Spectre Black by J. Carson Black Read Free Book Online Page B

knew about Landry himself.
    It occurred to him that whoever had taken Jolie might be the same person feeding the dog—just to maintain the status quo.
    Landry raked the small yard, making plenty of noise. The Rottweiler decided to join in, wriggling his hind end and dashing around the small yard before wriggling again.
    A real killer.
    After raking for ten minutes, Landry took a break and looked for the home alarm sensor leading to the central control box. He found the magnet where he expected to find it: attached to the doorsill. A home alarm system like this one passed a minimal amount of electrical current to the magnet. The current arced across a very short distance between the sensor and the magnet, sending it back and forth—a cycle. If that cycle wasn’t repeated constantly, the alarm would go off. Say a window was opened, or a door—that would break the cycle.
    Landry donned latex gloves from one pocket of his jeans before reaching into the pocket of the other, past a roll of electrical tape and a couple of bobby pins until his fingers closed around a sheet of tin foil. He fed the tin foil into the narrow crack between the doorjamb and the door—it was a nice tight fit. As long as the foil pressed against the sensor, he could open the window or door with impunity. The foil acted as a de facto magnet, aping the alarm’s cycle.
    Next came the deadbolt.
    Wisely, Jolie had made her home security redundant. She had deadbolt locks as well. But any lock could be picked. Landry removed one of the bobby pins and bent it into a right angle. He removed the second bobby pin and straightened it out flat, all the way. He started with the straight pin, working it back and forth inside the lock, then added the pin with the right angle. He worked the two of them until the latch clicked.
    Inside, Landry walked down the hallway, reconnoitering, and made sure he knew the house. Next, he returned to the open door on the left. This was Jolie’s home office. Inside, he smelled stale air. The house was cool, though—Landry had seen and heard the working swampbox cooler on the roof. It sounded like a bucket of rocks.
    A black-and-white cat was curled up on the desk chair.
    The desk was clear, except for a jar of pens and pencils. He’d hoped for a laptop but found none. Under a standing lamp a printer sat on a stand you’d buy at OfficeMax, paper stacked on the shelf beneath. He opened the desk drawers, but he saw nothing important in them. He went to the filing cabinet with its four drawers, and used the bobby pin to open each of them.
    The filing cabinets were half empty. The cabinet held old files from old cases, some even from Florida.
    Who used filing cabinets anymore? These days a person could file everything they wanted on a USB disk.
    He searched everywhere for the computer and for a USB disk, but found nothing. Wondered if she’d taken her laptop or if someone else had come along and taken it.
    There was nothing else. No iPad, no tablet of any kind. Just a potted plant. He poked his finger in the pot and the soil was crumbling and dry. The pet sitter apparently wasn’t a plant sitter. He went to the kitchen and took down a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water, came back to the office and dumped the water on the plant.
    A little bit of the sun came through the slats in the blinds, and the cat stretched and then curled up again, covering its face with one paw. It ignored him completely.
    Landry liked cats. They minded their own business.
    The missing laptop (if there was a missing laptop) meant a few things. She could have taken it with her, she could have cleared out fast and hidden it, or the person who fed the dog and cat could have been charged with keeping it.
    Or whoever had abducted her in the first place also had her laptop.
    The cat came into the hallway and cried at him, turned around and went into the kitchen and stood by the refrigerator. It looked at him briefly, then focused its attention on the