Coming up to a sitting position immediately alert, she said, "Son of a bitch is six days early."

Even in the half-light, Alexa took my breath away. Dark-eyed, with glossy hair and the high cheekbones of a model, she could have easily made a living on the covers of fashion magazines. Instead, she was down at Parker Center, in the biggest boys club on earth. Alexa was the only staff rank female officer on the sixth floor of the Glass House. She was an excellent commander, and deft at politics, while managing to avoid becoming a politician.

"The L. A. River?" she asked.

"Yeah, another homeless guy dumped in the wash near Barham just inside our jurisdiction. I don't know if the fingertips have been clipped off like the other two, but since it's almost a week off his timeline, I'm praying it's not our unsub."

Unsub stood for Unknown Subject, what lay enforcement called perpetrators who hadn't beer identified. We used to use words like him or his, bu with more and more female perils, it no longer math sense to use a pronoun that eliminated half the population.

"If the vic's homeless and is dumped in the river, then it's our unsub," she said. "I better get downtown. Did dispatch call Tony?"

Police Chief Tony Filosiani was known affectionately by the troops as the Day-Glo Dago, a term earned because he was a kinetic fireplug from Brooklyn. The chief was a fair, hard-nosed leader who was also a pretty good guy when he wasn't causing havoc by reorganizing your division.

"You better check Tony yourself. I'll let Chooch know." I said.

We'd converted our two-car garage into a bedroom for my son when his girlfriend, Delfina, lost her family and came to live with us last year. I stopped there before leaving the house.

Chooch was asleep with our adopted, marmalade cat Franco curled up at his feet. At six-foot-three-and-ahalf, my son was almost too long to fit his standard-sized bed. When I sat on the edge, he rolled over and squinted up at me.