Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach

sit well. It wasn’t clear whether Jeannie had shouted his name because she thought he could help us or because he was involved, but I assumed the worst.
    Richard should have been there waiting for me, but his car was no where in sight, so instead of parking, I slowed the junky El Camino and studied the home of a man I’d never met.
    Judging by his house, Edward Kosh didn’t do half bad. His home was elevated on stilts, with the living space directly over a carport and outdoor shower stall. Beyond the house, waves lolled on a private beach and morning sun glinted off the sea. Like its neighbors, the home had been built facing the ocean. From my spot on the street, I was actually looking at its back. A couple of newspapers lay forgotten in the driveway and his carport was empty except for a few sea gulls scavenging near the trash cans. Apparently Kosh was already gone for the day, off earning his nice living.
    I was partly tempted to climb the steps and peek through his windows, but doing it alone and unarmed with no real assurance the place was actually empty seemed foolish. So a block ahead, I parked and called Richard. When he didn’t answer at any of his numbers, I tried to convince myself that he was an ex-cop and could take care of himself. Still, I worried. It wasn’t like Richard to be late or unresponsive, and I doubted any amount of training or experience could adequately prepare a person for a situation like ours.
    Unsure what to do without him, I used the waiting time as an opportunity to clean myself up. Otherwise, I knew my tussled hair and bloodstained clothes would eventually draw attention. At a nearby super center, I grabbed the first suitable items in my size with no regard for fashion—a pair of lemon yellow Capri pants, long enough to cover my wound, a peach camisole, and a pale green cardigan. I draped them over an arm and headed toward the pharmacy, thinking the whole time that the gash in my leg must be splitting even wider. On my way, I swiped a backpack off its display hook. Next I found the antibiotic ointment, gauze, and medical tape that I needed most, and finally enough basic toiletries to make myself passable.
    After I paid, I used the restroom to clean and bandage my leg and change clothes. I washed my face, made it up, and pulled my hair into a tight bun, the only presentable hairstyle I could manage with a rubber band and a travel-size can of hairspray. When I left the restroom, I was a regular person again. At least, on the outside.
    By 7:20, I was back in Kosh’s neighborhood, but there was still no word from Richard and no sign of him. One of Kosh’s neighbors, a prim woman in a sleek jogging suit, retrieved her empty garbage can from the curb. She followed me with her eyes as I passed.
    Again, I parked a block away and tried calling all of Richard’s numbers. He didn’t answer anywhere and I was coming up on a decision point. The men who had Jeannie expected their money in less than an hour. I’d either have to explore the Edward Kosh angle by myself or return to the hotel to make the exchange for Jeannie. The choice should have been obvious, but I kept going back to our phone call.
    Jeannie had wanted me to know something about Edward Kosh badly enough to take a beating for it. Whatever that was, it seemed I owed it to her to visit his house, to at least do
something
. I thought about his nosey neighbor and worried about being seen.
    Then I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, thinking about that neighbor’s trash.
    She’d been hauling in her garbage can, but I remembered the gulls in Kosh’s carport. He hadn’t set his own cans out. Then there were the newspapers in his drive—two of them. I grew hopeful. Certainly Kosh knew that Jeannie had leaked his name. Maybe that was the reason his house was empty.
    Feeling better about the odds, I decided to give it a shot. I moved both cell phones, mine and Kurt’s, and all Trish’s cash into my roomy new backpack. A crumpled paper was wedged among the bills. I unfolded it and read what looked like somebody’s fast addition problem—a series of four numbers down the left side of the page and corresponding values down the right. Numbers in the first column looked like dates with no slashes to separate the day, month, and year. The second column had three numbers—89, 75, 84—summed at the bottom. The fourth spot was blank; someone had drawn a question mark there.
    That’s what my whole week was beginning to feel