According to the other kids, Jewell frequented the park when she got in a bad mood and didn’t want to hang with anyone else.

No, she’d never spoken of meeting anyone there.

No, there were no boyfriends or regular johns in her life. At least, not that she’d ever mentioned.

She’d been found fully clothed with no evidence of rape. The coroner’s conclusion was that she’d been sexually active for some time.

A premortem snapshot had been stapled to the file. What looked to be a school photo of a kid around nine. Jewell Blank had been dark-haired, wan, freckled, reluctant to smile.

Grace Blank and Thomas Crisp wanted to know if the city would pay for funeral expenses. Max Stokes’s notes were terse on that subject:

“I informed them that death arrangements etc. were the family’s responsibility. Respondents were displeased by that info., said they’d get back to me.”

Jewell Blank’s body had sat in the morgue for a month before an Inglewood mortuary had picked it up for cremation.

Was there any point talking to Max? Disrupting the poor guy’s retirement by reminding him of one that had gotten away?

She looked around the room. Three detectives hunched over piles of paperwork. That young, good-looking one, Eddie Baker; Ryan Miller, another stud; and Barney Fleischer, gaunt, bald, ancient, nearing retirement himself.

Petra walked over to Barney’s desk. He was filling out a requisition form for office supplies. Demi-glasses perched on his beaklike nose. His handwriting was tiny, pretty, almost calligraphic.

She asked him if he knew where Max Stokes was.

“Corvallis, Washington,” he said, continuing to write. “He’s got a daughter up there, Karen. She’s a doctor, never got married so you can probably find her under Stokes.”

No curiosity about why Petra wanted to know. Petra thanked him and returned to Jewell Blank’s file. Skimming a bit more, she put it aside, called Corvallis, and got office and home numbers for Karen Stokes, M.D.

Max answered the phone.

“Petra Connor,” he said. “We were just sitting down for dinner.”

“Sorry, I’ll call back later.”

“No, it’s fine, just cold cuts. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Picturing Max’s ruddy, mustachioed face, she told him about reviewing the Blank file, gave him the same nosy-intern story.

“You’re thinking of reworking it?” he said.

“Don’t know yet, Max. Depends on what I learn.”

“I hope you decide yes. Maybe you can do better than me.”

“I doubt that.”

“You never know, Petra. New blood and all that.”

“You and Shirley, that’s a lot of detective ability.”

“Poor Shirley. So… what can I tell you?”

“I really don’t know, Max. Seems to me you guys did all you could.”

“I thought we did… I still think about that one from time to time. Poor little girl. Everyone said she was aggressive, had a temper, but looking at her… such a tiny little thing. It was brutal.”

The autopsy report stared up at Petra. Jewell’s stats. Five-one, ninety-four pounds.

Occipital injuries…

What was the point of all this?

Max Stokes was saying, “… with the parents- actually just one parent, the mother. Plus that boyfriend of hers.”

“Solid citizens,” said Petra.

“My gut pegged him, Thomas Crisp, as the bad guy. Your typical trash boyfriend scenario, maybe gets a little too close to the daughter, you know? The coroner said Jewell had been having sex for a few years. I’d bet Crisp abused her, that would be a good reason for running away. I never asked him directly, just hinted around and he got squirrelly. Plus, he had a felony record. Bad checks, attempted welfare fraud. I know it’s not sex crimes or murder, but lowlife is lowlife. His attitude in general was bad- he didn’t even fake caring about Jewell. I checked him out carefully, even drove up to Bakersfield. Guy had an alibi. During the time of the murder, he’d been on a three-day bender with a bunch of other lowlifes. First they bar-crawled, then they bought more booze and went back to the mother and Crisp’s trailer. Neighbors in the trailer park complained and the police paid a call. Crisp was definitely in Bakersfield the whole time, everyone saw him.”

“What about the mother?”

“She was there, too. Borderline retarded, if you ask me. She did seem to care a little, but every time she started to cry Crisp nudged her in the ribs and she shut up. His big concern was who was going to pay for the burial.”

“I read your notes,” said Petra.

Max sighed. “What can I tell you. Sometimes you don’t win.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Enjoying retirement?”

“I dunno. I’ve been thinking of getting a security job. Just to get me out of the house.”

“Sure,” said Petra. “Makes sense.”

“Anyway, good luck on little Jewell.”

“One more thing, Max. I don’t see any transfer.”

“I wanted to transfer it to Shirley and she wanted to take it. Because she’d already started. Actually, it was she who came to me, wanting to partner. Because she’d caught another case, couple of years before, that probably wasn’t the same guy but there were some similarities.”

“Really?” said Petra.

“Yeah,” said Max. “Another head-bashing, but not a kid, some woman, up in the Hollywood Hills. That one, a dog got killed, too, what was the name… I’m having a senior moment.”

The name was Coral Langdon. Petra said, “Shirley thought the cases might be tied in?”

“At first she did, but in the end, she didn’t. Too many differences, what with Jewell being a poor runaway and the other one- what was her name- being a financially comfortable divorcée with a nice house. That one- Lambert, Lan-something… anyway, that one Shirley had worked the ex-husband as the main suspect because the divorce hadn’t been friendly. Plus, neighbors said he’d always hated the dog. He claimed an alibi, too, but it wasn’t much of one. Sitting at home watching the tube, no one else in the apartment. But Shirley never found anything to contradict him and one neighbor did say his car had been in his driveway around the time of the murder.”

“How come Shirley didn’t get Jewell Blank’s case?”

“I assumed she did,” said Max.

“If she did, there’s no record of it.”

“Hmm. Don’t know what to tell you, Petra.”

“In the end Shirley didn’t think Blank and the woman with the dog were similars.”

“The only thing similar was head-bashing- Langdon, that was it. Something Langdon. So Shirley didn’t work Jewell, huh?”

“Doesn’t appear so.”

“That’s kind of funny,” said Max. “You remember Shirley. Tenacious. Real tragedy what happened to her, I didn’t even know she skied.”

She thanked Max, apologized for interrupting his dinner, hung up, and turned to Coral Langdon’s file.

The murdered woman’s ex was an insurance salesman named Harvey Lee Langdon. Insurance tipped you off to the best of motives, but Harvey had sold property casualty, not term life. Shirley had taken a close look at Coral’s papers anyway, and contacted a bunch of insurance companies. No juicy policy, anywhere. No financial ties at all between Coral and Harvey since their divorce three years ago, except for five hundred a month alimony. Coral Langdon had worked as an executive secretary to an aerospace honcho, made a fine living on her own.

The dog, Brandy, had been a bone of contention in the Langdon marriage. Harvey had expressed dismay at his ex-wife’s demise but had smirked when hearing about the cockapoo. Shirley had transcribed his comments verbatim, quotation marks and all:

“Stupid little bitch. Know what her motto was? The world is my toilet.”

A shrink could have fun with that. Harvey had definitely been worth looking at, but Shirley had made no progress along those lines.

The modus and the crime scenes- two females bludgeoned in wooded areas of Hollywood- had caused the tenacious Detective Lenois to make a connection between Langdon and Jewell Blank. Had she been unimpressed by the June 28 angle?