Nick stepped into the big garage and hit the lights. Two rows of good fluorescents flickered on. Shimmering into focus below were a white late-model Cadillac Coupe Deville and a new black Porsche 911S.

“Nice coupe,” said Lobdell.

Nick remembered what the Lemon Heights Sporting Goods owner had seen that night in the parking lot. And what Terry Neemal had seen later that same night outside the SunBlesst packinghouse.

“Maybe it met Janelle and her Beetle in the Sav-On parking lot,” said Nick. “And left with her in it.”

“I like that idea.”

It had bothered Nick that Cory Bonnett disappeared two days after the murder. Now it bothered him more.

“That’s eight thousand dollars’ worth of German sports car,” said Lobdell. “I had an uncle that marched into Auschwitz. I don’t buy anything Kraut.”

Nick walked around the vehicles. One wall had shelves with boxes on them. The other had a long workbench with two vises, a table saw, a circular saw, a jigsaw, a band saw, a grinder, and two industrial sewing machines. There were a dozen leather punches hung from the pegboard behind the bench. Knives and scissors and handsaws, too. Ten different shapes and sizes, Nick saw. Gave him a weird feeling even though they were only tools.

No Trim-Quick, but plenty of other saws and shears and knives for cutting skin.

Nick still had the funny feeling inside as he looked at a stack of catalogues for leather apparel. And the little eight-shot.22 on top of them.

…artist or craftsman…terrific pride…and that is what she insulted…

An old wooden armoire sat open along the wall beside the workbench. Nick saw the leather hanging inside. Black and brown and tan and red and blue. Scraps in boxes at the bottom. Good smell. A Winchester Model 12 leaning back in one corner behind the leather like it was trying to hide.

On the wall by the office closet was a calendar with a woman in a yellow bikini standing next to a small airplane. Beside it another calendar with a woman in a red bikini standing next to a black Porsche.

“Pretty girls, guns, and shiny machines,” said Lobdell. “Fun hobbies. What kind of plane does he have?”

“Cessna,” said Nick. “Out at Orange County Airport.”

“You wonder how a little plane like that can carry enough drugs into the country to pay for a place like this. For cars and pools.”

“He just flies down to Mexico to negotiate and buy,” said Nick. “The drugs come north later. Some in cars. Some in bigger planes. They say Bonnett doesn’t even look at what he imports. Disgusted by everything about it, except for the money.”

“These hippies, you watch,” said Lobdell. “By the time they’re my age they’ll be carrying briefcases and wearing suits like their daddies. They’ll all want to work for IBM again, drive overpriced German cars. They’ll cut their hair for the dough. Tell their kids they never used dope or wore those dumbass clothes or called us pigs. You watch.”

Lobdell lit a cigarette. Nick smelled the butane, then the tobacco. Loved those smells. Liked the happy shear of metal on metal when the Zippo opened and closed. He missed the smokes. Just once in a while now. To bribe a subject, like Neemal. Build their trust in you and relax them.

Nick used his pen to prowl through the tools and containers on the workbench. Good stuff, well cared for. Some metal dust had mounded up on the grinder housing, but no clue as to what it had come from. Something for his plane? Nick thought of Bonnett’s white-handled Mexican switchblade, wondered if he sharpened it here.

Why would a guy with leather-cutting tools use a garden pruner?

He stood before the shelves and read the white labels on the boxes: pots and pans, extra blankets, pictures, trophies, sports gear, lantern and stove, sleeping bags, tent. Max had always used stick-on labels, too.

Then something grabbed his eyes. The loose bundle of material on top of the tent box. One corner of it dangling down over the cardboard. Didn’t fit with Cory Bonnett’s garage at all. Like a fly in a glass of milk.

“I’ve been looking at that for the last thirty seconds, too,” said Lobdell. “I’ve seen it before.”

White bedsheets with little pink roses.

“The curtains in Janelle’s yellow cottage,” said Nick.

“Yep,” said Lobdell.

Nick stepped up closer, leaning in. “I swear I’m looking at a bloodstain.”

Lobdell’s big head lowered over Nick’s shoulder. Nick smelled Old Spice aftershave and cigarette smoke. “Looks like blood to me.”

Nick just stared at the sheets. And the small drop of what looked like blood. It most definitely looked like blood. For the first time since he’d left the packinghouse he believed he’d found something that truly mattered.

“This isn’t the cleanest search here, Lucky. We could lose this stuff in court if we don’t see a judge and get a warrant.”

“The sheets are in plain sight, Nick. The blood, too. We came here to question someone in connection with a murder. We got permission. The garage door was wide open so we looked around. How can Bonnett expect privacy in his garage with his door wide open and a bloody sheet in plain sight?”

“No. I want it right. Let’s get a warrant.”

Nick couldn’t take his eyes off the sheets and that little stain. Damn. It was like throwing in your line hour after hour, day after day. And you finally catch a big fish you only half believed was there.

“See?” asked Lobdell. “My luck is rubbing off on you.”

“Yeah. But I still got a problem, Lucky.”

“I think I got it, too.”

“Say these are Janelle’s sheets,” said Nick. “Say she had two sets because she liked the pattern, got them on sale. Okay. I can believe that. One for the bed and one for the windows. But what are these doing here? What, Bonnett met her in Tustin, drove her back to Laguna to her place, killed her in her own bedroom, then changed the sheets and messed up the bed? Then drove back and dumped her at the packinghouse? Then brought evidence back to his own home?”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No kidding.”

No planning and unnecessary work.

“Except bringing back the evidence,” said Nick. “I’ve been doing some reading. Heard this FBI guy up in L.A. And they got this new kind of killer out now. They’re not dumb. They’re more weird than dumb. They like doing what they do. And sometimes they’ll take stuff from their victims, stuff that isn’t worth anything. It helps them remember. Neemal likes fire. These guys like keepsakes of what they did. Maybe Bonnett’s one of those. And the sheets turned him on.”

Would he take something from her as a reminder, like you talked about?

No. But unpracticed killers surprise us by what they remove from the scene simply to keep the police from finding it.

“Or maybe,” said Lobdell, “he brought them back here to get rid of them. Panicked or forgot.”

Nick grasped for the logic in the sheets but couldn’t find it. No method to the madness. “Let’s get some paper and toss this place,” he said.

“I’ll call deputies to seal it off,” said Lobdell. “I’d hate to see Tarzan and Gidget clean this all up while we’re gone.”

IT TOOK three hours to get the search warrant and back to Bonnett’s home. Nick typed the supporting affidavit while Lobdell filled in the statutory page and dictated a “hero paragraph” that made Nick sound like a seasoned murder investigator rather than the first-time lead detective he was. Lobdell kept harping on the “training and experience” that led Nick to the “strong opinion” that felony evidence would be found in Cory Bonnett’s home. Lobdell said the secret was not to overstep the warrant once you were inside. If you had a doubt, like could you open a locked chest, or could you stick your head up into the attic, then you went back to the magistrate and got another warrant. That way, nothing got thrown out of court.