The Neon was dirty, and missing the left front hubcap. When the Malibu turned, the Neon continued across the intersection behind it. Pike figured the Neon was SIS, and at least two other vehicles were maneuvering into surrounding positions.
Pike waited another five minutes before he slipped out of the taco truck. No lights came on when he opened and closed the door.
When Rahmi left his apartment, the spotters would have radioed the officers in their nearby cars, and the drivers would have scrambled to get into position. After that it was their show. For the first time in hours, the spotters would relax. They would kick back, check email, call their significant others, get some exercise. They wouldn’t be staring at Rahmi Johnson’s door because Rahmi was gone.
Pike trotted up to the same intersection, then rounded the corner to the next street and vaulted a fence into the yard butting the back side of Rahmi’s building. A dog barked, mincing and scraping at the door of the neighbor’s house, but Pike slid past the door and lifted himself over another chain-link fence directly behind Rahmi’s apartment.
Pike stood in the shadows, waiting to see if someone would turn on a light. The little dog continued barking, but a woman in the house shouted, and after a few seconds the barking stopped. Pike got to work.
Each of the apartments had only a single window on the back of the building, one of those high, small windows you find in bathrooms, but the windows were caged by iron bars. Rahmi’s window and the window in the street-side apartment were lit, but the rear apartment was dark. Pike wondered if it was filled with SIS operators.
The bathroom door was open. The bathroom light was off, but lights and the television were on in the outer room. The television being on, Pike figured Rahmi would return soon, but couldn’t be sure.
Pike examined the security bars. The bars were not individual bars, but a single cage formed of vertical rods welded to a frame like a catcher’s mask. More expensive security systems were hinged on one side, but these bars had been installed on the cheap and were likely against the building code. Pike ran his fingers along the bottom frame plate and found four screws. The owner had probably sunk wood screws through the stucco into the studs. They would be difficult to break, but not impossible.
Pike had come prepared with a pry bar. He jimmied the pry bar under the frame, used his SOG knife to pop the heads off the screws, then levered the cage from the window. Pike placed it on the ground, pushed open the window, then lifted himself through.
Rahmi had a studio apartment, with the bath in one corner sharing a wall with his kitchen. The furnishings were ratty and cheap, with a thread-bare couch fronting a discolored coffee table, a couple of beanbag chairs pimpled with stains, and a gray comforter suggesting the couch did double duty as a bed. The sixty-inch flat-screen hung opposite the couch like a glittering jewel, as out of place as a human head. Cables bled down the wall to a stack of components, then vined along the floor to a series of speakers. Rahmi had Surround Sound.
Pike wanted to turn off the lights and mute the television, but if the police were watching and listening, they would wonder what happened. The police had almost certainly been inside the apartment, and probably left a listening device. Pike didn’t want them listening when Rahmi came home.
Pike put away the pry bar and knife, and took out a small RF scanner about the size and shape of an iPod. Pike used it often in his security work. If the scanner picked up an RF signal, which pretty much all eavesdropping bugs emitted, a red light would glow.
Pike swept the main room, the kitchen, and finally the bath, then checked the big-screen components and furniture without finding anything. Pike considered the air conditioner wedged in the window. If the device was in the AC and someone turned it on, you wouldn’t be able to hear anything, but he checked it anyway. Nothing. Then he studied the shades covering the windows. The rollers were dingy and fuzzy with dust and spiderwebs. Pike scanned them, and found the bug on the second roller. It was the size of an earbud and stuck to the roller’s bracket with a piece of earthquake putty. Pike gently removed it and placed it