The LAPD

Afternoon at the LAPD. Officer Mike Maguire was on the pay phone to his daughter Jenny. She had paged him earlier to say that she received the letter she'd been anxiously waiting on and wanted to share the news with him first. In a battered Readers Digest at his local barber shop he read an article about how girls were always closer to their fathers when they reached adolescence. That was certainly true of himself and Jenny, they were like two peas in a pod. Brenda was always the disciplinarian, and he was the one Jenny could wrap around her little finger.

"Are you ready?" she asks down the receiver.

"Ready as I'll ever be sweetheart."

"OK – here goes" he hears ripping paper down the other end and then a long pause.

"Jenny? You still there?"

"I got it Dad! I got the scholarship!"

Tears spring from the corners of Mikes eyes, a mixture of pride and relief. He was not exactly in the best financial position to fund the college degree that Jenny had her heart set on. The pressure was on because she had wanted to enrol for the next semester, and they had already put it off once. Brenda had her demands too - and over the years Jenny's college fund got whittled away whenever the drapes needed changing or some part of the house needed renovating.

"Honey, that's amazing. I knew you could do it!"

"Thanks Dad!"

"Listen, I have to go, but I'll bring you home something to celebrate."

"Umm – can you get me some of those fancy doughnuts from the bakery on Wray Street?"

"Sure honey – love you, see you later."

Mike was on cloud nine, on a whim he went out and bought an extra box of iced doughnuts from Bakery on Wray to share with his colleagues in celebration. Good news is like butter, his Irish grandmother was fond of saying, it's meant to be spread. Mike was enjoying the congratulatory slaps on the back and high fives from the guys when he came face to face with a sullen Ronnie Dupree.

"So, what are you so happy about?" Ronnie grabbed a couple of doughnuts from the box.

"My daughter Jenny, she just got a scholarship, all expenses paid to study at UCLA."

"Well, congratulations," Ronnie brushed away some crumbs that had fallen over the paperwork she was carrying in her arms.

"Hey!" he pointed to a mug shot of Lorraine Jaxon clipped to the front of a manila folder, "I saw that girl three nights ago."

"Mike, are you sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure. She was downtown hanging about in an alley."

"You mean to tell me you saw one of the missing girls first before Bradford and didn't bring her into the station!"

"C'mon Ronnie, in fairness she looks nothing like those photos they gave us to work with, I mean she's virtually unrecognizable." Mike looked down at his shoes, in hindsight he probably should have reported it to someone, he wasn't sure why he had kept his encounter with the girl to himself. Perhaps he did not want to acknowledge how much she had rattled him. "Anyway, I was off duty and on my own...besides, she said someone was picking her up."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, she said 'he is coming' so I figured she meant someone was coming to get her."

"What! Did she say those exact words? Mike this girl was crazier than a cut snake when they brought her in, are you positive?"

"I'm 100 percent certain she told me - he is coming."

Ronnie searches in her notebook. "Motherfucker!"

"What is it?"

"It's exactly the same thing Helen Morcombe said to Dr Gray just before she went all kamikaze and jumped in front of your squad car. I knew that bitch was lying about a connection!"

"So, what are you going to do?"

"What I should have done in the first place."

Ronnie operated as a law unto herself and Mike knew better than to ask any more questions. He bit into the last remaining iced doughnut as he watched her collect her jacket, gun, and holster before leaving the station in a flying rage.