Page 71 of Killer Clone

Again, footsteps sounded behind him.

Fett managed to pivot his whole body this time. All he saw was a guy with his hood up on the other side of the road, hands buried in his pockets, a small backpack hanging from one shoulder. He didn’t look like much. If they came to a fight over the steak house dumpster, Fett would tell that guy where to step off.

He increased his pace. Or tried to. His shoes were two sizes too big, and the heels had been almost worn away when he’d accepted them at the church. Now he wished he’d held out for something better.

But five more yards, and he’d be fishing for the good stuff. Three yards.

There he was. Finders keepers.

All this stuff was his now.

Fett threw open the lid and gazed inside. A plastic tray, the lid still on. Someone had dumped last night’s leftovers as soon as they’d left the restaurant. This really was his lucky day.

He reached inside just as the footsteps sounded again—so close.

Fett swung around. “Hey, man, you need to find your own?—”

He didn’t get to finish his warning. The man in the hood was right behind him, gripping a tire iron in both hands, that backpack open and on the ground beside him. He swung, smashing the weapon hard on the top of Fett’s head.

And, just like that, it was lights out for Fett.

31

Hagen lifted his foot from the gas. “You sure this is the place?”

Stella checked the map on her phone. “Uh-huh. This is what Mac sent us. This is the last place Patrick Marrion searched for in his browser history.”

Hagen peered out the window. “If this is where he’d come to see his friend, his friend wasn’t living well.” There were no student dorms here and no apartment buildings. Each stretch by the river featured one abandoned warehouse after another.

One day, some development firm would no doubt gussy up this part of the city and turn all these warehouses into art galleries and cafés and the kind of apartments tech bros and famous country singers vied for. Until then, they stood derelict.

A pigeon flew through a broken window. A roof of rusty corrugated iron flapped in the wind. Weeds grew in the cracks in the asphalt and bent like grass. Behind them, a freight train trundled south over the bridge.

No other car was on the road, and no one walked down the empty sidewalk.

Hagen pressed the gas. “You know what he was looking for?”

“I’m not sure he knew what he was looking for. There.”

Stella pointed at the entrance to what appeared to be an underground parking lot. Hagen drove toward it. The lot sat under a two-story office building and warehouse that might once have managed portside logistics, but which now couldn’t manage to keep the plastic sheeting in the empty window frames from tearing away.

There was no gate. They drove in.

The light fittings in the underground lot were without bulbs, and the midday sun, hidden by thick clouds, reached little farther than the bottom of the entrance ramp, where water dripped on the Explorer from an overhead pipe. An old Honda Ridgeline was parked just inside the entrance, and that was the only vehicle they saw.

“What are the chances this is Patrick Marrion’s truck?”

“Pretty high.”

Hagen pulled in next to the once-sporty truck. Stella was out of the SUV before he turned off the engine. By the time he joined her, she already held her phone next to her ear as she read off the license plate to Mac.

The Ridgeline was filthy. The bed contained a scattering of dead leaves and some old rainwater that had failed to find a way out. The sides were rusted and dented, and the boxy front told Hagen it was an older model. He looked through the grime on the side window, peering through the eyes of a smiley face drawn in the thick layer of filth.

There was little to see. An empty phone mount on the dashboard. A tear in the side of the driver’s seat that revealed the yellow foam inside. A jumbo cup stuck in the holder.

Stella lowered her phone. “It’s Patrick’s. Forensics is on the way.”

Hagen stepped away from the truck. There was no sign of blood inside the cab, no indication that anything had happenedto Patrick Marrion in the parking garage. But this truck was now evidence, a link to his last moments.

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