Shadowfires

on?”
    Julio did not reply.
    Reese said, “The evening started out with one missing corpse. Now
two are missing-Leben and the Klienstad girl. And
we've found a third we wish we hadn't. If
someone's collecting dead bodies, why wouldn't they keep Ernestina
Hernandez, too?”
    Puzzling over these bizarre discoveries and the baffling link
between the snatching of Leben's corpse and the murder of Ernestina, Julio unconsciously straightened his necktie, tugged on his shirt sleeves, and adjusted his cuff links. Even in summer heat, he would not forsake a tie and long-sleeve shirt, the way some detectives did. Like a priest, a detective held a sacred office, labored in the service of the gods of Justice and Law, and to dress any less formally would have seemed, to him, as disrespectful as a priest celebrating the Mass in jeans and a T-shirt.
    “Are the locals coming?” he asked Reese.
    “Yes. And as soon as
we've had a chance to explain the situation to them, we've got to go
up to Placentia.”
    Julio blinked. “ Placentia? Why?”
    “I checked messages when I got to the car. HQ had an important one
for us. The Placentia police have found Becky Klienstad.”
    “Where? Alive?”
    “Dead. In Rachael Leben's house.”
    Astonished, Julio repeated the question that Reese had asked only
a few minutes ago: “What the hell is going on?”
1:58 a.m.
    To get to Placentia, they drove from Villa Park through part of
Orange, across a portion of Anaheim, over the Tustin Avenue bridge of
the Santa Ana River, which was only a river of dust during this dry
season. They passed oil wells where the big pumps, like enormous
praying mantises, worked up and down, a shade lighter than the night
around them, identifiable and yet somehow mysterious shapes that
added one more ominous note to the darkness.
    Placentia was usually one of the quietest communities in the
county, neither rich nor poor, just comfortable and content, with no
terrible drawbacks, with no great advantages over other nearby towns
except, perhaps, for the enormous and beautiful date palms which
lined some of its streets. Palms of remarkable lushness and stature
lined the street on which Rachael Leben lived, and their dense
overhanging fronds appeared to be afire in the flickering reflection
of the red emergency beacons on the clustered police cars parked
under them.
    Julio and Reese were met at the front door by a tall uniformed
Placentia officer named Orin Mulveck. He was pale. His eyes looked
strange, as if he had just seen something he would never choose to
remember but would also never be able to forget. “Neighbor called us
because she saw a man leaving the house in a hurry, and she thought
there was something suspicious about him. When we came to check the
place but, we found the front door standing wide open, lights on.”
    “Mrs. Leben wasn't here?”
    “No.”
    “Any indication where she is?”
    “No.” Mulveck had taken off his cap and was compulsively combing
his fingers through his hair. “Jesus,” he said more to himself than
to Julio or Reese. Then: “No, Mrs. Leben is gone. But we found the
dead woman in Mrs. Leben's bedroom.”
    Entering the cozy house behind Mulveck, Julio said, “Rebecca
Klienstad.”
    “Yeah.”
    Mulveck led Julio and Reese across a charming living room
decorated in shades of peach and white with dark blue accents and
brass lamps.
    Julio said, “How'd you identify the deceased?”
    “She was wearing one of those medical-alert medallions,” Mulveck
said. “Had several allergies, including one to penicillin. You seen
those medallions? Name, address, medical condition on it. Then, how
we got onto you so fast-we asked our computer to check the Klienstad
woman through Data Net, and it spit out that you were looking for her
in Santa Ana in connection with the Hernandez killing.”
    The Law Enforcement Data Net, through which the
county's many police agencies shared information among their computers, was a new program, a natural outgrowth of the computerization of the sheriff's
department and all local police. Hours, sometimes days, could be
saved with the use of Data Net, and this was not the first time Julio
found reason to be thankful that he was a cop in the Microchip
Age.
    “Was the woman killed here?” Julio asked as they circled around a
burly lab technician who was dusting furniture for fingerprints.
    “No,” Mulveck said. “Not enough blood.” He was still combing one
hand through his hair as he walked. “Killed