“Figures you ask me that. Nowadays, kids don’t get let anything. They do whatever the hell they want to. Can’t even get her to tell me where she’s going. Or to stay in school. I tried dropping her off, personally, but she just went in, waited till I was gone, and left. That’s why I figured this was about school. What is it about, anyway? She in trouble?”

“You’ve had trouble with Janie before?”

“No,” said Ingalls. “Not really. Like I said, just school and running around. Being gone for a few days. But she always comes back. Let me tell you, man, you can’t control ’em. Once the hippies got in and took over the city, forget it. Her mother was a hippie back in the hippie days. Hippie junkie slut, ran out on us, left me with Janie.”

“Janie into drugs?”

“Not around here,” said Ingalls. “She knows better than that.” He blinked several times, grimaced, trying to clear his head and not succeeding. “What’s this about? What’d she do?”

Ignoring the question, Schwinn kept writing. Then: “Hollywood High . . . what year’s she in?”

“Second year.”

“Sophomore.”

Another delayed-reaction nod from Ingalls. How many of the cans had been consumed this morning?

“Sophomore.” Schwinn copied that down. “When’s her birthday?”

“Um . . . March,” said Ingalls. “March . . . um . . . ten.”

“She was sixteen last March ten.”

“Yeah.”

Sixteen-and-a-half-year-old sophomore, thought Milo. A year behind. Borderline intelligence? Some kind of learning problem? Yet another factor that had propelled her toward victimhood? If she was the one . . .

He glanced at Schwinn but Schwinn was still writing and Milo hazarded a question of his own: “School’s hard for Janie, huh?”

Schwinn’s eyebrows rose for a second, but he kept making notes.

“She hates it,” said Ingalls. “Can barely read. That’s why she hated to—” The bloodshot eyes filled with fear. “What’s going on? What’d she do?”

Focused on Milo, now. Looking to Milo for an answer, but that was one ad lib Milo wasn’t going to risk, and Ingalls shifted his attention back to Schwinn. “C’mon, what’s going on, man? What’d she do?”

“Maybe nothing,” said Schwinn, producing the blue envelope. “Maybe something was done to her.”

He fanned out the snaps again, stretching his arm and offering Ingalls the display.

“Huh?” said Ingalls, not moving. Then: “No.”

Calmly, no inflection. Milo thought: Okay, it wasn’t her, false lead, good for him, bad for us, they’d accomplished nothing, Schwinn was right. As usual. The pompous bastard, he’d be gloating, the remainder of the shift would be unbearable—

But Schwinn continued to hold the pictures steady, and Bowie Ingalls continued to stare at them.