They lead me toward the open fence. They know about it too- not a secret place! I'm so stupid!

Her face is like a mask, but he's breathing hard, excited, his mouth's open, his skin's pink as a pencil eraser, the onion smell's blowing on my face, and they're dragging me toward Five, and he's saying, “You're gonna get done, kid. Like you never been done.”

20

Petra stayed at her desk, calling her phone com- pany contact about Lisa's records and being assured they'd arrive today. She began the preliminary paperwork on the court order for the extended records, phoned the coroner and the criminalists. No medical findings yet, no prints retrieved from Lisa's clothes or body or jewelry. Maybe a glove, the tech opined. Fortified by vending-machine coffee, Petra checked all the approved police tow yards and consulted rosters of found autos. Lisa's Porsche wasn't listed.

Time to go back on Schoelkopf's scut line. She'd already talked to dozens of detectives, covering the day watch from Van Nuys to Devonshire, then West L.A. Now she started in on Pacific.

Each time the same reaction: You've got to be kidding.

Everyone knew who the bad guy was on this one. But they also understood brass-generated busywork, and after the laughter died down, she had their immediate sympathy.

The end result: no similars. Meanwhile, Cart Ramsey got to hit golf balls, soak in the hot tub, enjoy the chrome and polish of his little car museum while his ex-wife was laid out on the coroner's table getting her face peeled off.

The Mercedes was probably scrubbed and steamed and vacuumed cleaner than an operating room.

She thought about Lisa's body, that gaping blood-filled hole in the abdomen, protruding entrails, what had been done to the young woman's face, and wondered what it took to turn love to that.

Could it happen anytime passions ran high, or did the guy have to be twisted?

Domestic bliss, domestic blood. There'd been one moment- an eye-blink instant- when she'd been capable of murder.

Why was she thinking about the past?

Deal with it, kid.

She tortured herself with memories.

A twenty-five-year-old art student pretending cool but so blindly, dumbly in love she'd have been willing to shed her skin for Nick. That rush of feeling, passion like she'd never felt before. Lovemaking till she couldn't walk. Postcoital pillow talk, lying flank to flank, her vagina still humming.

Nick had seemed such a good listener. It was only later she figured out it was phony. He kept quiet because he refused to give her anything of himself.

She told him everything: growing up motherless, the irrational guilt she felt about causing her mother's death, driving her father crazy to the point where boarding schools were the only solution, half of her adolescence spent in musty shared rooms, the other girls giggling and smoking, talking about guys, sometimes masturbating, Petra could tell by the rustle of comforters.

Petra, the weird, silent girl from Arizona, just lying there, thinking about killing her mother.

She'd entrusted Nick with the secret because this was true love.

Then one night she told him a new secret: Guess what, honey? Patting her tummy.

She'd expected surprise, maybe some initial resentment, knew he'd melt eventually because he loved her.

His eyes froze and he turned white. The fury. Glaring at her across the dinner table with contempt she'd never imagined. The special meal she'd prepared just sitting there, his favorites- ostensibly to celebrate, but maybe deep down she'd known he wouldn't be pleased, maybe the veal and the gnocchi, the twenty-dollar Chianti classico, had been nothing more than bribes.

He just sat there, not moving, not talking, those thin lips she'd once thought aristocratic so bloodless, the hateful mouth of an old, nasty man.

Nick-

How could you, Petra!

Nick, honey-

You, of all people! How could you be so stupid- you know what childbirth does!

Nick-

Fuck you!

If she'd had a gun then…

She opened her eyes, realized for the first time that they'd been closed. Squad room noise blew back at her, the other detectives busy doing their jobs.

What she needed to do.

She got back on the phone, prepared to waste more time.

But four Pacific detectives later, something did come up.

A three-year-old unsolved cutting of a pretty blond girl on the southern tip of Venice, near the marina, handled by a D-II named Phil Sorensen, who said, “You know, when I heard about the Ramsey girl, it struck me, but ours was a German girl, Lufthansa stewardess on vacation, and our leads pointed to an Austrian boyfriend, baggage handler, returned to Europe before we could talk to him. We put wants out with the Austrian police, Interpol, all that good stuff, never found him.”

“What made him a suspect?” said Petra.

“The girlfriend the vic was traveling with- another stew- said he showed up unannounced at their hotel all upset because the vic- Ilse Eggermann's her name- had left Vienna without telling him. Ilse told the friend they'd fought a lot, the boyfriend had a bad temper, roughed her up, she dumped him. The last straw was having to work in first class with a black eye. Still, when the boyfriend showed up in L.A., he was able to convince her to go out with him. They left at nine P.M. She was found at four A.M., body dumped in a parking lot near Ballona Creek. We traced the boyfriend's flight- he'd come in on Lufthansa the previous morning, employee discount. No checked-in luggage, and he never registered at any hotels or motels here in L.A.”

“So he intended it to be a short trip,” said Petra. “Accomplished what he wanted and split.”

“That's what it looked like.” Sorensen sounded like an older man. Gentle voice, slow talker, slightly hesitant. Stew, not flight attendant.

“How was Ilse dressed when you found her?” said Petra.

“A nice dress, dark- blue or black. Black, I think. Very pretty girl; she looked very nice. Considering.” Sorensen coughed. “No sexual assault. We didn't need to sherlock to establish her being with the boyfriend- Karlheinz Lauch- that night. The waiter who served them dinner, Antoine's on the pier at Redondo Beach, he remembered them, because they didn't eat or talk much. Or tip. We figured Lauch was angling for reconciliation, it didn't work, he got upset, drove her somewhere, killed her, and dumped her. What he drove, I don't know, because we could never trace a rental car and he had no known associates in California.”

Sorensen's voice had risen a bit. Lots of details at his fingertips for a three-year-old crime. This one had stayed with him.

“She was found at four,” said Petra. “Any idea when she was killed?”

“The guesstimate was two, two-thirty.”

Early morning, just like Lisa. Dumped in a parking lot. And the Ballona Creek marshlands were a county park, like Griffith. “Lots of stab wounds?”

“Twenty-nine- clear overkill, which would also fit the boyfriend. Add the domestic-violence history, and it seemed pretty clear. Sound at all like yours?”

“There are definite points of similarity, Detective Sorensen,” said Petra, keeping her voice steady. Looked at a certain way, it was a damn Xerox.

“Well, you know these guys,” he said. “The woman-haters. Tend to fall into patterns.”

“True,” she said. “Where did this Lauch handle baggage?”

“Vienna airport, but he had family in Germany. After the crime, he didn't return to work or to his hometown. We checked with other airlines too, but no dice. He could have changed his name or just rabbited to some other country. Would have been nice to go over there and nose around personally, but you know the chance of prying a European trip out of the budget. So we had to rely on the Austrian police and the Germans, and they weren't all that interested, because the crime took place here.”