The message exchange that showed the most promise to Jessie was one from member #401B22, who happened to be West Hollywood City Councilman Milton Jerebko. It was from two days ago.

In it, Claire—member 62W3—had overtly threatened to go public with their relationship. The reason wasn’t clear. But it had evoked a strong reaction from Jerebko. After a testy back and forth, his final message read: Do this and I will end you. That seemed worth checking out.

After checking with Jerebko’s office and learning that he was working from home that day, the group, or Four Musketeers as Dolan had taken to calling them, piled in the Marshals Service sedan. The drive to Jerebko’s house in the hills above West Hollywood took over a half hour, allowing Dolan to fill Jessie in on what he’d learned from Claire’s phone records, which was: not much.

“She texted all the time but almost never made calls,” he noted. “And the ones she did make were mostly for retail services. She almost never actually talked to anyone.”

“Kids these days,” Jessie said in her best old man voice.

“There are several calls to and from pay phones in the last few weeks,” he continued, pretending not to hear her. “That seems odd for such a modern girl.”

“The same pay phone every time?” Jessie asked, suddenly interested.

“No. Each call is at a different location. But they’re all in the same general area, this side of the hills, along the corridor from Hollywood west to Beverly Hills.”

“Just the area that our friendly neighborhood councilman would be traveling in,” Jessie noted.

“True,” Dolan acknowledged, “but it seems odd that they would communicate that way when they were already being so direct over the app.”

“Maybe they had agreed to financial terms and he wanted an extra layer of security for that chat,” Jessie surmised.

“Or it could be something completely unrelated,” Dolan replied. “Maybe Claire bought her drugs from a dealer who liked to stay on the move.”

“So your theory is that out of nowhere, Claire became an addict who coordinated her pickups over a pay phone.”

“Addiction can happen fast,” Dolan countered.

Jessie was skeptical but not in the mood to argue about it.

“I guess the preliminary toxicology report will help with that,” she said. “We should have it later today.”

From the front seat, Jessie heard a soft grunt from Murph. Dolan clearly heard it too.

“You have thoughts on the matter, Marshal Murphy?” he asked.

“Not my area,” Murph replied.

“And yet, you have thoughts. I’d love to hear them.”

Murph sat still for a moment, seemingly debating whether to engage. Jessie could tell that he was itching to. A second later he did.

“I’m not an investigator but I doubt she’s an addict. The pictures in her room, even late-night party ones, never showed her looking cloudy-eyed or out of control. She had medals for multiple endurance races framed on her wall and a bib from the LA Marathon on her dresser. That was only a few weeks ago. It’s hard to imagine that she suddenly did a deep dive into drugs at the same time she was training for and completing a twenty-six-mile race. I guess anything is possible. But she didn’t strike me as the type.”