“What’s going on?”

Conklin started out of my office, saying, “C’mon, Lieutenant,” taking long strides away from me and down the hall.

“Conklin?”

I tossed down the report I’d been editing and followed him to the small, cluttered room that was home to our microwave and yellowing Kenmore fridge.

Jacobi was sitting at the battered table across from a pretty young woman in her early twenties wearing a blue Polarfleece shirt and stretch pants. Her long dark hair was in a braid down her back. She looked up at me with reddened, mascara-smudged eyes.

Clearly, she’d been crying.

Jacobi had his “Uncle Warren” face on. It was short of a smile, but I could read happiness in his eyes.

“Lieutenant,” Jacobi said, “this is Barbara Jane Ross. She was throwing out newspapers when she found this.”

He pushed the newsprint picture of Jag Girl into the center of the table, the pretty blond girl we’d found displayed like a mannequin in the Jaguar convertible on Chestnut Street.

Innumerable dead-end tips had flooded our phone lines since Jag Girl’s picture had run in the Chronicle. From the look on Jacobi’s face, I knew this young woman had something valuable to say.

Barbara Jane Ross and I shook hands. Hers were cold as ice. “May I see that?” I asked of the photo she clutched in her left hand.

“Sure,” she said, handing me a snapshot of herself and Jag Girl on the beach. Both girls were wearing wide-brimmed hats and small bikinis; they had identical braids, and both were grinning broadly.

“She was my college roommate,” said Barbara Jane, her eyes scrunching up with tears. “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe that Sandy is dead.”

Chapter 57

Chapter 57

I HANDED BARBARA JANE a box of tissues, stared over her head, first at Jacobi then at Conklin, as she blew her nose. Holy shit. We’d finally gotten a break on Jag Girl.

“Barbara, what’s your friend’s last name?”

“It’s Wegner. But Sandy goes by other names. I don’t know them all.”

“She’s an actress?”

“No, an escort.”

I was stunned. Sandy Wegner had been a party girl. So how had she kept her prints out of the system?

“Are you an escort, too?” Conklin asked.

“No way. I teach. Special ed, right here in the city.”

Jacobi loaded up the Mr. Coffee as Barbara Jane Ross told us how she and Sandy had been roommates at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“When we were in school, Sandy needed some extra cash, so she went on a few ‘dates’ for an escort service. A lot of girls do it,” Barbara said. “You never, ever have enough money in school.

“She didn’t do it often, but when she did, she thought it was exciting and fun,” Barbara continued. “Sandy loved having a secret life. She wasn’t the only coed doing it, either.”