Strathmore Drive is a short hilly side street that diagonals toward the U. One end dies at the campus’s western rim; the other bottoms at the shaggy eucalyptus windbreak, manicured grass, and neatly arranged headstones of a vast veterans’ cemetery.
The block was lined with multiple dwellings ranging from apartment buildings dubiously maintained because they housed students so-why-bother? and newer, larger structures.
I arrived before Milo, found the address, and scored the last parking spot, directly across the street.
Amanda Burdette lived in the largest building, a four-story mass that stretched to the sidewalk without aid of landscaping and took up a sizable chunk of the block. The slope of the street created the illusion of a behemoth on the verge of toppling. The complex was gray stucco except where occasional balconies painted blue-black jutted like bruises. Subterranean parking made up the entire ground floor. Three mesh-gated driveways with call boxes, each topped by a CC camera and an equal number of pedestrian doors, unmonitored.
As I sat there, a woman in a sari exited one of the doors pushing a twin stroller. Moments later, an adolescent in a U. sweater, fixated on his phone, stumbled downhill toward the village. Next: a girl in short-shorts distracted by earbuds, wheeling a bike out of one of the pedestrian doors. Then the far door opened and an older, bearded man in a tweed jacket, cardinal-red pants, white socks, and sandals shuffled by.
Not much auto traffic until Milo’s unmarked sped up from the direction of the cemetery. He stopped at the Seville, held up an index finger, and pulled into the nearest of the three driveways. Punching a button on a call box led to metal mesh sliding open. He drove through.
I got out and jogged across the road but didn’t make it before the gate closed. Through the mesh I could see diminishing taillights.
From the far end: “Hold on, I’ll get you in.”
The gate reopened. Passing a No Walking on the Ramp sign, I did just that.
The unmarked was parked in a Reserved for Management slot. Milo stood at the car’s rear end next to a man in dark-blue work clothes.
“This is Mr. Bob Pena,” he said. “He’s the day manager and the guy who runs everything. We’ve already had a nice phone conversation and he’s supplied a photo of last night’s victim for us. Bob, Alex Delaware.”
Pena was slight, fiftyish, and droopy-eyed. The work set was starched and pressed, the pants cuffed and tumbling over polished bubble-toed shoes. The oval patch on his breast pocket was embroidered Robert P.
He said, “If I ran everything, this wouldn’t happen.”
I said, “The overdose last night.”
“Someone dying, it’s not a thing for us,” said Pena. To Milo: “Like I said, we don’t get that, here.”
Milo handed me a black-and-white photocopied license.
Michael Wayne Lotz had died three months after his forty-third birthday. Five-ten, one fifty-two, brown, brown. The photo showed a balding, dark-stubbled, blade-faced man with uncertain eyes.
Pena said, “I mean, once in a blue moon you get a student gets stupid, takes something, the ambulance drives ’em right across the street to the med center. It’s close, so they don’t die.”
I said, “Mr. Lotz wasn’t a student.”
“It’s crazy,” said Pena. “How could I know about him?”
Milo said, “By that Mr. Pena means Mr. Lotz worked for him.”
“His sleeves were always down,” said Pena. “Even when it was hot. What do I know about addicts? If I wanted to deal with addicts, I’d work one of those Section Eight dumps downtown. He did his job, stayed in his hole, made no problems.”
“By hole Mr. Pena means Mr. Lotz’s room here on the ground floor.” Milo’s long arm stretched to the left, behind Pena’s back. Directing me to a fenced-off section, mesh like the gates. High Voltage. HVAC. No Entry.
Bob Pena said, “It was part of his employment package.”
I said, “What was his job?”
“Cleanup, odd jobs, gofer-stuff,” said Pena. Head shake. “Owners aren’t going to like this.”
I said, “Who are the owners?”
“Academo, Inc. Big company in Ohio. He came through their human resources, they send me someone, I don’t argue. Like with cleaning companies, electricians, all that good stuff. They send, I take.”
“Academo,” I said. “They specialize in off-campus housing?”
“That and some Section Eight and maybe other stuff, I don’t know,” said Pena. “It’s a good business, big schools, you get too many students for the dorms. The U. refers them over here when they’re full up. Also, some of the rich kids don’t want to live in dorms. We’re a lot nicer than a dorm.”
I said, “Does the company gets subsidized by the U.?”
Pena frowned. “I don’t know the details, my job is to take care of the physical plant, fix problems. Not problems like this. This is like... I don’t know what it’s like.”
Milo said, “Where’s Lotz’s car?”
“I’ll take you,” said Pena, pointing to a far corner. We followed him across the garage to a twenty-year-old gray Volvo squeezed into a space marked No Parking. Dusty, rusted in spots, the tags four years old.
Milo looked inside the car, walked back to Pena. “Okay, let’s have a look at his place.”
“I kept it locked for you,” said Pena. Eager to take credit for something.
“Appreciate it, Bob.”
“Whatever helps. No one’s been in there since the other cops last night and the EMTs and then the morgue guys. So what was it, heroin?”
“We don’t know yet, Bob.”
“Probably heroin,” said Pena. “That needle and spoon next to him?” Head shake. “Go know. You do your best to run a tight ship — I was on a dry cargo in the navy. I know what tight ship really means.”
“Could we see the hole, Bob?”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry, I’ll let you in. Then I got to send an email to Ohio.”
Selecting a key from a clattering ring, Pena unlocked the mesh fence and led us into a dim concrete area half filled with stacks of labeled boxes. Bulbs. Hoses. Filters. Pipes. Fittings.
A slab-metal door led to a larger storage space throbbing with pneumatic and electric noise. Both side walls hosted equipment: a bank of water heaters, another of A.C. condensers. Electrical panels, a spaghetti snarl of phone hookups, overhead conduits, pipes, insulated ducts.
Past all that, a wooden door with a cheap lock opened to a windowless afterthought. Michael Lotz’s domicile was ripe with body odor and the vinegary reek of heroin, the walls barely plastered drywall. Generous for a jail cell; as a dwelling, sad.
A doorway to the left led to a prefab fiberglass bathroom. Toilet, sink, prefab shower, all in need of cleaning. I thought about Red Dress’s final moments.
In the main room, a single-sized mattress sat on a sagging box spring, next to a fake-wood dresser and chair and a black plastic lamp. Black sheet, purple-and-black quilted covers pushed toward the foot of the bed, much of the cloth dripping onto a vinyl floor. Two pillows bent into kidney-bean shapes, one black, one yellow, leaned against the wall.
Curling, Scotch-taped posters abounded: naked women, women in bikinis, high-octane race cars and homologated street versions. Grown man living in the fantasy world of a teenage boy.
On the dresser, a hotplate, a six-pack of Bud Lite, an almost empty bottle of Jose Cuervo, a dozen candy bars, plastic dishes and pot-metal utensils for one. Nearby, tucked in a corner near the entrance to the bathroom, a brown mini-fridge burped and wheezed.
The room was pleasantly cool, the beneficiary of being belowground plus an industrial-strength ventilation system. Trade-off for the wasp-drone coursing through the walls, bottoming the refrigerator’s percussion.