“Oh yeah,” I said, only now remembering that Lawrence had promised to give me some information about the teenager when we met that night on our Brentwood’s stakeout. Only problem was, Lawrence and I never had that meeting.

“It hardly matters now,” I said.

“Why?”

“Well, he’s a bit strange, no question, but I might not be talking to you now if it weren’t for him being in the right place at the right time. He’s kind of latching himself onto Angie, and she’s going to have to hurt his feelings, I suspect, but I imagine she’ll be as nice about it as she can.”

“Well,” Lawrence said, “you know, just ’cause a kid does something right doesn’t mean he’s still not screwed up. Stalking someone, that’s not normal behavior.”

Lawrence couldn’t see my shrug at the other end of the phone. I mean, he was right, but it all seemed a bit moot now.

“The thing is,” Lawrence said, “I’d done some checking on him that day, after our run-in with him at your place, when we found him back of the garage, and I got in touch with a few people I know who’ll tell me things that they’re not supposed to, mental health types, and they faxed me some stuff, told me some other things, and I’d made some notes.”

“Yeah?” I said, slightly curious, my eyes still drifting back to the cake.

“This Wylie kid’s got a long psychiatric history. Violent outbursts, obsessive-compulsive behavior. Slightly delusional behavior. And there’s something about a sister.”

“Yeah?”

“The reason he’s here, living without his parents, is, he attacked this sister, maybe even tried to kill her. No charges were ever laid, the family had enough money to make sure that didn’t happen, they kept the authorities out of it, but they ended up kicking the kid out, he was scaring the shit out of them.”

I felt very cold. “You’re not making this up, are you, Lawrence?”

“There’s more, Zack. I was checking out his car, that Chevy of his. This was shortly after I left your place. It was unlocked, and down there between the seats, I find all these snapshots of Angie. He’d been taking pictures of her, making a collection. And I grabbed those, nearly lost my hand to the fucking dog when I did it, too. He was dozing in the backseat, woke up quick.”

“Jesus,” I said. That cold feeling had turned into a shiver. And I thought back to a few nights earlier, when I’d been riding behind Trevor’s Chevy, on the way out to Oakwood, and he’d become distracted by something between the seats. That must have been when he’d discovered the pictures were missing.