Bret tracks Robert and searches the canyon residence

Bret’s pursuit of Robert Mallory turns suspicion into action: first he follows Robert’s Porsche through Los Angeles, then he trespasses into a secluded Benedict Canyon property where Robert has stopped. The search yields no confirming evidence, but the empty house becomes the focus of Bret’s conviction that Matt Kellner had been held there. The sequence matters less as a solved investigation than as a demonstration of how grief, accumulated clues, and fear combine to make a hypothesis feel certain.

The Pursuit Begins

After seeing Robert and Matt talk at Buckley, Bret is upset by the intimacy of their conversation and decides to follow Robert. He waits in his car on Stansbury Avenue, then trails the Porsche onto Valley Vista Boulevard. Robert’s unexpected turn toward Ventura, rather than the route Bret expects toward Century City, heightens Bret’s anxiety; he assumes the detour must have something to do with Matt and whatever the two had discussed. At the next lights and turns, Bret keeps the Porsche in sight, anxious that traffic might make him lose it.

The pursuit later becomes a routine. On an October afternoon, Bret waits near Buckley for Robert to leave, follows him along the 405 through Sepulveda Pass and toward the Century Towers, and watches him enter the building. He repeats the route the next afternoon, tracking the same turns from school to the valet entrance. Robert’s movements seem ordinary, but Bret is excited by the fact that Robert appears not to notice him. Bret recognizes that following him is becoming an addiction: during school, his attention is fixed less on classes than on waiting for three o’clock and the chance to resume the pursuit.

A Routine Breaks

Bret’s repeated route changes when Robert turns onto Beverly Glen, then toward Benedict Canyon, instead of continuing toward Century City. Traffic makes the turn difficult to follow, and Bret presses on to catch sight of the Porsche again. He feels relief when it reappears ahead, followed by a brief fear that Robert might be heading to Bret’s own home. The Porsche turns away from that possibility and descends into the canyon.

Robert pulls into the driveway of a house set back from the road. Bret waits before driving past, makes a U-turn rather than heading home, and returns to watch from farther up the street. He sees Robert leave after about ten minutes. Rather than follow the Porsche any farther, Bret turns back toward the property. This shift—from tailing a moving car to approaching the place where it stopped—turns surveillance into trespass.

Searching the Empty House

Bret drives through open wrought-iron gates past a crooked, mud-streaked no-trespassing sign. The white house, with green shutters, a stone entrance, and trees screening it from the canyon road, appears unoccupied. Bret tries the locked front door, then moves around the side into the backyard. There he finds a neglected tennis court and an empty pool partly filled with stagnant water; shaded windows and the absence of signs of habitation reinforce the impression that no one is living there.

The property offers no direct evidence connecting it to Matt. Bret does not find the phone number he remembers from Matt’s desk, nor does he identify anyone inside. Yet he experiences the quiet hillside as a concealed presence watching him and imagines several possible sources for it, including the Trawler and Matt’s ghost. He leaves the backyard, then regains enough composure to return to the Jaguar. The imagined watcher is part of Bret’s response, not a confirmed sighting.

Matt’s Clues and Bret’s Conclusion

Bret’s conviction about the house forms from details he has been collecting, rather than from anything discovered during the search. The Trawler’s attacks had been associated with missing pets: animals disappeared from a victim’s home and neighborhood before an assault, and Bret knows that Matt’s fish and cat went missing. When Matt disappeared, Bret also recalled silent phone calls and rearranged furniture, details that seemed to place him within the pattern of earlier attacks. At the time, Bret questioned his own inference, noting that the targets had included men as well as women and wondering whether Matt might simply have left town.

A separate clue sharpens his suspicion: Matt’s father says he checked the Datsun’s mileage before and after Matt vanished and can rule out the drive to Laguna Beach that others had proposed. At the canyon house, Bret connects that information with the phone-number note from Matt’s desk and concludes that the property may be where Matt disappeared and was held. His conclusion remains unverified. The search produces an emotionally decisive conviction, not proof that Robert owned the house, that Matt was kept there, or that Robert was responsible for his death.

Narrative Significance

The sequence maps Bret’s investigation onto the car-dependent geography of Los Angeles. The repeated drive from Buckley toward Century City gives his pursuit the shape of a schedule; the unexpected turn into Benedict Canyon breaks that pattern and leads him away from familiar streets into a secluded property hidden from the road. Route, distance, traffic, and limited visibility govern what Bret can observe—and what he has to infer.

The narration also keeps suspicion and fact in tension. Bret’s trailing of Robert and his entry into the house are concrete actions; the imagined watcher and the claim that Matt was held there are not established as facts. That distinction is central to the episode: each clue appears to strengthen the next, but the empty house cannot confirm the story Bret builds around it. His search therefore advances the investigation while deepening its uncertainty.