True enough. She’d settled down quite a bit since Monday, lost some of her edge and got her frustrations under control. But the Horace situation was still eating her up inside. And she was still living at her sister’s.
I said, “So Big Dog figures to be blackmailing whoever shot Spook.”
“How it looks.”
“Dangerous game when the mark’s already killed once.”
“Dude’s got two brain cells, Runyon says.”
“Two questions come to mind. Does Big Dog know the motive? Does he know Spook’s real identity?”
“Make it three,” she said. “How’d he ID the shooter?”
“Make it four. How’d he get hold of Spook’s stash?”
“Make it five. Anything in the stash that wasn’t with the rest of the stuff in the knapsack?”
“Might be the answer to number three, if there was. Something that named or pointed to the shooter. What’s Runyon’s take on all this?”
“He’s not guessing.”
I looked over the sheet of photographs, studied the one of the girl named Dorothy Lightfoot encased in the penciled heart. “High school yearbook. Graduating class, you think?”
“Hard to tell. Nothing to ID the school or location.”
“Could be Mono County, if there’s any connection to the phone call to Human Services.”
“I can find out. Be easier if we knew the time frame.”
“Hairstyles ought to give some idea.”
“White kids, all of ’em,” Tamara said. “I never did pay much attention to white kids’ do’s. Before my time, anyway. Got to be pretty old, mat page.
“Twenty years, at least. Maybe twenty-five or thirty.”
“Doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“No, but I think I can get it narrowed down.”
“Yeah? How?”
“Kerry. Advertising people get paid to notice hairstyles, clothes, things like that, past as well as present.” I folded and pocketed the sheet. “Either you or Runyon contact SFPD with all this?”
“He did,” she said. “Stopped to see Jack Logan on his way back here. Only thing he held out was the page of photos... same as you’d’ve done.”
“In my younger days, anyhow.”
“One other thing he gave the lieutenant, also same as you would’ve — that envelope of kiddie porn. No more raw meat for Pablo. He’s gonna be spoiled meat pretty soon.”
Right. The two types of felons cops hate more than any other are child molesters and kiddie-porn vendors. They’d put Pablo out of commission fast. Big Dog, too, but only if finding him proved easy. Otherwise, even with the new reforms in the department, they’d let the case slide again in favor of higher priority squeals.
I said as much to Tamara. She said, “Runyon’s take, too. Big Dog’s still loose by this time tomorrow, he wants to go back out on the streets and see if maybe he can help put a leash on him.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Okay with me, but I’d check with you.”
“Iffy.”
“Runyon said he’d do the job on his own time.”
“The hell he did.”
“Man’s a workaholic. Sound familiar?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Only difference is, you got a life and he doesn’t. Nobody to go home to and a grown son who hates his guts, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“Sounds like compassion.”
“Well, I been thinking about the man. About a lot of things. I got bad, but I also got people who care — family, friends. Folks like Runyon, they got all the bad and none of the good. I figure the least we can do is give him anything reasonable he asks for.”
“Be his friends as well as his employers.”
“Yeah, well, why not?”
I felt paternal as hell toward her in that moment. Tamara Corbin — from hostile streetwise college kid to mature businesswoman in less than five years. I’d had a small hand in it and it made me feel proud, the way her real father must feel about her.
On impulse I went over and put my arm around her and kissed her on the cheek.
“Hey, why’d you do that?”
I grinned and said, “Why not?”
“Nineteen seventy-seven,” Kerry said.
“Come on. The exact year?”
“Want to make a little bet?”
“You only looked at the photos for about two minutes.”
“I don’t need any more time. I could give you a four- or five-year window — late seventies to early eighties — but ’seventy-seven seems right. The photos were probably taken in the late fall of ’seventy-six, a few months before the yearbook was released.”
“Now you’re really guessing.”
“Want to make a bet?” she asked again.
“No way I’d ever bet against that smug look of yours.”
“I don’t have a smug look.”
“Go look in the mirror. All right, tell me why you’re so sure. Dazzle me with your deductive powers.”
“I should’ve been a detective, huh? Stolen some of your thunder?”
“God forbid. Come on, give.”
“I worked on my high school yearbook,” she said. “Photos are usually taken in the fall of the year before the book comes out. Three or four months’ lead time, to allow for layout, proofreading, printing. Capito?”
“Capito. But that doesn’t explain how you can pinpoint an exact year.”
“ ‘Charlie’s Angels,’ for one thing.”
“Who?”
“Number one rated TV show in the late seventies. Three beautiful women private eyes who worked for a mysterious boss named Charlie.”
“Never heard of it.”
“You’re kidding. Famous jiggle show.”
“What’s a jiggle show?”
“Now I know you’ve heard that term before.”
“If I have, I didn’t internalize it.”
“They didn’t wear bras, bounced when they moved. Jiggle show.”
“Oh. Sexy stuff.”
“You sure you never watched the show?”
“You know I don’t watch episodic TV.”
One of her analytical looks. “Sometimes I could swear you’re putting me on. You can’t be that far out of the mainstream, can you?”
“Why can’t I? The only things on the tube that interest me are sports and old movies. And I like my sex up close and personal, not bouncing and jiggling on a screen.”
“That much I know isn’t a put on.”
“So what about this ‘Charlie’s Angels’ show?”
“Well, one of the actresses was Farrah Fawcett. Blonde, wore her hair in a long, distinctive style. Waves, feathers... never mind.” Kerry poked the grubby page under my nose and tapped one of the photos. “This style. It was all the rage back then. Three of the girls here have the Farrah look.”
“Okay, I get it now. That explains the window but not the specific year.”
“ ‘Charlie’s Angels’ first aired in the fall of ’seventy-six,” she said patiently, although the patience seemed to be wearing a little thin. “A lot of girls adopted the Farrah look right away — more then than later, when the novelty began to wear off.”
“That’s not conclusive evidence.”
“Not conclusive, no, but—”
“So admit it, you’re just guessing.”
“I am not guessing!”
“Then give me conclusive proof the year is nineteen seventy-seven.”
“The pin,” she said.
“What pin?”
“One of the girls is wearing a pin. Didn’t you notice it?”
“No. Which girl?”
The page came at me again; she almost banged me on the nose with it. A finger came around and jabbed a photo near the bottom. “This girl. This pin.”
I squinted. Pin, all right, on a chubby girl’s black sweater. Up close, now that I was focused on it, it looked vaguely familiar.
“Looks vaguely familiar,” I said.
Kerry said, not quite in one of her exasperated growls, “Nineteen seventy-six. What does that mean to you?”