"I was thinking learning problems coulda made her an easier victim," said Milo.
Schwinn grumbled, "Anyone can be a victim."
The school was an ugly pile of gray-brown stucco that filled a block on the north side of Sunset just west of Highland. As impersonal as an airport, and Milo felt the curse of futility the moment his feet touched down on the campus. He and Schwinn walked past what seemed to be thousands of kids- every one of them bored, spaced, surly. Smiles and laughter were aberrations, and any eye contact directed at the detectives was hostile.
They asked directions of a teacher, got the same icy reception, not much better at the principal's office. As Schwinn talked to a secretary, Milo studied girls walking through the sweaty corridor. Tight or minimal clothes and hooker makeup seemed to be the mode, all those freshly developed bodies promising something they might not be able to deliver, and he wondered how many potential Janies were out there.
The principal was at a meeting downtown, and the secretary routed them to the vice principal for operations, who sent them farther down the line to the guidance office. The counselor they spoke to was a pretty young woman named Ellen Sato, tiny, Eurasian, with long, side-winged, blond-tipped hair. The news of Janie's murder made her face crumple, and Schwinn took advantage of it by pressing her with questions.
Useless. She'd never heard of Janie, finally admitted she'd been on the job for less than a month. Schwinn kept pushing and she disappeared for a while, then returned with bad news: no Ingalls, J. files on record for any guidance sessions or disciplinary actions.
The girl was a habitual truant, but hadn't entered the system. Bowie Ingalls had been right about one thing: No one cared.
The poor kid had never had any moorings, thought Milo, remembering his own brush with truancy: back when his family still lived in Gary and his father was working steel, making good money, feeling like a breadwinner. Milo was nine, had been plagued by terrible dreams since the summer- visions of men. One dreary Monday, he got off the school bus and instead of entering the school grounds just kept walking aimlessly, placing one foot in front of the other. Ending up at a park, where he sat on a bench like a tired old man. All day. A friend of his mother spotted him, reported him. Mom had been perplexed; Dad, always action-oriented, knew just what to do. Out came the strap. Ten pounds of oily ironworker's belt. Milo hadn't sat comfortably for a long, long time.
Yet another reason to hate the old man. Still, he'd never repeated the offense, ended up graduating with good grades. Despite the dreams. And all that followed. Certain his father would've killed him if he knew what was really going on.
So he made plans at age nine: You need to get away from these people.
Now he mused: Maybe I was the lucky one.
"Okay," Schwinn was telling Ellen Sato, "so you people don't know much about her-"
The young woman was on the verge of tears. "I'm sorry, sir, but as I said, I just… what happened to her?"
"Someone killed her," said Schwinn. "We're looking for a friend of hers, probably a student here, also. Melinda, sixteen or seventeen. Long blond hair. Voluptuous." Cupping his hands in front of his own, scrawny chest.
Sato's ivory skin pinkened. "Melinda's a common name-"
"How about a look at your student roster?"
"The roster…" Sato's graceful hands fluttered. "I could find a yearbook for you."
"You have no student roster?"
"I- I know we have class lists, but they're over in V.P. Sullivan's office and there are forms to be filled out. Okay, sure, I'll go look. In the meantime, I know where the yearbooks are. Right here." Pointing to a closet.
"Great," said Schwinn, without graciousness.
"Poor Janie," said Sato. "Who would do such a thing?"
"Someone evil, ma'am. Anyone come to mind?"
"Oh, heavens no- I wasn't… let me go get that list."
The two detectives sat on a bench in the counseling office waiting room, flipping through the yearbooks, ignoring the scornful eyes of the students who came and went. Copying down the names of every Caucasian Melinda, freshmen included, because who knew how accurate Bowie Ingalls was about age. Not limiting the count to blondes, either, because hair dye was a teenage-girl staple.
Milo said, "What about light-skinned Mexicans?"
"Nah," said Schwinn. "If she was a greaser, Ingalls would've mentioned it."
"Why?"
"Because he doesn't like her, would've loved to add another bad point to the list."
Milo returned to checking out young white faces.
The end product: eighteen possibles.
Schwinn regarded the list and scowled. "Names but no numbers. We'll still need a fucking roster to track her down."
Talking low but his tone was unmistakable and the receptionist a few feet away looked over and frowned.
"Howdy," said Schwinn, raising his voice and grinning at the woman furiously. She flinched and returned to her typewriter.
Milo looked up Janie Ingalls's freshman photo. No list of extracurricular activities. Huge, dark hair teased with abandon over a pretty oval face turned ghostly by slathers of makeup and ghoulish eye shadow. The image before him was neither the ten-year-old hanging with Mickey nor the corpse atop the freeway ramp. So many identities for a sixteen-year-old kid. He asked the receptionist to make a photocopy, and she agreed, grudgingly. Staring first at the picture.
"Know her, ma'am?" Milo asked her as pleasantly as possible.
"No. Here you go. It didn't come out too good. Our machine needs adjusting."
Ellen Sato returned, freshly made-up, weak-eyed, forcing a smile. "How'd we do?"
Schwinn bounded up quickly, was in her face, bullying her with body language, beaming that same hostile grin. "Oh, just great, ma'am." He brandished the list of eighteen names. "Now how about introducing us to these lovely ladies?"
Rounding up the Melindas took another forty minutes. Twelve out of eighteen girls were in attendance that day, and they marched in looking supremely bored. Only a couple were vaguely aware of Janie Ingalls's existence, none admitted to being a close friend or knowing anyone who was, none seemed to be holding back.
Not much curiosity, either, about why they'd been called in to talk to cops. As if a police presence was the usual thing at Hollywood High. Or they just didn't care.
One thing was clear: Janie hadn't made her mark on campus. The girl who was the most forthcoming ended up in Milo's queue. Barely blond, not-at-all voluptuous Melinda Kantor. "Oh yeah, her. She's a stoner, right?"
"Is she?" he said.
The girl shrugged. She had a long, pretty face, a bit equine. Two-inch nails glossed aqua, no bra.
Milo said, "Does she hang around with other stoners?"
"Uh-uh, she's not a social stoner- more like a loner stoner."
"A loner stoner."
"Yeah."
"Which means…"
The girl shot him a you-are-a-prime-lame-o look. "She run away or something?"
"Something like that."
"Well," said Melinda Kantor, "maybe she's over on the Boulevard."
"Hollywood Boulevard?"
The resultant smirk said, Another stupid question, and Milo knew he was losing her. "The boulevard's where the loner stoners go."
Now Melinda Kantor was regarding him as if he were brain-dead. "I was just making a suggestion. What'd she do?"
"Maybe nothing."
"Yeah, right," said the girl. "Weird."
"What is?"
"Usually they send over narcs who are young and cute."
Ellen Sato produced addresses and phone numbers for the six absent Melindas, and Milo and Schwinn spent the rest of the day paying house calls.