Free The Murder Book by Jonathan Kellerman

Schwinn. “Anything. Help us.”
    “What… I don’t know… She didn’t — since she was fourteen, she’s basically been gone, using this place as a crash pad but always gone, telling me to fuck off, mind my own business. Half the time, she ain’t here, see what I’m sayin’?”
    “Sleeping at friends’ houses,” said Schwinn. “Melinda, other friends.”
    “Whatever… oh God, I can’t believe this.…” Tears filled Ingalls’s eyes, and Schwinn was there with a snow-white hankie. PS monogram in gold thread on a corner. The guy talked despair and pessimism, but offered his own starched linen to a drunk, for the sake of the job.
    “Help me,” he whispered to Ingalls. “For Janie.”
    “I would… I don’t know — she… I… we didn’t talk. Not since… she used to be my kid, but then she didn’t want to be my kid, telling me to fuck off all the time. I’m not saying I was any big deal as a daddy, but still, without me, Janie would’ve… she turned thirteen and all of a sudden she didn’t appreciate anything. Started going out all hours, the school didn’t give a shit. Janie never went, no one from the school ever called me, not one time.”
    “You call them?”
    Ingalls shook his head. “What’s the point? Talking to people who don’t give a shit. I’da called, they’da probably sent cops over and busted me for something, child neglect, whatever. I was busy, man. Working — I used to work at Paramount Studios.”
    “Oh, yeah?” said Schwinn.
    “Yeah. Publicity department. Information transfer.”
    “Janie interested in the movies?”
    “Nah,” said Ingalls. “Anything I was into she
wasn’t
into.”
    “What was she into?”
    “Nothing. Running around.”
    “This friend, Melinda. If Janie never told you where she was going, how do you know she was with Melinda Friday night?”
    “Because I seen her with Melinda on Friday.”
    “What time?”
    “Around six. I was sleeping, and Janie busts in to get some clothes, I wake up, by the time I’m sitting up, she’s heading out the door, and I look out there.” He jabbed a thumb at the shuttered windows. “I seen her walking away with Melinda.”
    “Walking which way?”
    “That way.” Hooking his finger north. Toward Sunset, maybe Hollywood Boulevard, if the girls had kept going.
    “Anyone else with them?”
    “No, just the two of them.”
    “Walking, not driving,” said Schwinn.
    “Janie didn’t have no license. I got one car, and it barely drives. No way was I gonna — she didn’t care, anyway. Got around by hitching. I told her about that — I used to hitch, back when you could do it, but now, with all the — you think that’s what happened? She hitched and some… oh, God…”
    Unaware of Janie’s downtown rape? If so, the guy was being truthful about one thing: Janie had been lost to him for a long time.
    “Some what?” said Schwinn.
    “Some — you know,” moaned Ingalls. “Getting picked up — some stranger.”
    The death snaps were back in the envelope, but Schwinn had kept the envelope in full view. Now he waved it inches from Ingalls’s face. “I’d say, sir, that only a stranger would do something like this. Unless you have some other idea?”
    “Me? No,” said Ingalls. “She was like her mother. Didn’t talk — gimme that beer.”
    When the can was empty, Schwinn waved the envelope again. “Let’s get back to Friday. Janie came home to get clothes. What was she wearing?”
    Ingalls thought. “Jeans and a T-shirt — red T-shirt… and those crazy black shoes with those heels — platform heels. She was
carrying
her party clothes.”
    “Party clothes.”
    “When I woke up and saw her going out the door, I could see part of what she had in the bag.”
    “What kind of bag?”
    “Shopping bag. White — Zody’s, probably, ’cause that’s where she shops. She always stuffed her party stuff inside shopping bags.”
    “What did you see in the bag?”
    “Red halter the size of a