Provenza couldn't figure it out. Four teenagers, no sign of drugs or even beer, blood and bullets everywhere. No prints in the plush carpet where the little boy was found; his killer had shot him from the doorway in passing and kept on going. The grandmother's hearing aid was on the dresser across from her bed, so she had apparently heard nothing at all. Nothing had been stolen. Nothing was disturbed except the things the kids had knocked over when they were shot. The shooters had entered the house, killed everyone inside and then left, period. It simply did not make any kind of sense.

"Why didn't you call the Chief?"

He looked down at Sanchez, who was sitting at the hall table going through messages and an old-fashioned paper address book he had found under the telephone.

"How do you know I didn't call her?" Provenza asked.

"'Cause she was yelling at you for not doing it?"

"Keep your voice down," Provenza snarled, glancing toward Chief Johnson, who was examining the titles in the murdered boy's collection of video games. "Whoever called me said she'd already been called."

"'Whoever?'"

"Okay, 'whomever.'"

"You didn't get the name?"

"What, did you?" Provenza snapped. "Do you ever, when you get a call? It's just a dispatcher."

"Your friend in there will have you logging that kind of thing."

"What friend?"

"Raydor."

"She's not my friend." She was just the only person in this house with even half Provenza's experience with the LAPD. The others were young or mid-career transfers. The riot talk had brought that home to Provenza. "But she's maybe not our enemy, either."

"You hot for her?" Sanchez demanded.

"No, I am not hot for her! And what does that have to do with me not remembering the name of the dispatcher?"

"A dispatcher who told you the Chief had already been called."

"...and would meet me here. When Pope got shot I called to see what was holding her up, and that was the first she heard of it."

Provenza frowned for a minute, then looked hard at Sanchez.

"Don't go paranoid on me," he said, "but I think maybe I am going to go catch Captain Raydor before she leaves."