Dement became the go-to guy when you wanted hard-edged cinéma-politique. He grew prosperous, moved to a big house in Bir mingham, rewrote and reshot his Lake Erie film using a bigger budget: full color, megadoses of the innuendo and hyperbole he'd perfected working for Fixland.

Brown Water, version II, was nominated for an Oscar. Won a statuette. Lem made a brief, nasty speech, moved to L.A., took meetings, fielded offers. Using other people's money, he shot an exposé of emergency room practices spiced with gobbets of gore inspired by his factory-accident flicks.

Red Rooms was nominated for an Oscar and might've won if a heartrending portrayal of a nine-year-old, blind poet prodigy hadn't surfaced just before the submission deadline.

Upon hearing the verdict, Lem was reputed to have fidgeted in his seat at the Kodak Theatre and murmured, “How can you beat a fucking walleyed Helen Keller incarnation?”

He denied the quote.

The next two years saw Dement's fortunes dip as he tried his hand at “serious cinema.” A tale of Shakespearean lust garnered more plagiarism suits than profit. A historical action film depicting both sides in the Civil War as slavering, self-serving barbarians went straight to video, as did a “postmodern shake-up” of Othello that recast the tragedy as a metaphor for the Arab-Israeli impasse, with a villain named Iago Bernstein.

Lem Dement's name faded from the buzzosphere, as did tabloid shots of the now three-hundred-pound artiste at The Right Parties, bursting out of a custom tuxedo, his trademark limp-brimmed fishing hat studded with lures perched jauntily on a massive, grizzled head.

Dement went “into seclusion to center myself.” Emerged three years later with a four-hour, unspeakably violent depiction of the earliest days of Christianity, shot during a thirty-two-month stay in Turkey.

Given its creator's sensibilities, everyone expected Saul to Paul: The Moment to be an indictment of organized religion. What they got, instead, was a paean to the severest aspects of fundamentalist dogma that trumpeted the virtues of forced conversion and portrayed Arabs, Phoenicians, Mesopotamians, and Jews as hook-nosed heretics.

In a full-page Variety ad, Lem Dement announced, “I've been born again in the truest sense. My art and my heart are now focused upon sacraments of truth, purity and redemption.”

Quickly condemned as racist agitprop by the Hollywood establishment and the mainstream press, and protested serially by Muslim and Jewish civil rights groups, the film enjoyed a limited release in leased art houses and church auditoriums. Word of mouth grew. Theater chains signed on. Within three months, Saul to Paulhad taken in four hundred million dollars. Foreign revenues added another hundred fifty.

Lem Dement announced his “retirement to a life of contemplation” and moved to a “multiacre estate” in Malibu.

Same city where Rory Stoltz went to school. Honing his Industry ambitions.

Where Caitlin Frostig had gotten straight A's.

Aaron pushed back from the screen. Paced his office.

Malibu was more a concept than a locale, stretching thirty miles up the coast. But the Pepperdine-Caitlin-Rory link couldn't be ignored.

Aaron considered waking Henry again, to find out if Lem Dement's spread was anywhere near the sprawling campus. Decided against it. If Henry had managed to revisit his dream, busting his fantasy a second time would breed too much ill will.

Plus, at the early stages of the investigation, he needed to be careful about tunnel vision.

Caitlin goes to school in 90265, ditto Rory.

Rory has the gate clicker to a Hollywood Hills house owned by Dement, whose main crib is in 90265.

He flashed back to the house on Swallowsong. The winding driveway implied a big-view lot. High-priced real estate… maybe the place housed one of the stoners Rory had chauffeured.

In a Hyundai?

Had to be camouflage. So did leaving the club through the back- that was celeb behavior.

Was one-or both-of the stoners a VIP? That synced with Rory waltzing into ColdSnake.

Aaron returned to the keyboard, paired Rory Stoltz with Lem Dement, and Googled.

Did you mean demented roar?

No, I didn't, Meddling Cyber-Wienie.

He sat there for a long time, feeling his brain turn to sludge.

Three ten a.m. What he craved was sinking his teeth into the case, ripping and shredding like a rabid dog until the facts bled.

What he did was slog upstairs to Play Land, undress, fold his clothes neatly over the brass-and-teak valet, slip naked between Frette sheets.

Guessing Caitlin's face would appear in his dreams. He hoped she would.

Back when he'd been on the job, he'd embraced the classic Homicide D's self-congratulation.

We talk for the dead.

And sometimes, the dead talk to us.

Moe arrived at his desk at eight a.m., thinking about the Rory Stoltz-Mason Book connection.

Two messages from Aaron sat next to his computer. Crumpling and lobbing easy two-pointers into a nearby wastebasket, he Googled the actor.

Nearly four million hits. Midway down the second page were accounts of Book's early-morning suicide attempt by wrist-slash.

Paramedics responding to a 911 call at the Hollywood Hills house of heartthrob…

Facts were in short supply, but no shortage of lurid rehash: anonymous sources claimed Mason Book was addicted to every drug known to humankind, the hush-hush VIP admission to Cedars-Sinai had cost a heavy six figures for a one-week stay…

Moe found a couple of grainy, dark infrared shots of a guy who might've been Book being ushered into a black SUV at a hospital service door. Another hit quoted a plea by Book's unnamed mouthpiece to “respect Mason's privacy during this difficult period. Mason needs to concentrate all his energies on getting well. He thanks everyone for their support.”

Moe was about to log off when he noticed the date of Book's wrist-slash.

Printing the citation, he left the D room, turned around a sharp corner, hustled over to the familiar unmarked door, and knocked.

“Yeah?”

“It's Moe, Loo.”

“'S not locked.”

The room was so small that opening the door brought Sturgis's rhino frame into immediate close-up. Almost like being charged by a bull, and after all these months still kind of jarring to Moe.

The lieutenant had squeezed his bulk into a wheely-chair, long legs propped on his flimsy desk. Additional cold cases were stacked to the left of a cold computer screen. Sturgis's heavy jaw flexed.

“Got a second, Loo?”

Sturgis removed the cigar and rolled it from finger to finger, like a carny doing a trick. He pointed to a chair in the corner.

Moe didn't consider himself claustrophobic but he didn't like to be hemmed in. He remained standing in the doorway and told the Loo about Rory Stoltz working for Mason Book, Riptide's past life as a Hollywood hangout, saving the best for last: Book had slit his wrists exactly one week after Caitlin's disappearance.

Sturgis said, “You're wondering if he did something to her and felt guilty?”

“I know it's remote, Loo, but right now it's all I've got.”

“Remorse as a motive is predicated on Book having a conscience. Does he?”

“Don't know.”

Sturgis laughed-that vaguely threatening, phlegmy chuckle of his. “He's an actor, Moses. A dope-fiend actor, which is maybe repetitive. But sure, check it out, why not. Pick up any new cases?”

“Nope,” said Reed.

“Me neither. Damn slow.”

For a second, Moe thought Sturgis might offer to work Caitlin. But the Loo just cursed and rubbed his face. “If the citizens know what's good for them, they'll start killing other citizens so we can earn our pay. For all the service we're offering, we might as well be goldbrick politicians-not that I'm demeaning all your good work on poor Caitlin.”