“Did the police search this place?”
“Not while I was there, and I made sure the door was locked before I left. There wasn’t any reason for them to search inside the house.”
“I can’t see him moving into Melvin’s loft,” Diesel said. “He’d be noticed. He couldn’t hide his car and he’d be trapped in there. One door in and one door out.”
“I suspect Gerard Gouge’s apartment is unoccupied, but it was a major crime scene. His neighbors would notice someone living there.”
“Let’s look at it anyway.”
* * *
It was easy to find Gouge’s apartment. It was the one with the yellow crime scene tape still tacked across the door.
“Do your thing,” Diesel said to me. “Knock on some doors and see if anyone’s seen Oswald.”
I pulled his photo out of my messenger bag. “He looks different without the ponytail,” I said. “Are you coming with me?”
“No. This is a garden apartment, and Gouge had a ground floor unit. I want to see what’s going on in the back. I’m sure there’s a back door.”
Gouge had the middle unit. There were three apartments on both sides of him. No one answered in the first two. An older woman answered in the end unit. I introduced myself and told her I was bond enforcement and looking for a man who might have been associated with Gerard Gouge. I showed her the photo; she looked at it and shook her head.
“Sorry, I haven’t seen him,” she said. “There were a lot of people here in the beginning, though. It would have been easy to miss him in the crowd.”
I walked back past Gouge’s apartment and rang his next-door neighbors’ bell. I heard a dog barking, but no one came to the door. I did an involuntary shudder at the thought that this might be the tongue muncher. I moved on to the next house and a young woman answered with a baby in her arms. I introduced myself and she invited me in.
“I’m Catherine,” she said. “Mary Jane Kuleski is my mom. She sees your grandmother at bingo sometimes.”
“Grandma said she ran into your mom at the deli, and she said that you knew Gerard Gouge. I’m looking for a man who might have visited Gerard.” I showed her Oswald’s photo.
“I think I saw him two days ago except he didn’t have a ponytail. The police cars and crime scene van left and about an hour later, this man went to Gerard’s door. The yellow crime scene tape was across the door and the man stood there for a minute staring at it and then he turned and went back to his car. I was outside, pushing Sara in the stroller, so I noticed him.”
“What kind of car did he have?”
“A blue sedan. It looked new. It was clean.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the help.” I stepped outside. “This looks like a nice neighborhood.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It feels kind of creepy knowing what happened to Gerard. It’s hard to forget something like that. We’re thinking of moving.”
I was about to knock for the second time on the last apartment door when I saw Diesel come around the side of the building. I joined him in the parking lot, and we walked to my car.
“Did you break in?” I asked him.
“No, but the crime scene tape had been partially ripped off.”
“I met Mary Jane Kuleski’s daughter. She thinks she saw Oswald two days ago. She said he went to the door, stared at the yellow tape, and left. He got into a blue car.”
“And then maybe he came back at night and let himself in through the porch slider,” Diesel said.
“Hard to believe he would try to live here.”
“Easier to believe that he came back looking for something.”
“Gerard’s laptop,” I said. “The one I took from the bedroom.”
We got into my car and sat for a moment.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked.
“Lunch,” Diesel said.
I drove out of the apartment complex, got onto the highway, and five minutes later I pulled into the parking lot to Lumpy’s Diner. The name wasn’t great, but the menu consisted of seven pages of classic diner food that was absolutely edible.
We were lucky enough to get a booth by the window, giving us a view of the highway. Bucolic waterfalls, cows grazing, and fields of wildflowers are okay if you’re on vacation. If you’re a working girl eating in a Jersey diner you want the urban energy of traffic.
I ordered a vanilla milk shake, grilled cheese, and fries. Diesel got a burger.