Finally Stu walked away from Dr. Leavitt and passed behind the tape into the outer region of the parking lot, where the police and coroner vehicles had grouped. Being his usual methodical self, telling the techs what to do, what not to do, what to take back for analysis. The coroner drove away, and the morgue attendants stayed behind, listening to rap music in their van, the bass thumping.

Everyone waiting for the photographer and K-9 units to arrive so the body could be taken away and the dogs could check out the wooded area above the parking lot.

Stu talked to a uniform, barely moving his lips, profile noble, framed by sunlight.

Chief Bishop. If he didn't get a big movie role first.

Two weeks into their partnership, he'd taken out his wallet to pay for lunch at Musso and Frank and she'd seen the SAG card, next to a frequent-flyer Visa.

“You're an actor?”

His Celtic skin reddened and he closed the wallet. “Purely by accident. They came to the station a few years ago, filming a Murder Street on the Boulevard, wanting real cops as extras. They bugged me till I finally agreed.”

Petra couldn't resist. “So when do your hands and feet go in the cement?”

Stu's swimming-pool-aqua eyes softened. “It's an unbelievably stupid business, Petra. Incredibly self-centered. Do you know how they refer to themselves? The industry. As if they're manufacturing steel.” He shook his head.

“What kind of roles have you had?”

“Minor walk-ons. It doesn't even cut into my routine. A lot of the filming goes on at night, and if I'm still in town, leaving later makes the freeway ride shorter. So I don't really lose any time.”

He grinned. It was protest-too-much time and they both knew it.

Petra smiled back wickedly. “Got an agent?”

Stu turned scarlet.

“You do?”

“If you're going to work, you need one, Petra. They're sharks, it's worth the ten percent to have someone else deal with it.”

“Ever get any speaking parts?” Petra was genuinely interested, but also fighting back laughter.

“If you call ‘Freeze, scumbag, or I'll shoot' speaking.”

Petra finished her coffee, and Stu worked on his mineral water.

She said, “So when do you write your screenplay?”

“Come on, give me a break,” he said, opening the wallet again and taking out cash.

But the next week he took a part as an extra out in Pacoima. Everyone in L.A., even a straight guy like Stu, wanted to be something else.

Except her. She'd come to California, after a year of state college in Tucson, to attend the Pacific Art Institute, got a fine arts degree with a specialty in painting, and entered the workplace with a husband sharing her bed. Nick had a great job designing cars at the new GM future lab. She earned chump change illustrating newspaper ads, sold a few of her paintings out of a co-op gallery in Santa Monica for the price of supplies. One day it hit her: This was it; things were unlikely to change in any big way. But at least she had Nick.

Then her body failed her, Nick showed his real soul, or lack of, leaving her baffled, broken, alone. A week after he walked out, someone broke into her apartment and stole the few valuable things she owned, including her easel and her brushes.

She sank into a two-month depression, then finally dragged herself out of bed one November night and drove around the city, limp, deadened, defenseless, thinking she should eat. Her skin looked terrible and her hair was starting to fall out, but she wasn't really hungry; the thought of food made her sick. Finding herself on Wilshire, she turned around, headed for home, spied an LAPD recruitment billboard near Crescent Heights, and amazed herself by copying down the 800 number.

It took her another two weeks to call. The police commission said the department had to actively recruit women. She got a nice warm welcome.

Entering the academy on whim, thinking it a stupid, incomprehensible mistake, she'd surprised herself by liking it, then loving it. Even the physical-fitness challenges, learning to use her flexibility rather than brute strength getting over the Wall. Avoiding the turtle squad and learning she had good reflexes, a natural talent for using leverage to floor hand-to-hand opponents.

Even the uniform.

Not the wimpy powder-blue top and navy pants of the cadet, the real one, all navy, all business.

She, who'd bucked so many boarding school fascists over issues of rank conformity, ended up attached to her uniform.

Lots of the guys in her academy class were buffed jocks and they had their blues tapered to second-skin tautness, emphasizing biceps, deltoids, latissimi.

Boys' version of a push-up bra.

One night, impulsively, she'd customized her own uniform, using the old chipped Singer sewing machine she'd brought with her from Tucson, one of the few things the burglars had left behind.

She was five-seven, 132 pounds, with slim legs, boyish hips, big square shoulders, a butt she thought too flat, and a small but natural bust that she'd finally come to appreciate. Growing up with a father and four brothers, she'd found it valuable to learn how to sew.

She worked mostly with the shirt, because it bagged around her waist, and with those hips she needed some shape. The result had flattered her figure without flaunting it.

After graduation, she was even happier, though she didn't invite anyone to the ceremony, still nervous about what Dad and her brothers would think.

A month into her probationary year, she told them, and they were all surprised, but no one put her down. By then, she was in the groove.

Everything about police work felt right. Keeping fit, cruising, roll call, shooting on the range. Even the paperwork, because one thing boarding school had taught her was good study habits and proper English, and that put her ahead of most of the buff-jocks with their pencil-chewing agony over syntax and punctuation.

Within eighteen months, she made Detective-I.

Earning the right to guard a molt.

A new car joined the others in the parking lot. Subcompact with a department emblem on the door. A woman police photographer came out lugging a professional Polaroid camera. Young, around the victim's age, in sloppy clothes and long, too-black hair. Four pierces in one ear, two in the other, just holes, no earrings. Plain face, sunken cheeks, a spot of acne on each. Combative Generation-X eyes.

As she approached the body, Petra constructed a hypothetical identity for her: like Petra, an artistic type gone practical. At night she probably put on black duds, smoked dope, and drank stingers at Sunset Strip clubs, hanging out with failed rock musicians who took her for granted.

She opened her camera, looked down, and said, “My God, I know who this is!”

Petra said, “Who?” as she waved Stu over.

“I don't know her name, but I know who she is. Cart Ramsey's wife. Or maybe it's ex-wife by now. I saw her on TV around a year ago. He hit her. It was one of those tabloid shows, showbiz exposé. She made Ramsey out to be a real asshole.”

“You're sure this is her?”

“Hundred percent,” said the woman, peeved. Her photo badge ID'd her as Susan Rose, Photog.-I. “This is her, believe me. They said she was a beauty queen and Ramsey met her at a pageant- God, look at her, what a sick fuck!” The hand holding the camera tightened and the black box swayed.

Stu came over, and Petra repeated what Susan Rose had said.

“You're sure,” he said.

“Jesus. Yeah, very.” Susan began to shoot pictures rapidly, thrusting the camera forward as if it were a weapon. “On the show she had a black eye and bruises. Fucking bastard!”

“Who?” said Petra.

“Ramsey. He's probably the one who did this, right?”

“Cart Ramsey,” Stu said without inflection, and Petra found herself wondering if Stu had ever worked on Ramsey's show. What was it called? The Adjustor, some private-eye hero who solved the problems of the downtrodden.