. But you know what they say: the camera always adds ten pounds.
I continued standing at the counter and the little man continued reading his paper—and continued not bothering to look up. Probably because I hadn’t set anything on the counter.
He calmly turned a page.
I cleared my throat. He turned another page. I grabbed a homemade peanut butter cookie wrapped in cellophane and pushed it across the counter. He looked at it. “Two dolla’,” he said.
I noticed that the Aaron King standing in the closed-circuit TV screen was looking a bit exasperated. Handsome, granted, but exasperated. I didn’t blame him one bit. Two dolla’ for a peanut butter cookie was highway robbery. I opened my wallet.
“There’s a bum who comes around here,” I said.
The clerk turned back to his paper. “Bums always come ‘round here.”
“This one is tall and blond and sports a ponytail. He usually has a dog with him.”
The dog, of course, was the gimmick. Probably tripled the guy’s handouts. The clerk looked up from his paper and looked at me for the first time. He grinned. “I think you need one more cookie. You a growing boy.”
“Oh, brother,” I said.
I slapped a twenty on the counter. He smiled widely and reached for it. “Sure,” he said. “He come in here all the time. Buy single malt whiskey. The good stuff. That dog make him lots of money.”
“He ever buy anything for the dog?”
“It look like I sell dog food?”
“Good point,” I said. “Wh
en did you last see him?”
“One hour ago.”
My pulse quickened. “Any idea where he went?”
“You think I know where every bum go?”
“Fine,” I said. “Can you at least point me which direction he went?”
“One more cookie.”
“Unbelievable.”
I set a five dollar bill on the counter and he jerked his thumb left. I grabbed my three twenty-five dollar peanut-butter cookies, and left.
Chapter Twenty-five
I walked west along Rowena in the hot sun, squinting through my motorcycle cop sunglasses, eyes pealed for a bum and his dog.
If I were a bum with a freshly procured bottle of the good stuff, where would I take it? Well, I would want to drink it ASAP, of course, especially if I was an alcoholic. Also, I would want my privacy, especially if I was drinking the good stuff. No passing the bottle around a tent city.
So it would have to be close, and it would have to be cool, and it would have to be away from the cops. I paused, scanning the area. To the north was a high school. To the south were nicer two-story homes. Neither direction was bum friendly.
I continued west. I was close, I knew it. Somewhere nearby a bum was drinking. Safe from prying eyes. I turned left down an alley, between an auto body shop and a dry cleaners and came to a parking lot which was mostly empty of cars, and definitely empty of bums. I retreated back to the sidewalk, stopped, scanned the street again, wiped sweat from my brow...and saw something promising.
At the far end of the street was a construction site, a half-finished shopping center, in fact. The place was empty and lifeless, surrounded by a pathetic-looking chain link fence that was doing more leaning than standing.
Very bum friendly.
An ounce or two of sweat later, I was there at the site, moving along the lean-to fence until I found a gap big enough for a guy my size to squeeze through. Once inside, I stepped over a loose smattering of two-by-fours, deftly avoided a jutting carpenter’s nail, and headed over to the partially finished building.
Here, I pulled out my shiny new toy. Dog whistles are a bit of a mystery to man. Or, at least, a mystery to this man. You blow the damn thing, nothing comes out but a lot of hot air, and yet dogs perk right up. Makes you wonder what else they’re hearing that we can’t.
Anyway, with the sun high above and a small breeze working its way over the exposed dirt and rock of the construction site, I lifted the narrow whistle to my lips and blew as hard as I could into it.
And heard nothing, of course, but before I was done blowing the reaction was immediate. Dogs from seemingly everywhere were barking at once. And furiously.
And through the cacophony of barks, which ranged from deep-throated woofs to high-pitched yipes, one particular bark stood out above the rest. It was deep and low and deliberate, and not nearly as energetic as some of the others. It was the bark of an old dog, and it was coming from directly inside the partially-finished shopping center next to me.
* * *
The building was framed, and some of the drywall was in place. I ducked under a low-hanging crossbeam and stepped into the cool shadows of the unfinished structure. The smell of sawdust was heavy in the air, along with something else. Urine.
It was also nearly pitch black. Damn. I had thought of the dog whistle, but I had missed the boat on a flashlight. Double damn. Still, who knew I would be crawling through a half-completed construction site?
Always come prepared, King.
As I made a mental note to buy a little flashlight to attach to my keyring, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, aided by the beams of sunlight slanting in through the many cracks and fissures in the incomplete structure. My own personal laser light show. Dust motes drifted in and out of the rays of light. In here, bustling L.A. seemed like a million miles away, or to have never existed. I was in a strange world of slanting light, crossbeams and unfinished cement slabs, with nothing to fill the heavy silence except my own labored breathing. Hell of a place to drink alone, if alone was your intent.
Finally my eyes adjusted—although adjusted might have been a bit too optimistic. Less blind was a little closer to the truth.
Anyway, I blew the whistle again, and again the nearby dogs barked excitedly, although not as many and not as vehemently. Except for one. Indeed, it barked deafeningly, and with a lot more energy than before, and would have raised the roof had there been a roof to raise. And it came from deeper within the structure.
Deeper was not necessarily better. Deeper meant darker.
Great.
I moved cautiously through the increasingly deepening shadows, and the further I went, the more the dog barked. As I guided myself carefully over the debris-strewn floor by running my hand along the exposed wooden wall frames, I worried about splinters and nails and being mauled by a really big dog with really big teeth.
Lots of worrying going on here.
I turned a corner and there, sitting in a splash of sunlight on a patch of dirt-covered cement, was a man and his dog. The man sported a dirty blond ponytail, and the dog sported a lot of teeth and black gums and raised hackles. The man was currently turning his head this way and that, trying to get a look at me coming out of the shadows.
“You a friend?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He nodded, patted his dog, who immediately calmed down, although it still growled intermittently. “Not sure what got into him. He never acts like this.”
I decided not to mention the dog whistle. “Maybe he doesn’t like old men.”
“Naw, Dusty likes everyone, unless you mean to do me harm.”
“I’m just here to ask you some questions,” I said.
“You with the police?”
“Nope.”
He grinned and patted the cement slab next to him. “Then pull up a chair, my friend, and let’s have a drink.”
Chapter Twenty-six
There was, of course, no chair to pull up.
My eyes continued adjusting. We were in a corner space that I imagined would someday be the waiting room to a dentist’s office, complete with outdated magazines, uncomfortable furnishings and broken toys for kids who ate way too much sugar.
“Hot out today,” I said.
“But cool in here,” he said.
“And dark.”
He grinned. He seemed to like the dark part the best, and I didn’t blame him. A bum could disappear in here; at least, until construction started again. Milton looked bad, even for a bum. His sunken cheeks were dark hollows and his long blond hair was thinning badly. In fact, it appeared to be falling out in clumps. Yeah, maybe he was dying. He drank some more booze. The sound of it sloshing around inside the bottle was amplified inside this small, contained space.
“My name’s Aaron,” I said.
“Milton,” he said, and took another long pull on his whiskey. “My name’s Milton and I’m dying.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry that I’m dying, or sorry that my name’s Milton?” He laughed and slapped his knee hard and a cloud dust exploded off it, drifting up in the slanting rays of sunlight.
“Milton’s a fine name,” I said, and stepped closer. As I did so, Dusty growled a little, but not very energetically. I took out a cookie and unwrapped it. Dusty quit growling and wagged his tail instead. Food talks.
“May I?” I asked Milton.
“Knock yourself out, man.”
Dusty the Mutt had a lot of golden retriever in him. He also needed a bath, and no doubt all of his shots. I broke off a piece of the cookie and tossed it over to him, and Dusty promptly snatched it clean out of the air, even in the near darkness. He threw back his head like a whooping crane and swallowed the piece of cookie without so much as tasting it. For all he knew I could have tossed him my watch. Anyway, Dusty’s alert, glowing eyes were back on me again, ready for some more cookie, or anything else I might throw at him. I decided to keep my watch.
“You need some money?” Mi
lton asked suddenly, reaching into a pocket hidden within the many layers of his clothing. Amazingly, he pulled out a small wad of cash, counted out a few bills for me, and held them out. “We could all use a little extra money, friend. I had a good day today. Here, have some of it. Buy yourself something to eat.”
I was oddly touched. “I’m okay, Milton, but thank you.”
He held out the bills a few moments longer, then shrugged and absently shoved them back somewhere inside his voluminous clothing. I was fairly certain the wad never made it back into the same pocket. Milton had already drank half his bottle. If he wasn’t drunk now, he would be soon. If I wanted any answers, I’d better get them now.
“Have you ever shopped at Trader Joe’s, Milton?” I asked.
He didn’t answer at first. Instead, he took a long pull from the bottle, then held it out to me when he was finished. Tempted as I was, I declined. He shrugged and set it down on the concrete next to him. The sound of whiskey splashing back and forth echoed hollowly, sounding bigger than it really was in this small, unfinished room. Milton, I was certain, was getting drunker by the minute. I broke off another piece of cookie and tossed it over to Dusty. He missed it this time, but promptly plucked it off the ground.
“Milton, you ever shop at Trader’s Joe’s?” I asked again.
“Where?”
“Trader Joe’s,” I said patiently.
“I’m dying,” he said.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I have cancer. I can feel it eating away right here.” He touched underneath his left arm and my first thought was pancreatic cancer, but then again, what did I know?
What Happens in Vegas Page 32