The Murder Book

'About what?'

'Mostly about getting loaded and partying with rock stars.'

'That ever happen?'

She laughed. 'Not hardly. Janie was a sad little girl from the wrong part of Hollywood.'

'A young guy with a Jaguar,' said Milo. 'What else?'

'That's all I know,' said Waters. 'Really.'

'Which hotel did he take her to?'

'She just said it was downtown, in an area full of bums. She also said the guy seemed to know the place- the desk clerk tossed him a key the moment he walked in. But she didn't think he was actually staying there because the room he took her to didn't look lived in. He wasn't keeping any clothes there, and the bed wasn't even covered. Just a mattress. And rope. He'd put the rope in a dresser drawer.'

'She didn't try to escape when she saw that?'

Waters shook her head. 'He gave her a joint on the ride over. A huge one, high-grade, maybe laced with hash, because she was really floating and that's what hash usually did to her. She told me the whole experience was like watching someone else. Even when he pushed her down on the bed and started tying her up.'

'Her arms and legs and her neck.'

'That's where the marks were.'

'What happened next?'

Anger flashed behind Waters's eyeglass lenses. 'What do you think? He did his thing with her. Used every orifice.'

'She said that?'

'In cruder terms.' The gray in her eyes had deepened, as if an internal light had been dampened. 'She said she knew what he was doing, but didn't even feel it.'

'And she was blase about it.'

'At first she was. Later- a few days later, she got loaded on Southern Comfort and started talking about it, again. Not crying. Angry. At herself. Do you know what really bugged her? Not so much what he did to her, she was out of it during the whole thing. What made her mad was that when he was finished, he didn't drive her all the way back home, just dropped her off in East Hollywood and she had to walk a couple of miles. That ticked her off. But even there, she blamed herself. Said something along the lines of, 'It must be something about me, makes people treat me like that. Even him.' I said, 'Who's him?' and she got this really furious look on her face, and said, 'Him. Bowie.' That freaked me out- first the deviant, now incest. I asked her how long that had been going on, but she clammed up again. I kept nagging her to tell me, and finally she told me to shut up or she'd tell my mother what a slut I was.'

She laughed.

'Which was a viable threat. I was no poster child for wholesome living. And even though my mother was no Betty Crocker, she wasn't like Bowie, she would've cared. She would've come down on me, hard.'

'Bowie didn't care,' said Milo.

'Bowie was scum, total lowlife. I guess that explains why Janie would do anything to avoid going home.'

I thought of the bareness of Janie's room. Said, 'Did she have a crash pad, or somewhere else she stayed?'

'Nowhere permanent. She'd sleep at my house, crash once in a while in those abandoned apartments north of Hollywood Boulevard. Sometimes she'd be gone for days and wouldn't tell me where she'd been. Still, the day after the party- after Janie and I had split up, I called Bowie. I despised the ground that lowlife walked on, but even so, I wanted to know Janie was okay. That's what I was trying to tell you: I made an attempt. But no one answered.'

'When did you split up?'

'Soon after we got there. I cared about Janie. We were both so screwed up, that was our bond. I guess I had a bad feeling about the party- about her just disappearing in the middle of all that commotion. I never really forgot about her. Years later, when I was in college and learned how to use a computer, I tried to find her. Then after I got to law school and had access to legal databases, I tapped into all kinds of municipal records. California and the neighboring states. Property rolls, tax files, death notices. But she was nowhere-'

She picked up Milo's card. 'L.A. Homicide means she was murdered in L.A. So why wasn't an L.A. death notice ever filed?'

'Good question, ma'am.'

'Oh,' said Waters. She sat back. 'This is more than a reopened case, isn't it? Something got really screwed up.'

Milo shrugged.

'Great. Wonderful. This is going to suck me in and screw me up no matter what I do, isn't it?'

'I'll do my best to prevent that, ma'am.'

'You sound almost sincere.' She rubbed her forehead, took a bottle of Advil out of a desk drawer, extricated a tablet, and swallowed it dry. 'What else do you want from me?'

'The party,' said Milo. 'How'd you and Janie hear about it, for starters.'

'Just street talk, kids talking. There was always plenty of that, especially as the weekend approached. Everyone trying to figure out the best way to party hearty. So many of us hated our homes, would do anything to be away. Janie and I were a twosome, party-wise. Sometimes we'd end up at squat-raves- promoters sneaking into an abandoned building, or using an outdoors spot- some remote corner of Griffith Park, or Hansen Dam. We're talking bare minimum in terms of entertainment: some tone-deaf band playing for free, cheap munchies, lots of drugs. Mostly lots of drugs. Because the promoters were really dealers, and their main goal was bulk sales. Other times, though, it would turn out to be a real party, in someone's house. An open invitation, or even if it wasn't, there was usually no problem crashing.'

She smiled. 'Occasionally, we got bounced, but a girl could almost always crash and get away with it.'

'The party that night was one of those,' said Milo. 'Someone's house.'

'Someone's big house, a mansion, and the talk on the street was mucho drugs. Janie and I figured we'd check it out. To us a trip to Bel Air was like blasting off to a different planet. Janie was going on and on about partying with rich kids, maybe finding a rich boyfriend who'd give her all the dope she wanted. As I said, she loved to fantasize. The truth is we were both such losers, no wheels, no money. So we did what we always did: hitched. We didn't even have the address, guessed once we got to Bel Air, we'd figure it out. I picked Janie up at her place Friday afternoon, and we hung out on Hollywood Boulevard most of the day- playing arcade games, shoplifting cosmetics, panhandling for spare change but we didn't get much. After dark, we walked back down to Sunset where the best hitching was but the first corner we tried was near some hookers and they threatened to cut our asses, so we moved west- between La Brea and Fairfax, where all the guitar stores are. I remember that, because while we waited for a ride, we were looking at guitars in windows and saying how cool it would be if we started a girl band and got rich. No matter that neither of us had a lick of talent. Anyway, finally- we must've have been waiting there over an hour- we got picked up.'

'What time?' said Milo.

'Must've been nine, ten.'

'Who picked you up?'

'A college student- nerdy type, said he went to Caltech, but he was heading to the U. because he had a date with a girl there and that was really close to Bel Air. He had to tell us that, because we had no idea- I don't think either of us had ever been west of La Cienega, unless we were taking the bus straight to the beach, or, in my case, when I visited my father at the Navy base in Point Mugu. The nerd was a nice guy. Shy, probably picked us up on impulse and regretted it. Because we immediately started hassling him- turning the radio to our station, blasting it loud, teasing him- flirting. Asking him if he wanted to come to the party with us instead of some lame date with a college girl. Being real obnoxious. He got embarrassed, and that cracked us up. Also, we were hoping he might take us all the way to the party, because we still had no idea where it was. So we kept nagging him, but he said no, he liked his girlfriend. I remember Janie getting really rude about that, saying something to the effect of 'She's probably colder than ice. I can give you something she can't.' That was the