She pushed open a heavy glass door and entered the compact reception area of the Eagle Rock Reformer. A large, lumpy woman with hair the color of straw and a sullen expression sat behind the front counter. She wore a shapeless black dress and a bunch of cheap metal bangles on each wrist that jangled whenever she moved. She could have been forty-five or sixty. It was impossible to tell.

The east and west walls were dominated by framed front pages depicting some of the paper’s biggest stories over the years. There was the discovery of an early victim of the Hillside Strangler in an Eagle Rock neighborhood. The abduction of an eight-year-old girl by the Night Stalker. An exclusive interview with Ben Affleck, a former student of nearby Occidental College, after his Oscar win for best screenplay for Good Will Hunting. And there was the murder of a local woman and the disappearance of her toddler daughter.

Jessica turned away from the now-familiar image of Eleanor and Alicia Lavelle staring out from behind the glass and peered through an open doorway behind the receptionist leading to a medium-size office. Her idea of newsrooms had no doubt been influenced by old movies and television shows because she was expecting to find a bustling hub of activity, with phones ringing, keyboards clattering, and cigarette smoke hanging heavy in the air.

What she saw were four cubicles pushed up against each other in an awkward square, three of which were empty. The fourth was occupied by a young guy chewing a pencil and studying the page of a spiral-bound notepad. CNN was playing quietly in the background. The phones were silent. Jessica wondered if the other reporters were in the line outside waiting for weird ice cream.

The receptionist peered at her suspiciously over the rim of tortoiseshell-framed glasses, her eyes flitting first to the tattoos on Jessica’s arm and then the piercing in her nose. She had the look of a wary woman who fully expected Jessica to leap across the counter and help herself to some free newspapers or ransack the stationery cupboard.

“Can I help you?” she asked with a frown.

The woman took off the glasses, letting them hang from a chain around her neck, the bangles jangling loudly. She reminded Jessica of a disapproving homeroom teacher in high school whom she’d hated with a passion.

Jessica offered the woman what she hoped passed for a friendly smile but what felt more like a grimace. “I sure hope so. I’m actually looking for a little favor.”

The woman arched her eyebrows and pursed her lips but said nothing.