He picked up the Ekerling file, looked for Rudy’s name but didn’t find it anywhere. Not surprising because Martel and Perry had been arrested almost immediately, so why bother? And it wasn’t a smart thing to start calling up Ekerling’s critics and asking pointed questions. Someone might get pissed. Someone might call up Detective Rip Garrett or Detective Tito Diaz and start complaining about a nosy lieutenant from West Valley. And if they mentioned the name Decker, not only would he be in a tight spot, that lieutenant would also put his daughter in an even tighter spot.

Especially because two suspects were currently in custody and those two suspects had been in diapers or nonexistent when Bennett Alston Little had been murdered.

No, no, no, it would be an unwise thing to talk to Ekerling’s adversaries. What Decker needed was one of Primo’s allies.

He wrote himself a reminder to call Marilyn Eustis tomorrow morning.

CHAPTER 13

WHILE THE MORNING coffee was brewing, Decker turned on the family laptop. It was clogged with a plethora of different sites and icons and was ancient in a rapidly moving techno world. However, it still worked.

The Doodoo Sluts had gone through several transformations, but in its heyday eighteen years ago, it consisted of a quartet: Elvis Costello look-alikes who were, in turn, Buddy Holly look-alikes—four white boys in black suits, white shirts, thin black ties, and big round black-rimmed glasses. Their most successful track was entitled “Bang Me” and climbed its way to number eight on the Top 100 hit list. The song wasn’t available in any routine download format.

Decker was still searching for the song or a “best of” CD that contained the song when Hannah walked into the kitchen. The teen was dressed in a full blue skirt and a white-collared polo top, the preferred uniform of the school. With her red hair, she could have doubled as the American flag. Decker closed the computer, convincing himself that he was spending some quality time with his elusive daughter. That usually translated into making her eggs and pouring her orange juice.

“How’s it going?” he said cheerfully.

“You’re taking me to school?”

“Is that okay?”

“I love your company, but your car doesn’t have satellite radio. Can we listen to my CD mix?”

“Absolutely.”

“Thanks.” She plopped down on a kitchen chair, her eyes still full of sleep. “I’m not hungry, Abba. I’ll eat later at school.”

“All they serve is sugar cereal and that’s a terrible thing to eat in the morning. You get a blood sugar rush, and then you crash. You need protein.”

“I need another twenty hours of sleep.”

“What time did you get to bed?”

“It doesn’t matter when I get to bed. It’s when I wake up.”