Oliver made a face. “You would think that he’s seen enough bad TV to know how identifications are made.”

Marge said, “Since the body was badly burned, I’m sure he thought it wouldn’t be so easy to identify, that we didn’t have enough biological material to identify the remains as Beth Hernandez. And after passing the lie-detector test, he was feeling secure.”

“Can someone fill me in, just because I’m here?” Salvo asked.

Marge said, “Raymond Holmes was Roseanne Dresden’s lover. She supposedly died in the crash of 1324, but we never found her body. We went up north and gave Raymond a lie-detector test about murdering Roseanne Dresden. He passed. Either he’s a stone-cold psycho or he didn’t murder her.”

Decker held up a finger. “Even if Holmes was feeling secure about Roseanne, once we put a face on the Jane Doe, he has to feel nervous.”

“What if he didn’t know that we put a face on Jane Doe?” Salvo asked.

Marge said, “It was on the front page of the L.A. Times.”

“He doesn’t live in L.A.,” Salvo said. “Maybe he doesn’t read the L.A. Times. I don’t.”

“What do you read?” Marge asked.

“I’m a computer guy,” Salvo said. “I get all my news online. If you had a good, current photograph of him, I could maybe superimpose the two images.”

Marge said, “We could go up to San Jose with a camera and hope for the best.”

Decker said, “Let me regroup for a moment.” He tapped his toe. “Okay. Looks can be deceiving, so let’s go back to basic police work. We need to find out everything we can about Raymond Holmes. And that means another trip back up to San Jose. We go to the hall of records and pull everything we can on this guy. In the meantime, he sells renovated houses for a living. Oliver, he doesn’t know you. If Holmes is still around, you figure out how to approach the guy and take pictures of him.”

“Cakewalk. I’ll be a prospective buyer.”

Decker said, “We should check the visitation logs of Santa Fe Correctional and find out if Raymond Holmes has ever visited Martin Hernandez. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Where does that leave Roseanne Dresden?” Oliver asked. “Do you think this guy killed both women?”

Marge said, “Roseanne made it back into Burbank.”

“Maybe Holmes came down on the same flight as her and killed her in L.A.”

“Scott, we checked the passengers list coming down. Holmes wasn’t on it.”

“Maybe he used a pseudonym.”

Decker rubbed his temples. “I don’t want to think about that possibility yet. First let’s find out if Raymond Holmes is Ramon Hernandez. Right now I can only deal with one headache at a time.”

I F RAYMOND HOLMES was worried about his cover being blown, it wasn’t apparent from his daily actions. The contractor remained in San Jose, posing as a solid citizen. Perhaps he was, although the big man was a near perfect double for the age-progressed image of Manny Hernandez. Oliver also found him vaguely disreputable. Not that Holmes was a hard sell. His pitch was the opposite-feigned apathy. His homes were the best, and the market was heating up and the house that Oliver was interested in already had multiple offers, so if he was serious, he’d better get his offer in there or he’d just be plain out of luck! Throughout the interview and inspection, Oliver managed to get several good pictures of Holmes under the guise of snapping photos of the house for sale.

While Scott was occupied with Holmes, Marge was sorting through his paper trail on file with the hall of records. Holmes had filed his first income-tax return in San Jose twenty-two years ago, his occupation listed as an independent contractor. That was as much as Marge could get out of the bureaucrats. She’d need a subpoena to see the actual return. Through a stroke of good luck-a simpatico government employee-she was able to pull his contractor’s license, which, as far as Marge could tell, was up-to-date and legitimate. From his contractor’s license number, she obtained his original application for a contractor’s license in San Jose. From that form, she was fortunate enough to get his date of birth and his Social Security number.

After an hour on the phone with records in Santa Fe, Marge was told that there was on file a marriage certificate for Ramon Hernandez and Isabel Devargas. Unfortunately, Holmes’s DOB and SSN didn’t match Manny’s DOB or his SSN. Ramon Hernandez did have a birth certificate from Santa Fe County. Not surprisingly, that date of birth matched the one on the Hernandez’s marriage license. Maybe Raymond Holmes had taken on someone else’s identity. Maybe Raymond Holmes was just some poor schnook named Raymond Holmes.

When Marge and Oliver returned from San Jose, they were no closer to proving a connection than they had been before they left. As much as they wanted to, the detectives couldn’t bring in Holmes just because he looked like a computerized age progression of a guy who might or might not be dead.

The next day, Marge and Oliver handed Decker their meager reports and the digital camera with a few nice close-ups of Holmes. Decker read over their writings, then said, “He’s lived in San Jose for the last twenty-two years. Where was he before that?”

“No idea,” Marge said.

“Any idea where he filed his taxes before he lived in San Jose?”

“I can’t get that information without a warrant. And we can’t get a warrant without some evidence.”

“What about Holmes’s birth certificate?”

“Holmes’s date of birth doesn’t match Hernandez’s DOB.”

“I didn’t ask that,” Decker said testily. “I asked if you could get a copy of Raymond Holmes’s birth certificate.”

“How? I don’t even know where Raymond Holmes was born.”

“But you have his DOB and his SSN.”

“I’m not computer savvy, Pete.” Marge was holding in her own frustration. “How do I use a date of birth and a Social Security number to locate his birth certificate?”

“What about the Social Security Administration? They have to have had a birth certificate to generate a number.”

“Loo, you know as well as I do that they’re not going to give me the information unless I have the subpoenas or an executed warrant. If you can think of a judge that’ll give me the paperwork with what we have, then I’m willing to go to bat.”

She was right. Something would have to break or they were at a complete standstill. “At least find out what paperwork you need to get the information. Also, you can talk to someone in computers upstairs and find out if a birth certificate is accessible from somewhere other than SSA.”

“Sure, I can do that.”

“I think I speak for Marge when I say I hope we’re not spinning our wheels,” Oliver said. “We don’t have anything on this guy, Loo. I mean, we might have been able to bring him in for Roseanne Dresden, but since he’s already passed a polygraph, we’ve even lost that excuse.”

“Too bad we don’t have Manny’s old toothbrush,” Marge said. “It would be easier to get DNA off of Raymond Holmes from an old discarded coffee cup than it would be to crack some of these bureaucracies.”

Oliver said, “You know, that’s not a half-bad idea. If you want, I could call up the Devargases and find out if they’ve saved anything from Manny.”

“They threw away his pictures, Oliver, I doubt if they saved his toothbrush.” Decker thought a moment. “But sure, go ahead. If that doesn’t work, how about rounding up a witness who can positively identify Raymond Holmes as Manny Hernandez.”

“Like who?”

“My first thought is the Devargases, but even if they did pick out Holmes as Manny, their opinions wouldn’t likely hold up in court unless we have corroborating witnesses. How about Alyssa Bright Mapplethorpe or Christian Woodhouse?”

Marge said, “She hasn’t seen Manny in thirty years.”

“Ditto for Woodhouse,” Oliver said.

“Well, they’re all we’ve got right now that wouldn’t be considered prejudicial. Make up a six-pack of pictures, and show it to Alyssa. If you can’t get any satisfaction with her, we’ll work on getting an interview with Christian Woodhouse. Being as he’s out of town, let’s go with Alyssa first.”