"I'm so sorry, Janice. I can only imagine how awful that must've been."

"It was. It was a terrible thing." Her voice shook a little. "What killed me was that he was a really terrific writer. In fact, I always thought he was better than me. I kept telling him to get out of Hollywood and write novels. But he wouldn't listen." Janice gave a heavy sigh.

"I hope you don't mind. I'd like your opinion regarding things we've heard about Tommy."

"All right." But her voice was wary. I'd probably feel the same in her position.

"People who'd worked with him on the show said he complained a lot about other writers lifting his stories and his lines-"

"He wasn't the paranoid type, if that's what you mean. If he said it, then I'd bet it was true. Now, I'm not saying he couldn't have been mistaken at times. But there was probably some truth to it."

"Did he talk to you about the show, or the other writers?"

"Not much." Janice paused. "As you can tell, I wasn't a big fan of Hollywood. He didn't want to hear me tell him yet again that he should get out, so he didn't talk about it much. But of course, he did tell me when that man stole his screenplay."

"So he didn't complain to you about the other writers stealing his lines or anything?"

"No. He called them untalented hacks, but he didn't say anything about stealing from him."

I hadn't considered the possibility before, but now I wondered whether those stories of Tommy's constant accusations were just hype generated after the fact to explain his suicide.

"Had you ever known him to be suicidal before?"

"Never. Oh, he could be morose. He certainly had his moods. But suicidal? Not even a hint of it. That's why I had an investigator look into his death. I thought it might be a homicide that'd been covered up to look like a suicide."

I thought people read too much crime fiction. Then it occurred to me that Janice might be a thriller writer, so I kept that thought to myself.

"What happened?"

Janice gave another heavy sigh. "He couldn't find any evidence of homicide."

"So you have no doubts?"

"He did a very thorough job. Trust me, I made sure of it." Janice gave a short, dry bark of a laugh. "I wish I did have doubts. But, no, I don't."

Neither did I. I'd read the reports on Tommy's death and there was no indication that it was anything but a suicide.

"Did Brian know the story?"

Janice sighed again. "Not while his mother was alive. She refused to discuss it. Estelle considered the whole business of that script a sickness, and after Tommy died she was too angry to discuss it. All she wanted to do was get away from it all. She didn't care anymore whether Tommy was right or wrong. In my opinion, she was profoundly resentful-watching him unravel month by month, and then in the end...well, you know. The truth was, she hated everything and everyone associated with that script. And that meant Hollywood. Her way of dealing with that was to move them out to Arizona and never speak of it."

I don't know whether I'd have done the same thing. But I sure didn't blame her. "And after Brian moved in with you, did you tell him about his father?"

"Eventually, yes. Brian was a little guy when Tommy died. Barely nine years old. All he knew was that mommy seemed angry all the time and he believed it was his responsibility to make her happy. A task doomed to failure. Add that to his confusion over why daddy had abandoned them and you have a very sad child. Estelle was smart enough to get him therapy, and heaven knows she loved him dearly, so in spite of it all, he grew up into a sweet boy. But I could tell he was still confused about what had happened to Tommy. So I had to tell him the truth. I explained to him how and why it all happened, that his father was just too sad to go on living and his mother was angry about losing him because she loved him."

"And that helped?"

"It seemed to. He'd periodically ask me questions about what had happened, what his dad told me, what he'd done about the theft of the script. Brian even bought the DVD of the movie. He watched it over and over again."

So many things were clearer now. "Did he ever tell you that he wanted to avenge his father, clear his name by proving he'd originated the idea for the movie?"

"No. I mean, he was upset at the idea that someone might have stolen his father's script and that it had pushed his father...over the edge. But he never spoke of wanting to do anything about it. I mean, what could he do? The whole issue is long in the past now."

I didn't want to tell her that Brian had indeed found a way to do something about it. So I wrapped it up, thanked her for her time, and gave her my number. She assured me that if she heard from Brian, she'd be in touch immediately. "He's a lovely, gentle soul. Please believe me, he would never hurt anyone." My silence provoked her to add, "I know, someone in the family always says that, and then you find the body." The remark was so unwittingly accurate, it left me speechless. Janice exhaled and said, "Don't worry, Ms. Knight. If this girl is with Brian, I'm sure she's just fine and she'll turn up soon."

The bitter irony made my throat tighten. I barely managed to choke out a "thank you" before ending the call. When I got out of the car, the smell of greasy food filled my nostrils. It turned my stomach. I opened the door to the restaurant, intending to tell Bailey I'd wait outside, but she was already standing at the register.

"Man, you eat fast. Don't you believe in chewing?"

A waitress behind the counter brought over a bag that gave off the smell of bacon and something sweet. Bailey handed it to me. "I ordered yours to go."

Bailey finished paying. "Our pal Brian is on the move. He just bought a ticket to Paris using Hayley's iPad."

17.

Bailey hustled me into the car and pulled out onto Sepulveda Boulevard. For some reason my appetite returned with a vengeance. I was aiming a forkful of the hash browns at my mouth, but we hit a dip in the road, and it missed and bounced off my chin instead. Flicking a piece of potato out of my bra, I asked, "Where exactly are we rushing to?"

"The station. Got to call my contact with the cell site info."

Bailey's contact might be able to tell us what cell sites the iPad accessed when Brian bought the plane tickets. And, hopefully, that would lead us to Brian. "Think he's dumb enough not to know we can trace the signal?"

"He might think he can outrun us-"

And he might be right. Thus, Bailey's rush. "Do we know what name he bought the ticket under?"

"I didn't ask. We can do it at the station."

As Bailey navigated the morning traffic, I tried to stuff some food down. But after a few sudden stops and sharp turns, I gave up. I decided I didn't want to be Exhibit A for a new definition of pancake makeup.

We headed straight for Bailey's desk, and while she made the call to her contact I poked through her in-box. It looked like we already had a few reports from Dorian. Bailey fished them out and scanned them.

"Anything?" I asked.

"Dorian found no evidence of forced entry or struggle at the party house."

That's what we'd named Russell's house in the hills. "We didn't expect to. Did she recover any trace evidence to put Brian there?"

Bailey scanned the page again. "Doesn't say in this report. But I know she lifted some prints." Bailey flipped to the next page. "She notes plant debris on Hayley's body that looks similar to some debris on the undercarriage of the car-"

"So he took her with him to the ransom drop in Fryman Canyon."

Bailey nodded, then handed the reports to me. "We'll need to find Brian's prints on something official so we can give Dorian something to compare to whatever she lifted at the house."

I scanned the reports, then ran out to the vending machine to get some water. And since I was wearing old jeans, a faded sweatshirt, and no makeup, I of course ran into Graden.

He, on the other hand, was a sight for very sore eyes. His crisply pressed lieutenant's uniform showed off his lean, well-muscled frame, and his perennial light tan enhanced the wide cheekbones, sandy brown hair, and hazel eyes. Graden Hales was a man who very seldom got turned down. Surprisingly, that popularity had not turned him into an ass.

I told him about finding Hayley. "You'd think I'd know better than to get my hopes up by now."

Graden shook his head, his expression sad but resigned. "You never will. No one does. Hope dims over time, but it never completely goes away." He kept it light, but I heard the serious message underlying his words. It occurred to me that he might be referring to us.

The odds of getting back with Graden had been pretty slim. Even though I could now accept that my reaction to his Googling me wasn't rational, the hell of being "that girl" in the small Northern California community after Romy's abduction was still fresh enough to make me cringe. And so when my mother and I moved to Los Angeles, I kept my traumatic family history from everyone-including Bailey and Toni. My childhood therapist and now friend, Carla the Crone (as I'd called her), had always told me that my secretiveness was unhealthy and very likely stemmed from my irrational feelings of guilt for not having saved Romy. Though I recognized the truth in what she said, and in Bailey's and Toni's urgings that Graden shouldn't be thrown out as untrustworthy, it had taken all I had to make myself give him another chance. And he knew it.

"Listen, I've got to get some work done around the house this weekend," he said. "You around early next week?"

"It's hard to say, the way things are going. But if I am, you want to-"

"Yes."

"You don't know what I was going to say. I might've been about to ask if you wanted to paint my room."

"The answer's still yes," he said, with a smile that warmed me from head to toe. "But I get to pick the color."

Graden headed off to his meeting, and when I got back to Bailey's desk, she was just ending a call.

"And?" I asked.

"The iPad's in New York."

"How're we going to get out there in time to-"

"We're not. I put in calls to NYPD. I'm e-mailing them all the info, photos of Brian, all that jazz. They've put out the alert."

"So I guess it's that time," I said. Time to notify Raynie and Russell of Hayley's death. I couldn't even begin to tell Bailey how much I dreaded this meeting, but her expression told me I didn't need to.

"You don't have to do this, Rache."

"Yeah, I do." I couldn't let Bailey go it alone. And I couldn't let my own history get in the way of doing my job.

Bailey sighed heavily. "Do you want to get the parents together or tell them separately?"

I flashed back on the scene at Russell's house. "They all seemed pretty easy with each other. It might be best for them to have everyone together."

Bailey stood up. "I agree. And besides, it's bad enough having to give this news once."

No argument there. Bailey dropped me at the Biltmore and went back to her apartment in Larchmont Village so we could get cleaned up and look professional when we delivered the news.

We arranged for everyone to meet us at Russell's house and we were ushered into the living room, where the parents were seated on separate sections of the couch that was in front of the fireplace. There was a heavy tension in the room. I knew they were steeling themselves against the pain of hearing what we'd come to tell them. The words we were about to utter in the next few seconds would change their lives forever. It made me wish there was a giant life clock I could reach into and push back the hands, take us all to a time when Hayley was here, safe. Raynie jumped up to offer us something to drink, and when we declined, she offered us something to eat. I recognized the defense mechanism, a way to delay the blow. Because maybe if it was delayed long enough, it wouldn't come. But of course, it had to. Bailey told them, as gently as she could, that Hayley had been found dead in the trunk of Brian's car.

Russell roared, "Brian? Brian who?"

He was trying to distance himself from the fact of Hayley's death, but it was a valid question nonetheless. I told him. And when I explained who his father was, I watched Russell carefully. He blanched and then his eyes fixed on a point across the room in a hundred-yard stare.

"How in the hell did he and Hayley...?" he asked, looking bewildered.

"We think Brian sought her out," I said.

Russell covered his face with his hands, then rubbed his temples. He choked back a sob and began to pound the arm of the couch. "No, no, no!" He spit the words out as though they were rocks that'd been stuck in his throat. Then he suddenly jumped to his feet and began to storm around the room. "That goddamn crazy asshole! That psychotic son of a bitch raised a fucking lunatic of a kid! I want that piece of shit obliterated!"

Throughout all this, Raynie keened like a wounded animal, arms wrapped around her midsection, rocking back and forth. "No, no, no, no!" Her agony was almost too painful to witness. She folded forward and hugged her knees, head on her lap.

I could see that Bailey was feeling the heartbreak as deeply as I was. We did what we could to console them, but nothing can make you feel more useless than trying to assuage the pain of losing a child. It was a tragedy like no other. The death of a son or daughter upends the universe-parents predecease children, not the other way around. And I knew that the hole we'd just torn in Russell's and Raynie's lives today would never be fully healed.

Before we left, Bailey and I promised to do everything in our power to bring Brian to justice. Raynie nodded and whispered, "Thank you."

But I knew what she was thinking. We could catch Brian, we could take him to trial, we could get him convicted and locked up forever. But we could never bring Hayley back.

18.

We headed back downtown in silence. In the past few hours, the sky had gone from a deep, penetrating blue to an ominously heavy cloud bank of blacks and grays. We drove through a darkness that made mid-afternoon feel like the dead of night. I rolled down the window and the thick damp breeze clung to my face and crawled down my neck. A weird stillness filled the air, as though the planet were waiting for something.

At the corner of Fifth and Broadway, a man in a black top hat, dressed in jeans and a black blazer, waited at the light. He was sitting on a piece of canvas stretched across the frame of a walker, except the walker had four wheels and a basket. When the light changed, he popped up and pushed the contraption across the street, whistling the chimney-sweep song from Mary Poppins.

Bailey and I watched him. "Fellini wasn't really stretching much, was he?" I said.

Bailey's mouth twisted in a half smile. I knew it was all she could manage. "Want to head over to the coroner's?" she asked.

"Sure. And we need a specialist to look at that plant debris."

"Dorian's probably already got someone." Bailey got back on the freeway and headed for North Mission Road. "I've been wondering whether the aunt..."

"Janice."

"Right. Whether she was lying? Now that we know Brian's in New York, since he used Hayley's iPad there..."

I'd been thinking about that too. "She sure didn't sound like she had anything to hide. But then again, you never know."

Bailey nodded. "Just wondering."

"Did you ever find out what name that ticket to Paris was purchased under?"

Bailey smacked the steering wheel. "Damn. I'll check into it when we get back."