“He played me some of the music on his phone. Old-timey music, fiddles and banjos.” She made a face. “I can’t abide a banjo.”
“But that was on his phone. Did you ever listen to one of the actual tapes?”
“No,” she said. “I guess I didn’t. But where did they go? The police didn’t take them. They’re not on the inventory sheet they gave me.”
Peter looked at June, knowing what she was thinking. That maybe Reed had disposed of them or given them to someone else in case hewas captured or killed. Because if the police had the tapes, the investigation wouldn’t go away.
“Peter.” June stood looking at the wall by the desk. It was covered with images and computer printouts tacked up haphazardly. “Come look at this.”
He walked over. The images were captioned photos printed from news stories. Many showed houses and businesses in various stages of destruction. Some had been wrecked by wind or water, others were blackened and burned. The captions told of hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires. More photos showed melting electrical wires in Texas, the riots in Portland and Minneapolis, people breaking down the doors of the Capitol building in D.C. There were articles about climate change. Artificial intelligence. A half dozen wars. Famine in Africa. Some of the text had been marked up with stars and circles and arrows.
June started taking pictures with her phone. “Peter, what do you think?”
“He seemed very concerned about the state of the world.”
Sylvia came to stand beside them, hand to her mouth. “I’ve never seen these before.”
“He didn’t talk about this stuff with you?”
“Never.”
To one side, a glossy brochure was taped to the wall. The brochure was for a company called Resilient Systems, something to do with renewable energy. It was folded over to show the picture of the company founder, a middle-aged white guy with strange eyes that seemed to bore through the camera lens to somehow stare directly at you. June took a photo of it. “How about this brochure?”
Sylvia sighed. “A few years ago, he got obsessed with putting solar panels on the garage. Even if I could afford it, which I can’t, it rains nine months a year here, so it really never made financial sense.”
Another plane flew overhead, drowning all conversation. Peter stepped back to the big bookcase. The particleboard shelves were sagging under the weight of the contents, jammed in there every which way. Programming manuals covering six different computer languages. Thick textbooks on electrical engineering and industrial power systems. How-to books on farming and hunting. Animal husbandry. Log home construction. Build your own drone.
A lot of interests, as his sister had said. The kind of brilliant self-taught person who went on to become an inventor. Or something else.
The how-to books were all together on one shelf. They were smaller than the textbooks, but a few of them stuck out a few inches. Peter pulled them from the shelf. Tucked into the space behind was a narrow stack of what looked like pamphlets. Peter reached in and extracted them.
They weren’t pamphlets. They were old paper maps, the kind you used to buy at gas stations, held together by a rubber band. He flipped through the stack. It looked like all fifty states.
He’d seen a similar collection of maps in the Toyota’s glove box.
He put the books back where they had been. Using his body to block Sylvia’s view, he tucked the maps into his jacket.
June had told Sylvia they wouldn’t take anything from the apartment.
If the maps turned out to be nothing, he’d bring them back with an apology.
Somehow Peter didn’t think they’d be nothing.
26
With June and Sylvia Reed watching, Peter went through the rest of the small apartment. It didn’t take long. The closet had a camouflage-patterned jacket and pants, but nothing you couldn’t find at Bass Pro or Cabela’s. The cupboards held mostly sacks of rice and dried beans. The fridge had only a half-empty carton of chocolate milk. Under the kitchen sink, he found a small plastic toolbox with an assortment of specialty screwdrivers and pliers, along with a small soldering kit. For working on computers, Peter assumed. Behind the toolbox were four empty boxes that had once held heavy-duty motorcycle chains.
He held one up so Sylvia could see. “Did your brother ride a motorcycle?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea what those are doing here.”
Peter found no weapons, not even a pocketknife. He went through the bookshelf again. Just engineering texts and guides to surviving the end of the world.
They thanked Sylvia and left. The rain had let up. Lewis was waiting on the front porch with the shotgun. Peter left it inside Sylvia’s front door.
June said, “What’d you take from Geoff’s apartment?”
“You saw that?” Peter reached inside his jacket and pulled out the maps. “There was a bundle just like this in the killer’s glove box.” He handed them to her. Then he remembered the burner. He pulled the foil-wrapped phones from his pocket. “There’s a cheap phone in here. I found that in the glove box, too.”
