“Mama in a red car who called Adriana for help because something scared her. If those fears were justified, Adriana could have lost her life because she got too close to the situation.”

“Bad Daddy.”

“Major-league monster Daddy who murdered the mother of his child and the child, held on to the baby’s skeleton as a psychopathic trophy. That ended when he read about the bones in Holly Ruche’s backyard and decided to ditch his collection nearby. Mom had already been taken care of and Adriana, suspicious after her friend disappeared, followed him. Unfortunately, he spotted her.”

He drove for a while. “Charming scenario. Too bad I’ve got nada to back any of it up.”

“You’ve got Adriana’s personal effects.”

“There was anything juicy in those boxes, the Changs—being trained observers—would’ve noticed and said something.”

“That’s assuming they snooped.”

“Everyone snoops, Alex.”

“Not busy people.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll burn some incense to the Evidence Gods, pray a hot lead shows up in the boxes. I was a less pro-fessional detective, I’d pull into the next truck stop and do an impromptu forensic.”

“Everything goes straight to the lab?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “Finders keepers, but I’m doing it by the book.”

We got off the freeway at Santa Monica Boulevard at 1:36 a.m. For all its rep as a party town, most of L.A. closes down early and the streets were dark, hazy, and empty. That can stimulate the creepers and the crawlers but Milo’s police radio was calm and back at the station the big detective room was nearly deserted, every interview room empty.

He used the same room where Helene Johanson had cried, dragged in an additional table and created a work space. Spraying the surfaces with disinfectant, he gloved up, used a box cutter to slit the wardrobe open, emptied the contents.

Clothing. More clothing. A peer at the bottom evoked a disgusted head shake. He examined the garments anyway.

A couple more bland dresses similar to the one Adriana Betts had died in, two pairs of no-nonsense jeans, seven nondescript blouses, cotton undergarments, T-shirts, a pair of sneakers, black flats, cheap plastic sunglasses.

“No naughty secret-life duds, amigo.” He sniffed the garments. “No secret-life perfume, either. Adriana, you wild and crazy kid.” Shutting his eyes for several moments as if meditating, he opened them, repacked the clothes, sealed the box and filled out a lab tag.

The smaller box yielded a hairbrush, a toothbrush, antacid, acetaminophen, a blue bandanna, and more garments: two pairs of walking shorts and a wad of white T-shirts. Milo was about to put everything back when he stopped and hefted the shirts.

“Too heavy.” Running his hands over each tee, he extracted a shirt from the middle of the stack and unfolded. Inside was a brown leatherette album around six inches square, fastened by a brass key clasp.