“How did you find out about this guy?” Jessie asked.
“I was able to access Rutherford’s e-mail,” Jamil explained. “Apparently this Sawyer guy isn’t a fan of texting. He says, in an e-mail, that it ties him down too much. He always feels beholden to the little black rectangle. Frankly, I get where he’s coming from. Anyway, he likes to go old school, which to him means e-mail. That’s how I found his message to her saying he’d be at the Buckingham at 9 p.m. Of course, after all that, he showed up over a half-hour late.”
“He’s wearing jeans,” Karen noted, studying the screen.
“But no baseball cap,” Jessie pointed out. “And he looks a lot younger than fifty.”
“Are we sure we trust eighteen-year-old bellboy Eli Almeida as an accurate judge of people’s ages?” Karen asked.
“No,” Jessie conceded. “But Sawyer looks closer to thirty to me.”
“Twenty-eight actually,” Jamil said.
“What do we know about him?” Karen asked as Jamil let the footage play, showing the guy enter an elevator. He switched to another camera that tracked Sawyer traveling to the tenth floor.
“He’s an aspiring musician,” Jamil said. “He’s the guitarist for a rock band called Loaded for Bare, as in naked. I guess it’s supposed to be clever. They play semi-regular sets, mostly around Hollywood and Los Feliz. But his day job is working in a warehouse at an office supply place on Santa Monica Boulevard.”
The elevator doors opened and Jamil switched to a different camera, which showed Josh Sawyer approaching suite 1002. Once he entered, the screen went dark.
“He’s in there for fifteen minutes,” Jamil said. “I’ll skip ahead.”
Jessie thought back to the untouched bed in Addison’s suite. Fifteen minutes was obviously long enough for the couple to have gotten romantic, but it seemed less and less likely that it was that kind of visit. The next clip showed him exiting the room. As he walked away, he didn’t look exactly relaxed, but he also didn’t look overly stressed.
“You never know,” Jessie said, “but he certainly doesn’t carry himself like someone who just bashed his girlfriend in the head with a lamp.”
“Plus” Jamil added, “he walks out the front door of the hotel at 9:54 and we know that her cell phone was still pinging there well after he left. Remember, it didn’t go dark until 11:06.”
“That doesn’t eliminate him as a suspect,” Karen countered. “Maybe this visit was to scout the hotel, the points of entry and exit. We don’t know that he didn’t come back later in a baseball cap to finish the job.”
“Fair point,” Jessie conceded. “I guess the best way to find out is to talk to the guy. Let’s head out. Jamil, can you shoot us the address for his work please?”
“You got it,” he said, already typing it into his phone.
They checked in with Decker to let him know their plan, and then headed down to the garage, where Karen volunteered to drive. Jessie was just getting into the passenger seat when her phone buzzed. It was a text from Ryan. As she read it, her heart sank.
“What’s up?” Karen asked.
“Oh, it’s just Ryan,” she replied, trying to keep her tone even. “He and Valentine caught an ugly case—female law student butchered in a YWCA shower stall. No good leads yet. He was just warning me that it could be a long night for them.”
She didn’t mention that, independent of the awful nature of the crime, something far pettier was eating at her. She realized that, had she not been so averse to working with Susannah Valentine when Captain Decker allowed her to pick her partner this morning, Ryan wouldn’t be spending “a late one,” as he called it, with her.
It’s not like she thought that her fiancé would start flirting with the woman over crime scene photos of a dead girl. That was ridiculous. But just the idea of Susannah Valentine laughing at his mildest quips and tossing her hair around extravagantly as she batted her eyes at him was quietly infuriating.
“What’s wrong?” Karen asked, snapping her out of it.
“Nothing,” Jessie told her. “Let’s go.”
*
Josh Sawyer’s apartment was a dump.
As Jessie and Karen tiptoed up the rickety outdoor stairwell that led to his second floor unit, Jessie was on high alert.
They already had reason to be suspicious. When they went to Office Pros earlier, the warehouse manager said that he hadn’t shown up today, hadn’t even called in sick. So the next stop was this place, a grimy two-level apartment complex, just three blocks from the famed Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and classily named Corpse Court. It looked it too. The front gate was missing entirely. Pieces of metal siding dangled precariously from the exterior and paint was peeling back from the outside walls to form curled, snail-like designs. The cracks on the first floor courtyard pavement were wide enough to get a shoe stuck in.
Once on the second floor, they approached Sawyer’s unit, 207. They hadn’t even reached the door when they could hear loud voices, not quite yelling, but definitely animated. Karen released her holster lock and Jessie followed suit. Karen was about to knock when Jessie held up her hand. There was something odd—heightened— about the argument going on inside. After another moment, she understood why.
“It’s the TV,” she whispered.
Karen nodded in recognition, pointed to the adjoining window, which appeared to be partially open, and moved in that direction. Jessie waited while she peeked inside.
“I can’t see anyone,” Karen said when she returned. “I’m going to knock. But with him missing work, the television on, and the window open in this neighborhood, we may be talking exigent circumstances if he doesn’t answer.”
Jessie tended to agree. If Sawyer had left his place like this, that likely meant either something had happened to him or he was in a condition where he didn’t care what happened to him. Karen knocked loudly.
“Mr. Sawyer, this is Detective Karen Bray with the Los Angeles Police Department. Can you please open the door?”
After ten seconds of silence, she knocked again and repeated the request but still got no response. She turned the knob. It was locked.
“I’m going in through the window,” Karen said. “Hold tight.”
Jessie watched anxiously as Karen shimmied through the small opening. She kept her hand on her weapon, ready to grab it if necessary. After a painfully long half minute she heard the front door unlock. Karen opened it, looking unscathed.
“He’s not here,” she said.
Jessie stepped inside. It was immediately clear that, even amidst the mess, someone had packed and left in a hurry. A small suitcase rested on the couch, along with some clothes and toiletries. From what was there, Jessie gathered that Sawyer had decided he didn’t need the extra items or the suitcase.
“You check the bedroom yet?” she asked.
“Just a cursory search to make sure he wasn’t hiding in there or the bathroom.”
“I’m going to look around,” Jessie said, heading back.
The bedroom wasn’t much use in terms of clues. It looked like a tornado had torn through it. But the bathroom offered some hints. She found a razor, cologne, and some over-the- counter medications. But there was no sign of a comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, or prescription meds. It looked he’d taken the essentials and bailed.