AFTER THE INTERVIEW, I slouched out to Arnold Griner’s desk to touch base with Paul Lebleau, the LAPD tech in charge of tracing Mary Smith’s e-mails.

He tapped away on the keyboard of Griner’s computer while he spoke to me in a rapid-fire patter. “Two e-mails came through two different proxy servers. First one originated from a cybercafe in Santa Monica. That means Mary Smith could be one of a few hundred people. She’s got two different addresses. So far. Both just generic Hotmail accounts, which tells us nothing really, except we do know that she signed up for the first one from the library at USC. Day before the first message.”

I had to concentrate just to follow Lebleau. Did everybody out here have ADD? “What about the second e-mail?” I asked him.

“Transmission didn’t originate in the same place as the first one. That much I can tell you.”

“Did it come from the L.A. area? Can you tell me that?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“When will you know?”

“Probably end of the day, not that it’s going to be much help.” He leaned forward and squinted at several lines of code on the screen. “Mary Smith knows what she’s doing.”

There it was again—she. I understood why everyone was using the pronoun. I was doing it, too—but only for the sake of convenience.

That didn’t mean I was convinced the killer was a woman, though. Not yet, anyway. The letters to Griner could represent some kind of persona. But whose?

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR VACATION so far, Alex? Having a lot of fun?

I took copies of both bizarre e-mails and headed out for a meeting with the LAPD. The detective bureau on North Los Angeles Street was only a quarter mile from the Times offices—a Los Angeles miracle, given the cliché that it takes forty-five minutes to get anywhere in the city.

Oh, the vacation’s great. I’m seeing all the sights. The kids are loving it, too. Nana is over the moon.

I walked slowly, rereading the two e-mails on my way to LAPD. Even if the writing was persona-based, it had come from the mind of the killer.

I started with the first one, which described the last moments of Patsy Bennett’s life. It was definitely chilling, this diary of a psychopath.

To: [email protected]

From: Mary Smith

To: Patrice Bennett:

I am the one who killed you.

Isn’t that some sentence? I think so. Here’s another one that I like quite a lot.

Somebody, a total stranger, will find your body in the balcony at the Westwood Village Theater. You, Patrice Bennett.