No way Jackie True could be her man, anyway. The one thing Linus Brophy seemed sure of was that the killer had been tall, and True would be five-five after a session on the rack.

She moved on to the next name on her list: the soundman, a grad student at USC freelancing for the night, who’d barely heard of Baby Boy.

“Tell the truth,” he said, “it really wasn’t my thing. I’m into classical.”

Petra visited Baby Boy’s residence the afternoon following the murder. It turned out to be an apartment every bit as sad as Jackie True’s, a ground-floor unit in a boxy white sixplex off Cahuenga, midway between Hollywood and the Valley. The building sat behind a cypress-lined parking lot. Oily pools dotted the asphalt and like Lee’s thirteen-year-old Camaro, the resident cars were tired and dusty.

Given Lee’s history, she’d expected dysfunctional clutter, poor hygiene, empty booze bottles, dope, whatever. But Baby Boy had been living clean, in every sense of the word.

The flat consisted of living room, kitchenette, bedroom, bathroom. Off-white walls, shag carpeting the color of Mexican limes, low, cracked ceilings, sixties-era light fixtures with a nod toward sparkle and gold paint. Petra started at the back and worked her way forward.

The bedroom smelled of stale sweat. Baby Boy had slept on a pillow-top, king-size mattress set upon a box spring that rested on the floor. No stash space underneath. Lee’s clothes took up half the stingy closet: T-shirts, sweats, jeans, one huge black leather jacket so crackled it appeared ready to disintegrate. A nightstand drawer yielded a mostly empty date book and some overdue utility bills.

Petra took the book and continued to look around. No dope or alcohol anywhere, and the strongest nostrum she found in the bathroom was an economy-sized bottle of extra-strength Advil, the top left loose, indicating frequent use.