Nothing luxurious but, still, the rent had to be two thousand a month.

I climbed the steps to the door. No mail piled up but it was too early for today's delivery. The car said Locking might be home.

I rang the bell and waited. Music or something like it came through the door. Loud, pounding music. Screaming vocals.

Thrash metal. Locking's choice of background as he tormented the rat.

I knocked louder, rang again, still no response. Descending to the driveway, I looked back at the street. No neighbors out. In L.A., they rarely are.

I slid past the BMW, and walked along the side of the house. More slatted windows.

The pool was fifties-big, an oval that took up ninety percent of the backyard. The rest was a hill of ivy disappearing under the gloom of the ficus trees- two of them, sixty feet tall and nearly as wide, with thick roots that had worked their way under the pool decking, cracking it, lifting it up. The lounge chair was rusted, as were two others just like it. Not far away were a gas barbecue and an unfurled garden hose, kinked so badly it was useless.

The music much louder from back here.

A fiberglass roof darkened sliding-glass doors left an inch ajar.

I went over and looked in. The room looked to be a den. Well-stocked wet bar, pub mirrors with ale trademarks, hanging glasses, big plastic ashtrays. Lights out except for green numbers dancing on a black face. Six-foot stereo stack. The CD player going. The music at steam-drill level.

Trying to ignore it, I put my hand against the glass and squinted. Alarm panel in a corner. Another green light: unarmed.

The gray carpeting was grubby. Black leather couches, black-lacquer tables, Lucite sculpture of a nude woman bending submissively. One wall was taken up by a huge chrome-framed litho of a melon-breasted, rouged woman in leather tights. Motorcycle cap pulled down over one of her eyes. The other winked. Opposite stood a free-form gray-granite fireplace with ragged edges. No logs. Black beanbag chairs. A single CD case on one.

Panic-attack drumbeat, tortured bass, jet-engine guitars. Brain-scraping vocals, over and over.

No sign of Locking.

I slid the door open a few inches wider, stuck my head in. “Hello!”

Cigarettes, butts and ashes on the carpet. On one of the tables were piles of magazines.

I took a few steps closer, shouted another “Hello?”

The magazines were a mix of psychology journals I recognized and things you didn't need a Ph.D. to understand.

Full-color covers: nipple-pink, lip-red, coif-blond, pubic-hair-umber. The oyster glisten of fresh ejaculate.

The Journal of Clinical Practice and that.

Locking's idea of homework?

On another table stood a popped can of cola, a nearly empty bottle of Bacardi, and a glass filled with something diluted, barely tinted amber. Melted ice cubes, the drink poured hours ago.

One glass. Party for one.

Maybe Locking had rum-and-Coked himself into a deep enough stupor not to hear the noise.

I shouted again.

No answer.

I tried once more. The room stank of nicotine and a durable relationship with takeout food. The big black ashtrays on the bar were overflowing. Vegas casino logo on the rim of one, the place Ted Barnaby had worked.

The CD on the chair from a band called Sepultura.

Spanish for “grave.”

Cute. The image.

I turned off the music.

Silence. No protest.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

Not the time to explore further: Half the people in L.A. own guns and Locking's connection to Cruvic plus the tough- punk image made him likely to be one of them. If he'd managed to sleep through the racket, waking him could be dangerous. At the very least, I was guilty of criminal trespass.

I turned to leave and noticed something under one of the ashtrays.

Polaroid snapshot. One corner pinned.

Aligned perfectly with the counter edge.

Positioned.

As if for display.

Photo of a woman.

Bare to the waist, arms stretched high above her head, bound at the wrists and tied to a wooden headboard. Her smallish breasts were tugged upward by the pressure, stretching pale skin over a delicate rib cage. Tight deltoids, goosebump skin.

Her face was covered by a black leather hood studded with zippers.

Two open zippers in the nasal region, zippered mouth-slit fastened shut.

The eyeholes open, too.

Two bright, brown discs shone through.

Below them, two erect nipples, pinched by a pair of hands.

Male hands.

Two different men.

The one on the left, striped with hair, connected to a bare arm.

Small anchor tattoo midway up the forearm.

The hand on the right, smooth and hairless, emerging from a ribbed black cuff.

A ring on that one. Silver skull, red glass eyes.

I inched closer to the photo.

And saw Locking.

On the floor behind the bar.

Propped in a corner, legs splayed, arms limp. One hand curled inward, the fingers of the other outstretched.

Blue nails. Blue lips.

The skull ring grinned back at me.

His head had been thrown back so that his neck arched toward the ceiling. Cheekbones in relief, long hair mussed.

A black silk bathrobe did a poor job of covering his thin, white body.

White except for the raspberry lividity splotches where the blood had settled after he'd stopped breathing.

Mouth agape.

In life he'd been smug but he'd left this world looking surprised.

Crusted hole in the center of his high forehead.

Rusty stripes on his face, trailing down to his hairless chest, browning the black silk where they hit the robe.

Blood on the carpet and on the wall behind him.

Blood under the body.

Lots of blood; why hadn't I seen it right away?

His eyes were half-shut, dry, and dull like those of a fish left on the dock. Long lashes mascaraed by gritty blood.

I'd seen plenty of death. The last time, the man I'd killed… self-defense.

I could hear myself breathing.

Suddenly, the room smelled sour.

The position of his head caught my attention. It should have dropped.

But it was tilted upward, leaning against the wall, as if in prayer.

Positioned?

All around him, more Polaroids.

Lots more. Framing the corpse.

The same woman, bound and masked.

Close shots that obsessed on her thighs, her chest, her belly and below.

Full views that exposed her entire body, long and slim and pale, spread-eagled on a white-sheeted bed.

Legs knotted to the footboard, hips thrusting upward as if trying to buck a rider.

Shots of her alone, others with the same two hands.

Pinching, squeezing, kneading, spreading, probing.

Gynecologic close-ups.

And one facial close-up, placed near Locking's right hand.

The hood removed.

Blond hair pinned tightly and pulled away from the face.

Lovely face, cultured.

The open mouth expressing fear or arousal. Or both. The brown eyes wide, bright, focused and distant at the same time.

Even exposed that way, Hope Devane's emotions were hard to read.

My eyes shifted back to Locking's corpse.

Something else on the floor.

A cardboard box. More photos. Hundreds of them.

Neat lettering on the side in black marker.

SELF-CONTROL STUDY, BATCH 4, PRELIM.

When Locking had carried the carton from Seacrest's house he hadn't even bothered to close it. Hiding the pictures under a top layer of computer printout.

Big joke on the cops.

And Seacrest had been in on it. He had warned Locking.

The tattooed arm. Co-players.

A buzzing sound made me jump.

A shiny green fly had entered through the open door. It circled the room, alighted on the bar, took off again, inspected an ashtray, sped toward me. I swatted it away and it veered off, studied itself in a Beck's mirror, flew back. Hovering above Locking's body, it dove and landed on a patch of abdomen.