Ellen Sato produced addresses and phone numbers for the six absent Melindas, and Milo and Schwinn spent the rest of the day paying house calls.

The first four girls lived in smallish but tidy single homes on Hollywood’s border with the Los Feliz district and were out sick. Melindas Adams, Greenberg, Jordan were in bed with the flu, Melinda Hohlmeister had been felled by an asthma attack. All four mothers were in attendance, all were freaked out by the drop-in, but each allowed the detectives access. The previous generation still respected—or feared—authority.

Melinda Adams was a tiny, platinum-haired, fourteen-year-old freshman who looked eleven and had a little kid’s demeanor to match. Melinda Jordan was a skinny fifteen-year-old brunette with a frighteningly runny nose and vengeful acne. Greenberg was blond and long-haired and somewhat chesty. Both she and her mother had thick, almost impenetrable accents—recent immigrants from Israel. Science and math books were spread over her bed. When the detectives had stepped in, she’d been underlining text in yellow marker, had no idea who Janie Ingalls was. Melinda Hohlmeister was a shy, chubby, stuttering, homely kid with short, corn-colored ringlets, a straight A average, and an audible wheeze.

No response to Janie’s name from any of them.

No answer at Melinda Van Epps’s big white contemporary house up in the hills. A woman next door picking flowers volunteered that the family was in Europe, had been gone for two weeks. The father was an executive with Standard Oil, the Van Eppses took all five kids out of school all the time for travel, provided tutors, lovely people.

No reply, either, at Melinda Waters’s shabby bungalow on North Gower. Schwinn knocked hard because the bell was taped over and labeled “Broken.”

“Okay, leave a note,” he told Milo. “It’ll probably be bullshit, too.”

Just as Milo was slipping the please-call-us memo and his card through the mail slot, the door swung open.

The woman who stood there could have been Bowie Ingalls’s spiritual sister. Fortyish, thin but flabby, wearing a faded brown housedress. She had a mustard complexion, wore her peroxided hair pinned back carelessly. Confused blue eyes, no makeup, cracked lips. That furtive look.

“Mrs. Waters?” said Milo.

“I’m Eileen.” Cigarette voice. “What is it?”

Schwinn showed her the badge. “We’d like to talk to Melinda.”

Eileen Waters’s head retracted, as if he’d slapped her. “About what?”

“Her friend, Janie Ingalls.”

“Oh. Her,” said Waters. “What’d she do?”

“Someone killed her,” said Schwinn. “Did a right sloppy job of it. Where’s Melinda?”

Eileen Waters’s parched lips parted, revealing uneven teeth coated with yellow scum. She’d relied upon suspiciousness as a substitute for dignity and now, losing both, she slumped against the doorjamb. “Oh my God.”

“Where’s Melinda?” demanded Schwinn.

Waters shook her head, lowered it. “Oh, God, oh God.”

Schwinn took her arm. His voice remained firm. “Where’s Melinda?”