Her wallet was there, but money, credit cards, driver’s license were all missing. I couldn’t tell if anything else had been taken from the jumble of other stuff.
I backed out, taking the purse with me, and made sure all the doors were locked. My hands were shaking a little. Supposed to look like a robbery that had gone down right here in the lot, but not to me. Any thief will steal cash and credit cards, but none will take a photo ID out of its celluloid holder and leave the wallet behind. No, the Toyota had been driven over here and abandoned sometime during the night, the keys left in it in the hope that somebody would steal it. Driven from Willard Street, seven blocks away.
That was the where, all right. I had no doubt of it now.
I was on a dark side street, heading back to Willard Street, when Mick Savage finally called. The dashboard clock, more or less accurate, said it was 9:20. I veered over to the curb before I answered the call.
“Got what you wanted from Tamara’s computer,” he said.
“Go ahead, Mick.”
“New file, untitled, made on Monday. Looks like a preliminary background check on a man named Robert Lemoyne. L-e-m-o-y-n-e. Mixed race, black father, white mother.”
“Address?”
“Eleven-oh-nine Willard Street, San Leandro.”
“That’s it. What else?”
Mick gave me a quick rundown on Lemoyne. Age forty-seven. Construction worker. Twice married, twice divorced. One child, a daughter, custody awarded to the mother four years ago. Evidently lived alone. No criminal record of any kind. No brushes with the law except for a couple of misdemeanors. No apparent history of domestic or substance abuse.
So?
I asked Mick, “Anything in the file about why she was checking up on him?”
“No,” he said. “And no mention of him anywhere else on her hard drive. You think he’s responsible?”
“Somebody on Willard Street is. I just found her car-abandoned in a Safeway parking lot a few blocks away.”
“Oh, man. There wasn’t… I mean…”
“No indications of foul play, no.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Can’t say yet. But this Lemoyne’s house is right near where she was staked out the past two nights.”
“So maybe he spotted her and hit on her or something?”
“That’s one possibility. Is there anything in his background about violence toward women?”
“Not in the file,” Mick said, “but Tamara didn’t go too deep into it. Just preliminary stuff. You want me to do some digging myself, see what else I can find out?”
“Would you? But you must be pretty tired by now…”
“Nah. I’ll work all night if it’ll help find Tamara. I’d rather hack than sleep.”
“Thanks, Mick. Call me if you come up with anything I should know. Otherwise I’ll be in touch.”
I made it fast back to Willard Street. Number 1109 had been one of the dark houses; it was still dark now. I parked down the street, and with the lights off I unclipped the. 38 Colt Bodyguard from under the dash, checked the loads, and slipped the piece into my pocket. Then I went up and leaned on Robert Lemoyne’s doorbell.
Empty echoes, empty house.
I checked the garage, found a window in back I could see through with the aid of my penlight. Empty garage.
Lights behind curtains made saffron squares of the two front windows in Bill Powers’s house down the block. I crossed over there and rang his bell. He was in pajamas and bathrobe, a book in one hand with a finger marking his place, a pair of silver-rimmed reading glasses tilted forward on his nose. He blinked at me from behind the lenses.
“Sorry to bother you again, Mr. Powers,” I said, “but I need to ask a few more questions. About another of your neighbors this time.”
“Sure,” he said. Then he said, “You look grim. Something happen?”
I brushed the question aside. “What can you tell me about the man who lives at eleven-oh-nine, Robert Lemoyne?”
“Bob? Quiet, friendly enough, but mostly keeps to himself.”
“Aggressive? Toward women especially?”
“Not that I’ve heard about. Doesn’t seem to be that type, but then I don’t know him very well. Just to say hello to.”
“Trouble of any kind associated with him?”
“How do you mean, trouble?”
“Disputes with neighbors. Excessive drinking, loud parties. That sort of thing.”
“Nothing like that,” Powers said, “Say, you have reason to think he’s mixed up in the young woman’s disappearance?”
I hedged on that. “No specific reason, no. Did you happen to see Lemoyne last night?”
“Don’t think so. Not last night.”
“But he was home?”
Powers thought about it. “Wasn’t when I went for my walk, but I seem to remember his lights being on when I looked out before I went to bed. Won’t swear to it, though. My memory’s not what it used to be.”
“He’s not home now. Any idea where he could be?”
“Not a clue.”
“Bar or restaurant he frequents?”
“Like I said, I hardly know the man. Might ask one of the other neighbors, but I doubt they’d be able to tell you any more than me.”
“So he’s not particularly friendly with any of them? One of the black families?”
“Never saw him hanging out with anybody around here.”
“He lives alone?”
“Yep. As long as I’ve been here.”
“Girlfriends?”
“Don’t remember seeing him with a woman, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had his share.”
“Male friends?”
“Same answer.”
Quiet, nonaggressive, nontroublesome loner. If that was a true picture of Robert Lemoyne, what had he done to make Tamara notice him, run the check on him? And if he was responsible for her disappearance, what did he or she or both of them do to cause it?
I went back to the car, sat there with the cell phone in my hand. Call the cops-that was the right thing to do. Except that it wasn’t, not yet. No clear-cut motive and nothing but circumstantial evidence to link Lemoyne to Tamara’s disappearance-maybe enough circumstantial evidence to convince the local law to talk to Lemoyne, but not enough to convince a judge to issue a search warrant. Without any indication of foul play, the Toyota was just another car more or less legally parked in a supermarket lot. She hadn’t even been gone long enough for an official missing person’s report to be filed.
Not a damn thing the law could do, not tonight, not soon enough.
There was only one other person besides me who could do something-Jake Runyon. His number was the one I called.
21
TOMMY DOUGLASS
“Hey, Tommy,” Bix said, “hey, man, you sure about this, huh?”
“Sure about what?”
“Doin’ this one so early, man. People on the streets, cars, lights in all the houses… suppose somebody sees us?”
“We been over that already, how many times? This Butter-field’s not like the other fags. He don’t go out much and when he does he drives.”
“The one up by the park had a car.”
“So what? He stayed out late couple of nights a week, that made it easy. This one don’t go out much at night and when he does he comes home early and brings some other fag back with him. Troy told us that, didn’t he? We checked him out, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, but-”
“Yeah but, yeah but. Come on, what’s the matter with you? You turning chicken on me?”
“Chicken?” Bix glared at him from under the bill of his Giants cap. “Listen, dude, I ain’t afraid of nothin’ or nobody. You call me chicken, I’ll kick your ass. You know I can do it, too.”
Tommy sighed. Problem with Bix wasn’t that he was chicken, problem was he had two fuckin’ brain cells and one of ‘em was always out looking for the other. You had to explain everything to him fifty times before he got it, and then half the time he forgot and you had to explain it all over again. It was worse when he was high. He was high now, all that crystal meth he’d smoked out at Finn’s crib in Daly City. High and wired, the way he had to get to give these lousy queers what they deserved. Not Tommy. One pipe, that was all he’d smoked. He didn’t need speed or anything else to get his juices flowing. Just giving it to those bastards, paying ‘em back for what they did to Troy, that was enough. Better than any drug he’d ever tried.