Alexander Jablokov - Brain Thief Read Free Page A

door. It included a blacksmith and an office-supply distributor. Bernal walked across the parking lot, looking around for a concealed place Muriel might have put her car the previous night.
    The rear end of a newer office building poked out of the scrub woods. Where there were office buildings, there were parking lots. He trotted down a rough track between adolescent trees, hopped a mucky stream, and
    stepped over the crisp asphalt rim of the other parking lot.
    At this hour of the morning, there were few cars in the lot. Again, no Mercedes. But a police car had pulled up next to a Dumpster and was taking a report from a young guy who stared sadly at a dent in his car door, not looking up.
    “Why were you parked here?” the cop asked.
    “What? Look at this!”
    “I see it, sir. This isn’t a residential lot.”
    “I told you. There was a party. I live over at the McClintock Apartments. Some bozo, last night, was having this humongous party. Filled the parking lot. And some of the grass too. I got home, couldn’t find a spot. So I parked here.”
    “It’s marked ‘no overnight parking.’ ”
    “I know. Jeez, I know.”
    The cop looked over at the Dumpster. “Looks like something hit it. Pretty hard. Shoved it right over into your car.”
    “Yeah. So what are you going to say?”
    “Say? I’m not giving you a ticket.”
    “Thanks.”
    “But you had a fender bender with a Dumpster. I’ll just write that up. No vehicle, no evidence. This’ll be between you and your insurance company.”
    “I’ve talked to them before.”
    “Good. You know the drill, then.”
    The world looked full of troubles this morning. Bernal was about to head back to Muriel’s, to reconsider and regroup, when he looked past the dented Dumpster and noticed something.
    _______
    From this angle,  he got a view of the back of the warehouse. Whoever had been responsible for the adaptive reuse of the old warehouse had bermed and stabilized the building’s rear. The berm was planted with decent sod. A few of the tenants had fenced their back areas for additional storage, but Ungaro, at the end, had not.
    A black angled line led up through the grass to the rear of Ungaro’s lab. Something had torn the grass out in a wide strip, exposing earth.
    He looked down. A shopping cart lay on its side in the dark water. The stream curved along the warehouse’s rear, where it managed to hold on to a bit of its old flood-plain after everything else had been torn away. Opposite the warehouse, backyards pushed stockade fences against the willow trees. The patch of scrub woods, reeds, and weeds existed as a tiny wilderness behind the world that faced the roads.
    Bernal slid down the slope. The mud was slippery and stank. Each stick and reed wore a garland of soggy grass, souvenir of recent spring floods. He stepped on the cart, which wobbled but didn’t sink any further, and made it safely across the stream.
    Something had come through here. And recently. Weeds had been pressed down, their broken leaves not yet wilted. Reeds had been torn away and lay in clumps in the slow-flowing water. The mud was too soft for footprints to remain clear, but it did look like they were deep and there were a lot of them, as if two or more people had hauled something heavy through here. Had whoever it was smashed into that Dumpster? He looked back. It lined up. That hadn’t been caused by anyone carrying anything. It had been done by something heavy, a vehicle, moving pretty fast.
    The rear door of Ungaro’s lab, painted metal over thick wood, was scored with bright new scratches. It hung open, revealing darkness beyond.
    Bernal pushed it open and stepped in. “Madeline? Madeline Ungaro?” Then, more quietly, “Muriel?”
    A combination padlock meant for the door hung on a wall hook. Bernal’s guess was that the door was normally locked. But last night it had not been.
    Light streamed in through windows overhead, illuminating high fiberboard shelves loaded with