He passed the receiver from hand to hand. “What I’d love to do is get to Billy in his apartment, away from Brad, and gauge his reaction to Peaty’s death.” He huffed. “Let’s take care of this whispering bullshit.”

He called the phone company, talked to someone named Larry. “What I need is for you to tell me it’s crap so I can avoid the whole subpoena thing. Thanks, yeah...you, too. I’ll hold.”

Moments later, his faced flushed and he was scribbling furiously in his pad. “Okay, Lorenzo, thanko mucho...no, I mean it...we’ll forget this conversation took place and I’ll get you the damned paper a-sap.”

The receiver slammed down.

He ripped a page out of the pad and shoved it at me.

The first evening call to the Vasquez apartment had come in at five fifty-two p.m. and lasted thirty-two minutes. The caller’s mid-city number was registered to Guadalupe Maldonado. The call from Jackie Vasquez’s mom at “like six.”

Milo closed his eyes and pretended to doze as I read on.

Five more calls between seven and ten p.m., all from a 310 area code that Milo had notated as “stolen cell.” The first lasted eight seconds, the second, four. Then a trio of two-second entries that had to be hang-ups.

Armando Vasquez losing patience and slamming down the phone.

I said, “Stolen from who?”

“Don’t know yet, but it happened the same day the call came in. Keep going.”

Under the five calls was the doodle of an amoebic blob filled with crosses. Then something Milo had underlined so hard he’d torn paper.

Final call. 10:23 p.m. Forty-two seconds long.

Despite Vasquez’s anger, something had managed to hold his interest.

Different caller, 805 area code.

Milo reached over and took the page, shredded it meticulously, and dropped it in his trash basket. “You have never seen that. You will see it once the goddamn subpoena that is now goddamn necessary produces legit evidence.”

“Ventura County,” I said. “Maybe Camarillo?”

“Not maybe, for sure. My man Lawrence says a pay phone in Camarillo.”

“Near the outlets?”

“He wasn’t able to be that precise, but we’ll find out. Now I’ve got a possible link to the Gaidelases. Which should make you happy. All along, you never saw Peaty for them. So what’re we talking about, an 805-based killer who prowls the coast and I’ve gotta start from scratch?”

“Only if the Gaidelases are victims,” I said.

“As opposed to?”

“The sheriffs thought the facts pointed to a willful disappearance and maybe they were right. Armando told his wife the whispering made it impossible to identify the sex of the caller. If it’s amateur theater we’re talking about, Cathy Gaidelas could be a candidate.”

His jaws bunched. He scooted forward on his chair, inches from my face. I thanked God we were friends.