Anna jerked her head in a nod, but the kind words did nothing to help the growing sourness in the back of her throat.

At the water, a balding man in jeans and a T-shirt squatted beside the body, probing it. Two more men sat on the bumper of a medical examiner's truck, chatting, one with a set of Walkman headphones around his neck. Two plainclothes cops, one male, one female, were watching the man at the body. As Anna came up, they both turned to her.

The woman cop wore designer jeans with a crisp white blouse, and carried a blue blazer folded over one arm. Her round retro-chic sunglasses might have been stolen from one of the three blind mice. She was dark-haired and dark-complected, a little taller than Anna, with a square chin and square white teeth. She carried an automatic pistol in a shoulder rig.

Her partner was a large man, balding, gray-haired, a little too heavy, with deep crowsfeet at the corners of his eyes. His clothes were straight from JCPenney, and his black wingtips and pant cuffs would be filled with sand.

Like the woman, he'd taken his jacket off, and carried what appeared to be an antique Smith amp; Wesson revolver on his belt. There was an odd body language between them, Anna noticed. When they moved, even a foot or two, the guy tracked her, but the woman was unaware of it.

The man smiled, and the woman wrinkled her nose, as though Anna were a smudge on an antique table.

'I'm Jim Wyatt,' the cop said. This is my partner, Pam Glass.' The woman nodded, cool behind her glasses. Wyatt frowned, then said, 'Do I know you? I've met you.'

'I do TV news, cop stuff,' Anna said. 'You've probably seen me around.'

Wyatt nodded, grinned again, the openness of a good interrogator: 'That's it. You were at that raid on the burglary ring, God, couple of years ago. They thought the guys had killed that woman on Marguerita.'

Anna pointed a finger at him, felt as though she was babbling. She didn't want to look at the body; she'd do anything to delay it. 'You were the guy who kicked the door.'

A good piece of tape: the cops filtering across a yard to the target house while a neighbor's dog went crazy, barking; Wyatt drawing his gun, waiting for others to get in position, but not waiting too long, because of the dog. Then he turned the corner of the house with two guys in body armor and they took down the door.

Creek had gotten the good shots and the cops'd taken three men, a woman, and two hundred pieces of stolen electronic equipment out of the place, everything from home blood pressure kits to cell phones and bread machines. There really hadn't been much danger, but the tape was nice.

Stalling: Don't be Creek, don't be Creek.

'That was me,' Wyatt said, flattered that she remembered, pleased to meet her again. He'd been a hero for several hours. 'Are you still doing the TV stuff?'

Anna nodded: 'Yeah, same stuff, cops, fires, fights, accidents, movie stars.'

'A lot of police officers don't like to be called cops,' Glass said, breaking in.

'I know,' Anna said. She glanced toward the blanketan army blanket, olive drab. The man squatting next to it was doing something to an exposed paper-white ankle. Looked too small to be Creek, and too white. No shoe or sock. The skin wrinkled by the water. The victim's face was still covered by the blanket. To Wyatt, she said, 'I hope to God this isn't my friend.'

'His ID said Jason O'Brien.'

She almost fell down. Jason? She'd never thought of Jason. A sense of relief flooded through her, followed instantly by a sense of shame, that she should be so relieved.

Wyatt said, 'Are you all right?'

She caught herself. 'Aw, jeez. Jason?'

'He had a card that said to call you,' Glass said.

Wyatt, looking down at the blanket, said, 'So you're pretty close?'

'Not close, but he's a friend. He was our backup camera, our second camera when we needed one. He used to call me Mom,' Anna said. 'He's a kidwas a kid.'

'Did you see him yesterday?'

'Yeah. He was shooting with us last night. He split around eleven.'

'You didn't see him after that?' Glass asked.

'No.' Anna explained about the animal rights protest and the jumper, and Glass and Wyatt nodded. They'd seen the stories. 'So what do you think?' Anna asked. 'Drugs?'

Wyatt shook his head. 'Wasn't drugs: why'd you think it was?'

Anna shrugged. 'Jason did a lot of dope, I think. He got weird.'

'All your friends do dope?' Glass asked.

'A couple,' Anna said. She wasn't intimidated: there was no crime in knowing dopers. 'Jason did some crank, a little crack when he could get it. He liked cocaine, but he couldn't afford it most of the time. Some weed.'

'Why'd he leave last night?' Wyatt asked.

Anna shook her head. 'I don't know. He said he was gonna ride all night, but then, after the jumper. I don't know.' She thought about it for a second: now that he was deadif he was dead, she thought, if that was Jason under the blankethis hasty departure seemed even odder. 'He said the jumper made him feel bad and he was gonna take off. We all figured that was bullshitthe rest of the crew and me. Maybe something was going on.'

'Why was it bullshit?' Glass asked.

'Cause I've seen him crawl inside a car with a decapitated woman to get a better shot, and the head was laying on the front seat with the eyes still open and a smile on the face,' Anna said. 'How's a jumper gonna bother him? There wasn't even any blood.'

'Huh.' Wyatt nodded, and stared north up the beach, toward the mountains hanging over Malibu, like the hills might have the answer. When it didn't come, he sighed and said, 'Will you take a look? Just to make sure we've got the right guy?'

Anna nodded, swallowed, found she had no saliva in her mouth. She saw dead bodies all the time, but not dead friends.

Wyatt said, 'Frank, lift the corner of the blanket, huh?'

Frank stopped whatever he was doing with the leg and picked up the corner of the blanketWyatt was watching her faceand there was Jason.

No drugs, this one.

He was lying on his stomach, his head slightly downhill toward the water, his face turned toward her. He didn't look like he was asleep: he looked like he'd been changed to wax. The visible eye was cracked open, and his tongue hung out, like the limp end of a too-long suede belt.

His head looked wrong, misshapen, and something had happened to his cheeks. There was no blood, so the outlines weren't clear, but he seemed to have been slashed by a knife or razor. But that hadn't killed him: a bullet had. In his forehead, just above the visible eye, was a clean dark bullet hole.

'Aw, God,' Anna said, turning away. She felt like she ought to spit. 'That's him.'

'All right,' Wyatt said. Frank dropped the blanket.

'When did you find him?'

'He washed up about, mmm, two hours ago. People saw his body in the surf, thought he was drowning. One of the lifeguards went in after him, pulled him out.'

As he spoke, a tear rolled down Anna's cheek, and she frowned, and brushed it away. No tears. She didn't cry. Then another one started.

'He involved with any gangs? Buying dope, causing them trouble?'

'No. I don't think so. But I don't know him well enough to say for sure. Why?'

Wyatt shrugged: 'Those cuts on his face. They looked like they might be gang signs. They look the same on both sides, both cheeks.'

'I don't know,' Anna said.

'Okay. Listen, we're gonna need a complete statement from you,' Wyatt said. 'When you last saw him, where he lives, who he knows, any troubles he might have had. Family. That kind of stuff. The address on his ID isn't any good.'

Anna nodded. 'He moved around a lothe was living down in Inglewood, I think, an apartment. I've never been to his place, but I've got a phone number. We'd usually pick him up at the pier, he worked at the ShotShop photo place.'