Most likely she hadn’t noticed.

Would Shirley- astute, dogged, dedicated- have missed something like that?

Sure. The date of a homicide was something Petra never paid much attention to. As a detective, Shirley would have zeroed in on crime scene details.

The head-bashing. Like Isaac said, it was rare.

In the end, Shirley had decided the cases weren’t linked, but she hadn’t known about two previous head-bashings on the exact same date.

And now Shirley was dead and, once again, there was no evidence the case had been transferred.

Petra studied the photocopied driver’s license attached to the file. Coral Langdon had been an attractive woman with a tan, oval face under a short cap of blond hair. Five-seven, one-thirty. Slender. Probably strong, too. According to Shirley’s notes, Coral had worked out at a gym, studied kickboxing.

Meaning whoever had brained her was in good shape. And stealthy enough to get her from behind.

Petra visualized it. Langdon taking the cockapoo out for a night-time stroll, he steps out of the shadows…

Jewell Blank would’ve been a whole lot easier. A tiny little girl in the park.

No doubt, Shirley had wondered about that, decided it wasn’t a match.

But six cases on the same date, that was different.

Like Isaac said, statistically significant.

Like Isaac said.

Petra figured that phrase would be adhering to her brain for a while.

She went back and studied the first two murders in detail. Marta Doebbler, the twenty-nine-year-old housewife who’d gone to see a play at the Pantages, left for the ladies’ room and didn’t return, and Geraldo Solis, the Wilshire Division case. Elderly man found sitting at his breakfast room table, brains leaking onto a plate of sausage and eggs. Now there was a charming detail.

Nothing else about the Solis file sparked her interest, but a notation on Marta Doebbler gave her pause: Doebbler had been called out of the theater by a cell phone squawk, and the detectives had traced the call to a pay phone around the corner from the theater.

Had someone lured her out? The fact that she’d complied, coupled with her body being dumped in her own car- unlike the others- said it was someone she knew. The detectives had interviewed the husband, an engineer named Kurt Doebbler, and remarked that he seemed “overly calm.” Doebbler had an alibi: home with his and Marta’s nine-year-old daughter, Katya.

She reread the Solis file. No sign of breaking and entering. Someone the old man had known as well?

No apparent connection between the victims but could it have been the same person?

She jotted down the names of the D’s on both cases. Conrad Ballou and Enrique Martinez on Doebbler, another unfamiliar name on Solis, DII Jacob Hustaad, Wilshire Division.

Barney Fleischer was still at his desk, pen in his hand, but reading. Blue folder of his own. She’d always thought of Barney as end-of-career deadweight. Was he still working cases?

She approached him again, said, “Sorry, but I was wondering if you knew any of these guys.”

He closed the murder book- a file labeled “Chang”- and examined the list. “Got a cold-case assignment?”

“Self-imposed assignment,” said Petra. “The kid, Gomez, thought I should look at a few old files.”

“The genius,” said Barney. “Nice kid. I like him.”

“He talks to you?”

“From time to time. He likes to hear about the old days.” Barney smiled. “And who better than a geezer like me?” He put the Chang file on his desk. “That’s one I did five years ago. No one gives me anything, anymore. I should leave but I’m not sure it would be good for me.”

He peered at the list again. “Connie Ballou’s a real old-timer. He was here well before I arrived, probably has ten years on me. He left around five years ago.” Barney frowned.

“What?” said Petra.

“Connie left under somewhat… clouded circumstances.”

“What kind of circumstances?”

“He had a bit of a drinking problem. We all knew about it, we all covered. One night he tanked up, got behind the wheel of an unmarked, and crashed it into a building on Cahuenga. That was kind of hard to cover for.”

“How was he as a detective? When he was sober.”

Barney shrugged. “That wasn’t too often.”

“No Sherlock,” said Petra.

“More like Deputy Dawg, when I knew him. But I heard he used to be okay in the early days.”

“What about his partner, Martinez?”

“Enrique had no big problems, but was no great talent, either. He got tarred by Connie’s brush. The brass decided he should’ve reported Connie’s drinking and demoted him down to uniform. The obvious question was what about all those other partners Connie had ridden with. But Enrique was the goat. I think he went over to Central Division as a deskman, but who knows how long he lasted there.”

“He’s living in Florida now.”

“Makes sense,” said Barney. “He’s Cuban.”

A lush and a no-talent. There was a good chance Marta Doebbler’s murder hadn’t been worked to the max. Nor, as far as Petra could tell, had it been transferred. She asked Barney about that.

Right away, he said, “Schoelkopf.”

“He doesn’t transfer cases?”

“He doesn’t like to, if they’ve gone cold. What with all the manpower problems and the gang issues. You wouldn’t know about that because you tend to solve your cases.” Barney removed his reading glasses and massaged the ridge they’d etched into his nose. His eyes were wide, clear, blue, nested in a thatch of wrinkles.

“I know you don’t like him, Petra, but I can’t say as I’d do it any different. It’s always a matter of priority. Cases go cold for a reason.”

“Who says I don’t like him?”

Barney grinned and Petra returned the favor.

He looked at the list again, said, “Jack Hustaad’s dead. Suicide. Not job-related. We played golf together once in a while. Jack was a four-pack-a-day smoker, got lung cancer, started chemotherapy, decided he didn’t like it, and ate some painkillers. It’s not a completely irrational decision, right?”

“Right,” said Petra.

“Anyway.”

“Thanks, Barney.”

“I assume,” said the old detective, “that you want your research kept private.”

“That would be good,” said Petra.

“No problem,” said Barney. “I don’t like him either.”

The next day Mac called a noon meeting on the Paradiso shooting. He and Petra and Luc Montoya ate sandwiches in a small conference room and compared notes. Montoya was forty, bald, muscular, with a movie-star face and the longest eyelashes Petra had ever seen on an adult. He wore a cream-colored sports coat, beige linen slacks, white shirt, pale blue tie. Very natty, but his expression was defeated and he didn’t say much.

Mac had on the usual gray sharkskin and unreadable face.

He and Luc had dived into the witness pile, come up empty, and no local gang rumors were flying.

Petra told them about Sandra Leon’s lies.

Luc gnawed his lip. Mac said, “So we have no idea where this kid lives.”

Petra shook her head.

Mac said, “That doctor of hers, think he might know?”

“I’ve got a call in.”

“Maybe you can find him before his vacation’s over. Meanwhile, I’m heading over to Compton. They had a shooting last year, bangers, rap concert, cruise-by in the parking lot. Three down on that one. No solve, but they have ideas and I figured we’d compare notes. Misery and company and all that.”

Petra called Dr. Robert Katzman’s office again, talked to the machine, switched to the Oncology office, and got assertive with a secretary who transferred her to the department administrator, a woman named Kim Pagionides.

“Sandra Leon,” said Pagionides. As if she knew the girl. As if she disapproved of the girl.

Petra said, “You’ve seen her recently?”