Wishard leaned in closer, lowering her voice. “A few days ago homicide caught a case. They’d found the badly beaten and dismembered body of a teenage boy in an abandoned alley about a mile from Skid Row. A runaway named Eli Naylor. Eighteen months before, another body, this time of a young girl, Rachel Whiteman, only sixteen, was discovered, beaten and stabbed to death in a warehouse down there. Both victims had this same tattoo. All three were runaways. Which means…” Wishard hesitated.

Becca didn’t need her to finish. She’d already put the pieces together. “These are serial killings,” Becca whispered.

“That’s the working theory,” Wishard said.

Becca sat back in her seat. It seemed impossible that out of 3,196,000 people in Los Angeles, Ash could wind up in the same orbit as a goddamn serial killer. It was truly unfair, but luck had never been on Ash’s side.

“I understand how difficult this is…,” Wishard began.

Now she was going to play the sympathy card. Becca wasn’t having it. She wanted action, not empty words.

“What’s being done now? What are you doing to ensure that whoever is doing this, whoever this Tribe is, doesn’t hurt anyone else?”

“There’s an investigation underway.”

“What does that even mean? Whoever is doing this appears to be targeting homeless runaways. You have the tattoo and a name. Why not go public with this information? This should be all over the news, all over the Internet. You should be notifying the shelters and social services agencies, getting the word out.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were a police officer now.”

“Joanne, please, Becca’s concerned…”

“I don’t need you to speak for me, Chris,” Becca snapped.

“The last thing we want to do is create widespread panic. You really want people in this city to have more of a reason to go after the homeless? Because that will only make them more vulnerable. We have neighborhoods across the country in crisis because they can’t move the tent cities out. Is that what you want?” Wishard demanded.

Becca shook her head. “Joanne, ease up.”

“I’m not going to ease up. Becca wants to sit here and act like she knows how to do our jobs better than we do. We don’t have any solid evidence or witnesses or anything linking these crimes to anyone. The Bloods and Crips are now hiding out in Skid Row, robbing, committing rapes and assaults and God knows what else. Whoever these people are, they’re smart, they’ve stayed under our radar, the gang units haven’t heard of them. We’re forming a task force to deal with these crimes, uniforms are canvassing the streets, searching for suspects. You know those people don’t trust us.”