“Why’s that?”

“The first detectives looked into him after I told them about his temper. They said he was under no suspicion whatsoever.”

There’d been no mention of a former boyfriend in the file. I said, “I haven’t reviewed every page, Mrs. Newsome. What kind of temper problems are we talking about?”

“Roy can be a nice young man, but he does fly off the handle. Flora used to say sometimes she had to walk on eggshells when Roy got in one of his moods. Not that he hurt Flora, there was never a whisper of that, he never even raised his voice. It was his quiet that bothered her- she told me he’d drop into these long, cold silences where she couldn’t reach him.”

“Moody,” I said.

She said, “I don’t believe Roy had anything to do with what happened to Flora. He has a temper, oh sure, but he and Flora parted on friendly terms, and I’ve known his family forever.” She blinked. “Truth be told, Roy’d have no reason to resent Flora. He was the one who ended it. Ended up with another woman, cheap type if you ask me. Now they’re getting divorced, and isn’t that just a great big mess.”

“You’re still in touch with Roy.”

“His folks were our neighbors back when we lived in Culver City. Roy and Flora grew up together, like brother and sister. Roy’s folks own an aquarium- one of those fish stores. Roy doesn’t likes animals, isn’t that funny? Him I haven’t seen for a while; it’s his folks I occasionally talk to. His mother told me about the divorce. I think what she was really saying was that Roy should’ve been smart and stuck with Flora.”

“What’s Roy’s full name?”

“Nichols. Roy Nichols, Jr. I told the other detectives, it should all be in the records.”

“Did Flora like animals?”

She shook her head. “She and Roy saw eye to eye on that. Neat, both of them. Everything had to be tidy. With all that, you’d’ve thought Roy would pick a cleaner job.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a carpenter, frames up houses. I suppose it’s cleaner than plumbing.”

“Construction,” I said.

“You bet.”

I spent another quarter hour in the pine-paneled room, learned nothing more, thanked her, and left.

I reached Milo at his desk and told him about Roy Nichols.

“Bad temper, doesn’t like animals, works construction,” he said. “Something else Lorraine and Al didn’t think to include.”

“Evelyn Newsome said they talked to him and cleared him.”

“Yeah, yeah… let me run him through the county data bank just in case… I’ve got a Roy Dean Nichols with a birth date that would make him the right age… and look at this: two priors. A DUI last year and a 415 the year before that. Two months after Flora was killed.”

“Disturbing the peace can mean anything,” I said. “Given the DUI, it was probably alchohol-related.”

“I’m pulling up his DMV as we speak… here we go, an address on Harter Street. That’s Culver City, not far from Flora’s place in Palms. Are you on your way back to the alleged city? I can meet you at the station, and we’ll pay this joker a visit.”

“The Valley parole office isn’t far from Evelyn Newsome’s house. I was going to drive by, maybe go in and have a look.”

“Don’t waste your time. Flora only worked there for three days before they transferred her to a temporary branch office on Sepulveda and Venice. One of those projects funded by a federal seed grant. Small storefront offices, they opened half a dozen all over the city. Shorter distance for the cons to travel, heaven forfend we tax the poor souls. The hope was that the bad boys would be more compliant about checking in.”

“You’re talking in past tense,” I said.

“You got it. No better compliance and a few million bucks down the drain, the offices were shut down. Flora stayed on until the funds ran out, so she didn’t hate the job badly enough to quit. Didn’t make much of an impression either. Her supervisor remembers her as quiet, said she mostly filed and answered the phone. He doubts she’d get involved with a con.”

“Why?”

“He said she kept to herself and that not many cons came in.”

“Enough came in to bother her,” I said. “And Sepulveda and Venice is really close to her apartment. I’d like to know how many of the cons assigned to that office had sex-crime histories.”

“Good luck. Parole’s as bureaucratic as it comes. State office, everything’s filtered through Sacramento, and now that the satellites have closed, the records are somewhere in outer space. But if it shakes out that way, I’ll start digging. Meanwhile, Roy Nichols’s place is also close by, and he has a record that says impulse control’s a problem. And isn’t it you guys who make a big deal about psychopaths not liking animals?”

“Cruelty to animals,” I said. “Flora’s mother said Nichols is a neat-freak.”

“There you go, yet another quirk. Just the type to clean up a crime scene thoroughly. He’s worth looking into, right? See you in- what, twenty, twenty-five?”

“Zoom zoom zoom.”

CHAPTER 12

Milo’s unmarked idled at the curb, in front of the station. He was at the wheel, smoking and tapping his finger.

I drove up next to the driver’s window. He handed me a staff permit, and I parked in the lot across the street. When I returned, the unmarked’s passenger door was open. We were heading south before I closed it.

“Big hurry?”

“I pulled Roy Nichols’s file. The 415 wasn’t just some drunk breaking glass. Though you were right about it being booze-stoked. Nichols beat some guy up at a sports bar in Inglewood, did a real number on him, broke some bones. The report says Nichols thought the guy was leering at his date, a woman named Lisa Jenrette. They traded words, and one thing led to another. What got Nichols out of a felony assault charge was several other patrons swore the other guy had thrown the first punch and that he had come on to Nichols’s date. One of those habitual assholes, always picking fights. Nichols compensated part of his medical bills and pleaded down to Disturbing. He served no time, promised to stay away from the bar, and took a rage control class.”

He sped side streets to Olympic, turned left, headed for Sepulveda. “A severe jealousy problem could lead to the kind of overkill they found in Flora’s bedroom.”

“Evelyn Newsome said Nichols was the one who ended the relationship.”

“So maybe he changed his mind, got possessive. Alex, I read the medical report on the guy he pounded. Shattered face bones, dislocated shoulder. One witness said Nichols was about to stomp the guy’s head into pulp when they managed to pull him off.”

We drove in silence for a while, then he said, “Rage control class. You think that stuff works?”

“Maybe sometimes.”

“There’s a hearty endorsement for you.”

“I think it takes more than a few mandatory lectures to alter basic temperament.”

“The lightbulb has to want to change.”

“You bet.”

“More tax dollars flushed,” he said. “Like those satellite parole offices.”

“Probably.”

“Well,” he said, “that really pisses me off.”

Roy Nichols’s house was a slightly larger, pure white version of Evelyn Newsome’s bungalow that bore the signs of ambitious but wrongheaded improvement: overly wide black shutters that would’ve fit a two-story colonial, a pair of Doric columns propping up the tiny porch, a Spanish tile roof, the tiles variegated and expensive and piled too high, a three-foot sash of bouquet canyon stone veneered to the bottom of the facade. This lawn was lush, unblemished, the bright green of a Saint Paddy’s parade. Five-foot sago palms flanked the steps- five hundred dollars’ worth of vegetation. Dwarf junipers ringed the front, trimmed low to the ground with bonsai precision.