“Started walking up Stone Canyon and promptly got lost. There were no sidewalks, and the lighting was very bad. And no one was around to ask directions. All those incredible properties and not a soul in sight, none of the noises you hear in a real neighborhood. It was spooky. But we were having fun with it—an adventure. Once we saw a Bel Air Patrol car driving our way, so we hid behind some trees.”

She frowned. “Complete idiocy. Thank God my boys aren’t hearing this.”

“How’d you find the party?”

“We walked in circles for a while, finally ended up right where we started, back at Sunset. And that’s when the second car picked us up. A Cadillac, turning onto Stone Canyon. The driver was a black guy, and I was sure Janie wouldn’t want to get in—with her it was always ‘nigger’ this, ‘nigger’ that. But when the guy rolled down the window and shot us this big grin, and said, ‘You girls looking to party?’ Janie was the first one in.”

“What do you remember about the driver?”

“Early twenties, tall, thin—for some reason when I think of him I always think of Jimi Hendrix. Not that he was Hendrix’s spitting image, but there was a general resemblance. He had that rangy, mellow thing going on, loose and confident. Played his music really loud and moving his head in time.”

“A Cadillac,” said Milo.

“And a newer one but not a pimpmobile. Big conservative sedan, well taken care of, too. Shiny, fresh-smelling—sweet-smelling. Lilacs. Like it belonged to an old woman. I remember thinking that, wondering if he’d stolen it from an old woman. Because he sure didn’t match the car, dressed the way he was in this ugly denim suit with rhinestones all over it, all these gold chains.”

“What color?”

“Something pale.”

Milo opened his briefcase, removed Willie Burns’s mug shot, handed it across the desk.

Melinda Waters’s eyes got big. “That’s him. He’s the one who killed Janie?”

“He’s someone we’re looking for.”

“He’s still out there?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? What does that mean?”

“It’s been twenty years, and he was a heroin addict.”

“You’re saying he’d have a poor life expectancy,” she said. “But you’re still looking for him . . . why has Janie’s murder been reopened? What’s the real reason?”

“I was the original detective on the case,” said Milo. “I got transferred off. Now, I’ve been transferred back on.”

“Transferred back on by your department or you requested it yourself?” said Waters.

“Does it matter, ma’am?”

She smiled. “It’s personal, isn’t it? You’re trying to undo your own past.”

Milo smiled back, and Waters returned the mug shot. “Wilbert Burns. So now I have a name.”

“He never introduced himself?”