Myra Paprock was killed five years ago. Two years after that, Shipler. Then Lerner. Then Stoumen. Was Rosenblatt still alive?

Katarina was, just a few miles up this beautiful road. That gave us something in common.

I was ready to talk to her.

Cabrillo Boulevard swept up past the ocean, cleansed of the weekend tourist swarm and the bad sidewalk art. The wharf looked depopulated and its far end disappeared in a bank of fog. A few cyclists pumped in the bike lane and joggers and speed walkers chased immortality. I passed the big new hotels that commandeered the prime ocean views and the motels that followed them like afterthoughts. Passed a small seafood place where Robin and I had eaten shrimp and drunk beer. People were eating there now, laughing, tan.

Santa Barbara was a beautiful place, but sometimes it spooked me. Too much psychic space between the haves and the have-nots and not enough geography. A walk up State Street took you from welfare hotels and mean bars to custom jewelers, custom tailors, and two-bucks-a-scoop ice cream. The fringes of Isla Vista and Goleta were as hard as any inner city, but Montecito was still a place where people ate cake. Sometimes the tension seemed murderous.

I pictured Andres de Bosch trolling lower State for day laborers. His daughter listening and laughing as he dehumanized those he'd found. . . .

Cabrillo climbed higher and emptied of pedestrians, and I caught an eyeful of endless Pacific. Sailboats were out in force at the marina, most of them floundering as they searched for a tailwind. Nearer to the horizon, fishing scows sat, still as artist's models. The boulevard flattened once again, turned into Shoreline and got residential. I began checking the numbers on the curb.

Most of the houses were fifties rancheros, several of them in renovation. I remembered the neighborhood as well planted. Today, lots of the plants were gone, and the ones that remained looked discouraged. The drought had come hard to this town kissed by salt water.

The lawns were suffering the most, most of them dead or dying. A few were vivid green—too green.

Spray paint.

Santa Barbara, trying to free itself from dependence on Sierra snowpack, had declared mandatory rationing long before L.A. Now the town was returning to desert, but the addiction to emerald was hard to shake.

I reached Katarina's house. Older than its neighbors and considerably smaller, a pale blue, English country cottage with two turrets, a slate roof that needed mending, and a big dirt expanse in front. A privet hedge rimmed the plot, uneven, and picked apart in spots. What had once been a rose garden was now a collection of trellised sticks.