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arts.”
    He frowned. “Then you just closed two rare ones. Have you seen many others?”
    Petra thought back. She shook her head. “Not for a while.”
    Isaac said, “If we get even more specific, cranial bludgeoning by unknown weapon accounts for no more than three percent of L.A. homicides. But it makes up one
hundred
percent of these cases. When you add the other similarities—identical calendar date, same approximate time, probable stranger homicides, and look at the probability of a chance cluster, you’re moving way past coincidence.”
    He stopped.
    Petra said, “That it?”
    â€œActually, there is a bit more. LAPD homicide detectives solve between two-thirds and three-quarters of their cases, yet all
these
cases remain unsolved.”
    â€œThat’s because they’re stranger homicides,” said Petra. “You’ve been here long enough to see the kind of stuff we clear quickly. Some moron holding the smoking gun when the uniforms get there.”
    â€œI think you’re selling yourself short, Detective Connor.” Saying it sincerely, not a trace of patronizing. “The truth is you people are very effective—imagine a major league slugger hitting seven hundred. Even stranger homicides get solved. But not one of these. All that supports my thesis: these are highly irregular events. The final incongruity is that during the same six-year period, gang homicides rose from twenty percent of all homicides to nearly forty. Meaning the chance of a nongang murder lowered proportionately. Yet not one of the June 28 cases appear gang-related. Add all that up and we’re talking a combination of highly unusual circumstances. The likelihood of it boiling down to chance is one over so many zeros I don’t have a name for it.”
    Bet you do,
thought Petra.
Bet you’re going easy on me.
    She slid the list out from under his hand, took a closer look.
    June 28 Homicides: An Embedded Pattern?
    1. 1997: 12:12 a.m. Marta Doebbler, 29, Sherman Oaks, married white female. Out with friends at Pantages Theater in H’wood, went to ladies’ room, never returned. Found in own car, backseat, depressed skull fracture.
    2. 1998: 12:06 a.m. Geraldo Luis Solis, 63, widowed Hispanic male. Found in his house, breakfast room, Wilsh. Div, food taken but no money, depressed skull fracture.
    3. 1999: 12:45 a.m. Coral Laurine Langdon, 52, single white female, walked her dog in H’wood Hills, found by patrol car, under brush, six blocks from home. Depressed skull fracture. Dog (“Brandy,” 10 y.o. cockapoo) stomped to death.
    4. 2000: 12:56 a.m. Darren Ares Hochenbrenner, 19, single black male, Navy ensign, stationed in Port Hueneme, on shore leave H’wood, found in alley, Fourth Street, Cent. Div, pockets emptied. Depressed skull fracture.
    5. 2001: 12:01 a.m. Jewell Janis Blank, 14, single white female, runaway, found in Griffith Park, near Fern Dell, by rangers. Depressed skull fracture.
    6. 2002: 12:28 a.m. Curtis Marc Hoffey, 20, single white male, known gay hustler, found in alley, Highland near Sunset. Depressed skull fracture.
    Petra looked up. “There doesn’t seem to be any pattern victim-wise.”
    â€œI know,” said Isaac, “but still.”
    â€œI have a friend, a psychologist, who says people are walking prisms. We see with our brains, not our eyes. And what we see depends on context.”
    Now
she
was pontificating. Isaac sat back. He looked crushed.
    â€œMy point is,” she said, “that it all depends on how you look at it. You’ve raised some interesting points—more than interesting . . . provocative.” She pointed to the list, ran her finger down the names. “These people are all over the place in terms of sex, age . . . social class. We’ve got urban and semirural dumpsites. If this is some kind of serial thing, there’d most likely be a sexual angle, and I can’t see what a