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Kit remembered the Mercedes they’d seen in Mrs. Adler’s driveway. “She has a nice car.”
“Yeah. Archie’s a good guy. He bought his mom that car, y’know. His Kia was on its last leg, but he fixed it somehow and used the money he’d been saving for a car to buy her a new one.”
Isn’t that nice. A probable criminal with a soft spot for his mother.
She sent Connor a text. Request a unit be sent to Adler’s mom’s house. He might go there.
Will do was Connor’s reply.
Kit gave Roger her card. “Please call me if you see him. He could be in danger.” Which was true. Assuming Adler was involved, he could end up like Crawford.
Roger paled as he took the business card. “I will. Am I in danger, too?”
“Were you working with him?” Kit asked bluntly.
Roger’s eyes went wide. “No. I live with my mom and go to school. I work at the In-N-Out. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Good. If you see anything out of the ordinary, call me. You’ll most likely be fine, but if Archie was involved in what we’re investigating, he’s associating with some dangerous people.” She turned to go but turned back when Roger made a strangled sound. He was staring at her business card, having gone even paler, making his freckles stand out in stark relief. “Roger? Are you okay?”
“You’re Homicide. Archie’s involved in murder?” His tone hitched higher and higher with every word. “He might have brought a killer into our building?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. Do you know anything else that might help us?”
“Um…he’s got a boat. I think.”
Wonderful. He could be anywhere. “What kind of boat, Roger?”
“I don’t know, but I heard him on the phone once. He was coming up the stairs and I was going down. He’d caught this huge fish.” Roger spread his hands wide, easily three feet apart. “I stopped to look at the fish because it was really gorgeous. He told whoever he was talking to that he’d caught a lingcod. He was laughing, really excited. Said something like, ‘And you said I shouldn’t buy a boat. It’ll pay for itself if I keep catching fish like this one.’ The other person must have disagreed because Archie laughed and said that, fine, it might take a couple hundred lingcod, but it’d pay for itself eventually.”
“Did you ever see the boat or a photo of it?”
Roger shook his head. “But I think it’s in his mother’s name, because he said that he’d been paying the taxes on it and his mother was none the wiser.”
“Thank you, Roger. You’ve been a big help.” She got the young man’s phone number, then called Navarro as she jogged down the stairs. “Can you run a deeper check on Archie Adler’s mother?” she asked when her boss picked up. “I think Archie bought a boat in her name, but it didn’t come up in our original search.”
“Shit. He could be anywhere by now.”
“He left his apartment around four or four thirty. That gives him at least a three-hour head start. He might have taken the contents of his apartment to his mother’s house, but that still gives him plenty of time to get far away. If you can get a make and model on the boat, we can ask the Coast Guard to aid in the search.”
That was one of the duties Kit had had while she served.
“Give me a minute,” Navarro said.
She could hear him typing as she got to the bottom of the stairs and ran to the department sedan. She slid into the passenger seat, put the phone on speaker, and quickly brought Connor up to speed.
“A lingcod that size is worth about three hundred bucks,” Kit said. “So a couple hundred means he could have paid as much as fifty or sixty grand. Not bad for a college student working a night job.”
“I’ve got uniforms en route to Mrs. Adler’s house,” Connor said. “They’re going to sit outside until we get there.”
“I’ve got my clerk working on the warrant.” Navarro made a pleased sound. “Found the boat under his mother’s name. He’s got a Grady White Marlin. You know that boat, Kit?”
Kit whistled. “My sister looked at those. They go for eighty to a hundred grand, used. Importantly, they can go way out offshore. He could definitely be in Mexico by now. Dammit.”
“I’ll put in the call for assistance,” Navarro said. “You two head back to the mother’s house. I’ll have your warrant by then.”
Connor brought up the map to Mrs. Adler’s house on his phone. “We also need his phone records. It may have been the same friend who Georgia Shearer overheard him talking to. Sounds like that friend is privy to Archie’s secrets. Okay, we’re heading out, boss.”
He put the car in drive, but Kit saw motion from the corner of her eye. It was Roger. “Hold on a minute, boss. The neighbor is running toward us like he’s on fire.” He’d burst out of the building and was now waving them down. Keeping her call to Navarro open and on speaker, she got out just as the young man reached the car, breathing heavily.
