Waters nodded. “She claimed she was going to school, but I don’t think so. She had a bag full of clothes, and when I said, ‘What’s all that?’ she said she was going to some party that night, might not be coming home. We got into a hassle about that, but what could I do? I wanted to know where the party was but all she told me was it was fancy, on the Westside.”

“Where on the Westside?”

“I just told you, she wouldn’t say.” The woman’s faced twitched. “Fancy party. Rich kids. She said that a bunch of times. Told me I had nothing to worry about.”

She looked to Schwinn, then Milo, for reassurance, got two stone faces.

“Fancy Westside party,” said Schwinn. “So maybe Beverly Hills—or Bel Air.”

“I guess . . . I asked her how she was getting all the way over there, she said she’d find a way. I told her not to hitch, and she said she wouldn’t.”

“You don’t like her hitching.”

“Would you? Standing there on Sunset, thumbing, any kind of pervert . . .” She stopped, went rigid. “Where was—where’d you find Janie?”

“Near downtown.”

Waters relaxed. “So there you go, the complete opposite direction. Melinda wasn’t with her. Melinda was over on the Westside.”

Schwinn’s slit eyes made the merest turn toward Milo. Bowie Ingalls had seen Melinda pick Janie up on Friday, watched the two girls walking north toward Thumb Alley. But no reason to get into that, now.

“Melinda’ll come back,” said Waters. “Sometimes she does that. Stays away. She always comes back.”

“Sometimes,” said Schwinn. “Like once a week?”

“No, nothing like that—just once in a while.”

“And how long does she stay away?”

“A night,” said Waters, sagging and trying to calm herself with a twenty-second pull on her cigarette. Her hand shook. Confronting the fact that this was Melinda’s longest absence.

Then she perked up. “One time she stayed away two days. Went up to see her father. He’s in the Navy, used to live in Oxnard.”

“Where’s he live now?”

“Turkey. He’s at a naval base, there. Shipped out two months ago.”

“How’d Melinda get to Oxnard?”

Eileen Waters chewed her lip. “Hitched. I’m not going to tell him. Even if I could reach him in Turkey, he’d just start in with the accusations . . . and that bitch of his.”

“Second wife?” said Schwinn.

“His whore,” spat Waters. “Melinda hated her. Melinda will come home.”

Further questioning was futile. The woman knew nothing more about the “fancy Westside party,” kept harping on the downtown murder site as clear proof Melinda hadn’t been with Janie. They pried a photo of Melinda out of her. Unlike Bowie Ingalls, she’d maintained an album, and though Melinda’s teen years were given short shrift, the detectives had a page of snaps from which to choose.