“More than a theory. There was a witness,” he said. “Somebody saw the abduction.”
Justine started and sat up straight in her chair. “Wait. There were no witnesses.”
“Yeah, there was. The papers didn’t carry the story because, for one thing, the witness was eleven years old. A girl, Christine Castiglia. Her mother wouldn’t let her talk to us for long, and what she saw didn’t actually amount to much.”
“I’m desperately seeking a lead,” Justine said. “I need whatever you’ve got, however insignificant it may seem.”
Bruno said, “Nobody ever put Wendy Borman together with the schoolgirls. You’d make a good cop—if you could afford the precipitous drop in pay.”
“Thanks,” Justine said. “But I could be wrong about this angle.”
“Well, you just keep sticking your neck out,” said Bruno. “I’m not one of the cops with a hate-on for you, Dr. Smith.”
“Justine.”
“Justine. I don’t care who catches the son of a bitch. In fact, now I’m rooting for you. Obviously, we need all the help we can get.”
Justine smiled. “Tell me about Christine Castiglia.”
Bruno swiveled his chair a hundred eighty degrees, opened a file drawer behind him, and took out a spiral notebook with “Borman” written on the cover in thick caps. He swiveled back around and rubbed his forehead as he flipped through his notes, saying, “Uh-huh,” from time to time before he looked up again.
“Okay, I remember most of this pretty well. Bottom line, Christine and her mother, Peggy Castiglia, were in a coffee shop on the corner of Rowena and Hyperion. The girl is facing Hyperion and she sees two guys throw a girl into a van—”
“Two guys?”
“That’s what she said. She couldn’t be sure that the abducted girl was Wendy Borman. And we couldn’t establish Wendy’s time of death close enough to say if she was killed within the time the Castiglias were eating.”
Bruno sighed. “But she saw two guys. In effect, that was pretty much the beginning and end of our investigation. Nothing else was turned up.”
“Was Christine able to give a description of the men? Of either of them?”
Bruno shuffled through the pages and came up with an Identi-Kit approximation of a young man with curly hair and glasses. His features were regular, almost bland. Not much help there.
He turned the book so Justine could see it.
“This drawing tells me Christine didn’t get a good look at his face,” Bruno said. “The perp had dark hair and glasses, and that’s all she saw.”
“Too damn bad, huh?”
“Yeah, but I’m remembering now. Christine also saw the back of the second guy. He was shorter and had longer, straighter hair than the first guy. Great news, huh? That eliminates all but a couple of million white males in LA.”
“Did she look at mug shots?”
“No, we couldn’t get her to. The mother rushed her daughter out of here like her hair was on fire. Nothing we could do to change her mind.”
“She was eleven,” Justine said. “So she’d be sixteen now, high school sophomore.”
“I never really stop thinking about Wendy Borman,” said Bruno. “Here’s the Castiglias’ last known address.”
Justine said, “Thanks, Mark. One more thing that might help me. I could use an introduction to the best cop you know in cold cases.”
He nodded his head slowly. “Consider it done.”
Chapter 58
IT TOOK CRUZ the rest of the day and into the night to get anywhere near the film star Bob Santangelo—and he only managed it by hanging outside Teddy’s Lounge like some goofy groupie waiting for the actor to head out to the street with his entourage.
Cruz drifted a ways behind a bodyguard through the mob scene. He got to the pearly gray Mercedes at the curb as it started to roll. He pressed his badge up to the tinted glass of the windshield, and the car jerked to a stop.