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immigration bookended by EZ Lubes and supermarkets surrounded by iron fences. The traffic on the surface streets was not much lighter than that on the freeway.
    He said, “I think our guy brought his own chain saw, indicating premeditation. The housekeeper said she’d never seen Mercer with a tool more serious than a screwdriver. The gardeners came once a week and used their own equipment. There were no tools in his garage. Mercer did not like to get his hands dirty.”
    “He was murdered by someone who certainly didn’t mind.”
    Vining shuddered, recalling seeing Mercer’s dead face for the first time when the investigators had disassembled the “still life with body parts.” First to be removed was Mercer’s head, gently raised between a coroner’s gloved hands.
    Vining had been focusing with moderate success onquieting her escalating pulse as the moment of revelation grew near. When Mercer’s face was unveiled, a small gasp went up. No one there welcomed another surprise. It took Vining a moment to take in what she was seeing, the grotesqueness overwhelming her apprehension.
    Mercer’s face had been clownishly made up with his own blood. They found the tool later in the kitchen garbage—Mercer’s toothbrush.
    Lauren Richards’s face had held no surprises, other than shock over what was happening and the briefest struggle to prevent it.
    Now riding in the Crown Vic’s passenger seat, Vining took out Lauren’s family Christmas photograph. Looking at the sweet faces of the boy and girl, she mentally heard their mother’s voice loud and clear.
    Get him .
    Vining turned down the air conditioning and said to Kissick, “Our guy, or maybe he prefers to be called a gal, worked alone, and planned ahead. Mercer’s housekeeper said the Great Dane died of suspected poisoning two weeks before the murders. It’s possible she ate a poisoned rat or squirrel, but that sounds like coincidence.”
    “Let’s hope Mercer had the vet do an autopsy. Mercer clearly loved the dog and would have shelled out the dough to find out what happened to her.”
    In the house there had been a portrait of Mercer and Marilyn the Great Dane. Mercer’s arm circled the pooch, his right hand, the severed appendage that so far had not been located, against the dog’s broad chest. The portrait provided another clue. Mercer’s ring finger bore his USC class ring.
    Driving down Melrose, Kissick passed Paramount Studios’ famous wrought-iron entry gate. He continued to North Rossmore Avenue and turned left, entering therarefied boundaries of Hancock Park. The neighborhood had managed to remain an old-money, largely Caucasian enclave of sprawling mansions in the middle of L.A. Encompassing the exclusive Wilshire Country Club, it was bordered by Hollywood on the north and Koreatown on the south, making it the defiant caviar middle of an encroaching lower-class sandwich.
    The hustle and grit of Melrose fell away as they drove down quiet, tree-canopied streets where imposing homes were set back on manicured lawns. Signs warned that the Neighborhood Watch was in effect. Patrol cars from private security firms were highly visible, demonstrating that the citizens did not rely solely on vigilant neighbors, nor did they have sufficient confidence in the LAPD to keep the wolves at bay. Even still, the area was plagued with crime.
    The residents were all but invisible, a curiosity Vining recognized from Pasadena’s well-heeled neighborhoods. Most of the vehicles on the streets were the pickup trucks of Latino workers engaged in the many rehab projects under way on the older homes, or economy cars driven by household help. Pea-green Andy Gump portable toilets were ubiquitous.
    Kissick wandered the meandering streets, mistakenly turning down one cul-de-sac and then another, rolling over the speed bumps that attempted to keep traffic at the posted 15 mph. While they were stopped to look at a map, a Hummer loomed behind them. The driver, an attractive