What she was looking for was not somebody who left with friends at 2:00. The person Leah was watching for was not going to be in a crowd. It would be a girl. She would be alone. She would be somebody who probably didn’t have much experience in navigating her way along the far border between tipsy and hammered and had pushed it too far. That meant she was probably going to be on the younger side, either just twenty-one or carrying false identification that said she was. She would be the one who was left behind.

The car that caught Leah’s eye was not the Chrysler 300. It was an Audi convertible. It was white with a tan leather interior and a tan canvas top that was folded down at the moment. To Leah, the open top meant that it hadn’t been driven until after sundown, because the sun today had been too harsh for an open top. But leaving the top down in this parking lot hinted to Leah that the person was not thinking clearly. Rains here tended to come with no warning whenever the right cloud passed overhead.

Leah’s headlights were reflected back by a sparkly frame around the rear license plate. She drove a little closer and saw something that was a familiar sight to cops late at night. There was a pool of liquid on the pavement beside the driver’s door. Most of the time that meant a drink had been poured out, either from a glass or from the driver’s stomach.

Leah turned off her headlights and kept her distance while she studied the rest of the lot. She was sure that if she walked over there, she would find a young woman lying in the car, slumped over, her butt in the driver’s seat and her head and shoulders on the passenger seat, just the way she’d been since she passed out. Leah craned her neck and straightened her long legs to raise her body so she could see the car better. From a foot higher, she could see down into the convertible. Between the bucket seats of the convertible she could see a part of the girl’s back in exactly the position Leah had expected. Leah slid back down and stayed there.

Her cop’s mind began to work on the situation. She couldn’t very well drive away and leave this girl lying there. People, particularly small people, sometimes died of alcohol overdoses. And she could easily choke to death. Even sleeping off her intoxication unprotected in a convertible in a dark lot was dangerous. There were sure to be other men besides Albert Weiss in town who would be glad to find a girl unconscious and alone late at night.