He read it again. All about this guy who lets his lover go then changes his mind. Then it’s too late and he goes nuts with regret. Ends up “talking to the shadows on the walls.”

He went back to the kitchen and called the Blue Beat record store again. Craig told him sure he knew Jesse Black. Local guy, great songwriter. Great singer. All of twenty years old, if that. Janelle Vonn hung out with him some. The girls really dig him.

Nick looked across the living room to the framed pictures next to the kiss-your-ass-goodbye poster. Described them over the phone.

“Yeah,” said Craig. “That’s him. Shiny brown hair and kind of pale-looking. Strong jaw. If I remember right, Janelle carried around a camera. Shot some of his gigs at the Sandpiper, stuff like that.”

Craig told him that Jesse had left Laguna to live in Los Angeles a few months ago. Going to make it in the music business. Didn’t know how to get ahold of him, though you’d figure he’d come back after what happened. Might look at Big Red in Bluebird Canyon, a crash pad for the music scene, Craig said. Probably no phones up there. Or try Jesse’s mom and dad. Local family, up on Temple Hills. In the phone book, probably. If not, the dad was a music teacher at UCI.

“You any relation to the reporter Becker? Andy?”

“We’re brothers.”

“He came by here about ten minutes ago, asking about Janelle.”

Nick thanked him again, went into the bedroom. More music posters and a James Bond Thunderball poster, too. More plants. More makeshift, thumbtacked curtains. A dresser with bottles of perfume on top, made the room smell feminine. Nick felt odd being in a young woman’s room. Unmade bed. Dirty clothes in an open hamper. Like he should have permission from her. Didn’t seem right he got to see her stuff and she never would again.

The bedsheets had galloping horses on them.

There was a collection of Troll dolls in a basket in one corner.

And hundreds of Beatle cards in a Thom McAn shoe box.

A girl, thought Nick. Just a girl.

NICK HOVERED and watched the ID men as they photographed and dusted for prints. Wished he could just pitch in and do it himself. Missed his days on the ID Bureau, the way it was all physical, the stuff that ended up convicting in court. He especially liked the dusting, liked the fingerprint brushes and the vials of powder, the way you chose a color that would contrast best with the surface. Liked the names of the powders. Dragon’s Blood and Midnight Black and Ice White. Liked the way you’d brush the dust on something that looked clean and come up with a fat thumb or a big piece of a finger. Like his dad pulling a big fish out of a little stream.

Lobdell thought Nick was wasting their time. They weren’t going to find the answers in this cottage. What, he said, she made dinner for two guys, then went to Tustin with them so they could saw off her head? Lobdell told Nick it’s always sex with pretty girls like Janelle. The guy wasn’t getting any. Or the guy was getting too much, couldn’t keep her happy. Or the guy just ripped off a piece for himself and the rest of it was to cover his tracks. Head and everything. If you can figure out the guys in her life, you figure out everything, said Lobdell. And don’t forget the Wolfman. You get a nutcase in the works, anything can happen. But it was Nick’s case. Nick was going to swim hard or sink fast. Nick wished Lucky would shut the fuck up.

Nick watched the guys writing out the tag numbers and dates, taping them next to everything they were going to print: wine and water glasses, silverware, tabletop, doorknobs, light switches, you name it.

The hard work was comparing the lifts to the cards at headquarters. Thank God for good criminalists. They’d start with guys who had a record of similar crimes. You could go blind and crazy doing that, trying to see if a whorl was a match or a bust, trying to see if you had a good identifying bifurcation or just a blood bridge. Could take hours. Days even, if you had enough suspects. Not that they’d have a lot of prints of guys who did stuff like this.

There was talk of this big computer up in Sacramento getting all the prints together and comparing prints automatically someday. Just plug in your lift and a second later your bad guy came out. Nick figured he’d believe that when he saw it. Next they’ll say they can ID a guy from one drop of blood.

BACK AT HEADQUARTERS he called the National Crime Information Center in Washington, D.C., and was passed along to Special Agent Alan Creasen. Creasen took down the particulars surrounding the murder of Janelle Vonn and coded them for entry into the new NCIC computer.

“Beheaded with a pruning saw?”

“Correct.”

“Post or ante?”

“Post, we think. The autopsy is later today.”

“I’ll need that information. And the rape analysis, too. Detective Becker, this might take a while. We’re only a year old. The computer here is hot, slow, and temperamental.”

Nick called the Gleason/Marx Agency of Hollywood. They were a modeling agency and had found work for Janelle three times. Once in a magazine car stereo ad. Once in a newspaper shampoo ad. And once for the Playboy cover that had gotten her uncrowned as Miss Tustin. Janelle’s net on the Playboy shot was six hundred because she was one of several models used on that month’s cover in a spread called “California Girls.” Nick remembered seeing it then and thinking Janelle was the most beautiful. But she ended up paying a high price for such a low wage when they took her crown away because of it.

NICK FOUND Lenny Vonn that afternoon. Same house out in Modjeska Canyon. Brother Casey and father Karl were there, too, the three of them sitting in the garage drinking beers while Lenny cleaned out the carb on his yellow and orange Panhead. Casey had a Hessians vest on. His hair was almost to his shoulders and matted. Full beard, dark sunglasses even in the cool shade of the garage.

The three of them stopped talking and watched Nick come up the driveway.

“Vonns,” he said.

“Beat it, pissface,” said Lenny. “Private property.”

Casey shifted the cooler he was sitting on so Nick could only see the back of his filthy vest and filthy hair. Under the influence of God knows what, thought Nick. Probably holding. Probably carrying, too.

Nick now pointedly regretted that Lucky had a meeting with Kevin’s principal this afternoon. Lucky couldn’t very well miss it with the boy having been suspended. But Nick knew he should have waited to come here. He hadn’t figured on a hive of Vonns, either, and that was stupid of him.

“’Lo,” said Karl. “We already talked to Andy about it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nick. “I thought she was a sweet girl.”

“Get out of here, you fascist pig,” said Lenny. “I’m not kidding.”

Nick sighed and looked at Karl. “Talk some sense into your stupid son, will you? I’m in charge of Janelle’s case. If anybody’s going to get this guy, it’s going to be me.”

“Like that makes you a-”

“Shuttup, son,” said Karl. “Let him talk.”

“Just a few questions,” said Nick.

For the next half hour Nick held his pen in his right hand and his notebook in the left. Kept them both low so the meat of his right forearm never left the handle of his.45 ACP, snugged against his hip under the tweed sport coat. Hardly wrote a note. Hardly took his eyes off Casey’s back. Casey turned a second and just stared at him, eyes hidden behind the dark glasses.

Nick found out that Janelle had lived in the old Tustin house until she was fifteen, then moved in with “friends.” Nobody could come up with a full name for any one “friend,” but it might have been a family named Lawson or Langton off of Seventeenth Street. Karl was pretty sure Langton. Nick wondered if it was the Langtons from Tustin High School. Howard a coach and the daughters about Janelle’s age.