Welcome to a very special episode of House Hunters.
"That"s it over there," said Sarah about thirty minutes after we were on the ground in Los Angeles. She was pointing from the backseat of the cab we took from LAX. "The number"s on the mailbox. Two seventy-two."
We pulled up, paid the driver, got out, and stared at Ned Sinclair"s last known residence. I expected it to be run-down and creepy, with overgrown gra.s.s and weeds. Instead, it was in great shape, well maintained and impeccably manicured.
That somehow made it really creepy.
"Nora"s estate probably provided for a caretaker on the a.s.sumption that Ned would one day be released," said Sarah.
"Maybe," I said.
She looked at me. "Why? You don"t think-"
"That he"s in there? Nah. He"s been killing in only one direction: east," I said. "Lousy odds that he"d be commuting back and forth."
The better odds were that Ned had made a stop at the house after springing himself from Eagle Mountain, only twenty miles away. Pack a suitcase? A shower and a shave? Grab a little travel cash?
The real question, though, was whether he"d managed to leave something behind-some clue, anything, that could help us track him down.
"I"ll let you do the honors," I said as we approached the front door of the cedar-shake house with white trim.
Sarah removed the key from her pocket. It was still a little sticky from all the tape Olivia had used to adhere it to her diary.
"Tell me again there"s no chance he"s in there," she said.
"Okay, there"s no chance he"s in there."
We both laughed. Ha-ha. Then we both quickly took out our guns.
Just in case we were both wrong.
Chapter 75
KNOCK, KNOCK. WHO"S THERE?
n.o.body.
After a quick sweep of the entire house, there was no Ned to be found. Sarah and I were back in the small ceramic-tiled foyer, where we began.
"You take the upstairs, I"ve got downstairs," she said.
Now it was all about finding clues, something that would point us in the right direction. A Ned decoder. Where was he heading next?
Had this been a movie, it would"ve been so simple. We"d walk into a room and discover with mouths agape that every inch of every wall was covered with pictures of me, each one with a giant X over my face. Then we"d stumble upon some marked-up road map that gave us the exact location of where Ned was planning to kill again.
But as close as we actually were to Hollywood, this was no movie.
There was no shrine to me, no obvious clue ready and waiting for us. In fact, there wasn"t much of anything. Talk about minimalist. Nora Sinclair, the interior designer with a killer eye, may have bought the place for Ned, but she clearly didn"t decorate it.
No one did.
In the two bedrooms upstairs, the only pieces of furniture were the beds themselves. There were no dressers, no nightstands, not even a lamp.
That left only the closets. Two of them, to be exact. So much for the first one in the guest bedroom, though. It was empty.
Finally, in the closet in the master bedroom, I found the only sign that someone had actually ever lived in the house. Ned"s clothes. At least I a.s.sumed they were his.
Hanging very neatly on some wooden hangers, which looked to be purposefully aligned at exactly two inches apart, were some pants, shirts, and a few sport coats. Checking the pockets, though, was a swing and a miss. They were all empty.
I"d normally feel a little weird about going through someone"s personal belongings-Olivia"s diary notwithstanding. But there really wasn"t anything that seemed "personal" here.
Until I turned around and saw it.
There was something tucked underneath the bed. I thought maybe it was a suitcase at first, but dropping to my knees for a better look, I could see that it was a wooden storage chest. An old one at that.
Pulling it out, I lifted the scuffed bra.s.s latch, the hinges rusted and squeaky. What have you got for me, Ned?
Disappointment, that"s what.
It was toys. The chest was stuffed to the brim with children"s toys.
I stared at them all, frustrated. Then suddenly I realized something. They were all the same.
Not exactly the same, but a version of the same thing. Big, small, broken, or in perfect condition. Everything in the chest was a toy version of a very specific car. A one-of-a-kind car, actually-a blast from the past.
The DeLorean.
Huh.
Chapter 76
I DIDN"T WANT to overthink it, especially because I couldn"t see any way in which Ned"s interest or even obsession with this one car would get us any closer to him. Sometimes a box of toys is just a box of toys.
Still, I had to go through them all. You never know.
One by one I began pulling them out. I wasn"t sure what I was looking for. With any luck, I"d know it when I found it.