“Oh, sure.” He tugged at a saggy jowl, released skin, took a swallow. “I told him I appreciated the compliment but he should be paying more attention to watching his back when he cruised. He thought that was a double entendre and left cracking up.”

“West Hollywood’s the sheriff,” I said. “Why you?”

“You know how it is. Sometimes I’m the unofficial spokesman for law enforcement when the audience is alternative.”

“Captain pressured you.”

“That, too,” he said.

* * *

I walked over to where Michaela had been found. Milo remained several feet back, reading the notes he’d taken last night.

A flash of white stood out among the weeds. Another nub of coroner’s rope. The drivers had trimmed the bindings because Michaela had been a slim girl.

I knew what had happened at the scene: her pockets emptied, her nails cleaned of detritus, hair combed out, any “product” collected. Finally, attendants had packaged her and lifted her onto a gurney and wheeled her up into a white coroner’s van. By now she’d be waiting, along with dozens of other plastic bundles, stacked neatly on a shelf in one of the large, cool rooms that line the gray hallways of the basement crypt on Mission Road.

They treat the dead with respect at Mission Road, but the backlog— the sheer volume of bodies— can’t help but leach out the dignity.

I picked up the rope. Smooth, substantial. As it had to be. How did it compare to the yellow binding Michaela and Dylan had purchased for their “exercise”?

Where was Dylan now?

I asked Milo if he had any idea.

He said, “First thing I did was call the number on his arrest form. Disconnected. Haven’t located his landlord. Michaela’s, either.”

“She told me she was running out of money, had a month’s grace before eviction.”

“If she did get evicted, be good to know where she’s been crashing. Think they could’ve moved in together?”

“Not if she was leveling with me,” I said. “She blamed the whole thing on him.”

I scanned the dump site. “Not much blood. Killed somewhere else?”

“Looks that way.”

“Who found the body?”

“Woman walking her poodle. Dog sniffed it out, pronto.”

“Strangled and stabbed.”

“Manual strangulation, hard enough to crush the larynx. The follow-up was five stab wounds to the chest and one to the neck.”

“Nothing around the genitalia?”

“She was fully clothed, nothing overtly sexual about the pose.”

Strangulation itself can be a sexual thing. Some lust killers describe it as the ultimate dominance. It takes a long time to stare into the face of a struggling, gasping human being and watch the life force seep out. One monster I interviewed laughed about it.

“Time goes quickly when you’re having fun, Doc.”

I said, “Anything under her nails?”