CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The house on Oleander Street looked like it would blow over if a sudden, strong wind blew through the area.
The siding was a faded yellow with paint peeling away in long strips.
The front porch sagged slightly on one side, and several of the wooden steps showed signs of rot.
A chain-link fence surrounded the small property, though sections of it had been bent or broken over the years.
It got lost in the shuffle of the hundreds of other houses just like it along the surrounding network of side streets.
Miles parked the car on the curb directly in front of the house. He and Kim approached the front gate, which hung crooked on a single hinge. The yard was mostly dirt with a few patches of struggling weeds. An old refrigerator sat rusting near the side of the house.
They walked up to the front door and Miles knocked firmly. The sound echoed inside but no response came. He waited ten seconds and knocked again, harder this time, but there was still nothing.
“Yeah…especially if they just came from the desert where they tried to launch a woman with weather balloons and then stole a truck.”
“Yeah, or that…”
Miles peered through the small window beside the door. The interior was dark and he couldn’t make out much detail. He returned to the door and tried the doorknob. It was locked.
"We could wait," Kim said. "See if anyone comes home."
"Or we could take a look inside now." Miles stepped back from the door and looked at Kim. "But we'd need a warrant or probable cause. Though, given the nature of the case, I could argue the probable cause…"
Kim was quiet for a moment. Then she said, almost guiltily, "I'm pretty adept at picking locks. It’s not exactly a warrant…"
Miles raised an eyebrow. "That's tempting, but I don't have a lock pick set."
Kim smiled. "I do."
“What? Where?”
Without answering, Kim jogging back to the car. She opened the passenger door and pulled out her laptop bag, rummaging through one of the side pockets. She returned moments later with a small leather case about the size of a wallet.
"Where did you learn to pick locks?" Miles asked.
"My dad was a locksmith. I used to help him on jobs when I was a kid." Kim unzipped the case, revealing several thin metal tools. "I kept the hobby going in college. It also helped that I was a bit of a nerd and went through a phase where I was into magic. Really big on Houdini."
She knelt in front of the door and selected two tools from the case. She inserted them into the lock and worked them carefully, her movements confident and precise. Miles heard a series of soft clicks. In less than ten seconds, the lock turned and Kim pushed the door open.
Miles chuckled, genuinely impressed. "That was like a magic trick."
"Years of practice," Kim said, standing and tucking the tools back into their case. She then locked eyes with him, grinned, and said, “Like I said: Houdini.”
They stepped inside and Miles closed the door behind them.
The interior smelled stale, like the windows hadn’t been opened in months.
The living room was small and sparsely furnished.
A sagging couch sat against one wall facing a small but newer TV that sat on a battered and likely second-hand console table.
The carpet was worn and stained in several places.
Miles moved through the living room into the kitchen. The space was cramped, with outdated appliances and peeling linoleum flooring. A small table with two chairs occupied the corner near the back door. But what caught his attention was the mail scattered on the counter beside the sink.
He walked over and examined the envelopes without touching them. Several were addressed to James Clancy at this address. Electric bills, credit card offers, a notice from the dentist. All of them bore Clancy's name.
"Well, this is certainly James Clancy’s place," Miles said.
Kim had already pulled out her tablet and was tapping rapidly on the screen. "Let me see what I can find on him."
Miles left her in the kitchen and moved deeper into the house.
A short hallway led to two bedrooms and a bathroom.
The bathroom was grimy but functional, with rust stains in the sink and tub.
The first bedroom appeared to be used for storage, filled with cardboard boxes and old furniture covered with sheets.
Several stacks of old paperbacks tottered in the corner—Lee Child, Robert Ludlum, and Michael Crichton.
The second bedroom was clearly where Clancy spent most of his time.
A twin bed sat against one wall with rumpled sheets and a single pillow.
A small dresser occupied the opposite wall; a few of the drawers were slightly open with clothing visible inside.
The closet door stood ajar, revealing a few shirts and pants hanging from wire hangers.
Miles scanned the room carefully. There were no personal photos on the walls or dresser. No books or magazines. It was almost eerie in its simplicity.
"Miles," Kim called from the kitchen. "I've got something."
He reluctantly left the bedroom behind and returned to the kitchen. There, Kim was staring at her tablet with a focused expression.
"James Clancy has a criminal record," she said. "Two arrests, both at LAX.”
“Two arrests at an airport?” Miles said, his attention instantly piqued.
“Yeah, it looks like he was caught sneaking onto the tarmac to watch planes take off. The first time was six years ago. Security found him sitting near one of the runways at three in the morning. He told them he just wanted to watch the planes. There’s a note that requested a psychiatric evaluation. "
"And the second time?"
"Just last year. Same thing. He climbed a fence and made it onto the tarmac before security spotted him. That time he was charged with trespassing but the charges were dropped after he completed court-ordered therapy."
Miles processed this information. A man with a debilitating fear of heights who was drawn to watch airplanes, machines that existed solely to climb thousands of feet into the air.
The psychology made a twisted kind of sense.
But it also didn’t exactly feel like it fit—not Clancy as a suspect, but the psychology of it.
"We need to call Morales," Miles said, pulling out his phone. He dialed the detective's number and she answered on the second ring.
"This is Morales."
"Detective, it's Agent Sterling. We've got a name for our suspect. James Clancy, thirty-seven years old. We're at his residence now in Highland Park."
"Is he there?"
"Negative. The place appears empty but we found mail confirming this is his address. Agent Kim pulled his record. He's been arrested twice for trespassing at LAX, both times sneaking onto the tarmac to watch planes."
"Jesus," Morales said quietly. "That sure is a bullseye."
"I do what I can,” she said flatly. “What's your next move?"
"We're going to search the rest of the house, see if we can find anything that tells us where he might be."
"Got it. Let me know if you need anything. In the meantime, I’ll make sure to keep you updated."
Miles ended the call and turned back to Kim, who had turned her attention back to her tablet.
Miles headed back to the bedroom trying to figure out why the area had made him feel so on edge.
He stepped inside again and eyed the place.
The bed was unmade, and the room just had the feel of being heavily used.
But there were no personal artifacts of any kind.
He looked under the bed, checked the closet, and even looked behind the bedroom door as it stood open to see if anything was hidden between the door and the wall.
And that’s where he saw it.
On the back of the door, taped at eye level, was a large piece of paper—what looked like thick and unevenly torn butcher’s paper.
A crude sort of map had been drawn on it…
but when he stepped closer, he realized that it really wasn’t that crude at all.
In fact, it was a hand-drawn map of the greater Los Angeles area.
Not all of the streets had been named, but there were lots of landmarks that had been labelled.
The largest label of all was plain to see: LAX.
The coastline was visible on the left side, and major highways were marked with thick black lines.
But what really stood out were the colored lines that crisscrossed the city in various directions.
Miles studied the lines more carefully. They weren’t random; that was clear right away.
Each one appeared to represent a flight path, drawn in different colors to distinguish between them.
Red lines came in from the north. Blue lines approached from the east. Green lines descended from the south.
Yellow lines traced routes from over the ocean.
And they all either started or ended at that huge three-lettered label—LAX.
Miles felt understanding click into place. Was this how Clancy selected his victims? He tracked the flight paths that aircraft used to approach the airport. He watched where planes flew over the city on their descent. And anyone who worked at heights along those flight paths became a target.
No…no that didn’t quite make sense. No, there was something else going on here.
He took out his phone and looked at the map Vic had been using, with the locations marked where the bodies had been found.
He mentally applied those marks to the map—as well as the reservoir where Lisa Anderson had freed herself and the desert scene he’d been at three hours ago.
All of those areas seemed to be located between those colored lines.
But what really clicked everything into place was that Vic’s pins were all within a decent distance of areas where Clancy had drawn blue circles. They weren’t as thick and prominent as what Miles was assuming were flight paths, but they were clear to see.
“Got you,” he said quietly.
"Kim," Miles called out, excitement building in his voice as he snapped a picture of the map. "I think I’ve got something in here!”
She appeared in the doorway seconds later. "What did you find?"
"I think I might know where two other launch sites are.”
She looked at the map, her eyes wide as she nodded. “Walk me through it.”
“The lines, I think, are flight paths. Maybe certain times, maybe certain airlines…I don’t know but I also don’t even know if that’s really important to us. Just look at those blue circles. There are six of them, all labelled. And they are all within a short distance of—”
“Of where the bodies of the victims were found.”
Miles pointed to the blue circle that was located exactly at the launch spot that Lisa Anderson had seen when she’d come out of her drugged haze earlier than Clancy had expected.
And then, with a bit of hunting around the crude map, he found one positioned exactly in the same place within the desert where Clancy had attempted to launch Vivian Bennett. They were perfect matches.
“So these two,” he said, pointing at the two dots that didn’t line up with any of Vic’s pins, “are his last two launch points.”
“Okay…so do we just go check both of them out?” Kim asked.
Miles thought about it for a minute and shook his head.
“No. If he was on the run and wanting to act quickly, I don’t think he’d risk coming back into the heart of the city.
And this spot,” he said, tapping at a blue dot that was located downtown, “would take too long for him to reach. So that only leaves one.”
He tapped at the blue circle in question, slightly to the west of the desert location. “This one, right here…that would be in Vernon.”
“So we just drive out there and…and what? Look for weather balloons in the sky?”
“Yes. Or areas that would allow him to launch. Open areas without many eyes, that sort of thing. And maybe even dare to hope it will be harder for him now that he doesn’t have his little van of tricks.”
They were already moving back toward the front door as they made the plan. “We’ll give Morales a call and have her head over to the other location downtown just to be sure.”
When they left the house, Kim locked it behind them using her tools, and they jogged back to the car.
Miles slid into the driver's seat while Kim climbed into the passenger side.
And when he pulled away from the curb, even though they were still at least twenty minutes away from that Vernon-centric blue circle, Miles already found himself looking to the sky, thinking that he might see a few random weather balloons floating by, out of place… with a person hanging from them.