Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

“Talk to you tomorrow,” I said.

“Yeah.” He started down the corridor, looking very small and vulnerable, clutching his stuff and his food close to his skinny chest. “See ya.”

“Hey, Sly,” I called after him.

He turned.

“What’s in that package, anyway?”

He grinned. “None of your business.”

I talked, Mike listened, all the way downtown to Parker Center, the Los Angeles police administration building. For Sly’s sake, I hoped that something he had told me about Pisces and about the man who had killed her would make a difference. It was too late to do anything for Pisces. But I had a feeling that finding the man who had killed her would help Sly a whole lot more than all the efforts of an entire phalanx of county-hire shrinks.

We pulled into Parker Center’s covered garage. Mike found a space to park his plain-wrap city car among maybe a hundred other similar nondescript, superannuated American-made wrecks.

“If you can get Lyle to locate the videotape that shows the Corvette, I’ll have a courier bring it down.”

“I’ll call Lyle right now,” I said.

We got out and walked away from the plain cars and between rows of black-and-white units, working toward the underground entrance to the building. Mike had long legs and I had to stretch mine to keep up.

I looked over at him. “I’m really afraid that the footage I shot with the Corvette isn’t going to help much. I panned to the right from the girl to include the hood of the car because it was bright and glossy and it boosted the sleaze quality of the scene. I’m not sure I got the driver. When I closed on him, he took off. He gave me good sound for maybe eight seconds, but probably no face.”

“Whatever you got, it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing. The thing is, if we bring the asshole in and Sly IDs him and we tell him we have him on tape, odds are better than even he’ll cop to it.”

“You have to catch him first,” I said.

“I always get my man,” Mike said, nudging me with his shoulder. He held the door for me and we walked through the back passage to the elevators. I had never been in the bowels of headquarters before. From the general scruffiness, I guessed that nothing had been refurbished since Jack Webb retired.

Next to the elevators there were two wide, jagged cracks in the plaster. With a pencil, someone had labeled the cracks “Whittier Narrows Quake” and “Sierra Madre Quake,” and dated them. When the elevator door opened I was reminded that disasters always come in threes. I stepped inside anyway.

“What are we going to do here?” I asked.

“Get some real coffee.” Mike pushed the button for the third floor.

“And after that?”

“Start working on the girl’s ID.”

Mike was forever telling me that assignment to the Major Crimes Section of the Los Angeles Police Department was the ultimate any detective could hope for: high-profile murders, serial shit, VIP details, all the good stuff. He said the detectives who worked majors were America’s creme de la creme of big-city dicks. He wouldn’t lie to me. Then again, Major Crimes was where Mike worked.

When we walked into his office that late Saturday afternoon, things were fairly quiet. A couple of detectives were cleaning up paperwork from a shooting in the Valley they had rolled on the night before, four members of a Korean family found dead in their home. A second two-man team had tickets for the evening game at Dodgers Stadium and were just hanging out until it was time to go. I don’t know why they didn’t find someplace more comfortable.

The Major Crimes Section has space within the Robbery-Homicide bull pen. The office is a long, narrow room badly in need of paint and housekeeping. There are the requisite ranks of gun-metal filing cabinets lining the walls. Two dozen or so detectives work literally shoulder to shoulder at old library tables and scarred metal desks set in two parallel rows down the length of the room. Each detective’s work territory is marked off by a plastic blotter and some essential clutter: family snapshots, potted plants, trophies, personal computer terminals, telephones, case files.

Densely packed on the floor around the city-surplus chairs, and under the tables, jutting into the narrow aisles, balancing on every flat, nonmoving surface, are cardboard file boxes crammed with case files.

I sipped my coffee and looked up at the wild African boar head mounted on the wall over Mike’s work area.

“Family member?” I asked.

“My first mother-in-law,” he said. “Number two is down in the locker room.”

“Uh huh.” His chair squeaked when I sat in it. “Now what?”

“You’re going to make a list of everything you know, or think you know, about Pisces. There are probably a couple thousand missing juveniles in the state computer system. Anything you can think of that will narrow down the list will help.”

While Mike called the county coroner and ordered a dental workup to be done on Pisces, I started writing: female Caucasian, age fourteen, five-two or -three, ninety-five pounds, eyes brown, natural hair unknown, first name may be Hillary, possibly from Southern California, right-handed, played the piano, athletic build, pierced ears, mother may have lived at the beach. Virgin.

Mike called Sacramento and talked his way through the switchboard until he got the state investigator working juvenile records who was on call for the weekend.

“Detective Mike Flint, LAPD Major Crimes,” he said. “Who am I talking to?”

He listened and gave me a thumbs-up.

“Hell yes, Art, I remember you,” he said into the telephone. “That particular homicide convention was the end of my marriage. Your wife ever speak to you again?”

He laughed a whole lot louder than I suspected the joke from the other end merited.

“I just hope you weren’t so drunk you forgot you owe me a big one.”

More male-bonding laughter.

“You got it. Now I’m calling in the debt. You ready? Okay, I got me a female juvenile Jane Doe at the county coroner’s office. I’ve ordered the dental workup. They promised me they’d do it now and get it sent out to you ASAP. In the meantime, this is what I have.”

He read off my list, exactly as I had written it.

“I don’t know how long she was missing,” Mike added. “So give me some variety in the height and weight, age maybe a year or so either way. If you could do a computer Tab run and get me a list of all possibles, and get it to me overnight, I might consider your debt paid in full. Besides, it’s Saturday night. I know you’ve got nothing better to do.”

Mike’s smile gradually died as he listened to Art on the other end. He seemed all seriousness when he responded.

“Don’t think about it,” Mike said. “We were all over with a long time before that. Guess we just needed a kick in the pants to realize it. Good talking to you, pal. I’ll be watching for your report.”

He cradled the receiver.

“Do you know everybody?” I asked.

“Everybody who counts.”

“What do we do until Art’s report comes back?”

“Track down the ring,” he said. “Go over the field interviews from the crime scene. Make passionate love.”

“In which order?” I asked.

“Take your pick.”

I got up and started clearing a space on his table. “Let’s do that last item first. Right here. Right now.”

He laughed, but I saw the cast of doubt in his eyes. He wasn’t sure how far I would go. I liked knowing that he didn’t have me all figured out. When I began to tug at his shirttail, he grabbed my hand.

“Let’s go talk to the Bunco-Forgery guys,” he said. “That little manufacturer’s symbol stamped inside the band of the ring is probably registered in their book.”