Page 64 of Now or Never

I took a doughnut and drove to Exeter Street. I didn’t see any cop cars in front of Zoran’s house. No one doing surveillance. I parked at the curb, and Lula and I got out and walked around to the back.

“Do your thing,” I said to Lula.

Lula took a small hammer and screwdriver out of her bag andbang!The door was open.

“Go out front and watch for vampires,” I said. “I’m going inside.”

The police go through a house and collect evidence. Knives, guns, cell phones, laptops, scribbled notes, items with DNA on them. I had the right to enter with cause, but I didn’t have permission to remove anything from the premises. Of course, I could snoop through a computer or phone or files as long as it wasn’t obvious that I’d snooped. Unlike the police, I wasn’t necessarily looking for evidence. I was looking for something that would support my theory that he was holed up somewhere on Stark Street. The Exeter Street neighbors didn’t seem to see him around a lot. His car sat in the driveway and was rarely driven. My gut told me he had a hidey-hole somewhere close to the laundromat. I envisioned him leaving the laundromat, buying drugs, getting high in a bar, and crashing somewhere a few steps away. The fact that he’d attacked a woman in the laundromat was worrisome. It suggested that he was no longer in control of his obsession. That also would suggest that he needed his drugs. And that would keep him on Stark Street.

I entered the house and did the required shout-out announcing myself. I started in the kitchen. It was relatively clean. A spoon and a coffee cup in the sink. A small amount of coffee left in the carafe that went with the coffee maker. Almost nothing in the fridge. A canister of powdered Coffee-Mate, a single bottle of beer, American cheese slices, half a loaf of bread with blue mold. There was a box of cereal in the cupboard. A bag of ground coffee. This guy made me look like Ina Garten. The dining room off the kitchen had a table and six chairs. They screamed secondhand store. Not that this was terrible. Before the fire, most of myfurniture had come from dead relatives. Nothing to see in the dining room. The living room was unremarkable. A couch and a club chair. A coffee table, an end table, a floor lamp. A television. Nothing on any of the tables. No family pictures, no coasters, no crumpled Cheetos bags.

I heard the back door open and Lula call out, “Anybody home?”

“I’m in the living room,” I said.

Lula came into the living room and looked around. “This looks even worse than your apartment.”

“I thought you didn’t want to come inside.”

“I got lonely out there, and I was wondering what kind of décor a vampire would have.”

I spread my arms wide. “This is it.”

“Did you search the kitchen? Did he have blood stored in the refrigerator or freezer?”

“No blood. Just some moldy bread.”

“Have you been to the bedroom yet?”

“That’s next.”

“I’m gonna poop my pants if he sleeps in a casket,” Lula said. “Especially if it’s a nice one. The kind with the silk lining. If I was a vampire, I’d have one of those.”

We walked down the short hallway to the bedrooms. Two were empty. No furniture. Very small. The third had a bed that had been slept in. Completely rumpled. Obviously, a restless night. No telling when the bed had last been used.

“This is disappointing,” Lula said. “He’s just got a sad-ass bed.”

There was a bedside table with a lamp. There was a phone charger on the table and a used tissue. Socks on the floor.

Lula looked down at the socks. “Here’s something,” she said.“Vampire socks. I’ve never seen vampire socks before. That’s something you don’t ordinarily think about. You don’t ordinarily think about what kind of socks vampires wear.”

Lula took her cell phone out and took a picture of the socks. There was a sweatshirt hanging in the closet. A beat-up pair of sneakers. The usual guy clothes were housed in a couple drawers of a dresser. Sweats, jeans, T-shirts, underwear. Nothing was folded. Hard to tell what was clean and what was laundry.

I moved to the bathroom. There was a grungy bath towel hanging on a hook. Deodorant, a can of shaving cream, and a razor by the sink.

Lula let out a shriek and my heart jumped to my throat.

“Omigod,” she said. “Omigod, omigod.”

“What?”I asked, whipping my head around, looking for a body, a vampire, a guy with a machete.

Lula pointed to the sink. “It’s histoothbrush! It’s in that filthy glass by his razor. He uses that toothbrush on his fangs. He scrubs the blood and flesh slime away with that toothbrush.”

I was relieved that there was no guy with a machete, but I was grossed out by the toothbrush. My gag reflex kicked in and my breakfast was threatening to leave my body one way or the other.

“I gotta see what kind of toothpaste he uses,” Lula said. “I bet he goes for the extra-whitening kind.” She opened his medicine chest, and a dead cockroach fell out. “Whoa,” she said. “That’s a giant cockroach. That’s a record breaker.” She took a picture of the cockroach and the toothbrush.

I needed air. I could have walked away from the toothbrush, but the roach finished me off.

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