“Did she give you this idea?”

“Who?”

“Who do you think? Cook.”

“No, man, I just thought of it. Right now. What do you think?”

“I’m wondering who’s going to cover the cop shop while we’re both running with this.”

“Well, you both can trade off on it. Like you’ve been doing. And I can probably get some help from time to time from the GA group. Even if it was just you on this, I couldn’t cut you loose completely, anyway.”

Whenever general assignment reporters were pulled in to work the crime beat, the resulting stories were usually superficial and by the numbers. It wasn’t the way to cover the beat, but what did I care anymore? I had eleven days left and that was it.

I didn’t believe Prendergast for a moment and was not swayed by his column-one overture. But I was smart enough to know that his suggestion—whether truly his or Angela Cook’ s—could lead to a better story. And it had a better chance of doing what I wanted it to do.

“We could call it ‘The Collision,’” I said. “The point where these two—killer and victim—came together and how they got there.”

“Perfect!” Prendergast exclaimed.

He stood up, smiling.

“I’ll wing it in the meeting, but why don’t you and Cook put your heads together and give me something for the budget by the end of the day? I’m going to tell them you’ll turn the story in by the end of the week.”

I thought about that. It was not a lot of time but it was doable, and I knew I could get more days if needed.

“Fine,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “I gotta go.”

He headed on to his meeting. In a carefully worded e-mail I invited Angela to meet me in the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee. I gave no indication that I was upset with or suspicious of her. She responded immediately, saying she would meet me there in fifteen minutes.

Now that I was free of the daily story and had fifteen minutes to fill, I pulled the stack back over to the center of the desk and started reading the confession of Alonzo Winslow.

The interview was conducted by the lead detectives Gilbert Walker and William Grady at the Santa Monica Police Department beginning at eleven A.M., Sunday, April 26, about three hours after Winslow had been taken into custody. The transcript was in Q&A format with very little description added. It was easy and fast to read, the questions and answers mostly short at first. Back and forth like Ping-Pong.