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reason he wasn’t able to keep up was because his jeans were too tight. He couldn’t run.”
    Other team members captured the suspect.
    Bynum didn’t want to leave Hollenbeck, but her one-year trial period as a detective had expired, necessitating a change of location. “I put in for Hollywood, thinking it would be an exciting place to work. Before the deadline, I came over and introduced myself to the Robbery Detail supervisor, hoping for an opening. I was lucky. I served in the Robbery Unit first, then Gangs, and then to Homicide in 1997.”
    Maintaining her fine sense of humor and soft-spoken demeanor, Vicki earned the respect of her peers and bosses. At Bynum’s desk in the Hollywood Station, just above and to the right of her computer screen, can be seen photos of her two best pals; Bella, her “chubby Chihuahua,” and her miniature pinscher, Topaz, both acquired as gifts from her daughter.
    Ten years into her tenure as a homicide detective, Vicki Bynum heard the name Kristin Baldwin for the first time.

C HAPTER 5
    S HOT IN THE F ACE
    A confusing chain of communication triggered an investigation in LAPD’s Hollywood Station. It began late at night on May 31, 2007—sixteen days before the discovery of an unidentified body in the desert near Daggett.
    In Orange County, south of Los Angeles, an enigmatic caller to 911 stated that a murder had taken place in Hollywood on May 27. The receiving agency relayed it to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD), which forwarded the information to the Los Angeles Police Department. At one of the stations, an officer thought it sounded like a prank call and hung up. The caller persisted and tried again. From LAPD, the report was forwarded by a radio telephone operator (RTO) to the night watch at the Hollywood Station. By this time, the clock had ticked past midnight.
    At the desk in Hollywood, in the first half hour of June 1, Officer Tracey Fields received information that an unidentified male caller had said he was a witness to a homicide at a Cole Crest Drive address. The crime had occurred on Sunday, May 27. The informant said that his roommate, David Alan Mahler, shot a woman in the face and later asked for help in disposing of the body. Unwilling to identify himself, the caller left numbers where he could be reached, fell silent, and hung up.
    Officer Fields, on temporary duty answering telephones due to her advanced pregnancy, notified her watch commander, who contacted Detective Ray Conboy, on duty as the night watch detective.
    Conboy recalled the convoluted sequence. “I called the three numbers I had for the PR (person reporting). There were no answers, but I left voice mail messages on all of them giving numbers for my cellular phone and the Hollywood desk. At 0125 hours, I called my supervisor, Detective Wendi Berndt. She advised me to conduct a follow-up at the residence.”
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    With twenty-eight years of experience behind her, Wendi Berndt not only had achieved admirable success, but had also retained a youthful, attractive appearance. Exceptionally bright, she had worked her way up the ladder from raw recruit to Detective III, in charge of homicide investigations in the Hollywood Station. Originally from Wichita, Kansas, Berndt had married and moved to New York, where she earned a degree in police science. In the small township of Montgomery, New York, Berndt went directly to the police chief and told him she would like to apply for a job. He promised to get back to her and kept his word a few days later. Recalling it with a laugh, Berndt said, “I got two calls. In the first one, he said, ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t take you on because we don’t know how male officers’ wives would react to their husbands working with a female.’ The second call came after what I imagined to be a discussion with their legal department. This time he said, ‘Okay, you know what?