Finally, he did grow quiet, staring down at her, then slapping his hands over his face and holding them there.

“Daddy-”

The hands dropped into his lap. He looked so sad. “That's all I remember, sweetheart. Mother was a wonderful woman, but…”

Then he began crying, and had to hide from her again.

Men hid when they cried.

Petra came over and hugged his broad, bony shoulders. “Oh, Daddy, I'm so-”

“She was wonderful, baby. One in a million, but it wasn't perfect, Pet. It was no storybook situation.”

He opened a desk drawer and peered down at what had to be the bottle.

When he turned back to Petra, his eyes were dry and he was smiling, but it wasn't any of the smiles Petra knew- not the warm, protective one or the wry, sarcastic one or even the soft-around-the-edges drunk one that used to bother her but no longer did.

This was different- flat, hollow, frozen as statuary. In her tenth grade English class they had learned about tragedy, and she was sure this was it.

Defeated, that smile. As terrifying as a glimpse of eternity.

“Daddy…”

He scratched his scalp, shook his head, hiked a droopy sock up a pale ankle. “The thing is, Pet, no matter what… I guess what I'm saying, sweetheart, is men and women are really two separate species. Maybe that's the anthropology talking, but it's no less true. One little scrap of DNA separates us- here's something funny: The X chromosome's really the one that counts, Petra. The Y doesn't seem to do much but cause problems- aggression- understand what I'm getting at, sweetheart? We men aren't really worth that much.”

“Oh, Daddy-”

“Mom and I had our problems. Most were my fault. You need to know that so you don't romanticize things, expect too much out of… demand too much from yourself. Understand, baby? Am I making sense here?”

Taking hold of her shoulders, the light in his eyes almost maniacal.

“You are, Daddy. Yes.”

He let go. Now the smile was okay. Human.

“The point is, Petra, there are big questions out there, cosmic questions that have nothing to do with stars and galaxies.”

Waited for her response. She didn't know what to say and he went on:

“Questions like, can men and women ever really know each other or is it always going to be one stupid, clumsy dance around the interpersonal ballroom?”

He flinched, suppressed a belch, sprang up, went into his bedroom, and closed the door, and she could hear the latch turn and knew he'd locked himself in.

The next morning her brother Glenn, the only one still living at home, got to the breakfast table first and said, “What's with Dad?”

“What do you mean?”

“He's gone, went out on a field trip, must have been before sunrise. Left me this.” Waving a piece of notebook paper that said, Out to the desert, kids.

“Just one of his bone hunts,” said Petra.

Glenn said, “Well, he took his camping stuff- that means a long one. Did he mention anything to you? 'Cause yesterday we were talking about going over to the Big Five and getting some hockey stuff.”

“Actually, he did,” she lied.

“Great,” said Glenn. “That's just great. He tells you but never mentions it to me.”

“I'm sure he meant to, Glenn.”

“Yeah, right, great- fuck, I really need a new stick. Do you have any money I can borrow?”

She phoned seven more detectives, endured seven more you've-got-to-be-kiddings, no more similars.

From the far end of the room, the fax machine started humming and she jumped up and was there in a second, snatching papers out of the bin. Moving so quickly, a couple of the other D's looked up. But not for long; they were busy, too. This room, this city- the blood never stopped.

Karlheinz Lauch was big- six-foot-four- and ugly. Small, dark, squinty eyes popped like raisins in a pasty, misshapen crêpe of a face. The merest comma of a lopsided mouth, a mustache that looked like a grease squirt. Straight, fair hair- the stats called it brown, so probably dishwater- styled in that modified shag some Europeans still wore.

To Petra, he appeared a grubby loser.

The photo was from a four-year-old Vienna mug shot, lots of fifty-letter German words and umlauts. Sorensen's typed note said Lauch had been busted for assault in Austria the year before Ilse Eggermann's murder- barroom brawl, no time served.

In the photos, Lauch looked mean enough for anything. Wouldn't it be something if the bastard had come to L.A., cruising for good-looking blondes, somehow connected with Lisa?

Wouldn't it be amazing if Lauch stuck around so they could pick him up? A nice easy solve so Stu could get his promotion and she could add brownie points to her file.

Fantasies, kid.

She studied Lauch's face some more and wondered how someone like him could get Lisa to put on a little black dress and diamonds.

On the other hand, he had gotten close to Ilse Eggermann, who, by Phil Sorensen's account, was also a looker. But a stewardess wasn't the ex-wife of a TV star who'd experienced the good life.

Then again, Lisa had opted out of the good life. And some women, even beautiful women, liked to bottom-fish, turned on by whatever was crude and brutish, a man below them on the social ladder.

Beauty and the beastly? Lisa taking risks with rough trade and paying for it?

Petra kept staring at Lauch's photo. The thought of allowing his flesh to come into contact with hers turned her stomach.

She liked her men intelligent, considerate, conventionally handsome.

Probably because her father was an intelligent, nice-looking, gentle man. For the most part, a gentleman.

What was Ilse Eggermann's father like?

What was Dr. John Everett Boehlinger like when he wasn't crazed with grief?

Enough with the psychoanalysis. She'd taken it as far as she could for the moment.

She inserted the Eggermann-Lauch data in Lisa's murder book, crossed the room to the Nehi-orange lockers, opened hers, and took a Snickers bar from the bag she kept on the top shelf, above her gym shoes and sweats and the cheap black sweaters she kept handy for cold nights and messy corpses.

Death mops, she called them.

Acrylic that looked like acrylic. Attention, Kmart shoppers, our full-style cardigans now on sale for $13.95 in a wide range of colors. She bought five at a time, always black, threw them out the moment they got gory.

In eight months, she'd been through ten.

She hadn't worn one to Lisa's crime scene because the call had been an off-schedule surprise.

She hadn't been stained by Lisa's corpse.

Hadn't gotten close enough.

21

“Move, move, move- keep moving, you little bastard.”

Hiss-whispering in my ear, they squeeze me, poke me, push me.

She's the angry one; he sounds afraid, nervous. He even trips a couple of times.

“Come on!” She sticks the gun in my ribs, and when I cry out she sticks me harder and says, “Shut up!” Not nervous at all.

She's in charge.

As we get closer to where all the buggies are parked, I start to pray for some zoo person to be there this time, but there's no one. Should I scream? No, the gun is up against me; it wouldn't take much for her to pull the trigger and blow up my insides- now we're at the fence. The lock is on- and it's clamped!

“Do it,” she orders as she looks in all directions. She keeps the gun on me, and he takes a key out of his pocket and opens the lock.

They know this place.

They're prepared. They will rape me.

He comes back, grabs me, breathes into my ear, and suddenly my stomach starts turning over and over, hard, fast, painful, like I have to go to the bathroom.