“Rahmi’s phone. Jamal’s number is in the memory. Maybe you could ID the service provider, and back-trace Jamal’s call list. We might be able to find him through his friends.”

Cole put the phone aside, and picked up the note.

“I’ll see what I can do. How are these people connected?”

“Ana Markovic was the Meyers’ nanny. She died this morning. Rina was her sister. She has a friend called Yanni. I’m not sure how he spells it. Rina was at the hospital before her sister died. She was standing guard because she believed the people who shot her sister might come around to finish the job.”

“You think she knows something?”

“They’re Serbian. Rahmi says his cousin hooked up with a Serbian gangster. What are the odds?”

Cole thought about it. Los Angeles has always had a small Serbian population, but, just as the Russian and Armenian populations increased after the Soviet Union collapsed, the Serbian and expatriate Yugoslavian populations shot up after the conflicts in the nineties. Criminals and organized gangsters arrived along with everyone else, and L.A. now had significant numbers of criminal gang sets from all over Eastern Europe. But even with the increasing populations, the numbers of East Europeans remained statistically small. A Latin, African-American, or Anglo connection would have meant nothing. A Balkan connection in Westwood was worth checking out.

Cole placed the note with the phone.

“Your pal Rina, you think she’d talk to me?”

“No.”

Cole stared at the information Pike had cribbed onto the sheet. It wasn’t much.

“Where did Ana live?”

“With Frank.”

“Maybe she had another place for the weekends.”

“I don’t know.”

“I guess you and I aren’t up to speed on the nanny lifestyle.”

“No.”

The classic Pike conversation.

“What I’m getting at here is that talking to people who knew this girl might be a good place to start. I’ll need the names of her friends, maybe some phone numbers, things like that. If the sister won’t talk to us, can we get into the crime scene?”

“I’ll take care of it. Also, John Chen is on the SID team. He’s running the physical evidence.”

Cole nodded. Chen was good, and Chen had worked with them before. Cole would call him after Pike left.

Two seagulls appeared in the empty blue nothing outside the glass. Cole watched them float on their invisible sea, tiny heads turning. One of them suddenly dropped out of sight. His partner watched the other fall, then folded his wings and followed.

Cole said, “And Terrio doesn’t know about Jamal and the Serbian connection?”

“No.”

“You going to tell him?”

“No. I want to find them before the police.”

Pike was staring at him, but his face was as empty of expression as always, the dark glasses like two black holes cut into space. The stillness in Pike was amazing.