“I’ll do my best, ma’am.”

Waters shook her head. “That’s not good enough.” She stood. “I’m afraid this meeting is adjourned.”

Milo crossed his legs. “Ms. Waters, all we came here for are your recollections about Janie Ingalls. No assumption was made of any criminal involvement on your part—”

“You bet your boots no assumption was made.” Waters jabbed a finger. “That didn’t even cross my mind, for God’s sake. But what happened to Janie twenty years ago isn’t my problem. Safeguarding my privacy is. Please leave.”

“Ms. Waters, you know as well as I do that I can’t guarantee confidentiality. That’s the D.A.’s authority. I’m being honest, and I’d appreciate the same from you. If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about. And refusing to cooperate won’t shield your husband. If I wanted to complicate his life, all I’d have to do is talk to my boss and he’d make a call, and . . .”

He showed her his palms.

Waters slapped her hands on her hips. Her stare was cold and steady. “Why are you doing this?”

“In order to find out who murdered Janie Ingalls. You’re right about one thing. It was obscene. She was tortured, burned with cigarettes, mutilat—”

“No, no, no! None of that shock treatment, give me some credit.”

Milo’s palms pressed together. “This has become needlessly adversarial, Ms. Waters. Just tell me what you know, and I’ll do my utmost to keep you out of it. That’s the best I can offer. The alternative means a bit more overtime for me and a lot more complication for you.”

“You have no jurisdiction in New Mexico,” said Melinda Waters. “Technically, you’re trespassing.”

“Technically, you’re still a material witness, and last time I checked New Mexico had diplomatic relations with California.”

Waters looked at her family again, sat back down, put her glasses back on, mumbled, “Shit.”

The three of us sat in silence for a full minute before she said, “This isn’t fair. I’m not proud of the kind of kid I was back then, and I’d like to forget it.”

I said, “We’ve all been teenagers.”

“Well, I was a rotten teenager. A total screwup and a stoner, just like Janie. That’s what drew us together. Bad behavior—Jesus, I don’t think a day went by when we weren’t getting loaded. And . . . other things that give me a migraine when I think about them. But I pulled myself out of it—in fact, the process started the day after Janie and I split up.”

“At the party?” said Milo.

Waters grabbed for another pen, changed her mind, played with a drawer-pull—lifting the brass and letting it drop, once, twice, three times.