"Here's my problem, Thomas. Those pictures could be sitting right here, and I couldn't find them. The experts at LAPD can turn this thing inside out."

"I'm telling you they won't find nothing. I pick out the best shots, send them to Stephen, then get rid of the evidence. I don't keep that shit on my computer."

"You e-mailed the pictures to Stephen?"

"I sent the best three. The rest weren't so good. He got them. I know he got them - he wrote back and said."

Pike said, "When?"

"Five days ago, I guess. It hadda be five."

Dana said, "The day after I saw him."

I glanced at Pike, and Pike nodded. We were both thinking the same thing.

I said, "Have you gotten an e-mail from Stephen in the past three days?"

"No."

Pike's mouth twitched. Stephen had been working at a laptop when we saw him three days ago. It was the only computer we saw, and we took it. George Reinnike's picture was in my car.

I pushed Thomas's computer out of the way, put Stephen's laptop on the table, and turned it on. Thomas came over to see.

"If you had Stephen's computer, why didn't you just ask him for the goddamned pictures?"

Pike said, "Shut up."

The screen filled with a dark blue desktop. The DESKTOP FILES icon opened the hard drive, but revealed nothing more than a long list of files with meaningless names. I knew the list of call girls and business records were somewhere in the files, but nothing was labeled BLACKMAIL or JOHNS. We would have to make Stephen show us, but Stephen had already told his lawyer that we had taken his computer. If Stephen turned up beaten to death, the lawyer would probably suspect.

Pike said, "Anything?"

"Nothing obvious. We'll have to go back to Stephen."

Thomas said, "Let me ask you something. What's so important about me taking his picture? What you expect to see?"

"Reinnike's license plate."

Thomas seemed vague for a moment, but then his right eye flickered. Thomas was working on something.

"I think I got that. You can see the back end of his car pretty good in one of the shots I sent."

I said, "Do you know his password?"

"You think he wants me checkin' his mail? Would you?"

I waited. I didn't have to wait long. Thomas saw a way out and he was spooling up to make his offer.

"I send him these pictures, he's gotta download them, right? He's gotta save'm, print'm, make copies, whatever, so he can use'm to shake down the johns. If he downloads them into a file, then we don't need his password to get into his e-mail; all we gotta do is find the picture files, right?"

"Get to it."