He had several stops on his agenda. First, he planned to drive to the old hospital, just to get a closer look. Then he would try to catch Fortuna Esperanzo at work in the gallery in Venice. Afterward he planned on heading to Hoover Middle School, where Tally White was a teacher. He remembered Tally had befriended Jennifer when her daughter Melody had been in the same first-grade class as Kristi.

He punched in the address, headed for the freeway, and barely moved. The 10 was jammed in the middle of the day, but he kept at it, inching past an accident, then picking up speed.

As he headed east he checked his mirrors, on the lookout for a tail, watching to see if he was being followed, particularly by a silver Chevy.

Using his cell, cognizant that he might get pulled over as he wasn’t using a hands-free device, he left a message with Montoya, asking him to look up more on St. Augustine’s Hospital and see if there was some way he could get personnel records from the archdiocese or whatever institution or attorneys or board oversaw the hiring or firing of the staff. There had to be records somewhere. True, there would be a lot of staff to sift through, but only for a couple of years. He explained that the Impala was seven or eight years old and the hospital was closed five years earlier, so even if the car was bought new, the window of time when the sticker could have been issued was relatively short.

A plus.

He also left the license plate numbers and hoped that somehow there would be a match. If Montoya used the police department’s computers, databases, and DMV records, they might be able to find some shred of evidence to help him sort out the mystery.

Bentz knew he didn’t have a lot to go on, but he figured it was a start. Tedious work, but a slight inroad. His cell rang. Bentz saw it was Montoya and grinned.

“Got an answer for me already?”

“Up yours, Bentz. It’s not like I don’t have a job to do here.”

“Just see what you can do.”

“Great. Anything else?” he mocked.

“Not yet.” No reason to tell him about last night’s leap into Santa Monica Bay. Yet.

“Well, just let me know because it’s my mission in life to be your bitch.”

“Fulfilling, isn’t it?”

“You owe me, man.”

“Always have, Montoya.” He hung up just before taking his exit off the freeway, then wound his way around the surface streets to the site of the old hospital.

It wasn’t a large piece of property. The crumbling stucco building that had once housed St. Augustine’s Hospital was now surrounded by mesh fencing and warning signs that trespassers would be prosecuted “to the full extent of the law.”

Fine.