Compulsion

later. Took this long to make it into the computer.”

“Go Sean,” I said. “You run a good day care, Papa Sturgis.”

Mr. and Mrs. Royal Hedges lived in a vast, loft-like condo on the fourteenth floor of a luxury building on the Wilshire Corridor. Walls of glass opened to a southward view that avoided the ocean and stared down at Inglewood, Baldwin Hills, LAX flight paths. Altitude and a starless night transformed miles of tract housing into a light show.

Royal and Monica Hedges sat on a low, black Roche-Bobois sofa, smoking in unison. The condo’s floors were black granite, the walls white diamond plaster that threw off its own glints, the artwork big and blotchy with an emphasis on gray.

Monica Hedges was somewhere between fifty and sixty. Tiny and blond and skinny to the point of desiccation, she had heavily lined brown eyes, a face stretched past the point of reason, and great legs displayed by a little black dress.

Royal Hedges looked to be seventy, minimum, sported a red-brown toupee nearly good enough to pull off the illusion, and a Vandyke dyed to match. He wore a red silk shirt, white slacks, pink suede loafers without socks. Hid his fourth yawn behind liver-spotted hands and flicked ashes into a chrome tray.

Monica said, “Katrina’s my only child. From my second marriage. Her father’s long gone.”

“Disappeared?” said Milo.

“Dead.” Her tone said no loss.

Her third husband’s body language said this was her ordeal.

She said, “I’m not panicking, Lieutenant, but I am getting a little nervous. Katrina’s done stupid things before, but not like this, a week and counting. I can’t help worrying because that’s what a mother does. Though I fully expect her to walk right in with one of her stupid excuses.”

Royal said, “I’ll be back,” patted her knee, left the room.

“Men and their plumbing,” said Monica Hedges. “He’ll be up and down the whole time. We’ve been married two years, he doesn’t really know Katrina.”

Milo said, “Is there any friend or relative Katrina might’ve gone to visit?”

“You mean her father’s family? Never. Norm Shonsky wasn’t in her life and neither is his clan.”

Airy wave. Showing no curiosity about why someone of Milo’s rank would be doing a house call on a missing person.

At her income level, probably used to service.

“Besides,” she said, “Katrina doesn’t visit. She picks up impulsively and leaves.”

“Where does she go, ma’am?”

Another wave. “Wherever. Mexico, Europe. Once she even made it to Tahiti. That’s what I meant by stupid. She’ll find a cheap flight on the Internet, do no planning whatsoever, and just fly off in gay abandon.”

“By herself.”

Silence.

“Mrs. Hedges?”

“There are men, I suppose,” she said. “If she doesn’t travel with them, she’s certainly capable of finding them along the way. She makes a point of telling me when she comes back.”

“Telling you what?”

“That she behaved in a way I wouldn’t approve. She does it purely to rile me. The exceptions are those times when she neglects to take enough money for expenses and calls me in desperation. When that happens, she’s like someone from the Travel Channel. Going on about the sights, museums, quaint old churches.”

She smoked greedily. “I love my daughter, Lieutenant, but she can be trying.”

“How long has it been since you last saw her?”

Hesitation. “A month give or take. We weren’t fighting, nothing like that. But Katrina had convinced herself she needed to be independent. In other words, no contact with Mother until finances deem otherwise. I’d never have known she was gone if her friend hadn’t called to ask if Katrina was with me.”

“Which friend?”

“A girl named Beth Holloway. Never met her. She was out with Katrina at that club, they split up, she hasn’t heard from Katrina since.”

He read off the Van Nuys address on Katrina Shonsky’s driver’s license. “Is that current, ma’am?”

“It is.”

“Does Katrina live alone?”

“Yes. In a dump.”

“Any current men in her life?”

“Not that I know,” said Monica Hedges. Losing volume by the end of the sentence, as if she doubted her own veracity. “Katrina tends to guard her privacy.”

“How long has she been at this address?”

“Fifteen months.” She stubbed out her cigarette, watched the diminishing trail of smoke.

“In terms of guarding-”

“She kept me out of her private life.”

“Don’t be offended, ma’am, but do you think she was hiding something?”

“Could be, Lieutenant. If she was dating someone high-caliber I have no doubt she’d be showing him off just to show me I’m wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

“She’s a gorgeous girl, I keep telling her she needs to elevate herself, run in a different circle. Royal and I are members of the Riviera Country Club. There are socials all the time. When I call Katrina to inform her of an event, she laughs and then her mood turns ugly.”

“She prefers doing things her own way.”

Her eyes shifted toward the front door. “I just know she’s going to run out of cash and come waltzing in any minute.”

“Do you have a recent photo we could keep?”

Reaching for a new cigarette, she marched across the living room, turned a corner. Muffled voices filtered back. Inflections that suggested tension.

She returned alone, carrying the cold cigarette in one hand, a three-by-five glossy in the other.

“This is about four years old, but Katrina hasn’t aged appreciatively.” Touching her own cheek. “Good genes. It was taken at a cousin’s wedding. Katrina served as a bridesmaid. After much complaining about the dress.”

Pretty girl with a heart-shaped face wearing a big-shouldered sateen gown the color of mortified flesh. Ill-fitting cap sleeves rode too high on smooth arms. A high, square bodice kept its promise to flatter no one. Katrina Shonsky’s fair hair was upswept and tasseled by curls that resembled brass sausages. Her lips were shaped into something resembling a smile but the rest of her face radiated disdain.

“So,” said Milo, “you’re pretty confident she’s off on one of her trips but you reported her missing just to be safe.”

“I know she didn’t travel far, because she didn’t take her passport.”

“You’ve been to her apartment?”

“Talked my way past the landlord and went through the entire place. Straightened up, while I was there, Lord knows the dump needed it. Her passport was right in a dresser drawer. If she took clothes, she didn’t take many, Lieutenant. But Katrina’s capable of hopping off with nothing but her purse and a credit card.”

“Do you co-sign for her card?”

“I do not. No more of that, Katrina abused my credit limit. She now has a Visa with a one-thousand-dollar-a-month maximum and is expected to pay her own bills. And I have to say for the most part, she’s done so.” Crossing her fingers.

“No passport, no clothes,” said Milo. “Doesn’t sound like much of a vacation.”

“Some of those places she goes to,” said Monica Hedges, “all you need is a bikini and a wineglass. It’s also possible she used her employee discount for a wardrobe.”

“She works in fashion?”

“She sells clothing at La Femme Boutique in Brentwood. Overpriced tacky, if you ask me. I told her I could