Page 42 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

“You’re trying to tell me,” I said, “that whoever killed Daisy snuck back into your house last night and left a note in your kitchen telling you where to find her body?”

I waited. Tears ran down Troy’s face.

“I knew I couldn’t bring the note to the police. Not until I knew what it referred to. I knew the police weren’t watching the back of the house, otherwise how could I have — ”

“Troy!”I roared.“Stop!”

He wouldn’t look at me. I punched the metal grille dividing the front of the squad car from the back. The skin on my knuckles split. The pain was good. I hit it again three more times, roaring curses. I wanted to hit Troy. The temptation was overwhelming.

“They’ll have the note,” Troy repeated softly. He was speaking to no one. “I left it in the car when I ... when I ran to see if Daisy was ... ”

I got out. The patrol cops watched me march back up the road to the crime scene. Brogan saw me coming and peeled away from a conversation he was having with a photographer.

“Was there a note?” I asked.

“No, Rhonda,” Brogan said. “We searched his person. We searched his car. We searched the scene. I even had two officers walk the trail back toward the highway in case it had flown out the car window. There was no note. There was never a note.”

I turned and walked away. I followed the dirt path back through the three checkpoints, turned right, and headed toward the off-ramp from the highway. When I was out of sight of the officers, I crossed to a concrete barrier, sat down in the shade of it.

I took out my phone and texted Baby.Tell me exactly where you are right now.

She sent me a pin for 101 Waterway Street, Culver City.

I calculated the time it would take me to get there, told her I was on my way, and ordered an Uber. I put the phone away and sat back against the concrete barrier.

Then I cried for Daisy Hansen.

CHAPTER48

ABOUT AN HOUR LATER,I walked up the steps of 101 Waterway Street as though I were in a dream. I was aware but unquestioning of my curious surroundings: The weed-smothered front yard. The big security camera above the porch, its lens spray-painted black. Behind the screen door, an extremely familiar-looking enormous black dog started up a hellish clamor at my arrival, which Baby silenced with a single word. I drifted into the old, creaky house and sat at a big kitchen island. Baby took the stool on the other side, and a small, elderly man with thinning white hair sat at the table.

The story poured out of me. Telling it emptied my mind, which was what I needed. As I shook it off, I gently woke up to my surroundings. I was drawn out of my sadness for Daisy and my hopelessness for Troy and into the puzzle of the circumstances I had just walked into. As Baby took in the information I’d given her, I realized her shoulder was bandaged, and the big dog snoring loudly in the corner was a beast I’d encountered before.

“Why didn’t Troy just call you when he found the note?” Baby said through gritted teeth. “If there ever was a note, it’s long gone now.”

“Baby,” I said, glancing at the man at the table who’d been listening quietly to everything I’d said without comment. “What the hell is going on here?”

Baby tried to buy herself time. She cleared some bloody tissues and gauze from the kitchen island in front of me and swept them into a trash can she produced from under the sink. She was clearly familiar with the house. Her silence was making the temperature under my collar rise.

“Baby.”

“What?”

“I asked you a question.”

“This is Arthur.” Baby gestured at the old man. “He’s being harassed and threatened by psychopaths from a megacorporation who want to buy up the whole neighborhood and are trying to squeeze him out. It’s possible they killed his wife, and there’s no doubt they tried to kill him. I’m halfway to solving the problem but I hit a snag last night when I got into it with a dumbass from Fullerton and his gun-toting grandma. I’m fine. I wasn’t shot, it’s just glass from a door that exploded.”

She rubbed her bandaged shoulder, looked around, spotted the dog on the floor. “And, uh, yeah. That’s the dog from the pet-nappers’ apartment. We took him, Arthur and I. For protection. I’ve named him Mouse. Anything else you want to know?”

Some minutes passed; I don’t know how many. I sat silently reviewing what I had heard, mulling it over, examining it. I turned on my stool and looked at the man, then the dog, then the kitchen in the rickety old house. I put what I had heard together with what I’d just learned about the Daisy Hansen case. Tried to connect the scenarios. Then I gently placed my hands on the kitchen island.

“Baby,” I said. “This is a joke, right?”

“It’s — ”

“You’re out of your mind,” I said. My voice rose quickly to an earsplitting volume. “You’re out of your goddamn mind!”

Baby sighed, folded her arms, dropped a hip.

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