Marge helped her into the passenger seat of the unmarked and buckled her seat belt. “Comfy?” No answer. Marge started the motor and drove toward the freeway.

Crystal snored all the way home.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ADRIANNA MADE HER home in a block-long complex of three-story dun-colored buildings, planted with ferns and palms, illuminated at night by colored spotlights. Her apartment number was 3J, and Decker walked quietly through the two-bedroom, two-bath unit. She might have been a wild party girl, but she had kept her place tidy. Maybe that was the nurses’ training. When he was a medic in the army, he found that organization was not only handy, it was imperative. Lives depended on it.

It was an open-concept design. The living room/dining area was furnished with the basics—a sectional couch with a chaise, a couple of end tables, and a trunk for a coffee table. There was a square dining table and four chairs. The kitchen was tiny with beige tiled countertops and newer white appliances. A flat screen had been mounted to the wall opposite the couch. The place could have belonged to anyone USA except for the only revealing item in the space—a bookshelf.

Not many books but lots of DVDs. More important were the framed pictures of Adrianna in life. She’d been an attractive woman with long brunette hair and a wide smile. She stood on the slopes holding her skis with a goofy grin, she posed with her girlfriends at a restaurant holding up a margarita glass, she stood tall in a cap and gown, with her parents on either side. There were several shots of her with the same man—average height, spiky sandy-colored hair, light eyes, and several piercings in each earlobe. Good-looking guy. Probably Garth Hammerling. Decker placed one of his pictures in his briefcase.

He moved on to the bathroom—OTC analgesics, face creams, birth control pills, and a nice-size bag of weed. He left everything as is and went on to the spare bedroom, which Adrianna had set up as an office. There was a cheap desk that held a Dell laptop and a printer, a rocking chair, and a foldout sofa bed.

A computer was a valuable thing. He unplugged the laptop, closed the lid, and gently slid it into a carrying case. Then he began to rifle through her desk—pencils, papers, receipts, paper clips, rubber bands, tape, Post-its, and dozens of loose photographs.

He flipped through some of the pictures.

Adrianna had an orderly mind. On the backs of most of the photos, she had labeled the people and dated them. The same names and faces kept coming up: Sela Graydon, Crystal Larabee, Mandy Kowalski, Garth Hammerling—the cute guy in the framed, living-room picture—and a few of Garth’s friends, Aaron Otis and Greg Reyburn. Again, Decker selected several pictures and stowed them in his attaché.