I raised the door just enough to get inside, pulled it down behind me, and turned on the light.
Chapter Seventeen
Dobbs
At his desk at LAPD headquarters, Detective Garrett Dobbs scrolled through the hundreds of photographs taken at Alyssa Tepper’s apartment earlier in the day. CSI had uploaded them to a secure cloud storage folder. Pictures of Tepper and Michael Kepler, or Michael Fitzgerald, or whatever; seemingly random photographs of her kitchen, living room, bedroom. Still shots of the video featuring her with Kepler. Near the end, he found what he was looking for. “There it is.”
Dobbs raised his phone and held it out to Wilkins.
Wilkins, sitting at the desk across from his with his own phone pressed to his ear, waved him off.
Dobbs looked back down at the screen and enlarged the image of the feather attached to a thin leather strap, some kind of necklace. On the flat-panel computer monitor on his desk, he had a picture of the bag of feathers found in Kepler’s truck. A tech had removed one of the feathers and photographed it alongside the bag and a ruler. The example feather was a little over four inches long, similar to the one on Tepper’s necklace. Dobbs was by no means an expert, so he called one. Mirella Sunde at the Griffith Park Bird Sanctuary dropped into lecture mode, and Dobbs scrambled to take notes on at least thirty-five sparrow species in North America. Fifteen of those were common throughout the country, half a dozen were common to the eastern United States, ten more were common to the central part of the country, and two particular species were common to western North America—the Baird’s sparrow and the golden-crowned sparrow. Dobbs finally got her to consent to identify the species if he had a feather brought to her by a uniformed officer.
Across from him, Wilkins scribbled on a notepad, then ended his call. “I’ve got something from Kepler’s credit card records. He rents a warehouse space off Alameda. Maybe ten minutes from here.”
Dobbs snatched his keys from the corner of his desk and stood. “I’m driving.”
Chapter Eighteen
Written Statement,
Megan Fitzgerald
By the time Dr. Rose brought her silver Mercedes CLS to a stop in front of the campus library on West Avenue, my call log recorded six missed calls from the California number along with one voice mail I didn’t dare listen to in front of her. I clutched the phone in my sweaty palm—thank God they made these things waterproof.
“Will you need a ride home?”
I shook my head and unbuckled my seat belt. “I’m sure someone in the library can drive me back. If not, I’ll Uber.”
I was halfway out the door when Dr. Rose said, “Don’t forget about our session. Five p.m., my home office.”
“Sure.”
I grabbed my backpack from the rear seat, closed both car doors, and started up the sidewalk to the library. Approaching the entrance, I watched the reflection of Dr. Rose’s Mercedes. She pulled away as I stepped into the vestibule.
I dropped my backpack and tapped the voice-mail icon on my phone. The message had been left twenty minutes ago.
Michael’s voice, thin and tinny through the small speaker. “Damn it, Meg, where are you? I bought a burner phone. The police still have mine. I’m getting my car. Call me back!”
I pressed Redial, but my call went straight to voice mail. I wasn’t able to leave a message. A recording said the mailbox had not been set up.
I went back out the glass double doors and rounded the side of the library at a sprint, heading for the science building on the opposite side of the campus—where Dr. Rose saw her student patients.
Chapter Nineteen
Dobbs
Shortly before nine a.m., Dobbs pulled up in front of the Stow ’n’ Go.
“How you doing on a warrant?” Dobbs asked.
Wilkins frowned and scrolled through the e-mail on his phone. “Nothing yet.”
“Did you call Judge Fleming?”
“No—Fleming’s in Tahoe until Tuesday.”
Dobbs tossed his LAPD placard up on the dash. “Guess we’re winging it.”
Inside the office, they found a teenager manning the blue Formica counter. His spiky black hair jutted out in all directions. He had at least half a dozen piercings in his right ear, twice as many on the other side. A silver hoop hung from his nose. He had another in his lip. He wore a T-shirt that read THIS IS WHAT AWESOME LOOKS LIKE.
The kid glanced up as they entered, said, “Morning, Officers,” before Dobbs had a chance to pull out his ID.
“That obvious?” Wilkins said.
The kid shrugged. “Nobody rocks a Ford Taurus like the po-po.” He nodded at Dobbs’s belt. “And the bad guys have the decency to hide their guns.”
Wilkins stepped up to the counter, took out his phone, and scrolled through the pictures. “We’re looking for someone.”
“Damn, I thought you were here to take advantage of our nineteen-ninety-nine move-in special. Could have used that commission.”
Wilkins’s face soured, and he leaned slightly over the counter.
The kid shrank back and raised both hands. “Whoa, just playing with you. It can get lonely up in here. What’ve you got?”
Dobbs nodded at the ancient Dell on the corner of the desk. “Need you to look up a unit number. Should be under the name Michael Kepler. If you don’t see a Kepler, try Fitzgerald.”
Wilkins found the photograph of Michael Kepler and held his phone out to the kid. “You’re billing this guy’s credit card four hundred ninety-nine dollars a month.”
The kid took the phone and studied the image, chewing the ring on his lip. “Four hundred and ninety-nine dollars would be one of the garage units on the first floor, a ten by thirty.” He handed back the phone, walked past the computer, and pointed at the security monitor. “Think that could be your guy?”
Dobbs stepped closer. The security-camera footage was frozen on a man carrying a large box, his face only partially visible. He wore a Los Angeles Angels baseball cap and dark sunglasses, and he looked a lot like Michael Kepler.
“He ducked in behind another customer, didn’t swipe a key card.” The kid clicked on a food-encrusted keyboard under the screen. “I got another shot of him outside a minute or so later.”
In the second image, the man was kneeling down at a garage door, working a lock.
“Box is gone,” Wilkins pointed out. “Where’d it go?”
“He left it out in the courtyard, just outside the door. A lot of weirdness going on. I was checking him out when you guys came in.” He clicked a button on the keyboard, and the video advanced in slow motion. They watched the guy on the screen remove the lock, raise the door, and slip inside. The door rolled back down behind him.
“When was this recorded?” Dobbs asked.
The kid brought up the time stamp. “About twenty minutes ago.”
“He still in there?”
The kid shrugged. “I didn’t see him come out…” His voice trailed off. He was gazing at a small television on the counter, stuffed back behind the security monitor. The sound was off, but images flickered across the screen. “Isn’t that him too?”