Nazi war criminals had hidden for decades in Latin America, living like nobility. Why not a couple of low-profile thrill killers?

Still, if Nora and Dylan had escaped for the long run, why leave brochures anywhere to be discovered?

Unless the packets were a misdirect.

I looked up jet leasing, air charter, and time-share companies in Southern California, compiled a surprisingly long list, spent the next two hours claiming to be Bradley Dowd experiencing a “family emergency” and in dire need of finding his sister and his nephew, Dylan. Lots of turndowns and the few outfits who checked their passenger logs had no listing of Nora or Meserve. Which proved nothing if the couple had assumed new identities.

For Milo to get subpoenas of the records, he’d need evidence of criminal behavior and all Dowd and Meserve had done was disappear.

Unless Dylan’s misdemeanor conviction could be used against him.

Milo would be tied up right now with “boring police stuff.” I called him anyway and described Billy Dowd’s behavior.

He said, “Interesting. Just got Michaela’s full autopsy results. Also interesting.”

We met at nine p.m., at a pizza joint on Colorado Boulevard in the heart of Pasadena ’s Old Town. Hipsters and young business types feasted on thin crust and pitchers of beer.

Milo had been scoping out BNB buildings in the eastern suburbs for evidence of Peaty’s unofficial storage, asked if I could meet him. When I left the house at eight fifteen, the phone rang but I ignored it.

When I arrived, he was at a front booth, apart from the action, working on an eighteen-inch disk crusted with unidentifiable foodstuffs, his own pitcher half full and frosted. He’d doodled a happy face on the glass. The features had melted to something morose and psychiatrically promising.

Before I could sit, he hoisted his battered attaché case, took out a coroner’s file, and placed it across his lap. “When you’re ready. Don’t ruin your dinner.” Munch munch.

“I ate already.”

“Not very social of you.” He massaged the pitcher, erased the face. “Wanna glass?”

I said, “No, thanks,” but he went and got one anyway, left the file on his chair.

At the front were routine forms signed by Deputy Coroner A.C. Yee, M.D. In the photos what had once been Michaela Brand was a department-store manikin taken apart in stages. See enough autopsy shots and you learn to reduce the human body to its components, try to forget it’s ever been divine. Think too much and you never sleep.

Milo returned and poured me a beer. “She died of strangulation and all the cuts were postmortem. What’s interesting are Numbers Six and Twelve.”

Six was a close-up of the right side of the neck. The wound was an inch or so long, slightly puffed at the center, as if something had been inserted in the slot and left there long enough to create a small pouch. The coroner had circled the lesion and written a reference number above the ruler segment used for scale. I paged to the summary, found the notation.

Postmortem incision, superior border of the sternoclavicular notch, evidence of tissue-spreading and surface exploration of the right jugular vein.

Twelve was a front view of a smooth, full-breasted female chest. Michaela’s implants spread as if deflated.

Dr. Yee had pointed to the spots where they’d been stitched up and noted, “Good healing.” In the smooth plain between the mounds were five small wounds. No pouching. Yee’s measurements made them shallow, a couple were barely beneath the skin.

I returned to the description of the neck lesion. “ ‘Surface exploration.’ Playing around with the vein?”

“Maybe a special type of play,” said Milo. “Yee wouldn’t put it in writing but he said the cut reminded him of what an embalmer might do at the start of a body prep. The location was exactly what you’d choose if you wanted to expose the jugular and the carotid artery for drainage. After that, you spread the wound to expose the vessels and insert cannulas in both of ’em. Blood drains out of the vein while preservative’s pumped into the artery.”

“But that didn’t happen here,” I said.

“No, only a scratch on the vein.”

“A would-be embalmer who lost his nerve?”

“Or changed his mind. Or lacked the equipment and knowledge to follow through. Yee said there was an ‘immature’ quality to the murder. The neck stuff and the chest lacerations he called dinky and ambivalent. He wouldn’t put that in writing, either. Said it was for a shrink to decide.”

He extended a palm.

I said, “Better find yourself a decisive shrink.”

“Fear of commitment?”

“So I’ve been told.”

He laughed and drank and ate. “Anyway, that’s the extent of the weird stuff. There was no sexual penetration or fooling with the genitalia or overt sadism. Not much blood loss either, most of it settled, and the lividity showed the body was on its back for a while.”

“Manual strangulation,” I said. “Look in her eyes and choke the life out of her. It takes time. Maybe it’s enough to get you off.”

“Watching,” he said. “Peaty’s thing. With him and Billy being a couple of arrested-development losers- immature- I can see them fooling with a body but being afraid to dig too deep. Now you’re telling me ol’ Billy’s got a temper.”

“He does.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“You’re not convinced.”

“I don’t see Billy and Peaty being clever enough. More important, I don’t see Billy setting up Peaty with that call.”

“Maybe he’s not as stupid as he comes across. The real actor in the family.”

“Brad can obviously be fooled,” I said, “but he and Billy lived together so I doubt to that extent. Learn anything new about the stolen cell phone?”

He flipped the attaché case open, got his notepad. “Motorola V551, Cingular wireless account, registered to Ms. Angeline Wasserman, Bundy Drive, Brentwood. Interior designer, married to an investment banker. The phone was in her purse when it got stolen the day of the call- nine hours before. Ms. Wasserman was shopping, got distracted, turned her head, and poof. Her big concern was the whole identity theft thing. The purse, too- four-figure Badgley-something number.”

“Badgley Mischka.”

“Your brand?”

“I’ve known a few women.”

“Ha! Wanna guess where she was shopping?”

“ Camarillo outlets,” I said.

“The Barneys outlet, specifically. Tomorrow, when it opens at ten, I’ll be there showing around pictures of Peaty and Billy, the Gaidelases, Nora and Meserve, Judge Crater, Amelia Earhart, anyone else you wanna suggest.”

“Nora and Meserve may be cavorting as we speak.” I told him about the travel brochures, my calls to the private jet outfits.

“Another subpoena called for, if I had grounds,” he said. “The paper for Ms. Wasserman’s cell came in fast because it’d been reported stolen but I’m still waiting on the phone booth trace. Hopefully I’ll have it in hand tonight.”

“Night owl judge?”

His smile was weary. “I’ve known a few jurists.”

I said, “Meserve’s hoax conviction won’t help with the passenger logs?”

“Misdemeanor offense pled down to community service? Not hardly. You’re liking him and Nora better now? Nor more Andy and Cathy as psychos?”

“Their leaving town puts them in my radar.”

“Nora and Mr. Snow Globe. He hid his own car in Brad’s treasured space, just like Brad assumed, left the globe there for a screw-you.”

“If he and Nora targeted Peaty, they could’ve learned about Peaty’s unregistered van. Left the second globe as a misdirection.”

“Rape kit too?”

“Why not?” I said. “Or it was Peaty’s. Everyone at the PlayHouse seems to have known about Peaty’s staring and Brad knew about Peaty’s arrest record, so it’s not a big stretch to assume Nora could’ve found out. If Nora and Dylan wanted a scapegoat, they had a perfect candidate.”