Jason had been one of those whom several other women officers had sampled, the kind they called “Twinkies,” guys who aren’t good for you but you have to have one. Andi had been young then, and she paid the price during a five-year marriage that brought her nothing good except Max.

Her only child, Sergeant Max Edward McCrea, was serving with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, his second deployment, the first having been in Iraq at a time when Andi was hardly ever able to sleep more than a few hours before waking with night sweats. It was better now that he was in Afghanistan. A little better. Eighteen years old, just out of high school, he had gotten the itch, and there was nothing she could do to keep him from signing that enlistment contract. Nothing that her ex-husband could do either, when for once Jason had stepped up and acted like a father. Max had said he was going into the army with two other teammates from his varsity football team, and that was it. Iraq for him, tension headaches for her, lying awake in her two-story house in Van Nuys.

After getting her case file in order, Andi was about to get a cup of coffee, when one of the Watch 2 patrol officers approached her cubicle and said, “Detective, could you talk to a fourteen-year-old runaway for us? We got a call to the Lucky Strike Lanes, where he was bowling with a forty-year-old guy who started slapping him around. He tells us he was molested by the guy, but the guy won’t talk at all. We got him in a holding tank.”

“You need the sex crimes detail,” Andi said.

“I know, but they’re not here and I think the kid wants to talk but only to a woman. Says the things he’s got to say are too embarrassing to tell a man. I think he needs a mommy.”

“Who doesn’t?” Andi sighed. “Okay, put him in the interview room and I’ll be right there.”

Five minutes later, after drinking her coffee, and after getting the boy a soft drink and advising him for the second time of his rights, she nodded to the uniformed officer that he could leave.

Aaron Billings was delicate, almost pretty, with dark ringlets, wide-set expressive eyes, and a mature, lingering gaze that she wouldn’t have expected. He looked of mixed race, maybe a quarter African American, but she couldn’t be sure. He had a brilliant smile.

“Do you understand why the officers arrested you and your companion?” she asked.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Mel was hitting me. Everyone saw him. We were right there in the bowling alley. I’m sick of it, so when they asked for our ID I told them I was a runaway. I’m sure my mom’s made a report. Well, I think she would.”

“Where’re you from?”

“Reno, Nevada.”

“How long have you been gone?”

“Three weeks.”

“Did you run away with Mel?” Andi asked.

“No, but I met him the next day when I was hitchhiking. I was sick of my mother. She was always bringing men home, and my sister and me would see them having sex. My sister is ten.”

“You told the officer that Mel molested you, is that right?”

“Yes, lots of times.”

“Tell me what happened from when you first met.”

“Okay,” the kid said, and he took a long drink from the soda can. “First, he took me to a motel and we had sex. I didn’t want to but he made me. Then he gave me ten dollars. Then we went to the movies. Then we had Chinese food at a restaurant. Then we decided to drive to Hollywood and maybe see movie stars. Then Mel bought vodka and orange juice and we got drunk. Then we drove to Fresno and parked at a rest stop and slept. Then we woke up early. Then we killed two people and took their money. Then we went to the movies again. Then we drove to Bakersfield. Then -”

“Wait a minute!” Andi said. “Let’s go back to the rest stop!”

Twenty minutes later Andi was on the phone to the police in Fresno, and after a conversation with a detective, she learned that yes, a middle-aged couple had been shot and killed where they’d obviously been catching a few hours’ sleep en route from Kansas to a California vacation. And yes, the case was open with no suspects and no evidence other than the.32 caliber slugs taken from the skulls of both victims at the postmortem.

The detective said, “We just don’t have any leads.”

Andi said, “You do now.”

When Andi’s supervisor, D3 Rhonda Jenkins, came in late that afternoon after a long day in court testifying in a three-year-old murder case, she said, “My day sucked. How was yours?”

“Tried to keep busy on a typical May afternoon in Hollywood, USA.”

“Yeah? What’d you do?” Rhonda asked, just making conversation as she slipped off her low-heeled pumps and massaged her aching feet.

Deadpan, Andi said, “First I made calls on two reports from last night. Then I reread the case file on the pizza man shooting. Then I interviewed a banger down at Parker Center. Then I had some coffee. Then I cleared a double homicide in Fresno. Then I wrote a letter to Max. Then -”

“Whoa!” Rhonda said. “Go back to the double homicide in Fresno!”

“That bitch! You couldn’t find her heart with a darkfield microscope,” Jetsam complained to his partner.

Flotsam, who was attending community college during the day, said, “Dude, you are simply another victim of the incestuous and intertwined and atavistic relationships of the law-enforcement community.”

Jetsam gaped at Flotsam, who was driving up into the Hollywood Hills, and said, “Just shove those college-boy words, why don’t you.”

“Okay, to be honest,” said Flotsam, “from that photo you showed me, she was spherical, dude. The woman looked to me like a fucking Teletubby. You were blinded by the humongous mammary glands is all. There was no real melding of the hearts and minds.”

“Melding of the…” Jetsam looked at his partner in disbelief and said, “Bro, the bitch’s lawyer wants everything, including my fucking fish tank! With the only two turtles I got left! And guess what else? The federal consent decree ain’t gonna end on schedule because that asshole of a federal judge says we’re not ready. It’s all political bullshit.”

“Don’t tell me that,” Flotsam said. “I was all ready to yell out at roll call, ‘Free at last, free at last, Lord God Awmighty, free at last!’”

“I’m outrageously pissed off at our new mayor,” Jetsam said, “turning the police commission into an ACLU substation. And I’m pissed off at my ex-wife’s lawyer, who only wants me to have what I can make recycling aluminum cans. And I’m pissed off living in an apartment with lunging fungus so aggressive it wants to tackle you like a linebacker. And I’m pissed off at my former back-stabbing girlfriend. And I’m pissed off at the Northeast detective who’s boning her now. So all in all, I feel like shooting somebody.”

And, as it happened, he would.

The PSR radio voice alerted all units on the frequency to a code 37, meaning a stolen vehicle, as well as a police pursuit in progress of said vehicle.

Ever the pessimist, Jetsam said, “Devonshire Division. He’ll never come this far south.”

The more optimistic Flotsam said, “You never know. We can dream.”

Jetsam said, “Since our politician chief won’t let us pursue unless the driver’s considered reckless, do you suppose this fucking maniac has crossed the reckless-driving threshold yet? Or does he have to run a cop off the road first?”

They listened to the pursuit on simulcast as it crossed freeways and surface streets in the San Fernando Valley, heading in the general direction of North Hollywood. And within a few minutes it was in North Hollywood and heading for the Hollywood Freeway.

“Watch them turn north again,” Jetsam said.

But the pursuit did not. The stolen car, a new Toyota 4Runner, turned south on the Hollywood Freeway, and Jetsam said, “That one has a pretty hot six under the hood from what I hear. Bet he’ll double-back now. Probably some homie. He’ll double-back, get near his ’hood, dump the car, and run for it.”