“Should we work up a case for murder?”

“I don’t think so,” said Nick. “But I’ll want to interview him some more. He’s valuable as a witness. And if we cut him loose we might never see him again.”

Lobdell lit another smoke. “Speaking of cuts, you left out the Wolfman’s hands, Nicky.”

“Neemal has small cuts and abrasions,” said Nick.

“Consistent with defense wounds,” said Lobdell. “According to the examiner.”

“But apparently a few days old,” said Nick.

“Look,” said Lobdell. “In my opinion, if you have a dead beauty queen and an attempted murderer who finds her, doesn’t tell anybody, then says some regular-sized Hercules lugged her into a packinghouse, and you got his semen on her and his hands are scratched up-guess what? You charge him. They’ll just toss him back in the loony bin anyway.”

Harloff flipped a yellow page, wrote something, and underlined it twice. “Nick?”

“I’m not ready to charge him.”

“His first case as lead,” said Lobdell. “He’s being careful. Everything by the book.”

Nick nodded, staring at Lobdell. He knew Harloff saw it but he didn’t care.

“What are your conclusions so far, Nick?”

“The key is the dinner. Who are Red and Ho? They might have been the last people to see her alive. They might even be our A and O secretors. The wine and water glasses in Janelle’s cottage were covered with prints. All we could get were smudges and overlaps. Bad luck. Just a mess.”

Harloff nodded. Nick knew that Harloff had worked Crimes Against Persons for most of his career. So Harloff understood that too many prints was almost as bad as none at all.

“The doorknobs gave us nothing but Janelle,” said Nick. He felt like he was making excuses. He wanted Harloff to know he was going to get this guy if it was the last thing he did.

“But we’ve got good descriptions, sir. The Pepito’s hostess said Janelle came in with two men to pick up the order. Said they were both squares. Shirts and ties. Early thirties, both white. One was six foot one or so. Brown hair cut fairly short. Mustache. Good-looking but not overly so. Second was five-nine, short blond hair. Clean-shaven. The hostess is about Janelle’s age. I asked her if there was anything threatening about the men. Anything odd or off or maybe dangerous. Nervous, agitated. She said no. Two ‘full-on squares’ is what she said. One even wore a flag pin. Neither spoke to her. They took the food and talked to each other while Janelle paid for it. Maybe Red and Ho are unrelated to this. But I think whoever did this knew her. She’d been around the block enough to know what can happen. She wouldn’t take off with just anybody. I know it’s only speculation, but I think this guy hated her. Really hated her. The mutilation took time and it wasn’t necessary. She knew him. The NCIC wasn’t much help. They’ve got eight unsolved homicides with postmortem decapitations in eight different states but some go back ten years. Most recent is Illinois -sixty-four and it was an elderly woman. Nothing reported in California. Nothing with a saw.”

“What about the associations?” asked Harloff.

Nick had already talked to the California Identifying Officers Association to see if any similar crimes had occurred in other California jurisdictions. A Humboldt County decapitation murder had been closed out earlier in the year when the son confessed to killing and mutilating his mother for “mental cruelty.”

The California Homicide Officers Association had nothing but put him in touch with a half dozen other associations throughout the American West- Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, and Washington State. Nick had spent so much time on the phone over the three days his ear had swollen and his neck hurt. He’d come up with three current unsolved murders of young women with postmortem beheadings. It surprised him that they weren’t reported to NCIC. But none of the mutilation killings had happened closer than four hundred miles away.

“Red and Ho,” said Harloff. “Like ‘Better Dead Than Red’? Or like Ho Chi Minh?”

“I’ve gotten nothing political from this so far,” said Nick.

“Laguna’s full of radicals,” said Lobdell. “All kinds of political types. Marxists, Bolsheviks, anarchists, demonstrators, flag burners, atheists, God haters, peaceniks, hippies, yippies. Dopers and flower children. Fairies all over the place. That Leary nut from Harvard is still there with his LSD religion. You drive down Coast Highway on a hot night you can smell the marijuana in the air. The canyon there is full of dealers selling anything you can imagine. They call Woodland Street Dodge City because the law can’t get in. Or so the hippies think.”

“I know,” said Harloff. “I oversee narcotics.”

“I know you know,” said Lobdell. “I’m just saying if Vonn was living in that mix down in Laguna, she could have had just about anybody over for Mexican takeout.”

“The two squares sound more like Mormons to me,” said Harloff. Then a rare smile. Dark lips, white teeth. “Or insurance salesmen or FBI.”

Lobdell didn’t answer.

“Interesting you should say that,” said Nick. “One of my sources said a white male searched Janelle’s cottage Thursday night. I tracked the car plates back to the FBI resident agency in Santa Ana.”

Harloff raised his eyebrows and tapped his pen on his desk. “FBI? I know one of the agents there. I’ll make a call and see what that was all about.”

“Appreciate it, sir.”

“Odd, though,” said Harloff, “that they didn’t contact us.”

In the silence Nick cleared his throat. Looked directly at Harloff. Time to play another one of Andy’s tips. Thank God for little brothers who were also newspaper reporters.

“Sir,” Nick said. “There’s something else you can do to help us.”

“Shoot.”

“I heard that Janelle Vonn had been on the narcotics informant payroll for four years,” said Nick. “If that’s true, someone there knows her a lot better than we do, just coming in now. We need to talk.”

Harloff nodded curtly. “Who told you that?”

“I’m not free to say.”

“Talk to del Gado.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Harloff studied him for a long time. Nick held his gaze for a beat, then looked away.

A few minutes later Frank del Gado, the narcotics captain, unhappily told Nick and Lobdell that he’d look into it.

When they got outside the building Nick stopped and looked at his partner. “Hey, Lucky.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck me again in front of my boss and you can find another partner. I don’t care how it looks or who gets written up, I’m not working with a guy who won’t stand by me.”

Lobdell eyed Nick. Almost smiled but didn’t. Nodded instead. “Good.”

15

THEY WENT TO a late lunch at the new place, Lorenzo’s, up in the Anaheim hills. Nick had found the Lorenzo’s matchbook in Janelle Vonn’s shoe box. And the Lorenzo’s phone number written in three different places in the pile of papers by her phone.

He showed a five-by-seven black-and-white photograph of Janelle Vonn to the hostess. The hostess had long hair and a startlingly brief skirt. About Janelle’s age. In Nick’s opinion they shouldn’t let girls dress that way, but he liked it when they did. Katherine would never be allowed to dress like that. The hostess had never seen Janelle.

The dining room was almost empty. A few people drinking in the bar. The steaks were pricey so Nick got the Ortega burger with a big wet chili on it. Lobdell went with the lunch special New York cut.

The waitress had seen Janelle Vonn here at Lorenzo’s about a week ago, she said.

And one time before that, maybe a month earlier. Both times large parties, thrown by the Lorenzo’s owners.

“That’s really a bummer what happened to her,” she said. “She was younger than me.”

“What day of the week was she in?” asked Lobdell.