“Okay.” Luke nodded and stepped over to the fountain, walking slowly, enjoying the way his bootheels echoed in the wide space. He ran his hand beneath the cold water, waiting for Xander to speak just so that he could cut across him.

“Listen, I don’t—”

“Have you seen her lately?” Luke’s lips twitched. It felt good to be someone else, even an asshole cop like Colton Stone.

“Kitty?”

“Yeah, Kitty,” Luke said. He took his hand from the cascading water, wiped it down the front of his jacket, and walked back over to Xander. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Xander pressed his lips together, creasing his brow, pretending to give this some thought. “I, umm . . .” He made a vague gesture with his hand. “A week ago? Maybe?”

“Someone matching your description was seen entering Kitty’s apartment building in Silver Lake at approximately three p.m. on Tuesday.” Luke ran a thumb across his freshly shaved chin. “What can you tell me about that?”

“Three p.m.?” Xander’s mean little eyes shifted as he considered how best to tackle this. “Right. Yeah. Johan wanted her for a job, I think. She wasn’t answering her phone so I went to her apartment. There was nobody home.”

Luke snorted. He could make this little shit tie himself in knots for the next hour—it was fun, too—but that wasn’t what he came here for, and he didn’t want to push too hard. He had one objective: to sell the ruse. The first part of this was to walk and talk like a real homicide detective—to be convincing. Now it was time for part two.

He held up the manila envelope, but paused before opening it. “Hey, you’re not squeamish, are you?”

“No.” Xander shook his head.

“Good,” Luke said, reaching into the envelope and handing Xander the photos of Kitty’s corpse.

Luke had pulled another favor with Denny Chick, his makeup-artist buddy from the good old days. Denny, though, hadn’t exactly been thrilled about doing unpaid work.

“I’m a fucking artist,” he’d stormed. “I don’t do shit for free.”

“Free?” Luke had retorted. “Motherfucker, you owe me seventeen thousand dollars. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be walking on fucking crutches right now.”

“Ah Christ! Are you going to hang that shit over my head forever?”

They were in Denny’s studio in Santa Monica, a brightly lit space with an ocean view and jazz-funk playing on the stereo. Everything was mellow, except for Denny—although he probably had been until Luke showed up. A filtration system sucked up the smells of solvents and paints. Latex masks and a menagerie of alien-like creatures crowded shelves and hung from the ceiling on strands of nylon.