“Katrina Shonsky, twenty-eight-year-old female Caucasian, blond and brown, five four, one hundred ten. Out partying that night with friends, drove home alone, hasn’t been heard from since. Mother reported it three days later. Took this long to make it into the computer.”

“Go Sean,” I said. “You run a good day care, Papa Sturgis.”

Mr. and Mrs. Royal Hedges lived in a vast, loft-like condo on the fourteenth floor of a luxury building on the Wilshire Corridor. Walls of glass opened to a southward view that avoided the ocean and stared down at Inglewood, Baldwin Hills, LAX flight paths. Altitude and a starless night transformed miles of tract housing into a light show.

Royal and Monica Hedges sat on a low, black Roche-Bobois sofa, smoking in unison. The condo’s floors were black granite, the walls white diamond plaster that threw off its own glints, the artwork big and blotchy with an emphasis on gray.

Monica Hedges was somewhere between fifty and sixty. Tiny and blond and skinny to the point of desiccation, she had heavily lined brown eyes, a face stretched past the point of reason, and great legs displayed by a little black dress.

Royal Hedges looked to be seventy, minimum, sported a red-brown toupee nearly good enough to pull off the illusion, and a Vandyke dyed to match. He wore a red silk shirt, white slacks, pink suede loafers without socks. Hid his fourth yawn behind liver-spotted hands and flicked ashes into a chrome tray.

Monica said, “Katrina’s my only child. From my second marriage. Her father’s long gone.”

“Disappeared?” said Milo.

“Dead.” Her tone said no loss.

Her third husband’s body language said this was her ordeal.

She said, “I’m not panicking, Lieutenant, but I am getting a little nervous. Katrina’s done stupid things before, but not like this, a week and counting. I can’t help worrying because that’s what a mother does. Though I fully expect her to walk right in with one of her stupid excuses.”

Royal said, “I’ll be back,” patted her knee, left the room.

“Men and their plumbing,” said Monica Hedges. “He’ll be up and down the whole time. We’ve been married two years, he doesn’t really know Katrina.”

Milo said, “Is there any friend or relative Katrina might’ve gone to visit?”

“You mean her father’s family? Never. Norm Shonsky wasn’t in her life and neither is his clan.”

Airy wave. Showing no curiosity about why someone of Milo’s rank would be doing a house call on a missing person.

At her income level, probably used to service.

“Besides,” she said, “Katrina doesn’t visit. She picks up impulsively and leaves.”

“Where does she go, ma’am?”