“What’s up, guys?” She perched on the edge of Medina’s desk. “I hear you caught the Ong case? Sounds like a real nasty one.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” Pryce said. “When was the last time you were on a hot date?”

Rodriguez raised an eyebrow, looked from Pryce to Medina and back to Pryce again. She held up her left hand and pointed to a slim gold band. “If that’s your way of asking me out to dinner, Pryce, you’re about fifteen years too late.” She winked. “But if you’re offering to take me to that fancy new Italian place on Melrose, I’ll think about it.”

Pryce laughed. “Yeah, and if Angie found out, it’d be my balls instead of meatballs they’d be serving up for the special.”

“So what’s all this about hot dates?” she asked.

“You went to college, right?”

“Sure did. Then I realized it was way more fun catching criminals than finding ways to let them walk.”

“Cast your mind back to when you were a student. If you had a date on a Saturday night, you’d tell your roommate all about it, wouldn’t you? Especially if you were close friends.”

“Sure. We’d spend at least a couple of hours picking out the perfect outfit, doing hair and makeup, and figuring out if the guy was a keeper or not depending on where he was taking you.”

“Huh?” Medina asked.

“You know, drinks in a bar, he probably just wants to get laid. Dinner in a nice restaurant, he might actually like you. A ride in his car with a six-pack in the back? Forget it.”

“Who knew it was so complicated?” Medina said.

“With kids these days, it’d be much the same?” Pryce asked. “The stuff about knowing all the details, I mean.”

“Probably even more intense now.” Rodriguez laughed. “What with Facebook and Snapchat and Instagram, a guy’s whole life is probably dissected before your girlfriends even let you agree to the date.”

“Exactly,” Pryce said. “Thanks, Silvia.”

“Glad I could help.”

Medina watched Rodriguez walk back to the filing cabinets, then turned to Pryce. “What now?”

“Now we pay a visit to Kasey Taylor and find out why she’s been lying.”

The midmorning traffic on the Hollywood Freeway was slow moving, and it was forty minutes later before Pryce turned his midnight-blue Dodge Charger onto Paseo Rancho Castilla in the east of the city. Up ahead stood a small cylindrical building painted in shades of beige and terra-cotta. The words Cal State LA were spelled out in sunshine-yellow letters above an LED screen welcoming visitors to campus.

Pryce pulled up next to an information window and waited until a woman with silver hair and a plump pink face appeared behind the glass. She pulled aside a small screen in the window and smiled at them. “How can I help you?”