'Did she actually get killed at this club?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'We really weren't listening to the details, just wanted the cops to get her stuff out of here, get the whole thing out of our systems.'
'Do you remember the detective's name?'
'Gomez,' they said in unison.
'Ray Gomez,' said Bobby. 'He was a Los Lobos fan and he liked doo-wop.
Not a bad guy.'
Ben nodded. Their knees were pressed up against each other, white from pressure.
'What a thing to happen,' she said. 'Is this child going to suffer because Dawn stole the chart?'
'That's what she told us when she applied. Biomathematics, or something.'
'Did she ever mention her professor's name?'
'We can work around it,' I said. 'It just would have been nice to have.'
'Shame,' said Ben. 'Sorry we can't help you. The police took all her stuff and I didn't see any medical chart in there. Not that I was looking that close.'
'What about the things she stole?'
'No,' said Bobby, 'no charts there, either. Not too thorough of the cops not to find it, huh? But let me just check, to make suremaybe inside the flaps or something.'
She went into the kitchen and came back shortly with a shoebox and a strip of paper. 'Empty-this here's the picture she laid on top.
Like she was staking her claim.'
I took the photo. One of those black-and-white, four-fora-quarter self-portraits you get out of a bus terminal machine. Four versions of a face that had once been pretty, now padded with suet and marred by distrust. Straight dark hair, big dark eyes. Bruised eyes. I started to hand it back. Bobby said, 'You keep it. I don't want it.
I took another look at the photo before pocketing it. Four identical poses, grim and watchful.
'Sad,' I said.
'Yeah,' said Bobby, 'she never smiled much.'
'Maybe,' said Ben, 'she left it at her office at the U-the chart, I mean.'
'Do you know what department she was in?'
'No, but she had an extension there that sshe gave us.
Two-twothree-eight, right?'
'Think so,' said Bobby.
I took paper and pen out of my briefcase and copied that down.
'She was a doctoral student?'
'She gave a name for a reference,' said Bobby, 'but to tell the truth we never called it.'
Sheepish smile.
'Things were tight,' said Ben. 'We wanted to get a tenant quickly, and she looked okay.'
'The only boss she ever talked about was the guy at the hospital-the one who got killed. But she never mentioned him by name.'
