Free The Killer Is Dying by James Sallis Page A

done.
    Easy enough to check out. Call the station from a pay phone, say he had information, ask to be put through to the investigating officer. Maybe even pull vitals or a photo off the Internet—directories, newspaper archives, and the like.
    That left the visitor back in the room. Who hadn’t appeared to know Rankin on sight, but it was hard to tell. Maybe a doctor or hospital employee, as he’d first thought. Someone from the business office, a PA or nurse practitioner, chaplain.
    But maybe someone with a more exacting reason to seek out John Rankin.
    Two days later Christian is in the half-alley running behind Sayles’s house. Having decided he can’t let this go, he’s sniffing the wind. No way he’s getting near the police station, and he wouldn’t be able to learn much of anything if he did, but maybe Sayles brought his work home, maybe there’s a notebook, files.
    Sayles pulled out of the drive thirty minutes back. In his dress shirt, tie, and baggy slacks. Heading in to work.
    Eleven ranchstyles lined Juniper Street, most of them white or some shade of brown, distinguishable one from another primarily by the level of disrepair. Spiny, garish limbs of bougainvillea soared above rooflines. Grass and weeds flourished in cracked driveways and at curbside.
    Sayles was thoughtful enough to have a fenced backyard, a great boon to the enterprising B&E-er wishing to go about his job unseen. It took five minutes, tops. Sliding glass doors of the patio had pipe in the inside runners, windows appeared to be nailed shut. But the narrow door to the utility room didn’t quite meet the casing; its lock popped when he ran a knife blade in. Chances were excellent that he’d be able to come out the same way and reset the door, leaving no trace of his visit.
    Interestingly enough, the living room looked to be used primarily as a place to sleep. No litter of glasses, food, newspapers. Just blankets folded and stacked at one end of the couch with a pillow atop them. The bedroom, on the other hand, looked as though it were waiting for a photo shoot, bed made, everything in place, white tile gleaming from the small bath beyond.
    Woman’s house, no doubt about that from the shelves of figurines and trinkets in the living room, curtains, matched furniture, reproductions of paintings on the walls. None of it recently dusted, though. And that bedroom looked unused. Some unusual smells behind those of cleansers and a plug-in room freshener.
    The kitchen was getting most of the action these days. A little settlement of cup, coffeemaker, coffee can, and measure on the long mesa of counter. Two-cup pan and lid, bowls, spoons in the drying rack by the sink, four cans of Progresso soup in the trash. Couple of bottled beers, jug of water, cold cuts, and eggs in the refrigerator. Half the cold cuts missing and the rest in need of medical attention. The eggs were two weeks past sell-by date.
    The table meanwhile had gone home office. Bills removed from envelopes and in a neat stack, checkbook as paperweight. Not a lot of interest in the checkbook entries—the usual City of Phoenix, APS, Qwest, Southwest Gas, two credit cards—except for the medical. Man paid bills on time and, when he could, in full. Monthly partials, though, to two doctors, an online pharmacy, and Good Samaritan Hospital. Occasionals to LabCorps and a medical imaging firm in Tempe.
    That accounted for the missing woman and the smells in the bedroom. Also for the balance of $376.92 in the account.
    So where was she? Not dead, or there’d be indications: photos, service card, sympathy cards, mortuary bill, deposit check. Back in the hospital, then?
    A pocket-size leather-bound notebook sat beside the bills and checkbook, Sayles’s name embossed in gold on its cover. Christian opened it. The single entry was on the inside cover, From Josie, Christmas ’04 .
    A third of the pages were missing from the legal pad alongside. The topmost of those remaining had a listing in