'How about the cops?'

Tyler made a zipping move across her lips.

I gave her the big smile again, then went next door, slipped the lock, and let myself into Elton Richards's half of the house. It was dim from the drawn shades, and I flipped the light switch but the lights stayed dark. I guess the power company had killed the juice. I said, 'Mr Richards?'

No answer. Next door, I could hear Alanis start again, faint and far away.

The house smelled musty. A ratty couch was against the wall under a Green Day poster, fronted by a coffee table made of a couple of 2 by 10 planks lying on cinderblocks and cornered by someone's secondhand lawn chair. A black streamline phone waited on the planks. A pretty good Hitachi electronics stack was against the opposite wall, and a beat-up Zenith television with a coat hanger antenna was on the floor, and everything was covered with a light patina of undisturbed dust.

I crossed into the kitchen and turned on the tap. No water. I went back to the living room, used my handkerchief, and lifted the phone. No tone. I guess Elton Richards had ignored his bills long enough for the power and water and phone companies to turn everything off. Say, about four months.

I stood in the living room by the phone and thought about it. James Lester had met a short dark man and a tall blond man named Steve in a bar about a week before Susan Martin's kidnapping and murder. Steve speaks of snatching a rich woman as a means of attaining the better things in life, and maybe the two are connected, but maybe not. Four months after the fact, I identify a possible Steve and trace him to this address which, in fact, is apparently owned by a shorter, darker man named Elton Richards. Maybe they are the same two men, but maybe not. Maybe tall blond guys named Steve just naturally have short dark friends.

Two small bedrooms bracketed the bath. I searched each thoroughly, looking for receipts or ticket stubs or anything else that might provide a clue as to when and where Elton Richards and Steve Pritzik went. There was nothing. I went into the bathroom and checked behind and beneath the toilet and in the water tank. I pulled the medicine cabinet out of the wall. I checked in the little wooden cabinet beneath the lavatory. Nada. I went back into the living room and pulled the cushions off the couch and found a single 9 by 12 manila envelope. It was the kind of envelope you get in the mail from those sweepstakes companies declaring that you've just won ten million dollars, and it was addressed to Mr Elton Richards. The end of the envelope had been scissored open, then retaped. I pushed my car keys under the tape, opened the envelope, and looked inside. Then I sat down.

I took deep rhythmic breaths, flooding my blood with oxygen and forcing myself to calm. Pranayamic breathing, they call it.

I looked in the envelope again, then tilted it so that the contents spilled out onto the couch. Inside there were seven separate photographs of Susan Martin and Teddy Martin, and two hand-drawn maps. One map was the floorplan of a very large house. The other was a street map showing the layout of someone's neighborhood and a house on Benedict Canyon Road. It was Teddy Martin's neighborhood, and it was Teddy Martin's house.

I went to my car for the new Canon Auto Focus I keep in the glove box. I made sure I had film and that the flash worked, and then I took a pair of disposable plastic gloves and went back into the house. I put on the gloves, then photographed everything as I had found it, making sure I had clear shots of the hand-drawn maps as well as the photos. When I was done, I left everything lying on the couch, then went next door and asked Tyler if I could use her phone.

I called Truly first, who listened quietly until I was finished, then said, 'I'll notify Jonathan and we'll get there as quickly as we can. Don't let anyone else in the residence.' He cupped the phone, and I could hear muffled voices. Then he came back. 'We'll notifiy the police, too. Cooperate with them when they arrive, but keep an eye on them. Watch that they don't destroy the evidence.'

'Truly, they won't do anything like that.'

He said, 'Ha.'

When I hung up, Tyler was leaning against the back of her couch, arms crossed, a long paintbrush in one hand. Her home smelled of fresh jasmine tea and acrylic paint, and was decorated with oversized sunflower sculptures that she'd made from cardboard and wire. 'You really think that this creep next door had something to do with Susan Martin's murder?'

'Maybe.'

'I thought her husband did it. That restaurant guy.'

'You never know.'

'They said on TV that he did.'

'That's TV.'

She shook her head. ' L.A. is so perverted.'

The first black and white arrived eighteen minutes later. The senior officer was a guy named Hernandez, and his partner was a younger African-American woman named Flutey. I went out to meet them carrying a glass of Tyler 's jasmine iced tea. Hernandez said, 'You Cole?'

'Yep.' I told him what we had.

He nodded. 'Okay. Flutey, get the tape from the car and let's seal it, okay? I'll check inside and around back.'

Flutey went for the tape, and Hernandez looked at me. 'Where you gonna be?'

'I'll hang around out here unless you want company.'

Tyler called from the porch. 'Would you and the other officer like some iced tea?'

Hernandez smiled at her. 'That'd be real nice, miss. Thank you.' Tyler ducked back inside. Hernandez stared after her,. Portrait of the crime scene as a social occasion.

Two detectives from the L.A. County Sheriff's Office arrived, followed almost immediately by a criminalist van. The lead detective was a heavyset guy with thinning hair named Don Phillips. A DA's car came next, offloading a thin woman named Sherman, a bald guy named Stu Miller, and an intense African-American guy in dark glasses named Warren Bidwell. Sherman was the Assistant Deputy DA charged with prosecuting the Teddy Martin case. Miller and Bidwell worked for her.

All three of them slipped under the tape and went into Richards' duplex, then Miller and Sherman slipped out again and came over to me. Tyler gave them a bright smile and pushed aside her bangs. 'Would either of you like iced tea?'

Sherman said, 'No.' She squinted at me. 'I'm Anna Sherman from the district attorney's office and this is Stu Miller. Would you come inside, please?'

'Sure.'

Tyler said, 'Can I come, too?'

Anna Sherman said, 'No.'

I shrugged at Tyler and followed them.

Inside, Sherman said, 'Okay. Walk me through what happened.'

I told them about getting the address from Pavlavi and finding the duplex deserted and popping the lock to let myself in. I told them about finding the envelope under the couch cushions and opening the envelope. Sherman stopped me. 'You touched the envelope?'

'That's right.'

The criminalist said, 'What about the contents?'

I shook my head. 'Edges only. When I saw what I had I slid the stuff out onto the couch. I used my knuckles to separate the pages first time through. When I photographed the material I was wearing gloves.'

Bidwell was glowering so hard his body was making little jerks and lurches and I wondered if he knew he was doing it. He said, 'I want those photographs.'

I shook my head. 'I don't think so.'

Bidwell lurched harder. 'You don't? Are you a sworn officer? You have a search warrant or any authority to break into a private residence?'

I looked at Sherman. 'You want me to continue or should I call my lawyer?'

Sherman closed her eyes and shook her head. 'Not now, Warren.'

The yard and the walk outside grew crowded with cops and media people and rubberneckers from the neighborhood drawn by gathering news vans. Between questions I watched the on-air television talent fan out among the cops. A woman I'd seen a thousand times on the local NBC affiliate was talking with her camera operator when the camera operator saw me standing in the window and pointed me out. The reporter said something and the operator trained his camera on me. The reporter ducked past Flutey and hurried over to the window. She was all frosted hair and intelligent eyes. 'Are you the detective who found the kidnappers?'