Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Something about the Fowler residence made Cloister uncomfortable.
It wasn’t the worst place he’d been. There was competition for that one.
Trap houses where toddlers had been playing with syringes like blocks, burned-out meth labs with bodies curled in tight fetal balls of leather, and the warehouse that traffickers had used to store people like they were livestock.
Except they’d have watered livestock.
Those were in the top five. The Fowler house couldn’t compete; it was just…sad.
It had been a family home once. You could still see the bones of it: the shape of picture frames faded into the wallpaper where family portraits had once hung, the dents left in the linoleum from the legs of a kitchen table big enough for family meals, and the scribbled yearly line of growing bodies recorded on doorframes.
Some of it had probably gone when the parents died—keepsakes to friends and family, whatever the sister had wanted to take away with her—but Fowler had worked to get rid of the rest. He’d stripped the house down to the bare necessities.
His computer in the main room, a single hard chair in the kitchen, and a pallet on the floor in the bathroom.
As Cloister walked through it—the stink of bleach obliterating any of the normal lived-in smells of a house—it felt like moving through the physical representation of Fowler’s mind. Everything comfortable and optional pared down until only what served the obsession was left.
It made him think of his mother. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that comparison.
Bourneville seemed on edge as well. She paced around the first floor, doubling back on her own tracks as she cast around for a scent that she couldn’t quite pin down.
“Was he here or not?” Javi asked as he watched Bourneville scrape at a cupboard door with her foot until Cloister opened it for her.
Cloister doubled Bon’s lead over in his hands and looped it around his neck. The rough material scraped against the back of his neck as he absently tugged on it.
“I’ll let you know when she submits her written report,” he said. The harsh tone in his voice caught him by surprise. The short preview of the line that had run through his head before it came out of his mouth had been dry, but not starched. “Sorry.”
There was a beat before Javi acknowledged that, “It’s OK.”
Did that make them even, Cloister wondered.
It would be a relief if it did. He didn’t care for the fretful irritation that rattled around in his chest whenever he thought about Javi.
He did it often enough that the feeling was settled.
He decided that even if they weren’t even, he’d count his temper as rent on “OK” for the next hour.
Bourneville stopped in the middle of the kitchen. She whined in confusion and looked at Cloister expectantly. The game was broken; it was his job to fix it.
“There’s something, but it’s diffuse,” Cloister said. “She can’t find a direction.”
“And for those of us that don’t do dog?” Javi prodded.
That was a loaded question. Cloister was about to dodge it with a shrug instead of having to go back to the base principles of scent work.
Before he could, he rested his hand on the countertop and felt the powdery film of dried bleach against his palm.
He looked down at the dull, almost perfect, whorls of scrubbed bleach on the countertop.
“It’s scent-soup,” Cloister said. He lifted his hand and rubbed his fingers together. Soft white grains flaked off his fingers. “He washed the area down with so much bleach that it splashed the scent everywhere.”
He’d not come across it himself before. It had been one of the older K-9 handlers, retired now, who’d told them about a missing person whose OCD spouse’s reaction to the stressor had been to mop down the area so thoroughly they’d blown out the trail.
Javi grimaced and reached for his phone. “I’ll call it in,” he said. “If we’re doing it by hand, I want more eyes—”
“Let me try and reset her,” Cloister interrupted him. “The trail’s here. All she needs is a direction.”
He whistled Bon back to heel and gave her a reassuring pat. It wasn’t her fault. He dug his fingers into the ruff under her jaw, her weight pushed against his leg, as he decided between garden, car, and stairs.
Stairs won.
He used his knee to push Bon upright, off his leg, and headed back into the hall. Javi turned to watch him go, grunted a restrained—for him—sigh, and followed them to the foot of the stairs.
“What difference will this make? Javi asked. “If the trail’s gone, it’s gone.”
That was…sometimes it was like they didn’t speak the same language.
Cloister pulled the baggie out of his shirt, plastic body warm and pliable, and opened the seal to let Bon sniff and nudge the fabric. Once her ears pricked, he told her, “Fuss.”
She dropped her nose down and then raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
“You don’t bleach carpet,” Cloister told Javi. “No soup.”
Javi looked at the dusty blue gingham runner that lay crookedly on the steps. “Fair point.”
Cloister loped up the stairs after Bourneville. Her tail had gone from a discouraged pin between her legs to an eager flag. It swished as she cut back and forth across the landing with purpose, sniffing along the threshold of each door intently before moving on.
She finally stopped and scraped, just once, at a white brass-handled door. Alert delivered, she crouched down, ears forward and chin on paws, as she waited for Cloister to do his part. He stepped over her, grabbed the handle, and pushed the door open.
It was the main bathroom. Like the rest of the house, it had been stripped of home comforts, but personality had lingered.
The floor was covered with large off-white tiles patterned with stylized blue flowers, the colors close to those in the navy vanity that housed a dye-stained white sink.
The large square mirror behind it had been covered with layers of duct tape, as had the shower screen.
Once the door was open, Bon shot in. Her nails scraped on the tiles as she scrambled over to the walk-in shower.
Maybe it had been thinking of his mom earlier that made Cloister want to tell her to mind not to scratch the tray.
A quick sniff around the drain, and she raked it twice with her paw before she barked.
“She didn’t alert for a body,” Javi said. It wasn’t a question, more like he needed to hear it aloud to confirm it to himself.
“No, it’s something else,” Cloister said. In the shower stall, Bon was still fixated on the drain, her whole body tense as if she was considering going down it after the scent. “Aus.”
The minute the command was given, Bon released, her ears relaxed and tail dropped to a pleased-with-herself neutral half-mast.
“Hier,” Cloister said, calling her out of the shower.
She got a quick fuss as she came back to heel; then he left her there as he took her place in the stall.
He knelt down on the plastic, raised dimples digging into his knees, and twisted the drain cover loose.
Long strings of old hair, slimed with soap residue, came with it.
The smell of sour water and a fruity, rotten stink wafted out of the hole.
“He should have saved some of that bleach from downstairs,” Cloister said with a grimace as he reached in to dislodge the trap. It stuck for a moment and then popped free, black goop slopping over Cloister’s wrist and staining his cuff. “This is disgusting.”
He chucked the trap to the side and wiped his hands on his thighs.
“Maybe that’s the point,” Javi said. He thumbed the flashlight on his phone to “on” and leaned in to hold it over the hole.
Cloister was no plumber, but the narrow beam of light fell into a space bigger than the u-bend he’d expected.
Something dull and metallic caught it and glinted back.
Javi leaned in, hand on Cloister’s shoulder to steady himself, for a better look.
“Maybe he didn’t want anyone looking too close. ”
Bon gripped the knotted end of the T-shirt in her mouth and braced her paws on the crusty carpet as she pulled.
Her ears were flat, but her tail was wagging in loose, excited sweeps.
Cloister yanked back on the toy as his radio crackled to life with Mel’s acknowledgement.
He dipped his chin to his shoulder as he responded in a clipped voice that conveyed the urgency of the situation.
“This is K-9-23 at Cuyamaca Road. The reinstated wellness check has turned up a hidden storage area with multiple electronics, hard drives, and paperwork related to Miles Lassiter’s kidnapping. Requesting a full scene and Crime Lab.”
Mel was one of the few employees who’d been grandfathered over after the purge of Plenty PD. She’d been on the job since she was nineteen, so it took a lot to break her composure. This didn’t, but it did make her give a short, dry whistle.
“That’s gonna come back to bite someone,” she muttered, and then flicked back to routine. “Copy that, K-9-23. Techs and forensics will be on their way to you ASAP. Stay on location.”
Cloister acknowledged that with a grunt that was half annoyance at being told the obvious and half Bourneville nearly dislocating his arm as she thrashed her head around.
He let her have the toy. As she retreated down to the hall to flop down for a good chew, he tapped back into the call to add, “And it’s Cuyamaca Road. Not Way. Cuyamaca Road.”
Mel scoffed at him. “Do not worry about that,” she said. “It’s just as clear as it was the first time.”
She cleared the call.
Cloister pushed himself to his feet and went back to lean on the bathroom doorframe.
The shower tray had been pried up to reveal the space under, the plumbing pulled out to leave a void Fowler could hide his stash in.
Javi knelt on the tiles next to the hole, his hands covered with sleek black gloves as he carefully looked through the evidence.