Good Morning, Killer

jacket and low-riding jeans was placing one red high heel on the lower rung of a bridge, causing a reaction amongst the photographers like goldfish to crumbs.

“Smile, honey! Pose!” shouted a strained woman’s voice.

“Are you the mom?”

Of course she was the mom, who else would have laid out a blanket piled with head shots?

She looked not much older than her daughter, ruddy face, wide at the hips, an infant over one shoulder, a toddler wearing a butterfly costume prancing along the path.

Like they said: family.

“I’m Sonoma’s mother,” she said self-importantly. “Sonoma has her own website.”

She gave me a card. Her nails were long and white and sparkled. The only sparkly thing about her.

“I tell my girls, use your looks while you have them. You won’t have them forever.”

The butterfly had scrambled onto a rock, hands clasped to her chin, flashing a demented smile at a guy with a mustache and a tripod.

“You don’t mean the little one,” I couldn’t help saying. “Losing your looks at three?”

“Oh no,” said the mother, “Sonoma and Bridget. That’s what I say to them.”

She pointed with the toe of her running shoe at the glossies on the blanket. Sonoma was blonde. Bridget had long dark hair, like Juliana’s. There were dozens of shots of them in halters and short skirts. It made you appreciate actual models.

“Bridget is Sonoma’s sister?”

“Eighteen months apart. I have to be careful they don’t get competitive. They like to dress the same, but I tell them, you should each develop your own look.”

“The cowgirl look.”

“They do it different every time. They love it,” she assured me. “We all the time go on a shopping spree before we come to one of these.”

It turned out they lived in the desert, three hours away. The drive was no problem. This was, according to her, how the actress Heather Locklear got started.

“Last week Bridget earned a hundred fifty dollars.”

“Really?”

“Through an agency on the Internet. They get paid twenty-five dollars an hour, two hours minimum. I make sure I’m always at the photo shoot,” she said firmly. “And it has to be nonglamour, not lingerie.”

“Is Bridget here?”

“No, she’s working with one of the gentlemen.”

I looked around for another doll in a cowboy hat.

“Where?”

“She went with him for a little while,” the mom explained, shifting the infant to the other shoulder.

“Where did they go?”

“To his studio.”

“You said you’re always present at a photo shoot.”

My heartbeat had kicked up to a hundred thirty.

“I am,” she said haughtily, “but I have the babies.”

I was angry enough to nail her to a tree. She never went on shoots. And you know Bridget never got the hundred fifty bucks; it’s how mom kept the girls tied up inside her own spandex dreams.

“Is this the photographer?”

The lady peered at Ray Brennan’s picture.

“That kind of looks like him, but this man’s name is Jack.”

“Kind of, or is it? He might have changed his hair color, or his facial hair. He’s six feet tall, weighs about two hundred, in good shape.”

I might not have the creds, but I had the attitude, and it was rattling her.

“Let me ask Sonoma.”

I stood there, knowing. It was like suddenly being encased in ice.

Sonoma minced over, walking on toes to keep the high heels from sinking into the sweating grass. She was the older one, not so pretty close up.

“What is the problem, Mom?” she snapped, looking at the picture. “That’s Jack. Who else would it be?”

“Don’t use that mouth,” the mother whined. “I just wasn’t sure.”

“It’s chill,” the girl told me. “My sister knows him really well.”

“How well?”

“He’s come here before.” Then, less certain, “I know she’s talked to him …”

I realized why the other photographers claimed not to have seen the hard face of Ray Brennan in their garden. They had not wanted to see him. He was forty years younger, stronger, pumped with male vitality, capable of getting real girls to do the real thing.

“Bridget left with this man? How long ago?”

“Half an hour. Forty minutes.”

“They’ll be right back,” the mother assured me.

“Where is the studio?”

They looked at each other.

“—Somewhere close.”

“—Five minutes away.”

“—He said it was at his mother’s house.”

It was not supposed to be this way. Not without an arrest plan, or a warrant, for God’s sake. Not without backup. I sped down the 134 Freeway while punching the address book on my personal cell phone.

Donnato.

Jason.

Barbara.

Galloway.

Vernon.

Eunice.

Voice mail. Voice mail. Voice mail. Voice mail.

Donnato was at a wedding with his Nextel turned off, but where the hell was everybody else? What did they do on Sunday afternoons? Damn, they were probably all at the ceremony — it was Vicki Shawn and Ed Brewster, the firearms instructors who had posed for Hugh Akron in their wedding clothes. I roared out loud with frustration. It would take too long to go through the rigmarole with some rookie on the switchboard. I needed to connect in the next two minutes with somebody who knew the Brennan case.

Fingertips on the wheel, I reached back with my other hand and felt around the rear seat for the envelope of files concerning the preliminary hearing. The files were in folders, which took the finesse of a bomb squad expert to extract from the envelope at eighty-five miles per hour in a convertible. Glancing from the gyrating road to the pages flapping in the open air, I located the list of witnesses, and there was Kelsey Owen’s home phone number.

I guess she was not invited to the wedding, either, because she picked up on the first ring.

I explained as concisely as I could: Ray Brennan had taken a teenage Juliana look-alike from a photo shoot less than an hour before.

“Where are you?” she shouted.

“Almost to the Ventura Freeway. They said he took her to a studio in his mother’s house. I’m guessing his mother’s house is somewhere around Culver City or the park—”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I didn’t mean for it to go down like this—” I was yelling.

“It’s okay, Ana. Calm down. You’re doing good. I’m here and I’m going to help you. Tell me, clearly and slowly, what you want me to do.”