AROUND 5:00 THE NEXT DAY, the briefing room at LAPD was packed to overflowing, a suitcase with way too much crap inside. I leaned up against a wall near the front, waiting for Detective Jeanne Galletta to get the madness going.

She came in walking briskly alongside Fred Van Allsburg, from my office; L.A.’s chief of police, Alan Shrewsbury; and a third man, whom I didn’t recognize. Jeanne was definitely the looker in the group, and the only one under fifty.

“Who’s that?” I asked the officer standing next to me. “Blue suit. Lighter blue suit.”

“Michael Corbin.”

“Who?”

“The deputy mayor. He is a suit. Useless as tits on a bull.”

I was kind of glad to have been left out of the speechifying at the meeting—but a little wary as well. Politics were a given on this kind of high-profile homicide case. I just hoped they weren’t about to start playing a larger-than-usual role here in Los Angeles.

Galletta gave me a little nod hello before she started. “All right, people, let’s go.” Everyone quieted down immediately. The deputy mayor shook Van Allsburg’s hand and then slipped out a side door. Huh? What was that all about? It wasn’t a guest appearance, more like a ghost appearance.

“Let’s get the nuts and bolts out of the way first,” Detective Galletta said.

She quickly ran over all the common elements of the case—the Walther PPK, the children’s stickers marked with two A’s and a B, the so-called Perfect Mother victims, which was the angle the press was running with, of course. One nasty out-of-town paper had called the case “The Stepford Wife Murders.” Galletta reminded us that the exact wording in the e-mails Mary had sent to the L.A. Times was classified information.

A few questions flew.

Does the LAPD or Bureau know of or suspect any connection between Mary Smith and other homicides in the area? No.

How do we know it was a single assailant? We don’t for sure, but all signs indicate as much.

How do we know the killer is a woman? A woman’s hair, presumably the offender’s, was found under a sticker at the movie theater in Westwood.

“This might be a good time to ask Agent Cross to give us an overview of whatever profile the FBI has going. Dr. Cross has come here from Washington, where he solved cases involving serial killers like Gary Soneji and Kyle Craig.”

Something like a hundred pairs of eyes shifted to look at me. I had come to the briefing as an observer, I thought, but now I was going to be put on center stage. No sense wasting the opportunity, or worse, everybody’s time.

“Well, let me start by saying that I’m not yet absolutely convinced Mary Smith is a woman,” I said.

That ought to wake them up in the back rows.

Chapter 50

Chapter 50