“You gonna tell me why you think this is our guy?” Barrello inquired around a mouthful of burger.
I lowered the binoculars and rubbed my eyes, continuing to inspect the huge mansion. “After I’m sure.”
“You realize Fuentes and I are goin’ out on a limb for you on this, not to mention workin’ on our only day off?”
“I do, and I appreciate it, Lou. If this pans out, I’ll turn everything over to the task force and step aside. You, Fuentes, and Deluca are going to be heroes.”
“I’m not risking my pension for that. I want this dirtbag as much as you do.”
“I know.” I pulled out my cell phone and called Fuentes. “Where is he now?” I asked.
“Crossing the parking lot,” Fuentes’ voice came back from Plaza Antonio, a shopping mall four miles east. “He’s heading into the market. Just got a basket. Now he’s going through the doors. Want me to follow him in?”
“No. Stay with his car. Let us know when he comes out.”
I hung up, then dialed another number. “One last check,” I said as Carns’s home number began ringing. No one answered. Next I tried Carns’s business line, reaching an answering machine. Satisfied, I repocketed my phone. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Barrello downed a final fistful of fries and dropped the car into gear. A few blocks south he turned up a side street, stopping at a weed choked lot past Carns’s estate. From our new vantage Carns’s enormous compound appeared even larger, with a putting green, tennis courts, and a kidney-shaped pool now visible behind the fencing and hedges surrounding the grounds.
“Holy shit,” said Barrello, his voice tinged with awe. “The guy’s definitely got some bucks.”
“Seems that way.” I reached across the seat and grabbed Barrello’s partially eaten burger. “Dog,” I said in response to Barrello’s puzzled look. “Don’t worry. You’ll get it back if there isn’t one.”
“How long will you be?”
I shoved the paper-wrapped burger into my pocket. “Fifteen, twenty minutes tops. Keep in touch with Fuentes and call me if Carns comes out of the market.”
“Got it,” said Barrello. “You’re just gonna reconnoiter the grounds, look through a few windows, right? For anything more we get a warrant.”
“Right,” I lied, stepping from the car. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Barrello, but if what I was about to do were ever discovered, I wanted to protect him and Fuentes from the inevitable repercussions-at least as much as possible.
I crossed the street and climbed a six-foot gate, then followed a winding, pressed-concrete driveway to the front door. Out of sight of Barrello, I used my knuckle to ring the bell. No one answered. With a handkerchief covering my palm, I tried the knob. The door was locked. I groaned inwardly, noticing a Medeco dead bolt above the latch.
Shortly after graduating from the Police Academy, I had spent time learning the art of picking locks. Over months of practice at home, working on various lock cylinders while watching television, I’d developed considerable expertise. Nonetheless, I had managed to open a “pick-proof” Medeco only once. It had taken a week.
Giving up on the Medeco, I made my way around the side of the house, discovering a pair of French doors bordering the pool. The lock there was a Baldwin. With a smile, I pulled a small tension wrench and a pick from my pocket. Working quickly, I inserted the wrench into the Baldwin’s brass keyway and twisted, maintaining pressure with my left hand. Using the pick in my right, I raked the pins. One by one, all five clicked into place. Twenty seconds from starting, I rotated the cylinder. Burger in hand, I cracked the door and whistled into the interior. “Here, boy,” I called. Nothing. Rewrapping Barrello’s lunch and shoving it back into my pocket, I entered the house, wiping the knob with my handkerchief as I stepped inside.
Beside the door, I noticed a security panel. As I’d expected, Carns’s house had an alarm system. Prepared to leave immediately if necessary, I checked a small screen on the panel face. Also as expected, the system was unarmed. Like most people, Carns didn’t set the alarm when only going out for a short while.
After relocking the door I glanced around, finding myself in a well equipped gymnasium complete with mirrors, chrome plated dumbbells, and Nautilus machines. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, I checked a bathroom off the gym, then made my way down a hallway to the main portion of the house. Along the way I passed four guest bedrooms, a den, and a powder room. All were lacking even the barest of furnishings. The living room came next. Past that lay another hallway and a staircase leading up.
Check the upper floors first. Make sure no one’s home.
I crept up the stairs. At the top, an oak-paneled library lay to the left. A short corridor ran the other direction. At the end, a pair of eight-foot doors stood open.
Carns’s bedroom.
After a cursory look around the library, I searched the bedroom. Dresser: socks, underwear, and T-shirts, all neatly folded. Walk-in closet: shelves stacked with sweaters and shirts, racks containing hundreds of shoes, poles laden with suits, sports coats, and jackets. Bathroom: Jacuzzi tub, marble shower, a jar of hand cream on the sink. Medicine chest: prescription vials-Donnatal, Ampicillin, Imitrex, Midrin-along with a hairbrush, toothpaste, and a bottle of black hair dye. I removed a plastic bag from my pocket and deposited several strands of hair that I teased from the hairbrush. I also took a sample of the dye, tipping the mouth of the bottle against a wad of toilet paper and saving the specimen in a second bag. A search of the trash basket revealed an empty pill vial, sure to have prints. It went into a third.
Moving quickly, I descended to the first floor.
Right or left?
I turned right, entering one of the single-storied wings I had seen from the street. The rooms there, like the guest bedrooms I’d passed earlier, were devoid of any signs of habitation. After passing a darkened stairway leading down, I searched the other wing, finding it similarly barren.
After returning to the base of the main stairs, I entered a third corridor leading to a gigantic dining room with a large kitchen to the left, past which a door accessed the garage. I stepped through. A garage workbench ran the length of one wall. Another door with a simple button lock opened onto a walkway to the tennis courts. The garage had slots for six cars, all empty. No oil drips on the concrete floor.
Where’s he storing the cars?
An inspection of the workbench revealed vises, metalworking tools, and an array of electronic equipment-none of which resembled Hank Dexter’s spectrum analyzer.
Time was running out. Trying not to rush, I reentered the house. Two areas remained to be searched: a door I had spotted at the end of the third hallway, and the stairway to the basement. I glanced at my watch. Nine minutes had elapsed since I’d entered, and I still had nothing that would tie Carns to the murders, at least nothing the task force could use. Although the dye sample, loose hairs, and any latent prints on the prescription vial might prove out, they were worthless because of the method in which I had obtained them. Worse, should their warrantless procurement ever come to light, they could invalidate similar evidence gathered later-possibly even poisoning the entire case. I knew the analysis of any materials I gathered would definitely have to take place on an unofficial basis.
Although I realized my illegal entry constituted a serious risk, it was one I felt was justified. In addition to making absolutely certain about Carns, I hoped to find incriminating material that could plausibly surface in some other way-thus giving the task force grounds for an airtight warrant, grounds they didn’t have and might never get. Hair evidence wasn’t definitive enough. Showing Carns’s picture at the murdered women’s health clubs might pan out. Then again, if he had altered his appearance, maybe not. And even if he were recognized at various clubs, so what? I felt even more skeptical about Carns’s DMV thumbprint matching an unknown print from one of the crime scenes. Carns had been far too careful for that. Whatever happened, I was certain of one thing: To nail Carns would take more than the circumstantial evidence already assembled.