Hunter's Trail

“You’re part of a new missing persons support program,” Jesse said promptly. “Checking to see if they need anything, finding out more about the victim—the missing person, I mean. That way you don’t have to try to sound like a cop; you can just talk to them. The most important thing is to look for connections between Leah and Kathryn. I looked around this morning, but I couldn’t find anything on the Internet.”

It was weird to me, how he kept referring to the victims by name. I hadn’t dealt with many dead bodies, but when I had to, I always thought of them as “the body” or “the victim.” I wondered if Jesse was trying to humanize them on purpose, to remind me. Or maybe that was just really how he thought of them.

Either way, I couldn’t really blame him.

“You seem nervous,” Jesse observed. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be great.”

I blew out a breath. “I just wish you were going with me.”

“I wish I was too, but we don’t have that much time before this guy can change again. Splitting up makes the most sense.”

He was right, I knew. “Okay,” I said finally. “I’m ready.”

More or less.

Chapter 17

Leah Rhodes and her roommate had shared a two-bedroom apartment in a big concrete box of a building just off the 405 freeway, near the border of West LA and Culver City. I had the van’s window down as I parked, and the sound of traffic from both the 405 and Sepulveda was loud enough that conversation would have been difficult. It was a still, cool January day, with no breeze to speak of, and when I stepped out of the White Whale at Leah Rhodes’s apartment, a thick haze hung over the city like a canopy of poison. The chemical scent of car exhaust stung my nose. The building’s architect hadn’t bothered adding balconies to the apartments, and I understood his reasoning.

Cane in hand, I limped up to the apartment directory and was extremely grateful to see that the Rhodes and Lewis apartment was on the first floor. I pressed the button, expecting to have to go into a long detailed explanation, but to my surprise Leah’s roommate bought the consultant story with absolutely no fuss and buzzed me in.

Inside the building, I made my way down the hall and found Amanda Lewis waiting for me in her apartment’s doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed over her chest. She was a short, plump Caucasian woman in her late twenties with strategic clothing that probably made her look slimmer than she really was. She had long, white-blonde hair tied in a careful, high ponytail, almost at the very top of her head, and bubblegum-pink lip gloss that practically showed my reflection in its shine. “You’re Laverne?” she asked, a little doubtfully. “You don’t look like a Laverne.”

“That’s just what I keep saying,” I said lightly as I approached.

Amanda Lewis led me into a small, cluttered living room. All of the furnishings, down to the threadbare rug, had obviously outlived their expiration date from IKEA. She pointed me to a lumpy sofa, and lowered herself into an adjoining armchair that had been dressed up with a pale-blue cover. I sat down in one of the two obvious ass-dents and pulled a little reporter’s notebook and pen out of the blazer pocket. Jesse had instructed me to download an app that would let me record the conversation on my phone, and had been comically dumbfounded when I informed him I didn’t have a smartphone.

“I’m not sure what I can tell you,” Amanda began, a little frown creasing her features. She wasn’t really pretty but had access to high-quality makeup that enhanced her pleasant-enough features until she was almost there. “I mean, Leah and I have been roommates for . . . oh, five or six years. But we aren’t exactly close.”

“You’ve been roommates for that long, and you’re not close?” This felt so weird, learning about someone after I’d already covered up her murder. I had to work not to use the past tense as we talked.

She bobbed her head. “We roomed together at UC Riverside; randomly assigned, you know, by the school. We got along okay, stayed out of each other’s way real well, but we didn’t, like, socialize. When we both got jobs in West LA—she’s an industrial designer at this place on Overland; I manage a restaurant at the Bev Center—it just made sense to get an apartment up here together.” Amanda gave me a tiny smile. “Leah always says that there’s friend chemistry and romantic chemistry and roommate chemistry, and we have the last one like nobody’s business.” For the first time, a look of genuine emotion came over her face. “I hope she’s okay,” Amanda added softly.

I clenched my jaw so I wouldn’t wince. Sorry, Amanda. I threw her into a furnace twelve hours ago; she’s probably not okay. “Is there someone she may have decided to go visit? A friend or boyfriend?”

“The cops at the station asked me that too,” Amanda sniffed. “I don’t know of anywhere she’d go and not be back by now. She has a boyfriend, but it’s pretty casual, I think, and he’s out of town a lot for his work.”

“Does she have family nearby?” I asked.

“Her family is all in San Diego; they haven’t heard from her, either,” Amanda replied. “Diane—that’s her mom—she’s planning to come up late tonight to file another report or whatever. She’s really freaking out.”

I wrote Diane Rhodes in my notebook. “Do you know her boyfriend’s name?” I asked.

Amanda shrugged again. “She just introduced him as Henry. I don’t think I ever heard his last name. He was older, maybe in his forties.”