“He’s blond, we’ll go with anonymous pale.” Scanning her sketch. “The eyes, you got them as kind of piggy.”

“They were piggy,” said Robin. “But wide-set, maybe even wider than I drew them. Squinty, which could’ve been him trying to look tough, or they really are squinty. One thing I remember now that I didn’t include is he had a heavy brow—a shelf right here. Low hairline, too. His hair didn’t stay down like yours, it stuck up.”

“Mousse or gel?” said Shimoff.

“Quite possibly. No sideburns, he clipped them way up here. Pug nose, possibly even smaller than I showed.”

“Possibly broken?” said Shimoff. “Fits with the football build.”

“Good point,” she said.

“Pug as well as high-bridged.”

“Not as high as Milo’s but definitely on the high side.”

Milo measured the space between his nose and upper lip with two fingers. Shrugged.

Robin said, “His ears were really close-set.” She frowned. “I keep remembering things I omitted. He had no lobes. And they were a little pointy at the top. Right here. Elfin, I guess. But there was nothing cute about him. The lips I got pretty accurately: the upper really was this thin. Almost invisible and the lower was full.”

Shimoff picked up a pencil. “Wish they were all this easy.”

He worked slowly, meticulously, stepping back from the drawing to take in a long view, rarely erasing. Forty minutes later, two likenesses had materialized. To my eye, stunningly accurate.

Robin said, “What do you think, Alex?”

“Perfect.”

She studied the drawings. “I’d lift her eyebrow a bit on the right side. And his neck could be a little thicker, so there’s a bulge where it feeds into his collar.”

Shimoff tinkered, sat back, appraised his work. “Beautiful girl. Now back to Picasso.”

Milo said, “Picasso looks finished to me.”

Shimoff smiled. “You are spared the pain, Lieutenant.”

“Of what?”

“Being an artist.”

Milo called LAPD Public Affairs from the Seville, put the phone on speaker.

“Got a couple artist renderings I need on the media A-sap. A Jane Doe 187 and a possible suspect.”

The P.A. officer said, “One second,” in a voice that said nothing mattered less.

For the next four minutes a public service announcement on domestic violence took the place of live speech.

A new voice said, “Hi, Lieutenant Sturgis. This is Captain Emma Roldan from the chief’s office.”

“I was just on the phone with—”

“Public Affairs,” said Roldan. “They passed along your request, it will be prioritized appropriately. You should be notified as to its disposition by noon tomorrow.”

“All I asked was for a couple of drawings to be—”

“We’ll do our best, Lieutenant. Good night.”

“Anyone else calls P.A., P.A. handles it. I call P.A., you handle it.”

“Chief’s standing orders,” said Roldan. “You get extraspecial treatment.”