“All right,” said Brzica. “J.J. said he was a friend. Also.”

“All those friends. J.J. was a popular guy.”

“Yeah.”

“Just a regular social butterfly.”

“I guess. He did live next to him, said he wasn’t paying rent. That’s what a friend does. Right? They help.”

“When did Williams tell you what he planned to do to Corey?”

“Never, sir. I didn’t even know until you told me, sir. Honest.”

“Williams goes into Corey’s place, comes out with bags of money, you didn’t wonder.”

“If I knew, maybe.”

“He never showed you the money.”

“No, sir,” she said. “I’d a liked that.”

“Liked what?”

Big smile. “When they show me the money.” Dropping her hand to her crotch. “When it drops into the g-string. The greatest feeling, sir.”

“Okay, let’s move on, Ag—Kashmeer. Meredith Santos.”

“Who?”

“A girl who used to work with Williams.”

“Don’t know her. I’m sorry, sir.”

“For what?”

“Calling you fat and ugly. I was scared.”

“Hey,” said Milo, “reality is reality.”

“No way, sir. You’re muscular and masculine.”

“Gosh.”

“Can I go now? It’s almost time for lunch.”

“Not quite yet, Kashmeer. We need to talk about Meredith Santos. She’s disappeared.”

“Okay.”

“Williams never mentioned her?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Meredith Santos, Kashmeer.”

“Nope.”

“Hispanic, a little younger than you.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Gorgeous girl,” said Milo. “I’m talking beauty-queen caliber.”

Anger striped Brzica’s face. “He didn’t need that.”

“Didn’t need what?”

“Fancy pussy. He had me.”

He spent another two hours with her, gave me a try, allowed Frank Gonzales to have a go. By the time she asked for a lawyer, all of us were tired but Agnes Brzica remained full of energy and refusing to say where she’d lived before meeting Williams.

Hard to say how much of that was temperament, how much a residual effect of the meth she’d smoked.

Left alone in the interview room, knowing she was being videotaped, she danced and sang and shimmied and fluffed her hair and her breasts. Removing her jail slippers, she waved them like cheerleading props.

When her public defender arrived, she was standing on her head and wiggling her toes.

Her legal representation was a twenty-something named Ira Newgrass. He forbade her from saying another word, assured Milo he was wasting his time, anyway, “nothing is going to stick.”

The Oxnard deputy D.A. assigned to the case, a woman named Pam Theroux, agreed privately. “All you have her on is flirting with Kleffer.”

Frank Gonzales said, “C’mon, we’ve got her living with Williams right next to Corey, leaving before Corey’s murder, waiting at that motel and meeting up with Williams and then coming to L.A. to abet a homicide.”

“Residing and waiting aren’t crimes, Detective.”

“She’s evil,” said Gonzales.

“Evil isn’t my business,” said Theroux. “The penal code is.”

“You can’t do anything?”