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the floor.
    Goodman hunkered down and studied the brown smear on the orb’s surface.
    “Not much,” the crime lab woman said. “But we’re so good we don’t need much.”
    “The vic’s body says she really got knocked around,” Gwen said. “I don’t see it happening here. Floor’s too unmarked.”
    Goodman studied the floor, which was surprisingly glossy and unscratched except for a worn area near the entryway. “I think we got a missing rug,” he said.
    Marcella agreed. “We’ll check fibers, come up with a description for you.”
    “Body could’ve been rolled up in the rug,” Gwen said.
    “Maybe,” Goodman said. “Yeah, I’m beginning to like this room.”
    “Was there a rug in that Dumpster with the body, Marcy?” Gwen asked.
    “I didn’t root through the garbage myself,” the lab lady replied. “Seniority counts for something, thank God. But there wasn’t any rug on the list.”
    Goodman looked at the table with the booze collection. “How many cocktail glasses come in a set?” he asked.
    “Six, maybe eight,” Gwen said.
    “We got five here,” he said, indicating the square faceted tumblers resting on their rims. “Water in an ice bucket suggests drinks were served. But no dirty glasses.”
    “They’re not in the kitchen, either,” Marcella informed them. She rose with a nearly polite grunt and placed her baggie with blood scrapings into a metal box. “Here’s something,” she said, plucking another baggie from the box. “Found it under the couch.”
    Gwen lifted the plastic container with latex-covered thumb and finger, studied it for a few seconds, then held it out for Goodman’s inspection. He squinted at a dainty gold bracelet with a tiny gold charm in the shape of some kind of animal.
    “That a dog?” he asked.
    “A lion,” Gwen said. “Dogs are the little critters, pops. Lions are... bigger.”
    “And the inscription on the bracelet’s plate?” he asked.
    Gwen squinted. “It says, ‘Dear M. We’ll always have Paris. Love, J.’ ”
    “Hmmm. Find anything to suggest who ‘J.’ might be?” Goodman asked.
    “Not yet,” Gwen said. “We’ve still got about a dozen more rooms to check.”
    “Don’t waste your time here, then.”
    “Right,” she said, “but remember, Eddie.”
    “Remember what?”
    “We’ll always have the Buena Vista Motel in Hollywood.”

S IX
    O ne of several unpleasant consequences of Nikki being party to the destruction of evidence in the Mason Durant case had been an insomnia that neither prescription drugs nor whiskey was able to medicate successfully. As time passed, however, the feelings of frustration and guilt that were keeping her awake had begun to fade.
    Then, nearly four months into her Compton exile, she had received her first phone call from Durant. “Do you accept the charge?” a disinterested operator had asked.
    Nikki knew she should have said no. The man was a murderer and the world was better off with him behind bars. And yet...
    “Hey, lady D.A.” The voice was hoarse and phlegmy, barely resembling what she remembered of Durant’s gruff bark. “How’s it goin’ in Compton? Guess you get to put away more brothers and sisters than Downtown, huh?”
    “What can I do for you, Mr. Durant?”
    His laugh ended in a racking cough. “I think you done enough, don’t you?” he wheezed.
    “What’s the matter with you?” she asked, a bit more sympathetically than she’d intended.
    “This place don’t agree with me at all. Had a little trouble, uh, adjustin’. Lots of big white boys here in Fo’som. Got my arm broke. Some ribs. Restin’ up from that in the hospital, I
con
tracted this lung problem.”
    He was a convict, she told herself, and cons, even the most brutish of them, had the uncanny ability to sense weakness and focus on it. “I’m sorry to hear you’re not well,” she said, back on guard now.
    “Cough keeps the fags off my ass.”
    “Why’d you phone me, Mr. Durant?”
    “Heard you put