Two months later, he caught the Claire Argent homicide and called me right away, sounding furious but sparked by enthusiasm.

"Got a new one, some interesting similarities to Dada. But different, too. Female vie. Thirty-nine-year-old psychologist named Claire Argent-know her, by any chance?"

"No."

"Home address in the Hollywood Hills, just off Woodrow Wilson Drive, but she was found in West L.A. territory. Stripped naked and stashed in the trunk of her Buick Regal, back of the loading dock behind the Stereos Galore in that big shopping center on La Cienega near Sawyer."

That side of La Cienega was West L.A.'s eastern border. "Barely in your territory."

"Yeah, Santa loves me. Here's what I know so far: the shopping center closes at eleven, but there's no fence at the dock; anyone can pull in there. Real easy access because an alley runs right behind. West of the alley is a supplementary indoor lot, multiple levels, but it's closed off at night. After that, it's all residential. Private homes and apartments. No one heard or saw a thing. Shipping clerk found the car at six A.M., called for a tow, and when the driver winched it up he heard something rolling around inside and had the smarts to worry about it."

"Was she cut in half?" I said.

"No, left in one piece, but wrapped in two garbage bags, just like Dada. Her throat was slashed, too, and her eyes were mangled."

"Mangled how?"

"Chopped into hamburger."

"But not removed."

"No," he said irritably. "If my storage theory about Richard is correct, it would explain why she wasn't cut in half. Dr. Argent was five-five, folded easily into the Buick. And guess where she worked, Alex: Starkweather Hospital."

"Really," I said.

"Ghoul Central. Ever been there?"

"No," I said. "No reason. None of my patients ever killed anyone."

Chapter 3

In the spring of 1981, Emil Rudolph Starkweather died in his bed in Azusa at the age of seventy-six, unmarried, leaving no heirs, having dedicated fifty years to public service, ten as a Water and Power engineer, forty as a state senator.

Tightfisted in every other regard, Starkweather campaigned relentlessly for mental-health funding and pushed through construction of scores of community treatment centers throughout the state. Some said living with and caring for a psychotic sister had made him a one-issue humanist. The sister died five months before Starkweather's massive nocturnal coronary. Soon after her burial, Starkweather's health seemed to rot away.

Not long after his funeral, state auditors discovered that the veteran senator had systematically embezzled four decades of campaign funds for personal use. Some of the money had been spent on the sister's twenty-four-hour nursing care and medical bills, but most went into real estate: Starkweather had amassed an empire of over eleven thousand California acres, primarily vacant lots in run-down neighborhoods that he never developed.