Broken (13 page)

Chapter 20

I didn’t
have a printer at home, but after a few minutes of looking at maps on Google I
was pretty sure I could find Emerson’s second house without too much trouble.
If it turned out to be a problem I could always stop and buy a map at a gas
station.

It
occurred to me that I ought to call Dan Evans, or Sarah, or even Davies before
I left. But as soon as I did that, I’d be taken right out of the picture. Dan wasn’t
going to let me run off on my own and look for a kidnapping victim. He’d send
helicopters and a SWAT team after me. And who knew what Alan Davies might do?

And
there was at least a reasonable possibility I was wrong. What if I showed up in
Oceanside and wound up introducing myself to Chandler Emerson’s mistress? That
would be…awkward, to say the least.

I went
into the garage and looked at my car. There was no way I could drive it in the
condition it was in. But my motorcycle was still plugged into the battery
charger. I unhooked the wires that fed the battery and checked the bike to be
sure it was in neutral, then set the choke to halfway open and tried the
ignition switch. The starter grumbled for a moment, but then the engine roared
to life. The noise was like hearing an old friend’s voice after a long time
spent apart. I was amazed to find how much I’d missed it.

I cut
back on the choke and let the engine run. It sounded healthy enough. I took a
walk around the bike, checking the tires for air pressure and any signs of
damage I might have missed. Everything looked good to me. As long as I kept my
balance, I should be able to ride with no problem. That didn’t mean getting on
the bike in my condition was the best idea in the world, but I probably wasn’t
going to drive into a tree.

I left
the bike to run and went back into the house. My helmet was somewhere in my
bedroom, if I remembered correctly. I found it in the closet and checked the
inside for any opportunistic spiders that might have snuck in there looking for
a cozy place to sleep. It was clean, thank god. The only thing worse than
finding spiders in there would have been trying to get them out.

My old
riding jacket was hanging in the bedroom closet as well. The black leather
smelled good to me; one more thing I’d missed more than I ever would have
expected. Plus, it made me look like a total badass, which was a bonus.

Back in
the kitchen I allowed myself one more swallow of vodka. I needed to drink just
enough to keep myself from getting sick in the near future. If I got an attack
of the shakes on the bike I was going to crash, and probably crash hard.

Oceanside
was a straight shot up I-5. I kept the bike at just under the speed limit and reached
the city in less than an hour. Riding again felt good, but I was glad Emerson’s
house wasn’t located any farther north. There was an immigration checkpoint
about ten miles up the freeway from my exit, and I didn’t want anyone stopping
me to take a closer look at what was under my helmet. I didn’t know what I
smelled like to other people, but it certainly couldn’t have been good.
Besides, I probably still had chalk in my hair. I’d never taken that shower.

Emerson’s
second house wasn’t difficult to find. I’d have described it as entirely average
if anyone asked. It was a ranch-style house that probably dated back to the
late 1970’s or early 1980’s, when about nine out of ten houses built in
California had been of that design. This one had a protruding one-car garage on
the right-hand side with a late-model Taurus parked in front of the closed
retractable door. A stone path led to the front door on the house’s left-hand
side. Two large windows in front of the house faced the street. From one of
them I could see lights were on inside. Someone was definitely home, then. The
question was how many someones, and who were they?

I parked
on the opposite side of the street, two houses up from Emerson’s place. He’d
never seen my motorcycle before, of course, but anyone inside who looked out
his window might wonder who had parked in front of his house. There was no
reason to tip anyone off that I was here. I locked my helmet to the bike’s
frame and took a deep breath. I could do this. I just needed a look inside the
house, that was all. Once I knew what was going on in there I could leave and call
whoever needed to be called.

I tucked
my hands in my jacket pockets as I walked across the street and was surprised
to feel something metallic in one of them. I pulled it out and saw I’d finally
found my cell phone. So that was where it had been. In just about the last
place I ever would have looked.

Once I
was in front of Emerson’s house I took a good look around, checking for any
late-night dog walkers or joggers. Nobody was on the sidewalk. Feeling like a thief,
I stepped up to the Taurus and took a look inside. There was nothing out of
place in there. Then again, what had I really expected to see? Guns? Anna? Of
course there was nothing in the car. How had I ever become a detective?

After
taking another look around to see if anyone was watching, I sidled up to the house’s
largest window facing the street and peeked inside. The window had a view of
the house’s living room. Two heavily tattooed Mexicans were sitting at a
folding card table playing dominos. A portable stereo sat on the floor next to
the wall, playing music I could only barely hear. There was no other furniture
in the living room. Either these two guys had just arrived and were waiting for
the moving truck with all of their things to show up, or nobody actually lived
here.

One of
the men turned his head slightly as if he’d seen me and I ducked out of sight.
A breathless moment passed with nothing happening, and I looked in again.
Neither of them had appeared to notice me. One of the men was holding his hands
up in the air and smiling, as if he’d just scored a domino. Or something. I’d
never played dominoes and had no idea how the scoring worked.

I
couldn’t see any sign of Anna or anyone else in the living room, but I did see
something that gave me chills. A shotgun was propped up against the wall near
the stereo. So two men had just moved in here, without any furniture or
luggage, but they’d brought weapons along. That hardly seemed likely. But
buying an empty house to hide your kidnapping victims? I could believe that,
although I had to wonder why Emerson had bought the house, rather than just
rented one. Maybe he wanted to flip it and make a profit. That seemed like
something he’d do. Or he might have been concerned about a pesky landlord
stopping by. If he owned the house, he controlled it, along with who could come
and go.

I
wished, not for the first time in recent days, that I still had my gun. I
suddenly felt very naked without it.

I went
back to the sidewalk and looked up and down the street. None of the neighbors
seemed to have noticed my presence. There were no faces peering out of windows
at me, telephones pressed to ears as the police were called. It wouldn’t
necessarily be a bad thing if the cops showed up to arrest me as a drunken
peeping tom, provided I could convince them to take a look inside the house
before they hauled me off to jail. But they probably wouldn’t bother once they
got a whiff of me.

I knew
perfectly well that this was the time I should step away from this and call in
the cavalry. But I was sure Anna was in the house. I couldn’t walk away now. I
had to press on. I had to know if she was safe.

A wooden
gate was set in a short piece of fence between the end of the garage and the
property-line fence to my right. It was too tall for me to see over, but if
this was like many suburban California homes, the gate would lead to a path
that would go straight to the rear of the house, and most likely a swimming
pool and patio area. And if I was lucky, other doors.

I took another look around, then reached
over the gate and felt around in the back, hoping it was the kind with a
padlock latch near the top. I didn’t feel much like climbing over the gate, but
I probably could if I needed to. After a moment of fumbling I felt metal. I
pressed on it and the gate popped open. Given that nobody really lived here,
they’d probably never thought about securing it. Lucky me.

I opened the gate slowly. The hinges
were in desperate need of some WD-40, but the men inside had the radio on and
were distracted with their game. If I was lucky they weren’t hearing any of
this.

After another look around, I stepped
through the gate and closed it behind me. I didn’t bother to latch it. The gate
wasn’t in any shape to swing open on its own and if I needed to run on my way
out of here, leaving it unlatched would buy me a precious second or two.

Once I was invisible to anyone on the
street I took a moment to collect myself, surprised to find that I was already
breathing hard and starting to sweat. When this was over maybe I’d try to detox
myself for a few days. It would be nice to be able to walk for more than a few dozen
feet without getting tired.

As I’d
suspected, the gate led to a concrete path that ran along the side of the house
toward the backyard. A door set immediately to the left of the gate would have
to lead into the garage. I pressed my ear against it and listened, but couldn’t
hear anything coming from inside. I tried the knob. It was unlocked. I wasn’t
ready to go inside yet, though. I wanted to get a better look around the place first.

Two
small windows that I was guessing belonged to bedrooms were set in the wall
along the side of the house. They were too high up for me to see through, and
would have been too small for me to fit through even if they’d been open and I’d
had a ladder.

I crept
slowly down the path, wanting to have a look at the back of the house before I
did anything else. My footsteps were silent on the concrete, even though my
legs were just a little unsteady. One more sip of vodka before I’d left my
house would have been a good idea, but it was too late to worry about that now.

A
swimming pool about thirty feet long lay just behind the house next to a patio
area. The pool was only about one-quarter full and the water was littered with
fallen leaves. It was the kind of water you didn’t go into unless you wanted to
come out with tetanus. Nobody had swum in there in quite some time.

This
side of the house had two more windows set into the wall above my head, and
then a sliding glass door farther down. Given the light I could see coming from
inside, I was willing to bet that the sliding door led into the living room. I
thought about going up to it and trying to get another look inside, but decided
against it. It was too much of a risk to take just to see the living room from
the other side, and if the men spotted me this time, it was going to be
considerably harder for me to get away then when I’d been on the street. It had
been a while since I’d run anywhere and I doubted I was going to be all that
fast, even if I managed to keep from collapsing in exhaustion after a few
steps.

I went
back to the door that led into the garage and stopped to listen again. There
was nothing but silence coming from inside. I turned the knob slowly and then
pushed the door open about half an inch. I could see only darkness. Relieved, I
opened the door wide enough to let a little bit of the light from outside in. I
could make out a van parked inside, but that was all. Why on earth hadn’t I
brought along a flashlight?

The lack
of light coming from any other source suggested I could safely turn on the
garage lights. At least, that’s what I hoped it suggested. I fumbled along the
wall until I found a light switch and turned it on, then had to squint against
the brightness. The garage was empty except for an older Econoline van. It was
the cleanest I’d ever seen a garage.

I
spotted the door that led into the house, gauged its distance, and then shut
off the light. Leaving the exterior door open gave me just enough light to feel
my way along the wall until I came to the interior door. I put my ear up
against it and listened, but couldn’t hear anything from inside. I tried the
door very gently and found it unlocked. That was a relief. I’d picked locks
before, but even if I’d had my tools I was fairly clumsy at it. On an exterior
door that wouldn’t have mattered much, but on an interior door the people
inside might well have heard the racket I was making, even over their music,
and come to see what was going on.

The door
opened inward, which was pretty far from ideal in this situation. I’d have to
open the door much farther than I’d have liked to get a look at what was on the
other side. It took me a solid minute of slow maneuvering to open the door just
enough that I could see it led to a long hallway with two doors on my right-hand
side. Those would probably be the bedrooms whose windows I’d seen from outside
earlier. Another hall went off to the left just after the bedroom door farthest
from me. Judging from how clearly I could hear their music now, that hall would
probably go straight to the living room.

I waited
a moment, holding my breath, as I thought about what to do. I knew I should
leave, but the bedrooms were
right there
in front of me, and Anna could
be in one of them. It would take me thirty seconds to look, and then I’d know.
Thirty seconds to spot her, go back the way I’d come, and then make the call
that would get her out of here. If she wasn’t bound, I might even be able to grab
her and take her along with me.

The
music would make it difficult to hear any movement coming from the living room,
but the Mexicans had seemed pretty engrossed in their game and I didn’t need
much time. Still, if I got caught, I was probably going to get my head blown
off.