True Detectives Read Free Page B

approval of his transfer from Pacific to West L.A. Division.
    Since arriving at his new desk, the only attention he’d received from downtown were memos on the case he thought he was leaving behind.
    In Re: Caitlin Frostig
.
    Nice girl, Caitlin. From all he’d gathered.
    For the last eight months she’d been nothing but a thorn in his butt.
    He’d made it to Pacific Homicide a year ago, not bad for twenty-eight, got assigned to a no-brainer gang shooting that he closed in seventy-four hours.
    His second case was Caitlin Frostig, already missing for half a year by the time her file got transferred from the unsolveds of an old D who dropped dead of a heart attack.
    Not a homicide case, strictly speaking. But someone with pull— Moe never found out who—wanted the case prioritized.
    He started the way you’re supposed to, with family. In Caitlin’s case that boiled down to a mumbly-nerd father who’d raised her alone since she was little but didn’t seem to know much about her beyond the obvious. The other man in her life was a boyfriend named Rory Stoltz who came across so wholesome that he set off Moe’s antennae.
    Also, nine times out of ten it’s Romeo who kills Juliet.
    This Romeo turned out to be alibied for the night Caitlin walked out of the Riptide. Moe dug into Stoltz’s background anyway, turned up nothing but All-American Lad, basically Caitlin’s male counterpart. Still living at home, waiting tables at the same place, studying hard. Both of them A students at Pepperdine, Malibu.
    Rory’s eyes got misty when he recounted meeting Caitlin in a philosophy class.
    Moe questioned him to the nth, nothing there.
    Caitlin’s dad let Moe search her room. No sign of foul play—none anywhere in the little frame house on Rialto, south side of Venice. Hip-ness encroached all around the neighborhood but Maitland Frostig hadn’t changed a doily since his wife’s death sixteen years before.
    Real quiet, real depressed guy. Moe got permission to trace Caitlin’s Discover card. No recent activity.
    No California Jane Doe DBs matched the missing girl and from what Moe could gather, she’d led an exceptionally boring life: studying hard, working at night, no social life other than Rory Stoltz. Moe rechecked Stoltz, came up empty. Turned to missing persons databases, working his way east until he’d covered the entire country. He even tried police departments in Mexico, for what that was worth.
    Last step was dealing with Canada, which was no easy feat, place was huge and the cops were cautious. Still, he managed to cover Our Northern Neighbor.
    Zilch. As Milo Sturgis would say.
    He talked to Sturgis about Caitlin, because the lieutenant had been his guru on the marsh murders.
    Be honest, Moses, Sturgis
solved
the marsh murders and you tailed along
.
    Talk about continuing education; working with someone that seasoned was a semester at Homicide Harvard. Wanting to learn more from the lieutenant was the reason he’d requested transfer to West L.A.
    If he lost Caitlin Frostig along the way because her file bore a Pacific Division number, all the better.
    Once news of his request got out, the wisecracks from the other Pacific D’s were a pain in the butt.
    Changing your sexual orientation, Detective Reed?
    Is that eye shadow? Or just too much Ecstasy at that Boystown dance club, what’s it called, oh yeah, Do Me Bob
.
    Don’t ask, don’t tell. Most of all, please don’t swell
.
    Moe ignored them. When he’d started with Sturgis, to be honest, there was that initial discomfort.
    Hard to believe a big, gruff guy like that was … who cared what people did in private, the thing was the job and Sturgis
did
the job.
    Some years—lots of years—the lieutenant ended up with the best close record in the department.
    Moe let the jokes sail past. If the transfer didn’t come through, staying here would be hell.
    It came through.
    The Frostig file traveled with him.
    Second day at his new desk, he left the big detective