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appointment. So much for clinical predictions.
    What was the chance I could do better for a dead girl?

Chapter
    7
     
     
     
    “How far’d you get?” Milo asked the next morning. It was 9:00 A.M. and we were drinking orange juice in my office.
    “All of it.” I lifted the offender printout. “New system?”
    “Funded by Sacramento in response to the victims’ rights movement. Great idea but so far reporting procedures are sloppy and lots of cities—L.A. included—don’t have a system in place. Also, most cops are scared of computers so the best way to get info is still the horn and teletypes. What’d you think of the FBI letter?”
    “Nothing I disagree with but Agent Gorman’s careful not to commit herself.”
    “So what else is new.”
    I told him my conception of the murderer. The possibility that photos had been taken.
    “Polaroids or a darkroom?” he said. “A professional photographer?”
    “Or a serious amateur. Someone with artistic pretensions—there’s something pretentious about the crime, Milo. Fussy. Arranging the body, sweeping up. A psychopath who wants to believe he’s something else. But all that’s predicated upon it being a sex crime.”
    “You don’t think it was?”
    “Gorman may be right about its having something to do with Irit’s background rather than being just a random thing. When Gorobich and Ramos did something, they were thorough. It’s what they didn’t do that’s off. All those interviews with park neighbors but none in Beverlywood. The father talked to twice, the mother not at all.”
    He wiped his face. “A family thing?”
    “Most kids are killed by relatives.”
    “Something about these parents comes across creepy?”
    “Just how little attention they’ve received. And how little information they’ve offered.”
    “A parent hiding in that forest—it would have to be the father ’cause the mother wouldn’t be strong enough to carry Irit that far. And I know for sure it wasn’t the father because when the call came in about Irit’s being missing, he was at the consulate in a meeting.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Any other relatives besides the younger brother?”
    “Don’t know.” He put his big hands on the side of the box and rocked it. “It’s too weird, anyway, Alex. When relatives kill kids you know it’s almost always at home. Or some family outing. I’ve never heard of them stalking like this. I know Gorobich and Ramos didn’t turn over every rock but they claim there was nothing off about the Carmelis. Just parents destroyed by the worst possible scenario. Add VIP to the picture and you could see why they wouldn’t want to pry too hard.”
    “Makes sense,” I said. “Get a callback from Mr. Carmeli yet?”
    “Nope. And I can’t wait to tackle that one. Little old moi crashing the halls of diplomacy.”
    The image made me smile.
    “What?” he said. “The tie?”
    The tie was a limp, narrow strip of blue-green pseudosilk, too short to stretch the hump of his belly and flipped-up at the tip. Perfect with the beige-and-black-striped shirt and the faded olive sportcoat.
    I used to think he didn’t know better but a month ago, Robin and I had gone with him to the art museum and he had looked at the pictures the way someone who understands pictures does, talking about how much he liked the Ashcan painters, why Fauvism stank because of the vulgar colors. After all these years I was beginning to suspect the way he dressed was intentional. A distraction, so people would think him inept.
    “The tie,” I said, “could cause an international incident. Why, are you planning a drop-in?”
    “You know me. Mr. Spontaneous.”
    “When?”
    “Soon as possible. Want to come along? No doubt you’ve got a diplomatically correct foulard—in fact, do you have one to lend me? More orange juice, too, long as you’re up.”
       
    I lent him a conservative paisley and we took the unmarked.
    The Israeli Consulate was on Wilshire near Crescent