“Our studio and the bathroom. We turned his bedroom into a studio, so now he sleeps out here. He keeps his clothes and stuff in the boxes.”
He shrugged toward the boxes lining the wall.
I took a quick tour through the bungalow. The studio was a small, dim room split by a narrow table. Swivel chairs and microphones faced each other across the near end of the table. A desktop computer cabled to two oversized monitors filled the opposite end. Acoustic foam panels covered the ceiling and half of the walls. The remaining half was covered by even more photos. A large poster showed a glowing UFO hovering above the desert. Two words stood tall beneath the spacecraft. they’re here.
I wandered back to the living room.
“Your podcast is about UFOs?”
“Sometimes. But our show wasn’t about UFOs.”
He made air quotes when he said “about” and seemed irritated.
“We explored subjects the mainstream media suppresses. Government programs, corporate conspiracies, whatever. And, yeah, UFOs. We did crashed and captured vehicles, reverse-engineering alien tech, the Roswell Grays—”
My head was beginning to hurt.
“The Roswell Grays?”
“The aliens recovered at Roswell. Big heads, big eyes, gray skin. The Grays.”
He showed me how big by raising his hands above the sides of his head.
I changed the subject.
“Josh told Adele he was on a new story.”
Ryan shook his head before I finished.
“This is bullshit. He took his laptop. He took his toothbrush, and he didn’t even tell me he was going. Asshole.”
He sounded hurt.
“He probably told someone, Ryan.”
I asked the same questions I’d asked Adele.
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
Ryan snorted.
“Please.”
“A boyfriend?”
“He’s straight.”
“Other friends? Traci Tanner? Davis Kleimann?”
Ryan glanced up, sneering.
“Kleimann’s a dick. Traci’s okay, but she hasn’t been around for years. Who gave you their names? Adele?”
“If not them, who else?”
“Besides me?”
“Yeah. Anyone.”
Ryan’s brow furrowed, but he came up empty.
“Not really.”
“Okay, if friends are out, can you get us into his email?”
Ryan blinked.
“His personal email?”
“Yes. Can you access his account?”
“We have a show account, but I can’t get into his personal. I don’t know his password.”
“Then check the show account. Do it tonight and let me know. Where does he keep his financial records?”
Ryan stared as if I’d spoken Urdu.
He said, “What?”
“Receipts for payments. Bank statements. Adele gives him cash, so he probably deposits the cash into a checking account. Where does he keep his bills?”
“How would I know?”
If Josh deposited the cash into a checking account, most of his banking was likely done online, but we still had to check.
“Okay. We’ll start in this room, and take it room by room.”
“Start what?”
“Detecting. Digging through these boxes and going through his things. You asked how we find him. We snoop.”
Ryan didn’t complain. We divided the boxes and quickly went through them. Many were taped and hadn’t been opened in years. Most contained clothes or books, and one held Josh’s high school yearbooks. He looked glum in his ninth-grade photo. Ryan’s picture was on the same page. Ryan’s chin was fierce with zits, but his eyes were happy. When we’d gone through most of the boxes, I stood.
“I’ll check the kitchen. You finish the boxes, okay?”
“It’s just clothes and stuff.”
“It’s clothes and stuff until it’s something else. Keep looking.”
I moved into the kitchen and went to work. No notes were taped to the fridge saying Gone to Tahoe. The drawers and cupboards contained nothing helpful. All I found were takeout cups and crumpled soda cans spilling from a plastic bin and a mountain of bloated garbage bags piled against the kitchen door.
I moved to the dining table. The table sat in the corner beneath the casement window. The mauve bungalow sat directly across the zigzag concrete courtyard. It had a maroon door with what looked like vines across its face, and a curtained casement window beside the door. When I looked, the curtains swayed, as if someone had closed the curtains when they saw me.
I said, “Ryan?”