The Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman

hadn’t moved since yesterday evening.
    â€”
    B Y NINE A . M . he was back at the scene, walking the grounds with a topo map printed off Google. He’d brought his new camera. It had a nice hefty zoom lens, as close as he was going to get to the bottom of the canyon without a pickaxe and crampons and a whole lot of rope and determination.
    He went inside the house to rephotograph it, starting with the letters burnt into the kitchen counter.
    They were gone.
    For a moment, he did not move. Then he turned around, thinking he’d misremembered their location.
    The rest of the countertops were clean.
    The original photos were on his personal cell—the useless one, back in his apartment. He estimated where the mark had been, bent close to inspect the spot, taking care not to touch it. He couldn’t see evidence of sanding or scraping or erasing, not there or anywhere else.
    Maybe Divya Das’s swab had caused the mark to degrade. But that was only possible if it was superficial, and what he remembered seeing was incised into the surface of the wood. Restoring a perfectly even surface would require replacing the entire countertop.
    Message delivered, they’d come back to remove the evidence?
    He straightened up, acutely aware of the stillness.
    He shut the camera off and put it in his pocket, drew the Glock, crept through the living room, the master, the studio.
    Deserted.
    Outside to recheck the perimeter.
    He was alone.
    He fetched his fingerprint kit out of the trunk of the Honda and went back to the kitchen. He snapped a host of photos of the now-pristine countertops, then dusted, coming up blank.
    The good news was that if someone had been here doing renovations while he slept, Claire Mason’s security system would have caught them. He left the house and drove back down the hill.
    â€œYou’re back,” she squawked through her intercom.
    â€œCouldn’t stay away.”
    The gate motor growled to life.
    In daylight he could appreciate the scope of the property. It was an ode to human ingenuity, an oasis of modernity in that barren, prehistoric setting: three-car garage, electric blue pool, desert landscaping, weathered brick paths branching through terrain artificially gentled andtufted. Stark steel I-beam sculpture, patinated to match the front gate. The peaked glass brow of a greenhouse poked up from behind a neat grove of fruit trees. He wondered what she wanted with so much homegrown produce. Given what he knew of her, he could easily figure her for an end-of-the-worlder, preparing for the worst, erecting walls to keep out the ravenous hordes that would inevitably turn up in times of shortage, licking their lips, ready to feast upon the rich.
    She met him wearing the same flannel bathrobe, and he suffered through another giganto helping of tea.
    â€œTwice in twelve hours,” she said. “How can you tell me I shouldn’t be concerned?”
    â€œDue diligence,” he said. He gestured to the view. “Lovely place you have here.”
    â€œIt’s a rental,” she said.
    In the security room she played back the previous night’s footage—static, except for the arrival and departure of Jacob’s car.
    â€œIs there another way up? Fire road, or something that’s not showing up on my map?”
    â€œThe area to the north is public land. You get oddballs coming through. Hikers. That’s why I have the cameras.”
    â€œRight,” he said.
That, and cause you’re bonkers.
    Having her on duty was like running a twenty-four-hour stakeout: he left his card with her, asking that she contact him if she saw anyone go up the hill.
    For the next two hours, he tooled around Griffith Park, failing to find any way to access the canyon. A brief consult with a park ranger confirmed as much. Unless Jacob could convince Special Projects to call in a rappel team, a body down there was staying put for the foreseeable future.
    â€”
    A LL THOSE