“When was this?”

“About a year and a half ago. He told me the academy was a joke, Mickey Mouse. He'd graduated high in his class. He said he'd called me just to let me know. In case I happened to see him drive by in a car, I shouldn't be freaked out.”

“Was he assigned to Hollywood from the beginning?”

“No. West L.A. That's why he thought I might see him, at Cedars. He might come in to the E.R. with a suspect or a victim.”

In case I happened to see him. What she'd described was less a family than a series of accidental pairings.

“What kind of jobs did he work before he joined LAPD?”

“Construction, auto repair, crewing on a fishing boat off Santa Barbara. That I remember because Mom showed me some fish he'd brought her. Halibut. She liked smoked fish and he had some halibut smoked.”

“What about relationships with women?”

“He had girlfriends in high school, but after that I don't know- can I walk around?”

“Sure.”

She got up, covered the room in small, choppy steps. “Everything always came easy to Nolan. Maybe he just wanted to take the easy way out. Maybe that was the problem. He wasn't prepared for when things didn't come easy.”

“Do you know of specific problems he was having?”

“No, no, I don't know anything- I was just thinking back to high school. I used to agonize over algebra and Nolan would waltz into my room, look over my shoulder, and tell me the answer to an equation. Three years younger- he must have been eleven, but he could figure it out.”

She stopped, faced a bookshelf. “When Rick Silverman gave me your name, he told me about his friend on the force and we got into a discussion of the police. Rick said it was a paramilitary organization. Nolan always wanted to be noticed. Why would he be attracted to something so conformist?”

“Maybe he got tired of being noticed,” I said.