Private

A muted ring came from my briefcase in the backseat. I asked Del Rio to pass me the phone, and he did. I opened it, saw that I had a dozen missed calls. I said hello to Colleen.

“Where’ve you been, Jack? I’ve been calling and calling.”

“I know that. I was at the spa. What’s going on?” I asked her. My jaw was throbbing, my skull was a ball of pain, my ego was messed up.

“Justine wants to speak with you.”

“Put her on.”

“I’ll warn her that you’re a wee bit cranky.”

“Put Justine on, Colleen. My mood couldn’t be better.”

Justine’s words came in an agitated rush. “The mayor got an e-mail from the son of a bitch,” Justine told me. “He said that he left Marguerite Esperanza’s running shoes in a mailbox on La Brea. The lab is going over the shoes now. Jack, where the hell are you?”

I said, “Hang on.”

There was a gas station coming up on the corner of Sunset and Fairfax. I pulled in.

“We’ve got almost a full tank,” Del Rio said.

“Use the restroom. Wash the blood off your face. Justine? You still there?”

“Blood? What happened to Rick? What’s going on? Why aren’t you in the office? What’s this about a spa?”

I got out of the car and walked to a secluded part of the Chevron’s concrete lot. I told Justine about the pool party at the “spa” and that Glenda Treat had confirmed that Shelby had worked there but not why.

“You’re a shrink; explain this to me,” I said. “Why was she a working girl?”

“Without knowing her, I don’t think I can.”

“Pretend you’re doing a profile. Just starting one.”

There was a pause. Then she said, “ Shelby was a comic, right?”

“A good one.”

“Okay. Well, if you combine equal parts narcissism and self-hatred, you might come up with a stand-up comic. You might also come up with a prostitute.”

I must have groaned.

Justine said, “Was I too rough, Jack?”

“ Shelby must have found out something she wasn’t supposed to know. Maybe about the Noccias.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not over.”

“I know. Jack?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you coming to the office? Sci and I have two very different approaches to the Schoolgirl case. I need another opinion.”

“Sounds like we’re making progress,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

Chapter 48

FOUR PAIRS OF eyes looked up in dismay, and maybe even shock, when Del Rio and I entered the war room.

“No one died,” I said.

“Because there were too many witnesses,” Del Rio added as a charming note.

Colleen came in to take orders for lunch as I was winding up my theory of the Shelby Cushman-Noccia family connection. She looked at me, wide-eyed and stunned. My jaw was bruised pretty badly. I had a nice laceration on my cheekbone. And those were just the injuries she could see.

“We were outnumbered,” I said.

“The usual?” she asked me.

“Extra fries,” I said. “Extra ice.”

When Colleen left, I turned the floor over to Dr. Sci.

“Jack, I’ve been over this with Mo. We agree. If the Schoolgirl killer is baiting his victims with fake messages, he has to have wireless access to their mobile phones in real time.”

Mo-bot piped up. She was sleeveless, showing off a colorful mess of tattoos. It was hard to imagine her at Harvard, where she’d gone through her PhD. She took off her bifocals and said, “What Sci is implying is that we think the scum is waiting at a location, probably in a vehicle that won’t call attention. We’d say a van.

“Scum grabs the signal out of the air and accesses the target’s mobile unit and basically clones it. That’s how he’s able to send his own messages using a screen name from one of the victim’s friends.”

“If he can do that,” Sci said, “he can block all other messages, incoming and outbound. As far as I know, there’s no program that can hijack cell phone content wirelessly,” Sci said.

“But it’s imaginable. If you can imagine it, it can be done,” added Mo-bot.

Chapter 49

“ HOLD ON TO that thought. Justine?”

Justine had dark circles under her eyes, but she still looked good. On the other hand, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her smile. This case had a hook in her and wouldn’t let go.

“Something’s been nagging at me for a couple of days,” she said, “and it finally crystallized this morning. Five years ago, another girl was left dead in the same alley where Connie Yu was found. I went through the LA Times archives and found the story.

“Her name was Wendy Borman. She was seventeen,” Justine continued. “Like Connie Yu, she left her house to make a quick trip to Hyperion Avenue and didn’t come back. Her body was found the next morning.”

“Wendy Borman is an unsolved case?”

Justine nodded and said, “She was killed by manual strangulation. She had a bruise behind her ear that came from a concussive blow with a heavy object. There were no witnesses, no sexual assault, and no forensic evidence. Sound familiar to you?

“And how’s this? Her handbag and cell phone were taken. Also, she’d been wearing a necklace, a hand-wrought gold star on a chain. It wasn’t on her when they found the body. Her mother said she always wore the necklace.”

“So obviously, it was made to look like a robbery-homicide.”