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Chapters (27)
  1. "F" is for FUGITIVE
  2. Chapter 1
  3. Chapter 2
  4. Chapter 3
  5. Chapter 4
  6. Chapter 5
  7. Chapter 6
  8. Chapter 7
  9. Chapter 8
  10. Chapter 9
  11. Chapter 10
  12. Chapter 11
  13. Chapter 12
  14. Chapter 13
  15. Chapter 14
  16. Chapter 15
  17. Chapter 16
  18. Chapter 17
  19. Chapter 18
  20. Chapter 19
  21. Chapter 20
  22. Chapter 21
  23. Chapter 22
  24. Chapter 23
  25. Chapter 24
  26. Chapter 25
  27. Epilogue

"At the time of the murder, she was apparently having an affair and got herself knocked up."

"Don't know."

"Make a guess. There must have been rumors."

"Not that I heard."

"Can you ask around? Somebody must know."

"Hey, I'd like to help, but I've probably already said more than I should."

"What about some of the girls in your class? Someone must have been clued in back then."

He cleared his throat again. "Well. Barb might know. I could ask her, I guess."

"Barbara who?"

"My wife. We were in the same class."

I glanced at the photograph on his desk, recognizing her belatedly. "The prom queen?"

"How'd you know about that?"

"I saw some pictures of her in the yearbook. Would you ask her if she could help?"

"I doubt if she knows anything, but I could mention it."

"That'd be great. Have her give me a call. If she doesn't know anything about it, she might suggest someone who would."

"I wouldn't want anything said about..."

"I understand," I said.

I gave him my card with a little note on the back, with my telephone number at the Ocean Street. I left his office feeling faintly optimistic and more than a little disturbed. There was something about the idea of grown men haunted by the sexuality of a seventeen-year-old girl that seemed riveting – both pitiable and perverse. Somehow the glimpse he'd given me of the past made me feel like a voyeur.

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

At two o'clock I slipped up the outside stairs at the motel and changed into my running clothes. I hadn't had lunch, but I was feeling supercharged, too wired to eat. After the hysteria at the courthouse, I'd spent hours in close contact with other human beings and my energy level had risen to an agitated state. I pulled on my sweats and my running shoes and headed out again, room key tied to my laces. The afternoon was slightly chilly, with a haze in the air. The sea blended into the sky at the horizon with no line of demarcation visible between. Southern California seasons are sometimes too subtle to discern, which I'm told is disconcerting to people who've grown up in the Midwest and the East. What's true, though, is that every day is a season in itself. The sea is changeable. The air is transformed. The landscape registers delicate alterations in color so that gradually the saturated green of winter bleaches out to the straw shades of summer grass, so quick to burn. Trees explode with color, fiery reds and flaming golds that could rival autumn anywhere, and the charred branches that remain afterward are as bare and black as winter trees in the East, slow to recover, slow to bud again.