Page 20 of Into the Fire

“What did you touch?” Evan said. “Start here.”

Max blinked twice.

Evan said, “Focus. Every single thing you touched.”

Max pointed. “Side gate.”

Evan jogged over, removing a rag from one of his cargo pockets and dousing it with the hair product. He wiped down both sides of the gate.

From behind him, Max said, “It has bleach in it?”

“Bleach is overrated. A lot of them are reducing agents that leave behind intact hemoglobin,” Evan said, giving extra attention to the handle. “Whereas hydrogen peroxide is an oxidizing agent—generates bubbles that degrade DNA.” He headed back to wipe off the rear fence where Max had jumped over and then considered the dilapidated lawn furniture. “Where else did you touch? Or even go near?”

They worked their way inside, Max averting his eyes from Lorraine Lennox’s body. The smell was thick all around them, pressing into their pores.

Evan said, “Don’t touch anything.”

He lathered down the counter and then poured the solution into the sink, running the water and the garbage disposal for a solid two minutes. When he shut it off, Max was standing over by a bookshelf, staring at photographs.

“Let’s go,” Evan said.

“We can’t just leave her,” Max said.

Evan paused halfway through the open sliding door. “She won’t know the difference.”

Max pointed at the framed pictures. “She has a brother. And looks like her parents are still alive.” He wiped his mouth. “Her people deserve to know.”

Evan’s own mouth tensed. He leaned to look down the brief hall through the front window. No one visible on the street. Yet.

Then he strode inside, plucked the phone from the base station, and tapped out three digits with a superglue-tipped finger. He rested the cordless on the counter and ushered Max outside.

Behind them he could make out a tinny voice asking, “What’s your emergency?”

10

Area of Expertise

Downtown Los Angeles stretched skyward around Evan and Max, a huddle of high-rises shot above an apron of urban sprawl, as if a few square blocks had snapped off the slab of Manhattan and floated to the wrong coast. On a clear day, the San Gabriel Mountains loomed with deceptive closeness to the east. Snowcapped Mount Baldy dominated the jagged tear line where earth met sky, and beyond, smothered in an ocean of pines, lay Arrowhead and Big Bear, where Grant Merriweather had been put down with a bullet to the head.

Here on the bustling city sidewalk, a wintry breeze rattled an empty Pressed Juicery bottle over the cracked concrete past Evan’s and Max’s shoes. On the corner a man sold roasted corn out of a food cart, his face weather-battered, his skin a rich shade of umber. The smell reminded Evan that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and he stared longingly as the man rolled an ear through metal troughs of melted butter, Cotija cheese, and powdered chili. Along the cart’s frame, freshly carved mango hung in clear bags, marinating in lime, salt, and sriracha.

Grant Merriweather’s firm, the imaginatively titled Merriweather Accountancy, resided on the seventeenth floor of the black-glass rise before them. This was a convenient part of downtown for a forensic accountant, a few blocks from City Hall, LAPD headquarters, and the Criminal Courts Building.

Evan clenched the Swiss Army knife key chain, the key swaying beneath his fist.

Those oddly symmetrical cuts. The shiny gold finish, unworn by use, not a single scrape from tumbler pins.

“Are we ever actually going to, you know, go inside?” Max asked.

Dragging Max along, Evan had circuited the nearby blocks three times, checking parked cars, passing faces, and searching windows for glints thrown by binoculars or sniper rifles. They’d ridden up the elevators of surrounding buildings and watched the street from various vantages. Sipped espresso in the catty-corner Starbucks and studied the lobby.

The Third Commandment: Master your surroundings.

Evan slid the key chain into his pocket. Then headed for the entrance.

Max followed.

They slid through the weighty revolving doors, delivered onto a white granite floor scuffed from the tread of loafers and high heels. The elevator bank was to the left, set behind a directory shimmering with brass letters. Foot traffic was light. Cutting across the lobby, Evan circled his gaze from faces to hands to faces.