Dolan pushed off the couch, went to her phone, and called Stan Watts, asking him if she'd gotten anything from DA Records. When she hung up, she said, "Give me five."

She showered and dressed and took almost twenty.

When we went outside, she said, "Move your car and we'll take mine."

"No way, Dolan. You scare the hell out of me."

"Move your goddamned car or I'll back into it."

She powered up the Beemer as I moved my car.

We drove to Parker Center without saying very much, each of us keeping our thoughts to ourselves. She pulled into the red zone by the front door, told me not to touch anything, then hurried inside. Ten minutes later she came out with DeVille's file.

"You didn't fuck with the radio, did you?"

"No, I didn't fuck with anything."

We parked a block away in a little parking lot. Dolan went through the file first, peeling away pages and dropping them on the floorboard.

"What's that?"

"Lawyer crap. This stuff won't tell us anything. We want the detective's case presentation."

The lead detective in charge of the case was a Rampart Division sex crimes D-2 named Krakauer. Dolan told me that the case presentation was the sum total of the compiled evidence used in building the case, and would include witness statements, testimonial evidence, interviews; anything and everything that the detective accumulated along the way.

When Dolan had the lawyer crap separated, she took half of the detective's case presentation, gave me the other half, and said, "Start reading. The case will be divided by subject and chronology."

I was hoping for some indication that Sobek was connected to DeVille, and perhaps had been the informant that put Pike and Wozniak in that motel room on the day Wozniak died, but most of what I read concentrated on Ramona Ann Escobar. There were statements from her neighbors and the motel desk clerk and her parents, and a transcribed statement from Ramona describing how DeVille had paid her ten dollars to take off her clothes. Ramona Ann Escobar had been seven years old. It was uncomfortable to read, but I read in hopes of finding Sobek.

I was still searching when Dolan quietly said, "Oh, holy shit."

She was pale and stiff.

"What?"

She handed me a witness list that compiled the names of the people who had lodged complaints about DeVille. The list was long, and at first I didn't understand until Dolan pointed at a name midway down the list.

Karen Garcia.

Her face still ashen, Dolan said, "Keep reading."

They were all there, the first five victims, plus the newest, Jesus Lorenzo. Dersh wasn't there, but he was the exception.

Dolan stared at me. "You were right, you sonofabitch. These people weren't random. They're linked. He's killing everyone who helped put away Leonard DeVille."

All I could do was nod.

"Maybe you're the world's greatest fuckin' detective, after all."

Only one of the six victims actually gave testimony against DeVille, that being Walter Semple, who had seen DeVille at the park from where the little girl disappeared. The others were part of what Dolan called the clutter, people who had been questioned by Krakauer because they had lodged sex crime complaints against a man Krakauer believed to be DeVille, but not directly related to the case for which DeVille was finally prosecuted.

Dolan's breast rose and fell as we read through the rest of the file. A copy of DeVille's criminal arrest record was attached, listing several aliases, one of which was the Coopster.

I said, "It's Sobek. It's got to be Sobek. We have to take this to Krantz. The other people on this list have to be notified."

"Not yet. I want more."

"What do you mean, more? This will break open the case. It's a showstopper."

"It links Sobek with DeVille, but it doesn't prove he's the shooter. If I can bring them the shooter, Bishop's gotta let me on again,"

"You've already got something, Dolan. We've found a connection between these people, and we've got leads. You're going to turn this case around."

"I want more. I want to put the whole thing right on the table. I want the headline, Cole. I want to push Krantz's face in it. I want it so tight that Bishop can't not take me back on the team."

I stared at her, and thought that if I were her I would want it this badly, too. But maybe I wanted it more. If we got the shooter, then maybe that would clear Joe Pike. "Okay, Samantha. Let's find this guy."

We drove back to her place. It took Dolan almost two hours of phone calls, but we learned that Laurence Sobek wasn't in the adult system, and the system had no record of his present whereabouts. This meant one of two things: Either he'd straightened out and gotten his life together, or he'd moved away before the age of eighteen. Of course, he could always be dead, too. Boys who work the streets often end up that way.

While Dolan made the calls, I went into her kitchen for a glass of water. A couple of million photographs were stuck to her refrigerator with little magnets, including several of Dolan posing with the actress who'd played her in the series. Dolan looked like she could kick your ass and would enjoy doing it, but the actress looked like an anorexic heroin addict. Showbiz.

The picture that Dolan had taken of me at Forest Lawn was stuck near the handle with a little Wonder Woman magnet. Seeing it there made me smile.

I finished my water, then went back into the living room as she put down the phone.

Dolan said, "We've got to go to Rampart."

"Why?"

"Because that's where Sobek was busted as a juvenile. The Juvie Section there will know where to find his sheet. They might have it loaded on their system, but maybe somebody will have to dig through paper."

"I thought you said we'd need a court order to get at the juvenile stuff."

She frowned, annoyed. "I'm Samantha Dolan, you idiot. Get up to speed."

And this woman wanted to sleep with me.

The Rampart Division station house is a low-slung, brown brick building facing Rampart Street a few blocks west of MacArthur Park, where Joe Pike had first met Karen Garcia.

We parked in a small lot they have behind the place for officers, then entered the division through the back. This time Dolan didn't tell me to keep my mouth shut and try to look smart. Looking smart would be out of place in a station house anyway.

Dolan badged our way into the Juvenile Section, which was microscopic in size, just four detectives attached to the robbery table in the corner of a dingy room. Where Parker Center and the Robbery-Homicide offices were modern and bright, the detective tables at Rampart seemed faded and small, with outdated furniture that looked as tired as the detectives. Rampart was a high crime area, and the detectives there busted their asses, but the cases rarely made headlines, and no one was lounging around in six-hundred-dollar sport coats waiting to be interviewed on 60 Minutes. Most of them just tried to survive their shift.

Dolan zeroed on the youngest detective in the room, badged him, and introduced herself. "Samantha Dolan. Robbery-Homicide."

His name was Murray, and his eyebrows went up when she said that.

"I know you, don't I?"

She gave him the smile. "Sorry, Murray. Don't think we've met. You mean from the TV show?"

Murray couldn't have been more than twenty-six or twenty-seven. He was clearly impressed. "Yeah. You're the one they made the show about, right?"

Dolan laughed. She hadn't laughed when I'd mentioned her show, but there you go. "These Hollywood people, they don't know what being a detective really means. Not like we do."

Murray smiled wider, and I thought if she told him to roll over and bark, he wouldn't hesitate. "Well, that was some case you put together. I remember reading about it. Man, you were news."