Page 66 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

“If you say so.” Jamie slurped his energy drink.

“The only way to stop Marshall is to attack Marshall,” Baby said. “Tell me who she is. Get me some juice. Everybody’s got a deep, dark secret, and finding deep, dark stuff seems to be your talent.”

Jamie tapped. White text that meant nothing to Baby skittered across the dark screen. Her phone rang, and she frowned when she saw it was Dave Summerly but answered anyway.

“If you’re calling to ask me what kind of flowers Rhonda likes,” Baby said, “she doesn’t like flowers. You want to make up with that woman, you gotta get her a case of beer and a pepperoni pizza.”

“It’s ... ” Summerly began. “It’s not that, exactly. Where are you?”

“Skid Row.”

“Can I get an exact address? I’m not that far away. I need to run something by you.”

She hung up and sent him a pin. Jamie had filled two screens with ones and zeros and weirdness.

“That better not be a cop you just invited here,” he said.

“Why not?”

Jamie’s elaborate gaming chair creaked and hummed as he swiveled to face her. “I’m a hacker, Baby. I make my living breaking into virtual lockboxes. I’m like those guys from that old movieHeat,only it’s firewalls I’m blasting through, not bank vaults.”

“If you say so.” Baby hid a tiny smile.

“Everything you see here?” He spread his arms wide, indicating the machines that covered the desks around him. “This is all hot. You can’t evengetthis kind of stuff in the States. Not legally.”

“Dave Summerly is an old-school police officer,” Baby said. “Until last year he used a flip phone. He can’t tell a router from a toaster.”

Jamie huffed but went back to his tapping.

Ten minutes later, Summerly arrived. It was a challenge for him to squeeze his bulky body into the tiny room crammed with devices, crates of wires, and humming, bleeping, whirring boxes making a city skyline in the dark.

“Here’s the thing,” he said when he had found a crate to sit on. “I might have failed to take Rhonda seriously on something that was maybe ... uh ... serious. I think she might be in trouble, and I’ve let her down.”

CHAPTER76

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKINGabout?” Baby studied Dave Summerly’s face in the dim blue light from Jamie’s machines.

“You know about the trophy box, right?” he said.

Baby nodded.

“Well, I just came from Dorothy Andrews-Smith’s daughter’s place,” Summerly said. “The daughter looked at Dorothy’s bag — the missing-person article, the little oil-painting kit. Then she said she just couldn’t understand it. I said, ‘You can’t understand what?’ She said, ‘That oil-painting kit wasn’t my mom’s.’ ”

“What do you mean?”

“The little oil-painting kit belonged to Dorothy’s daughter, not to Dorothy. And it wasn’t even anything, ah” — he waved his hand — “special. It wasn’t a treasured personal item. She said she’d been at her mother’s place one afternoon and wanted to do something crafty. She bought it but never used it.”

Baby stared at him. Jamie’s clicking and tapping was like a soundtrack to her thoughts turning and ticking around.

“Why would a serial killer take an item from a victim that didn’t even belong to that victim?” Summerly asked.

“Maybe, you know, he just assumed ... ” Baby struggled. She was speaking her thoughts as they came to her, the urgency making her talk faster and faster. “Maybe he stalked Dorothy, went in, killed her, and grabbed whatever was nearby as a memento. Just because the kit meant nothing to Dorothy doesn’t mean it meant nothing to the killer. That’s why they take things, isn’t it? So they can, like, go back and relive the moment?”

Summerly and Baby fell into their own thoughts. Jamie slurped his energy drink and ignored them both.

“See, there’s more to it.” Summerly shifted. “When I started unpicking the Dorothy-painting-kit threads, I found I could also unpick other threads about the other items in the box. I called Jarrod Maloof’s parents. Jarrod, the crazy homeless kid from down on Venice Beach?”

“Yeah. I know who you mean.”

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