At eight-ten, I called the Rodriguez house. A phone company recording said that line had been disconnected. I pictured Evelyn and the girls barreling over a dirt road in Baja, Rodriguez following in his truck. Or maybe the four of them, wandering through Waikiki with glazed tourists' eyes. If only they knew how much we had in common now . . .

I began unpacking books. At eight thirty-five, the doorbell rang and Milo appeared on one of the TV monitors, tapping a foot and carrying a white bag.

“Breakfast,” he said, as I let him in. “I already gave Ms. Castagna hers. God, that woman works—what've you been doing?”

“Getting organized.”

“Sleep okay?”

“Great,” I lied. “Thanks a lot for setting us up.”

He looked around. “How's the office?”

“Perfect.”

“Great view, huh?”

“To die for.”

We went into the kitchen and he took some onion rolls and two Styrofoam cups of coffee out of the bag.

We sat at a blue granite table. He said, “What's your schedule like today?”

“It's pretty open now that the Wallace thing's on hold. Looks like Grandma decided to take matters into her own hands.”

I recounted what I'd found in Sunland.

He said, “They're probably better off. If you feel like taking on a little assignment, I've got one for you.”

“What?”

“Go over to the Mental Health Center and talk to Ms. Jean Jeffers. I finally got through to her—she actually called me back last night, which I thought was pretty cool for a bureaucrat. Better attitude than I expected, too. Down to earth. Not that she shouldn't cooperate, after what happened to Becky. I told her we'd come across some harassment crimes—didn't go into specifics—that we had reason to believe might be coming from one of her patients. Someone we also had reason to believe was a buddy of Hewitt's. Mentioning his name got her going—she went on about how Becky's murder had traumatized all of them. Still sounds pretty shook up.”

He tore an onion roll into three pieces, placed the segments on the table like monte cards, picked one up, and ate it.

“Anyway, I asked her if she knew who Hewitt hung out with and she said no. Then I asked her if I could look at her patient roster, and she said she wanted to help but no—the confidentiality thing. So I threw Tarasoff at her, hoping she didn't know the law that well. But she did: no specific threat against a specific victim, no Tarasoff obligation. At that point, I played my trump card: told her the department had a consultant doing some profiling work for us on psycho crimes—a genuine “pee aitch dee' who respected confidentiality and would be discreet, and I gave her your name in case maybe she heard of you. And guess what, she thought she had. Especially after I told her you were semi-famous.”

“Hoo-hah.”