He weakly shook his head.
"You going to help me?"
He nodded.
"Good boy."
Frank let go and the man wheeled his chair farther from Frank's grasp. Noah pulled a quarter out of his pocket and tossed it into the clerk's lap.
"That's for later. After you call Mrs. Wyche's supervisor you can call LAPD and register a formal complaint about her. But you'll have to be patient. There's a lot of people in line ahead of you."
Frank turned her back and glanced at the fresh blood on her gauzed hand. Noah's gaze followed, and he asked what she'd done.
"Cut it," she said flatly and stepped out into the hallway. When Noah followed, he said softly, "You shouldn't have roughed him up like that."
Frank's head jerked toward Noah. Her eyes were bottomless blue chasms that a man could fall into and never be heard from again.
"Don't even start with me."
He flashed his palms in a peaceful gesture.
"Alright. I'm just saying if something's bugging you—"
"Nothing's bugging me."
"Alright. Okay."
Frank had unconsciously turned to face her partner in a fighter's stance, and Noah bowed his head, backing off. The LAPD's reputation for unnecessary aggression was well-founded, but Frank's presence was usually intimidating enough to get what she wanted out of a wit or a suspect. She rarely engaged someone physically, especially just a cluck-headed desk boy, and she was embarrassed that she'd lost her temper.
The nurse supervisor arrived, and Noah explained without detail about Delia Wyche's daughter. The supervisor went back down the hall to retrieve her employee as Frank asked the clerk for Mrs. Wyche's next of kin. She was promptly, silently handed a slip of paper with a name and number on it. The clerk eyed Frank warily, making sure he was well away from her reach. It occurred to her to apologize to the little bastard, but she didn't.
Frank glanced at the clock on the wall, wondering where the hell Wyche was. Noah'd been done with his shift hours ago. Frank felt a flicker of remorse for her behavior, but that reminded her of the dream and she quickly focused on the square yellow paper in her hand. She joined Noah, who was still waiting in the hallway. He was leaning against the wall, chewing on a nail. His suit was wrinkled and a tad short at the ankles and wrists.
"Anybody have a game today?"
"Naw. Just practice."
"You should call Tracey."
"She won't be home 'til later. I'll call after we do Wyche."
"You don't have to go the morgue. I'll take care of it."
Noah absently flapped one of his boney hands.
"It ain't no thing. Besides," he tried to joke, "the last thing I wanna do is leave you alone with a bereaved parent." Frank didn't smile. They were both relieved when the supervisor led Delia Wyche down the hallway. She took them to an office where they could talk, but before Frank had finished the introductions, Mrs. Wyche interrupted with the practiced snort of the chronically bitter.
"What's Jennie done now?"
Frank herded the heavy-hipped woman into a seat, explaining that they had a few questions. She wasn't avoiding telling the woman about her daughter, but it would be easier to get answers from her before she was too upset.
"Mrs. Wyche, is Jennifer Peterson your daughter?"
"'Fraid so. What did she do?" the woman repeated suspiciously.
Frank ignored her, asking when she'd last seen Jennifer.
"Oh, I don't know," she said offhandedly. "Maybe three, four days ago. Let's see, it must have been Sunday because she didn't come home for dinner. I remember because I went to a lot of trouble to make something she and Randy both like—Randy's my husband. He's not Jennie's father. I made pork chops. I try to make something they both like or else one of them bitches all through dinner and ruins everyone else's appetite. They never seem—"
Noah interrupted her.
"So you haven't seen Jennifer for three days?"
"That's right."
"And you weren't concerned about that?"
"Detective, you've got to understand, Jennie pulls stunts like this all the time. At first I was concerned, but when they started happening on a regular basis I just quit worrying. She always comes home sooner or later."
Not this time, Frank thought, and asked what it was that started happening on a regular basis.
Delia Wyche gathered her patience with a large sigh and explained, "When she started running off. The first time was three years ago, right after I remarried. She and Randy don't get along so good—she ran away to show me how unhappy she was. She did it a couple of times after that. I was worried in the beginning, but she's always just at a friend's house. I finally figured, let her knock herself out. I don't have time to chase her all over."
"Mrs. Wyche, can you tell us exactly when you last saw your daughter?"
"Well, yeah I can, but what's this all about? What sort of detectives are you anyway?"
Frank again ignored the questions and drilled the woman with a pitiless gaze.
"Mrs. Wyche, what was your daughter doing the last time you saw her?"
Mrs. Wyche wiggled uncomfortably in her chair. When she answered, her voice was tinged with a whine.
"The last time I saw her was in the kitchen. I was doing the dishes—God forbid she or Randy should do them—and she came in to make herself a sandwich. She'd just gotten up, and she had her backpack with her. I asked her where she thought she was going, and she said to the park. Then I—"
"Which park?"
"The one off Jefferson, by all the oil derricks. It gives me the—"
"Do you mean the Culver City Park? With the ball fields?"
"I guess. It's the one off Duquesne, right off Jefferson," she said impatiently.
"Alright, then what?"
"I asked her about her homework, which she'd been putting off all weekend, and she asked what did I think she had in her pack? Then when I asked why she had to go to the park to study, she started bitching about the noise Randy was making in the garage."
"What was he doing?"
"Shoot, I don't know. He's got an old jeep he's always tinkering with. It hasn't run since I've known him, but you'd think with all the time he spends on that thing he had it in the Indy 500 every weekend."
She paused, searching for a glimpse of sympathy from either detective and finding none.
"You know I still don't know what you—"
"Just a few more questions, Mrs. Wyche. What happened next?"
"I don't know...nothing I think. I didn't want to listen to her and Randy going at it all day so I just let her go."
"How did she get there?"
"The bus. She takes it everywhere."
"Did she go to the park often?"
The woman nodded, then realized Noah had referred to her daughter in the past tense. When she asked again what her daughter had done, it was with a genuine note of concern in her voice. Frank had been standing near the door, letting Noah ask most of the questions. Now she crossed the small room and sat on the arm of the empty chair next to Delia Wyche.
"Mrs. Wyche," she said, as gently as one could say such a thing, "Jennifer is dead."
"No," she chuckled, "you've got somebody else's Jennifer. Mine couldn't possibly be dead."
She turned her head, smiling at Noah as if in confirmation of this very simple error, and when he didn't smile she looked back at Frank. The detectives could see comprehension slowly sinking in around the shock of the words. She shook her head.
"How do you know it's Jennie?" she whispered.
"Fingerprints. But we'd like you to come to the morgue with us to confirm that," Frank said, still gentle.
Her last sentence penetrated the shock, and Mrs. Wyche broke down in huge, gulping sobs. Noah offered the wad of tissues he always carried for such occasions, as Frank left the room to call Delia Wyche's husband.