Chapter 9

Sunday April 30

I drove to Albuquerque yesterday. This morning I set about searching for the murder house. The neighborhood wasn’t hard to find. Starting with where Eldon’s rental car was found and plugging the businesses Imogen remembered seeing into Google Maps, I identified a few possible subdivisions. Then, checking a real estate website, I found the one with a bunch of foreclosures.

The subdivision was small, and as far as I could tell, vacant. Many of the plots hadn’t been built: they were just driveways into flat rectangles of land. Several of the houses that did exist had broken windows. All of the lawns were overrun with dandelions and other weeds.

Imogen had given me plenty of clues about the house in which she’d been held captive. Based on what she and Laurel had said, I expected I’d know when I found it: the inside would be filled with dirt and decayed plant matter of some sort. There were two houses that seemed to match Imogen’s criteria, but when I looked in through the windows, neither had any signs of plant life. I might have misunderstood Imogen on a detail or two, so I broadened my search and tried some others. Still no luck.

I decided that maybe I had been wrong to assume I’d find dead plants and dirt. Imogen had also said that the floor at the top of the stairs had been visibly damaged by the drill Laurel used to destroy the phones, so I picked the locks on every house that matched any of my criteria and went upstairs to look around. I didn’t find anything.

Something was wrong - I knew I was missing something, but I couldn’t figure out what. I resolved to look in the window of every single house in the subdivision. And still I found nothing.

Frustrated, I left and sat at a coffee shop table re-checking the Internet for an hour. I searched again for any other neighborhood that matched what I knew, but I kept coming up with nothing. It had to have been that one.

I went back. I vowed to search every house, inside and out, one by one, for any clue. I didn’t want to have to keep unlocking and then re-locking all of the doors, so I propped them open when I visited them, as a reminder to lock them back up again later. I checked every room of every house. I found empty bottles, drug paraphernalia, and discarded furniture, but no dirt-filled floors and no drill marks. Something was wrong.

I was standing in the middle of the road, pulling at my hair and holding back a scream when I noticed that one house’s front door was closed. I surely had been there, of course - at least I thought I remembered checking that one. The wind must have blown the door shut, or an animal knocked it loose. Except there was no wind, and I hadn’t seen so much as a cat. Maybe I had closed it out of habit. No - not me, not now. Something was screwing with me. For some reason I couldn’t explain, my mind was irrationally eager to dismiss that particular house, and the more I confronted those thoughts, the more desperate they became.

UN-FUCKING-ACCEPTABLE! My thoughts serve ME and ME ALONE! Up until then, I’d never had any personal feelings toward Laurel. Sure, she was an adversary and a threat, but it was all just about the case. But at that moment, I HATED her.

Once I finally fought past the deception and went inside, it was obvious that I had found the right house. The entire bottom floor was a damp shady field of mushrooms. They looked like the ones my grandmother used to put in salads, except that some were as big as my fist. Near the windows - there were no blinds - some vines clung to the walls and a few bold leafy plants dared to compete with the fungi. Most interestingly, though: in one sunny corner, the mushrooms had been largely cleared away and some tomato plants nurtured. There were also a few paths where people had obviously walked.

I went back to my car to change shoes, and to grab gloves and plastic bags, and then I began looking around.

A homeless man and I surprised each other when he came in the back door near the tomatoes. He immediately began to leave with an I-don’t-want-trouble slump in his posture. I called out to him: “Wait! Please don’t go!” For good measure, I added, “I’m not a cop.”

“Jim,” he said tentatively.

“I’m Lexi,” I said, walking toward him, removing my glove, and offering my hand. He wiped his hand on his jacket and then shook mine.

It was honestly kind of heartbreaking to look at him. I know that that’s coming from a place of privilege, but I can’t help it. He struck me as a strong, confident man at his core whose edges had been mercilessly chipped away over the years.

“I’m a private investigator,” I said soothingly. “I’m not here to make trouble or tell anyone what they can or can’t do. I’m just looking for answers. Okay?” He nodded. “Do you live here?”

He shook his head. “No ma’am. The police chase us away if they see us around nice houses like this, even if nobody’s using them. I just come here for the garden.”

“That’s yours?” I asked, indicating the tomatoes. He nodded. “Do a lot of people come here?”

“No. I’m the only one the ghosts don’t scare away. And now you.”

“Ghosts?” I asked. I week ago I would have dismissed the word choice as a metaphor, but now I couldn’t be sure.

“Well, something doesn’t want people coming around. They sure like mushrooms, though. You wouldn’t believe how fast they grow. Tasty too. I found this place two - no, three months ago.”

I smiled gratefully. “This is helpful. Thank you very much! I wonder - have you ever found anything here? An ID card or cell phone, or maybe some bones?”

He pursed his lips and shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Just a couple of teeth.”

“Really?” I exclaimed. My eyebrows raised enough that my glasses slid halfway down my nose. “What happened to them?”

“I gave them to Young Jan for her collection.”

With enough teeth, a forensic dentist could identify a person. That could be the proof of death I was hired to find. It wouldn’t be enough for an official death certificate, but it might satisfy the insurance company. So I made Jim an offer: Forty dollars for every tooth he found. He asked if he had to find him there - it would be much easier to go buy some from Young Jan - but I told him I needed these particular teeth. He and I spent hours bent over, feeling around in the dirt. When we reached fifteen I decided to call it quits.

Jim introduced me to Young Jan and I bought her jar of teeth - probably a hundred of them - for three hundred dollars and another fifty to Jim as a broker’s fee. I bought both of them dinner, plus some new slacks and shoes for Jim. I picked Jan’s brain about where the best places in Albuquerque were to find human teeth, after promising that I wouldn’t reveal her identity to the cops.