“Yeah, and help from new forensic tests. How much do you know about the Pink investigation?”

“The basics. I never read the whole thing in detail.”

“Well, one thing they recovered was some blood found at the back door of the kitchen. It didn’t belong to any of the Pinks, but the blood was preserved and eventually matched to a dead body that was pulled out of the LA River. Denton Young. Moniker of Devo. He was from Long Beach, a drug addict and burglar, found in the trunk of a stolen car that surfaced in the LA flood control channel as water from winter rains subsided. And there was a slug recovered from his body, .357. It matched Pink’s gun.”

Tess stopped the gentle rocking she’d been doing. “Pink killed him?”

“The evidence points that way. Young bled in Pink’s house, so he was shot there. And breaking into houses with security systems was his MO. Had an extensive record in Long Beach. He was detained once in Pink’s San Pedro neighborhood about two weeks before the Pink killing. Field interview cards recorded that he and Royal Redd were thought to have been casing cars. But cops found no evidence of any crime, so after they were questioned, they were released.”

“Whoa.” Tess leaned forward as the picture crystallized in her mind. “Those two dirtbags killed Isaac and his family.”

“That’s where the cold case guys are going. They’ve wanted to find Redd for a long time.”

“Any connection to Beck or Cross?”

“Cross, yes. The guys found travel records showing that Redd left the country with Cross some twenty-five years ago, but it’s not known when he returned.”

“He must have returned and assumed the Smith identity,” Tess said. “Or maybe he got the ID somewhere out of the country.”

“He got it somewhere. Redd had a passport; none has been found for Smith. And Redd is known to be an associate of Cyrus Beck. The cold case guys really wanted to go the distance with Redd in the box.”

Tess leaned back. She understood that. The LAPD detectives probably had a whole script for the interview if they’d ever gotten Redd into an interview room. Almost made her sorry she’d had to shoot him. Almost.

“Needless to say, the investigators are anxious to get up here and do more digging, hopefully close the case as solved. It’s actually amazing that this guy, at his age, has been able to avoid even a traffic ticket for all these years.” He fidgeted, and Tess finally picked up that something was wrong. She realized she’d been distracted by fatigue and thoughts of Oliver.

“Why are you telling me this, Steve? What’s the bad news?”