Bowie Ingalls hadn’t been fair to Melinda Waters. Nothing chubby about the girl’s figure, she was beautifully curvy with high, round breasts and a tiny waist. Straight blond hair hung to her rear. Kiss-me lips formed a heartbreaking smile.

“Looks like Marilyn, doesn’t she?” said her mother. “Maybe one day, she’ll be a movie star.”

Driving back to the station, Milo said, “How long before her body shows up?”

“Who the fuck knows?” said Schwinn, studying Melinda’s picture. “From the looks of this, maybe Janie was the appetizer and this one was the main dish. Look at those tits. That’d give him something to play with for a while. Yeah, I can see him holding on to this one for a while.”

He pocketed the photo.

Milo envisioned a torture chamber. The blond girl nude, shackled . . . “So what do we do about finding her?”

“Nothing,” said Schwinn. “If she’s already dead, we have to wait till she shows up. If he’s still got her, he’s not gonna tell us.”

“What about that Westside party?”

“What about it?”

“We could put the word out with West L.A., the sheriffs, Beverly Hills PD. Sometimes parties get wild, the blues go out on a nuisance call.”

“So what?” said Schwinn. “We show up at some rich asshole’s door, say, ‘Excuse me, are you cutting up this kid?’ ” He sniffed, coughed, produced his bottle of decongestant, and swigged. “Shit, Waters’s dump was dusty. All-American mom, another poor excuse for an adult. Who knows if there even was a party.”

“Why wouldn’t there be?”

“Because kids lie to their parents.” Schwinn swiveled toward Milo. “What’s with all these fucking questions? You thinking of going to law school?”

Milo held his tongue, and the rest of the ride was their usual joy-fest. A block from the station, Schwinn said, “You wanna go snooping for Westside nuisance calls, be my guest, but I think Blondie was lying to Mommy like she always did because a fancy Westside party was exactly the kind of thing that would calm the old lady down. Hundred to one Blondie and Janie were fixing to thumb the Strip, score some dope, maybe trade blow jobs for it, or whatever. They got into the wrong set of wheels and ended up downtown. Janie was too stupid to learn from her past experience—or like I said, maybe she liked being tied up. She was a stoner. Both of them probably were.”

“Your source mentioned a Westside party.”

“Street talk’s like watermelon, you got to pick around the seeds. The main thing is Janie was found downtown. And chances are Melinda’s somewhere around there, too, if a scrote got her and finished with her. For all we know, he kept her in the trunk while he was setting up Janie on Beaudry. Got back on the freeway, he could be in Nevada by now.”