The Competition - [53]

Everyone took their positions and began to move, slowly and quietly. In spite of the chilly sea air, a trickle of sweat rolled down my back. Bailey and I hunkered down and duckwalked to stay below the windows of the apartment, our guns down at our sides. The local police, led by a hefty but solid-looking detective with red hair named (what else?) Rusty, were right alongside us. Some officers had fanned out to guard the perimeter in case Shane decided to rabbit on us.

Shane Dolan’s window was second from the last. We knelt down and listened at the door. The television was on, and a commercial for some seafood restaurant offering a good deal on lobster was playing. I tried to look around the edge of the yellowed window shade, but all I could see was the corner of a sofa that was a sickly shade of green. It looked like something he’d picked up off the sidewalk. I was about to move forward to the other window when I heard a soft thump.

I turned back to Bailey and kept my voice low. “Did you hear that?”

“I think so, but the television’s so loud.” She looked at me. “I don’t want to wait for SWAT. Think we can call this an exigent circumstance?”

Exigent circumstances, such as hot pursuit of a suspect or the possible imminent destruction of evidence, can let police get into a house without a warrant. “Well, he does fit the description of the second shooter.”

Bailey looked skeptical. “Medium build. Not exactly a DNA match.”

“But we’ve accounted for all the other students-”

Bailey nodded. “And he didn’t show up for work-”

“And no one’s seen him since the Friday before the shooting. Screw it. I say we go for it. I’d rather ask forgiveness than permission.”

Bailey gestured for the local officers to join us. They moved quickly to surround the small complex. Rusty and another of the sturdier-looking cops took the lead at the front door. We whispered, to make sure we couldn’t be heard over the television. “Police, open up.” Then they mouthed a count to three and kicked in the door.

32

The flimsy door splintered and flew open on the first kick. I was behind all the other officers so I stood on tiptoe to try to see inside. No one was there from what I could tell, but I waited for the officers to give us the “all clear.” They gave it in less than two minutes.

I saw that it was just a small single room. The “kitchen” was a hot plate. But as I walked in, I heard movement coming from somewhere overhead. In one swift motion, I turned and drew my gun.

And found a cat crouched on top of the refrigerator, staring down at us. I pointed to the cat. “The thump we heard.”

Bailey glanced at my gun. “You planning to take it down, Knight? I think it’ll probably come peaceably with a piece of chicken. But, your call.”

I glared at her and put my gun away, then scanned the apartment. It was a mess. The kind of mess that said someone had left in a hurry and didn’t plan on coming back. A half-eaten meatball sub-with some cat-sized bites taken out of it-was lying on its wrapper on the coffee table next to a nearly full bottle of beer. The sub was cold and the beer was room temperature. But the sandwich didn’t look stale. A few cockroaches were making a dinner of it, but given the look of the place, they were probably permanent residents. I guessed we’d missed Shane by mere hours. The dresser drawers were pulled out and empty, the only remaining clothing a few stray boxer shorts and socks that had dribbled onto the floor. In the bathroom, the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet hung open, the inside shelves nearly empty except for a couple of rusty-looking razors and an old can of shaving cream. The officers found some stray ammo inside the fold-out couch, but no spent casings or bullets. Nothing we could match to the spent rounds in the school. Still, we asked the officers to bag them up so we could see if they were the same caliber and make as the evidence ammo.

I motioned for Bailey to join me outside. “Let’s get these guys out of here and get the crime scene techs in,” I said. “The one good thing about this ungodly mess is it doesn’t look like he took the time to wipe anything down. We should come up with some usable prints and DNA in here. If Dorian gets anything out of those jackets she found in the Dumpster, we can see if there’s a match.”

Bailey nodded and turned to head back inside, when we heard a shout from the apartment. We ran in and found the lead cop, Rusty, pointing to the refrigerator wedged in the corner. It had been pivoted out a few inches to reveal a yellowed piece of paper taped to the side that faced the wall. “I didn’t want to pull the thing all the way out till the crime scene guys got here,” he said. “But I’d guess those are his email addresses-and passwords.”

Damn if he wasn’t right. They all looked like remarkably unoriginal variations on the name Shane Dolan, like SDol10586 and SHLAN1086. I glanced at the officers. “Ten bucks says his birth date is October fifth, nineteen eighty-six. Anyone?” No takers.

The crime scene techs showed up, so while I copied it all down on Bailey’s notepad, she told them what we were looking for-what Dorian lovingly referred to as our “wish list.” Okay, maybe not so lovingly. Rusty put out an alert with Shane Dolan’s DMV photo, the license plate for his black Ford F250 pickup truck, and his personal description. He assured us that would do the trick in Ventura. “If your guy’s still up here, we’ll find him pretty quick.”