Killer in the Hills by Stephen Carpenter

don’t really know the guy, or anything about his personal life. I remember that he had been married, then divorced very quickly. I vaguely recall him complaining about alimony payments to a woman he had only been married to for a year or so.
    A better explanation for his behavior was that he was terrified his visits to Karen’s site would become public. He had destroyed his boss’s career by arranging a liaison with an underage girl, and now he would face a ruined career—and maybe worse—for a similar thing. I have no idea what legal penalties he could face, but the slightest possibility of jail time for consorting with a minor on the internet would no doubt compel him to fuel up a fleet of aircraft, let alone a single jet. But Erlacher knew the kind of people who could fix a problem like that—maybe.
    Still, something wasn’t clicking. Anyone could have used that credit card to visit Karen’s site. The smartest thing Erlacher could do was stay as far away from her as possible, and deny everything if his visits to her site were ever made public. Karen had said she didn’t know who she was talking to, so she wouldn’t be able to identify him.
    If Karen was telling the truth.
    I look at her as she stares out her window, leg bouncing, mouth drawn down in a pout.
    If she was lying, then what is the truth?
    Time to call Melvin.
    We pass Normandy, then Vermont, and I turn right on Hoover. When we get close to Rampart I start looking around for an enterprising young man who might want a new $100,000 BMW.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
     
    Half and hour later I pass a grimy little body shop. I turn around, then drive onto the lot and stop at the garage bay entrance. Two Latino men are in the garage, sanding Bondo patches on an 80’s-era Cadillac. One of the men is in his forties, wearing greasy coveralls. The other man is in his twenties, shirtless, wearing gang tattoos across his chest and an elaborate mural tattoo on his back that features a nude woman driving a fierce-looking ’64 Chevy that has shark’s teeth instead of a front grille. No one else is in the shop.
    I tell Karen to stay in the car, then get out and enter the garage and speak to the men in Spanish.
    “I’ll trade you the Beamer for any car you’ve got that runs well and has a tank of gas,” I say. “But we have to do it right now. No questions.”
    The men stare at me, then at the car. I turn and walk back to the BMW and open the door and let them look at it. They murmur to each other. I hear the word puerco —Spanish for pig. The young man peers inside the car, then at Karen, then he shuts the door and speaks to me in English.
    “Burns my fingers, ese ,” he says.
    I smile sheepishly.
    “Alright,” I say in English. “Look, I’m not a cop, and the car’s not hot. I’m five months behind on my payments and the repo guys are after it. I’ve been moving it around, but they’re gonna find it eventually and I’d rather trade it to you guys for something with wheels than let those pricks have it. I’ll take any car you’ve got that’s working and I’ve never been here, okay?”
    I stare the kid down with the kind of desperation an Anglo like me would have in a situation I’ve just described. It’s not hard. The hard part is holding back thereal desperation.
    The two of them go back into the garage and talk quietly in Spanish. The older man is reluctant, but the young man is persistent. After a minute they come back. The older man takes his keys out of his pocket, removes a car key from the ring, and hands it to me. He points to a twenty year-old Toyota Corolla with dull maroon paint and bald tires. I take the BMW key off the ring and hand it to him, then open Karen’s door and she gets out. The man gets in the BMW and pulls it into the garage bay. The kid slides under the car and I hear the whine of a pneumatic drill in short, quick bursts as I gather Zach’s computer gear from the trunk.
    The older man reaches up for the garage door as I