“Nah,” said Ingalls. “Anything I was into she wasn’t into.”

“What was she into?”

“Nothing. Running around.”

“This friend, Melinda. If Janie never told you where she was going, how do you know she was with Melinda Friday night?”

“Because I seen her with Melinda on Friday.”

“What time?”

“Around six. I was sleeping, and Janie busts in to get some clothes, I wake up, by the time I’m sitting up, she’s heading out the door, and I look out there.” He jabbed a thumb at the shuttered windows. “I seen her walking away with Melinda.”

“Walking which way?”

“That way.” Hooking his finger north. Toward Sunset, maybe Hollywood Boulevard, if the girls had kept going.

“Anyone else with them?”

“No, just the two of them.”

“Walking, not driving,” said Schwinn.

“Janie didn’t have no license. I got one car, and it barely drives. No way was I gonna—she didn’t care, anyway. Got around by hitching. I told her about that—I used to hitch, back when you could do it, but now, with all the—you think that’s what happened? She hitched and some . . . oh, God . . .”

Unaware of Janie’s downtown rape? If so, the guy was being truthful about one thing: Janie had been lost to him for a long time.

“Some what?” said Schwinn.

“Some—you know,” moaned Ingalls. “Getting picked up—some stranger.”

The death snaps were back in the envelope, but Schwinn had kept the envelope in full view. Now he waved it inches from Ingalls’s face. “I’d say, sir, that only a stranger would do something like this. Unless you have some other idea?”

“Me? No,” said Ingalls. “She was like her mother. Didn’t talk—gimme that beer.”

When the can was empty, Schwinn waved the envelope again. “Let’s get back to Friday. Janie came home to get clothes. What was she wearing?”

Ingalls thought. “Jeans and a T-shirt—red T-shirt . . . and those crazy black shoes with those heels—platform heels. She was carrying her party clothes.”

“Party clothes.”

“When I woke up and saw her going out the door, I could see part of what she had in the bag.”

“What kind of bag?”

“Shopping bag. White—Zody’s, probably, ’cause that’s where she shops. She always stuffed her party stuff inside shopping bags.”

“What did you see in the bag?”

“Red halter the size of a Band-Aid. I always told her it was hooker shit, she should throw it out, used to threaten her I’d throw it out.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” said Ingalls. “What woulda been the point?”

“A red halter,” said Schwinn. “What else?”

“That’s all I saw. Probably a skirt, one of those microminis, that’s all she buys. The shoes she already had on.”

“Black with big heels.”

“Shiny black,” said Ingalls. “Patent leather. Those crazy heels, I kept telling her she’d fall and break her neck.”

“Party outfit,” said Schwinn, copying.