“She was already in the backseat by the time I got outside. He was getting in the front. I ran to the car and tried to open the back door. He squirted something out the window at me and took off.”
“It must have been mace or pepper spray. You took an awful chance. He might have tried to put you in the car too.”
“I figured if he did you would be there in time to save me.”
Would he? “Don’t rub your eyes. It’ll make it worse. It’s a good thing he didn’t do that to you yesterday.”
“He’s getting desperate. Oh, Tony, this is my fault. He took Tina because he couldn’t get me.”
Her fault? Now wasn’t the time for her to feel guilty. And now wasn’t the time for him to use listening techniques on her, such as, “Why do you think it’s your fault?” He said, roughly, “This is not your fault. And if we’re going to help Tina, we’ve got to stay focused.”
Shahla remained quiet until she received a query over the phone. She gave their position and said they hadn’t spotted the kidnapper. As Tony approached Artesia Boulevard, he wondered whether he should turn right toward the 405. If he were the kidnapper and he wanted to get to a place north of the airport, that’s what he would do.
A police car came racing up behind him with its red lights blinking but no siren. Tony pulled into the right lane to let it pass. The black and white crossed Artesia Boulevard and stayed on PCH, which mysteriously changes its name to Sepulveda Boulevard at that point. Tony turned right on Artesia and headed toward the freeway. Let the cop take Sepulveda.
“What are you doing?” Shahla asked.
“Getting on the freeway.” But just then he crossed Aviation Boulevard and realized that if Nathan had been planning all along to take the freeway, he would have probably turned right on Aviation a few blocks back, where it started at PCH, which would have been like taking the hypotenuse of a right triangle. Tony had taken the sides of the triangle. More time lost.
Not only that, he had to wait a significant amount of time for a red light at Hawthorne Boulevard. He felt that the chase was hopeless when he finally accelerated up the onramp onto the 405 and merged with the traffic. The continuous, heavy traffic, which made spotting a single silver car as difficult as spotting a specific silver fish among the thousands in the schools he had seen on his last snorkeling trip.
“We’re never going to find the car here,” Shahla said, echoing Tony’s feelings. She made one more report to the police and then disconnected, promising to call back if they spotted the car.
“We’ve lost it. I’m going to get off.” Tony exited at La Cienega Boulevard, which continued straight north while the 405 headed in a more westerly direction. He drove on that street until curbside parking was available and then pulled into an open space.
“What are we going to do now?” Shahla asked. She looked despondent.
Tony opened the glove compartment and pulled out the Thomas Guide he kept there, a book with detailed maps of the Los Angeles area. It was invaluable to him when he made his marketing calls. Then he stuck his hand into his front pants pocket and pulled out the sheet of paper on which he had written Nathan’s address and phone numbers. Fortunately, he had done that before they had gone into panic mode.
“We aren’t far from where Nathan lives,” Tony said. “Let’s go to his place.”
“Do you think that he might take Tina there? That is, if he’s the kidnapper?”
“No more ifs. As far as we’re concerned, Nathan is the kidnapper. If we think any other way, we lose all hope. And hope is the only thing we’ve got right now.”
CHAPTER 36
Nathan lived on a quiet street lined with apartment houses that resembled in some respects the one where Fred, the Chameleon, lived, only it was more upscale. Now that Tony had his own house, all apartment houses designed for single people looked pretty much alike to him. The apartments were too small, too seedy, even when well cared for. He was glad that he no longer lived in one. But he became depressed when he thought that if he couldn’t keep up the payments on his townhouse, because of the loss of income from Josh, he might have to return to that life.
Tony parked the Porsche on the street, several buildings short of the one where Nathan lived. He turned to Shahla, but before he could say anything, she started talking, rapid-fire.
“I’m going with you. We know that Nathan doesn’t have a gun. You’re still not at full speed, and I can run faster than you can, in case it becomes necessary to go for help. And it will be easier for two of us to overpower him. Besides, it’s not safe for me to stay in the car alone.”
Tony had opened his mouth to speak when she started her speech, and then closed it. Finally, he opened it again and said, “That’s just what I was going to say.”
Shahla said, “Let’s go get him, partner,” and gave him a high five.
The entrance to the apartment building was through a gate made of vertical iron bars, which Tony discovered was locked. He wondered how they could get through the gate. A young man approached it from the inside and opened it. Shahla smiled at him as he walked past her and grabbed the handle before the gate closed behind him. The man kept walking.
“After you,” she said to Tony, sweeping her hand toward the opening in invitation.
They walked through a passage into an interior courtyard, with the apartments forming a rectangle around it, on two levels. The doors to the apartments opened off the open courtyard and the balcony above it. The main feature of the courtyard was, of course, a swimming pool. Maximum sun, maximum fun. The quintessential California experience. Except that nobody was using the pool.
They quickly ascertained that Nathan’s apartment was on the ground floor. Tony’s first thought was that Nathan was certainly not going to bring Tina here. There would be no way to sneak her into his apartment with all this openness. His second thought was that maybe he had taken her somewhere else to kill her. No, no, no. Don’t think like that.
The drapes were drawn over the windows of Nathan’s apartment. Tony hesitated. Another effect of the sunny courtyard was to wipe out his feelings that this might be in any way dangerous. He knocked on the door. There were no sounds from within. He knocked again, too soon, like in the movies where they assumed that five seconds was enough time for someone to answer.
“The window’s open,” Shahla said.
As Tony waited for nobody to answer, Shahla was removing the screen from in front of the window. He looked apprehensively around to see if anybody was watching. He couldn’t see into the other apartments, of course, but the shadow cast by the balcony directly above them did partially mask her efforts.
“Cover me,” Shahla said.
She had removed the screen and opened the window wider. She meant for Tony to literally cover her-place his body in between her and the courtyard.
“Let me go,” he said. Nathan might still be inside.
“You have to watch your knee.”
Shahla put her leg up on the windowsill. Tony got directly behind her and gave her a boost as she went through the open window and landed on the floor inside. He quickly replaced the screen, hoping that nobody had seen anything and called the police. Shahla opened the door and let him in.
“The place is deserted,” she said.
Tony went into the apartment and looked around. All the furniture was gone. The carpet was dirty and there was some trash on the floor. Nathan hadn’t attempted to clean the place. This was apparently the living room. A divider doubling as a counter was at the other end of the room, with a small kitchen behind it. Dirty dishes filled the sink. Tony’s nose detected the stench of rotten food. The odor came from a metal garbage container, which hadn’t been emptied.
A short hallway led in one direction to the bathroom and in the other direction to a bedroom. They went into the bedroom. There was no bed, but there was a built-in closet. Tony opened the wooden folding doors. Some clothes were hanging up in the closet. Pants and shirts. Old clothes. On one side of the closet were built-in drawers. Tony opened each of the drawers and quickly went through the contents: a sweater, a sweatshirt, some underwear, and socks.