Jacobi gave Selzer a scathing look. Her indignant expression crumpled. “Selzer, you’re pissing me off,” he said.

“Oh, man, I feel bad. I really do. You think I screwed up? I don’t know what I could’ve done differently.”

The woman pulled the comb from her hair, shook her head so that her gleaming hair sprayed around her face, playing the sex card in an unconscious defense of her worried conscience.

The move didn’t distract Jacobi, not even a little bit.

“You didn’t just screw up,” he said. “You sent this girl on a date with a killer.”

Selzer clapped her hands to her face.

“Give me the john’s particulars,” said Jacobi.

Selzer wrote numbers on a Post-it note. Jacobi snatched it up and put his card in its place.

“If he calls you again, fix him up with a girl who doesn’t exist and call me immediately. You got that? Any time, day or night. My cell phone’s on the back of the card.”

Selzer called out as we reached her front door.

“Officers. I’m sorry about Sandy. You should know that. I hope you get whoever killed her.”

“Yeah,” Jacobi called back, “we want to ease your guilt if we possibly can.”

Chapter 59

CONKLIN OPENED THE DOOR for us when we arrived at Sandy Wegner’s apartment. I said hey to Charlie Clapper, who was coming out of the bathroom, bagging the victim’s hairbrush and toothbrush, plus some medications.

“Doesn’t look like a crime scene, Lieutenant,” Conklin told me. “The door was double-locked. No signs of a struggle.”

“What else?”

“She had yogurt for dinner. She left some clothes on the bed, like maybe she’d tried on a few things before she went out. Towel rumpled on the towel bar. Her clothes are okay, but not superexpensive, by the way.

“The message light on her answering machine was blinking. Two calls. Her mother and the library saying she had a book overdue. I took the tape. Pressed redial. Her last call was to ‘time and weather.’ Probably called just before she went out that night.”

“Good work,” I said to Conklin. I asked a CSU tech, “How’s it coming?”

“We’ve got our pictures, Lieutenant.”

I looked around Sandy Wegner’s place. It was dark, like my office, a view of the alley from every room.

Her style was Pottery Barn right down to the swirly iron wall-hanging over the couch. A vase of dead flowers was on the windowsill, and contemporary novels and historical biographies, along with textbooks—math, physics, art history—lined the bookshelves.

Sandy’s bedroom was small, about eleven feet square, painted a pretty lilac-blue with white trim. Primitive watercolors of birds hung over her bed, her name signed in the corner of each one. The personal touches always kill me.

I opened her bifold closet doors, saw that Sandy took care of her clothes. Her Agnès B. T-shirts were on padded hangers; dresses, suits, and jeans in dry-cleaner’s bags. Shoes lined up, polished, heels in good condition.

She had a tasteful wardrobe, but it was definitely off the rack. Nothing like the quality of what she was wearing when we found her body. Jacobi was going through the dresser drawers, shutting them noisily as he went.