The interior lights died. So did the spots brought in to illuminate the search. She picked up a bottle marked LUMINOL and started spraying it around.
Luminol is a compound that glows when it’s exposed to certain substances, like the iron in hemoglobin. When someone tries to clean up blood, traces of it are left behind; spray that area with luminol, and the chemical glows blue for a brief period.
There were a few blood spatters immediately visible on the van floor close to the doors. The more Getty sprayed, the more spatters appeared, until it looked like a starry night had been superimposed on the van’s floor, ceiling, and walls.
“What the hell is that?” Potter said. The manager had come up behind us.
Sampson looked at him and said, “Evidence of a slaughter.”
CHAPTER
95
THE NEXT MORNING, Sampson and I drove to the address of the woman who’d been driving the van the night it was stolen. Lourdes Rodriguez lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, on the eighth floor of a large, midpriced, brick-faced apartment building.
At the locked front door, we buzzed Rodriguez’s apartment number, 805, and got no answer. We figured that with an apartment building that big, there might be a live-in superintendent, and we lucked out when Arnie Feiffer answered our ring and soon buzzed us in.
Sampson and I entered a foyer featuring 1970s decor that showed the dings and scratches of time and neglect.
“Not where I’d be living if I’d inherited a boatload,” Sampson said.
I agreed, thinking that I’d expect a woman in her early thirties with newfound wealth to choose to live in one of the newer, more luxurious apartment buildings in downtown Silver Spring or …
A door to our right opened. A television blared the patter of an announcer for American Ninja Warrior. A nebbishy man in his sixties shuffled out of the apartment wearing a maroon bathrobe over his clothes, slippers, and a blue-and-white yarmulke on his head.
He squinted through round glasses. “You the cops?”
“You the super?” Sampson asked as we showed him our identifications.
“Lord of the castle,” he said. “Arnie Feiffer. How can I help, Detectives?”
“We’d like to go knock on Lourdes Rodriguez’s door,” I said.
“Why? What’s she done?”
“We just want to ask her a few questions about her prior workplace.”
Feiffer hesitated, then said, “I’ll go with you, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” I said.
“C’mon, then,” he said, and he shuffled by us, heading to the elevators. Posted on one of the two was a handwritten sign that read Out of Service.
We rode the creaking, shuddering lift to the eighth floor. The doors squealed open, and we stepped out into a musty hallway with dingy rugs.
We walked down the hall to apartment 805 and rang the bell. There was no answer. We knocked, but no one came to the door. I was about to suggest we leave business cards with a note asking her to call us when from inside we heard the high-pitched mewing and cries of a cat that sounded very upset.
“A cat?” Feiffer said furiously. “No cats. No dogs. The lease is clear.”
After a glance at me, Sampson said, “It’s within your rights to remove the cat from your property. We’ll help. It’s the least we can do for you.”
The superintendent studied us suspiciously. “You’re not looking to get around a warrant, are you?”
Sampson said, “If we wanted to do that, we’d tell you we smelled gas.”
“I run electric,” Feiffer said as the cat’s cries turned frantic.
“Sounds like it’s hungry,” I said. “We could always call in Animal Control for suspicion of neglect on Ms. Rodriguez’s part. They could get us in.”
The super didn’t like that and grudgingly dug under his robe for a key ring. He found the master key and used it to turn the dead bolt and unlock the door.
Feiffer pushed the door open. A filthy yellow-and-orange tabby sprang out and darted between our legs before any of us could grab it. The cat sprinted down the hall, took a sharp right, and disappeared.
“I’m getting too old for this crap,” Feiffer said with a moan, his palm to his forehead.
I saw he wasn’t talking about the cat but about the apartment. The place was empty and swept clean.
CHAPTER
96
FEIFFER TRUDGED INTO the modest one-bedroom apartment and we followed.
When he reached the living area, he gazed around in disbelief. “She never said anything about leaving.”
“We heard she’d inherited a lot of money,” I said.
“That right?” the super said, raising one bushy gray eyebrow. “She never mentioned it, but why would she? How long ago?”
“Few months.”
“Big money and she lived here for months?” Feiffer said, incredulous.
What could I say? The man knew his place in the market.
“Could we see your copy of her lease?” Sampson asked.
“Why?” he said, suspicious again.
“I gather you have no forwarding address since she skipped out, but there will be bank and reference information in the lease agreement that might help us figure out where she’s gone.”
Feiffer considered that and then nodded.
After confirming that Rodriguez had indeed removed all her possessions, we were on our way out when I noticed some newspapers in a brown paper bag behind the door. I picked the bag up, hoping they’d give us an idea of how long she’d been gone.
I pulled out a stack of loose newspaper sections and flipped through a few.
The sections were all from the Washington Post, several going back a month or more, front pages mostly, with a few Metro sections thrown in. I kept looking through the newspapers as we rode down and noticed something that quickly became a troubling pattern.
I kept it to myself until Feiffer had gone into his apartment and we were alone in the lobby.
“We’re keeping these papers,” I said, slipping them back in the bag.
“Why’s that?” Sampson asked.
“In almost every section there’s a story about Gretchen Lindel or one of the other missing girls.”
“So maybe Lourdes Rodriguez had reason to sneak out in the middle of the night.”
“Maybe she did.”
Feiffer emerged from his apartment with a file marked APARTMENT 805—L. RODRIGUEZ. I flipped the file open, took a glance at the standard rental-agreement form, and then zeroed in on a photo of the tenant stapled to the contract.
“Huh,” I said, seeing Rodriguez in a whole new light. I took a picture of the rental agreement and the photo, then handed the contract back to Feiffer.
“That it? I’ve got to go find that cat.”
We thanked the super for his time and left. The second the front door clicked behind us, Sampson said, “What did you see on that lease?”
“My poker face didn’t work?”
“I have known you since we were ten.”
I pulled up the shot of the picture stapled to the contract.
“Lourdes Rodriguez?” I said. “I know her by another name.”
CHAPTER
97
THE ULTRA-LUXURY UNION Wharf apartment complex on Fell’s Point was the most expensive place to live in Baltimore, costing five times what Lourdes Rodriguez had been paying at Feiffer’s. We’d used the bank account and other information on Rodriguez’s old lease to track her to her new digs.
A small moving van was snarling traffic on South Wolfe Street. The front door to one of the apartment buildings was propped open for workmen carrying furniture wrapped in blankets. We followed them inside and up the stairs to 2E.
The door was open. Reggae music was playing. The workmen went in. So did we.
I trailed Sampson past stacks of moving boxes choking the front hallway, hearing a familiar voice saying, “Be careful with that! It was my mother’s!”
We stepped out into a living area with large glass windows that gave a sweeping and dramatic view of Baltimore Harbor. Wearing jeans and a loose-fitting pink jersey, Lourdes Rodriguez paced by the window, watching the workmen move a table into position.
She looked puzzled when she saw Sampson standing there holding his badge. Then she noticed me.
I stepped into the room, said, “You never sent me your new e-mail, Annie.”
For a second, the love junkie was so shocked, I thought she might faint dead away.