“So what happens now?” I asked as the officer finished writing.

“We send it next door to a detective.”

“Can we talk to him? Her?”

“I’m not sure who’ll be assigned, and if they’re in right now. Anyhow, there’s nothing they can tell you.”

“But if we were really horrible people,” Joey said, “and made a big scene and started yelling and demanded to see a detective, what would happen then?”

The officer looked up. “Then you’d get to see a detective.” She stood and called to her colleague manning the counter, “Who’s around next door? Anyone?”

“Cziemanski,” an officer called back, without looking up.

“Cziemanski,” she said, and pointed to the exit.

Detective Cziemanski worked in a trailer marked “Detectives,” at one of twenty or so desks crammed into a small area. The carpet was the same teal blue as the one next door, but less worn and dirty. Both trailers gave the appearance of having outlasted their intended lifespan and maximum occupancy by 25 percent.

“Shum,” Detective Cziemanski said. “Shum-man-ski. Not Chum or Zum or Sum or Chime or Zime. Here’s what happens: I take this report, I see there’s no clear indication of a crime, so I send it to Missing Persons.”

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“Parker Center. Downtown.” He ran a hand through his hair, or what would have been his hair had he had any, which he didn’t. His skull glowed as if oiled, reminding me of the White’s tree frog, Litoria caerulea, which I’d been researching for the mural. “They put it in the computer. I never see it again. Your friend turns up in a week or a month, and-. Okay, are you the type, when you can’t make a dinner reservation, you call the restaurant to cancel?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay, so you call me up to say she’s back, or she’s living in Bali with her boyfriend, and I say thanks for letting me know.” He smiled. His smile made him look younger, too guileless for a detective. His baldness made him look older but made his ears more prominent, which made him look younger again. I put him between twenty-nine and sixty.

“So you don’t investigate anything, and you’re just talking to us now to humor us?” Joey said.

“Yeah, pretty much. Next door sends people here, we send them back. Which is okay, I like talking to you. You seem rational, you’re clean, you’re worried about your friend. You’re also good looking, both of you, but I’m not supposed to say that. I think you can sue.”

Joey smiled. “That’s why you’re working in a trailer. All those sexual harassment lawsuits.” Joey had family in law enforcement. She was right at home here, even drinking the coffee, which smelled like it had been brewing as long as Cziemanski had been on the force.

“And if Annika doesn’t turn up?” I said. “Same scenario, except we don’t call to cancel the dinner reservation? We just wait around, year after year?”

“Unless she’s a juvenile, a criminal, or very elderly,” he said, “I’m limited. There’s no law against disappearing. As long as you’re not wanted for a crime, it is, as they say, a free country. Now, you report a lost kid, or a mentally handicapped person, we’re out there in numbers and we stay out till we find them. Or let’s say your friend’s a victim of domestic violence, her husband threatened to kill her last week-I take it that’s not the case?”

Joey and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

“Does she have a drug problem?”

“Maybe,” I said, at the same time that Joey said, “No.”

He looked back and forth at us. “What’d you have in mind for me to investigate?”

“I guess I figured you’d check out her known associates,” I said. “On the other hand, we’re her known associates.” There was also Maizie Quinn, who might feel compelled to show the police the drugs under Annika’s bed, and Marty Otis, who’d describe her as a liar and a felon. What if Annika showed up tomorrow and found herself, thanks to me, facing criminal charges and deportation? Maybe I hadn’t thought this through.

“We have to look at the odds,” Cziemanski said. “This kind of thing, she’s off in some time-share she forgot to tell you about. That’s how it pans out, usually.”

“Unless you’re Chandra Levy,” Joey said.

“Who?” Cziemanski and I said it at the same time.

“A few years back. She slept with a congressman and disappeared, and it was all over the news for weeks. And she turned up dead.”

“Did your friend sleep with a congressman?” Cziemanski asked.

“No,” I said, at the same time that Joey said, “Maybe.”

He looked back and forth between us.

Joey said, “Would it help if she did?”

“Sure,” Cziemanski said. “It’d help more if she were a congressman. Anything to set her apart from the other forty or fifty thousand missing Americans. Not including kids.”

“Forty or fifty thousand?” I said. “And she’s not even an American.”

“Well, then. Unless she’s wanted for war crimes, it’ll be tough getting anyone interested. You two the only ones worried about”-he looked at his report-“Annika Glück?”

My heart sank. “Except for some odd people on an odd TV show. And her mother.”

Detective Cziemanski folded the report in half, then unfolded it and added it to the mess on his desk. “I’ve got your numbers. Let me know if anything else turns up on your end. Meanwhile, I’ll look into it. But don’t get your hopes up.”

We walked out of the trailer to Joey’s husband’s BMW, shiny and sleek, a standout in a parking lot full of trucks, minivans, and nonluxury vehicles. “Amazing,” Joey said. “You go in expecting to hear ‘Let us handle this’ and instead, they all but deputize you. What fun.”

“I hate when people say ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ ” I said. “It’s as bad as saying, ‘Don’t give up hope.’ You either hope or you don’t, but you don’t adjust yourself like a toaster oven.”

Joey clicked her key at the BMW. “I’ll tell you what he hopes. Cziemanski’s hoping for a reason to call you, because that cop likes you.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“His name’s Peter. I read his reports upside down. He’ll ask you to call him Pete.”

“I’m not calling him Pete. I’m immune to-I’m still recovering from-”

“Doc. I know. But consider this: all we need for Cziemanski to work Annika’s case is one or two suspects. So first we hand him the boyfriend-cops always suspect the spouse or the lover. Then we offer an alternate: Marty Au Pair. Give me a minute, I’ll make up something incriminating about him.”

“I’m all for finding the boyfriend,” I said. “But you’re wrong, Joey. It’s not suspects Cziemanski wants, it’s a crime. Dollars to doughnuts, nobody’s going to care about Annika Glück until we come up with a dead body.”

If there’s anything trickier than finding a missing person, it’s finding the boyfriend of the missing person when all you have to go on is “Rico.”

We called Annika’s mother from Joey’s car, on the 101 freeway. It was three P.M. in L.A., midnight in Germany, but I figured Mrs. Glück wouldn’t be sleeping well, and I was right. All she could tell us about Rico, though, whose last name she didn’t know, was that he was a “goat boy.” There aren’t a lot of goats that need tending in Southern California, so I decided she meant “good boy.” I told her I’d call when I had news, and hung up before her lamentations could put me over the edge. I was worrying quite well on my own.

I tried Maizie Quinn, on the chance that she’d recalled Rico’s last name. A human answered-Lupe, the housekeeper, who said Mrs. Quinn was at her sushi class. When I hung up, my phone rang. I answered it and was met with silence, the kind that signals a telemarketer about to take a stab at your name. Did telemarketers call cell phones? “Hello,” I repeated.

“Wollie Shelley?”

“Yes.”

“Just checking.”

That was the whole conversation. I said hello again, then did something I must’ve picked up from the movies: I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it.