He backed away, positioned himself between the Corvette’s scoop-nose and the parking lot wall.

“The Daneys,” he said, smiling coldly. “Always figured them for your typical Jesus freak hypocrites, and I was right.”

“Right, how?”

“Daney was doing Sydney any way he wanted.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Saw her going down on him in her car. In the parking lot, after dark. Asked her about it the next day and she screamed at me to fuck off and get out of her life.”

“Which parking lot?”

“County jail.”

Same place she’d offered her baby blue BMW for the interview with Jane Hannabee. “High-risk behavior,” I said.

“That was the thrill for Sydney.”

“So Daney broke the eighth commandment,” I said. “What made his wife a hypocrite?”

“C’mon,” said Montez. “She had to know. Sydney and Daney were hooking up all the time, how couldn’t she know?” He worked his lips as if to spit, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “She rubbed me the wrong way. Psychobabble-spouting airhead. The only one she cared about was Troy, I couldn’t get her to even talk to Rand. You really care, you reach out to everyone.”

“Why’d you want her involved?”

“Character reference.”

“Why’d she favor Troy?”

“They both did. Because they knew Troy from before,” he said. “He was one of their do-gooder projects at 415 City. Which shows you how effective they were.”

“Rand wasn’t a project.”

“Rand never got into big-time trouble until he met up with Troy, so he never had the benefit of their wise counsel. Not that it would’ve made a difference, like I told you.”

“The script.”

“If you don’t believe there’s a script for everything, you don’t deserve that Ph.D.”

“What happened with the real script?”

“Sydney’s movie? What do you think? Nothing happened. This is L.A.”

“What was the story line?”

“How would I know?”

“Never read it?”

“No way, this was top secret. Don’t even know if there was a script.” He pulled out a remote and disarmed the Corvette’s alarm. Moving around me, he opened the door.

“What was there?”

He didn’t answer.

“Suit yourself,” I said and clicked open my phone.

He said, “All I saw was a summary, okay? A treatment Sydney called it. Only reason I knew about it was I found it in her desk when I was looking for matches.” Tiny smile. “I like to smoke afterward.”

“You and she got it on at the office?”

“Those cheap government desks are good for something.”

“What did the treatment say?”

“The names were changed but it was basically Kristal Malley. Except in her story, the boys had been manipulated by the kid’s father into killing her.”

“What was his motive?”