10. The Girl with the Captain Tattoo

There's something intoxicating about being locked in a secret with someone, especially when that someone is a ranking Los Angeles police officer who also happens to be your prickly new boss. I wouldn't be the first ditzy bottle blonde to bring down a power player in some sordid government scandal, but stirring the simmering pot between us were a covert smile, a flashy badge and a loaded gun. Looking back, if the station only had a decent air conditioning system, the whole sticky mess might never have come to a boil.

In the days after our wordless pact -- whose exact meaning was still unclear, even to me -- I sensed the captain's gun metal gray eyes boring into me out of nowhere. Across an overheating copier. Between two humming vending machines. In the reflection of the citizen's service window Georgia May and I manned, behind a peeling decal emblazoned with the words, "To Protect and To Serve."

"He's married, you know," George May informed me as the captain passed, leaving behind the faint scent of cigarettes and conspiracy. She gobbled another strip of crisped bacon hanging from some microwave contraption that looked like the scene of a mass crucifixion. Recently diagnosed with type two diabetes, she was somehow convinced she hadn't been getting enough pork fat. "Wife's an FBI agent," she added. "Mess with a lady like that and she'll cut you with her bare hands."

"How is that even possible?" I said, dismissing her with all the indifference I could fake.  "Do they have kids?" I couldn't help adding.

"They had one," she replied, raising an eyebrow. I looked at her blankly. "Don't you ever read the newspaper?"

"Do I look like a total idiot?" I shot back, without a hint of irony. Rita always picked up the Sunday Times on her way home from Starbutts; she'd sit up tweaking and clipping coupons, then bring back a whole load of groceries for the sum total of two dollars and seventy-four cents. "Why pay more? she'd say brightly, waking me up for a bowl of deeply discounted Lucky Charms. Of course I hadn't seen Rita in awhile, which was usually a good thing. She'd come back with some wild story about a reasonably well-built bald guy with very high level studio connections, such as washing Town Cars on the Paramount lot -- who blew his entire paycheck on an eight ball and took her shopping in Vegas.

"Is the captain's kid's named 'Jeremy?'" I asked Georgia May. "He has this yo-yo on his desk, I wondered whose it was." There was also that empty picture frame and some kind of a ring, possibly inscribed with the words "Eternal Bond" -- though I didn't dare ask for confirmation.

"What you doing all up in the captain's desk?" Georgia May hissed.

"Just curious," I lied. "No big deal."

"You know what's good for you around here, you keep your nose clean, your eyes lowered and your mouth shut." She reminded me of all the big deal papers I'd signed in order to gain access to the Justice Department records system I worked on alone every night. Nothing on there had interested me much anyway, except maybe the arrest of the beloved former child actress best known for that alien movie caught taking a pee on the sidewalk outside The Gap. No charges filed. Officer error. Imagine that.

"Well, I guess I'm off, then," I told Georgia May, not about to share my silly fantasies about sucking that ring right off the captain's finger while knocking boots on the cookie table in the coffee room. He'd kick the door shut, wild-eyed with rage over the senseless murder of his wife and baffling disappearance of his son. "Forget them," I'd whisper breathlessly as he drove himself into me over a bed of crushed Oreos in a pool of non-dairy creamer. With every forceful thrust he branded my skin with the imprint of the red hot badge affixed to his lashing belt.

"Settle down, sex fiends!" Georgia May bellowed at the middle-aged, married men awaiting processing after being netted in a Vice sting for waving their weenies around in the Merry-Go-Round bathrooms at Griffith Park. That was all it took to snap me out of it and focus on something important. I was always on the look out in that crowd for a big producer to show my head shot and resume, figuring there's no more captive an audience in all of Hollywood than a fresh caught sex offender. Cutting me off at the knees, Georgia May told me to head on home for the day, flagging me off with a crispy bacon strip. "Don't you be flapping your gums to the press out there," she warned me. "Damn bloodsuckers are dying for some new dirt on Dr. Demented."

It really sucks when Nancy Grace starts barking a catchy new moniker for the handsome surgeon a co-worker recently caught dismembering your roommate. Even with Rita's as yet unidentified body parts lying strewn about various coroner's labs, I'd already washed my hands of the whole stinking case. No way in hell was I getting in any deeper, not even when Rita disappeared for so long I couldn't keep stalling her landlord on the rent. Nor even when my car wouldn't start after work one night, and someone knocked on a window I rolled down just a crack.

"Pardon me, do you work in Police Records?" a friendly voice asked from behind a camera lens, snapping my picture without bothering to ask permission. As a down-on-her-luck bikini model who'd come within inches of being named the new face of Maui Sunless Tanning Systems, I take that kind of thing as a very serious offense indeed. "How'd you like to make a few extra bucks?"

11. Dirty Laundry and The Dishwater Blonde

If there's one thing I've learned in Hollywood, it's never trust a foreigner with no discernable accent. He's either your average American nobody hiding behind an exotic, assumed name and some wildly fictitious back story, or he actually is a creepy little immigrant who's just a little too good at blending in.

Though he called himself "Atti," his name was Attila -- no lie -- and he was an actual, honest to God Hun, though his family name had been bastardized to "Hunnic" centuries before they ended up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall and lost all their raping and pillaging savings to the Communists. I wasn't following much of any of this as we stood inside Quiznos waiting for the tow truck he'd be happy to pony up for -- provided I was willing to become his mole inside Hollywood Division. A freelance paparazzo working with all the top gossip sites, he was strictly interested in the sort of super sexed up dirty laundry that had somehow gone un-aired. "You mean like a cover-up?" I said. "What makes you think I'd know about something like that?"

"Don't toy with me, blondie," he said.

"Don't call me blondie unless you want a sock in the jaw," I returned. Lowering my voice, I shared that I could, in fact, use a few extra dollars under the right circumstances. Here I was trying to get back on my feet after a run of bad luck, and boom, I get smacked with a nineteen hundred dollar hospital bill when my roommate blinds me with a botched set of permanent eyelashes. "Then she up and disappears with the fridge empty and the rent past due."

"Let's you and I help each other," he said, opening the bid theoretically with half a California Turkey Club and a sip of his bottomless Diet Coke. "I can make it very worth your while."

"Are you kidding me, dude?" I  looked around for the hidden camera in the event I was either getting punked by Ashton Kutcher or set up by Internal Affairs. "I might not be a sworn officer, but I signed a whole lot of papers swearing to keep my mouth shut. I've been finger printed, lie detected and background checked up the ying-yang. I could get fired for even talking to you."

"You know something," he said, with a greasy little smile. "Who do you think you're dealing with, an amateur?" In black jeans and turtleneck, sporting a limp little pony tail and coke bottle glasses, he certainly looked like one of the smug stalkerazzis I could never get to pay attention to me before. Here I'd be, walking some celebrity-studded red carpet or another on the arm of a little agent assistant I met on the treadmill at Crunch -- and the lightbulbs would suddenly stop flashing. All those years I couldn't get arrested in this town, and here was my bright, shining moment. Why not become famous for being a famous whistle blower, wasn't it the right thing to do anyway?

I opened my mouth to spill what I knew about the botched arrest of Dr. Demented, interrupted by the commotion of the manager shooing out a homeless woman with a baby, caught panhandling among the diners.  "That's enough, lady," he said.  "Try outside the Arclight, there's always a long line of Hollywood liberals with deep pockets." Briefly meeting her eyes, for some odd reason I flashed on those horrible crime scene pictures I'd seen of the as yet unidentified dead girl hacked to pieces only blocks away. Though nobody had come forward to claim her, she must have been somebody's baby, not so long ago. Whatever had become of her life since, who was there do do right by her now?

Turning to my pal Attila, I pulled a switcheroo. "You know the beloved former child actress who starred in that alien movie?" I asked. "She got popped for peeing in public while smoking a doob." If he had any inkling I held the key to a much bigger police scandal brewing, he didn't show it.

"You got pictures? Witnesses? Anything?"

I shook my head no. "Seems to have been a little snafu in the evidence room if you know what I mean. But you might be able to locate a booking sheet under her birth name -- Tanya Blanowitz. Kind of has a ring to it, don'tcha think?" I wrapped up my half of the sandwich, still untouched, and headed for the door. "Wait. Don't you need me to pay for your tow?" he asked with his mouth full. So uncouth, those Huns.

"I'll take the bus," I snorted. "I didn't give you anything that isn't public record. I just told you why nobody's been looking for it." He nodded, standing to shake my hand. "Don't push your luck," I advised. He said he'd be in touch and I told him he'd have to touch himself. I was lying, as things would turn out, but it felt pretty awesome at the time.

I left him standing there with mayonnaise on his face, hurrying down Sunset Boulevard to catch up with the ejected homeless mother and child withdrawing into the shadows for the night. That could have just as easily been me, without crazy Rita opening her door to me only a few weeks before. I didn't even know she was dead, and already she was haunting me, crying out for help from a friend who may or may not be up to the task. "Hey! Would you like a sandwich?" I called out to the lady.  "It's still nice and toasty."

12. What to Do with the LAPD Blues

It rained for the next two days, which is a mixed bag in Hollywood this time of year. On the one hand, it washes away the smog gripping the city day after suffocating day. On the other hand, once it's over, we all have to take a good, hard look at one another in the even more unforgiving glare of our big, cloudless skies.

I woke up from Rita's couch to get ready for night watch -- wrestling with my usual steamy fantasies about the captain. He was a happily married man, after all -- or at least he had been at one point, overcoming some kind of tragedy involving a child, if Georgia May was to be believed. Though there was all kinds of heat between him and me, maybe he hadn't been the one to invite it. Though cops are well trained to confuse you with what they don't say, so are pretty little blondes. It wouldn't take much of an actress to let him know that I'm not the type of girl to bother myself with a family man.

A loud rap on the front door signaled my daily visit from Rita's greedy, Arab-born landlord. Not that all Arabs are greedy any more than all landlords are Arab -- but this one was a full on, gold-chained, cologne-spritzed escapee from the pages of "Ali Baba and The Forty Skeeves." Rumor was he'd recently been deeded an entire square block of the Fairfax District after calling in a loan he made to some old Jewish guy in trouble with the mob.

"Good afternoon," I said brightly, opening the door in my baby dolls. "May I offer you a cup of sugar?" Pops always said you catch more flies with honey, but Rita didn't have any -- in fact, I hadn't seen her in weeks. The creep wasn't buying any of it, though he did indulge in a free sampling of my amply stocked top shelf.  I quickly wrapped myself in a pink satin bed sheet, insisting that she must be traveling on business. "Tomorrow I bring eviction papers," he replied.  "I have very big friends with the City. You are prostitute, no?

"I'm a civilian employee of the Los Angeles Police Department," I snapped back. "I, too, have big friends with the City." He emitted a sarcastic grunt women must get a lot wherever he's from. "Would you like to see some identification?" I inquired.

"I like to see two months back rent." Hammering on a calculator, he showed me some figure with far too many zeroes to even be legal on a rent-controlled unit. "Also twenty-percent increase for 'house guest' and my cut of profits from business activity on premises!" Disgusted, I slammed the door in his face. "How much for one night with both of you?" he added, scratching at the door like some hopeful little desert rat.

After waiting him out as he made unannounced visits throughout the complex, I was late for work, hurrying from the bus stop to the station just before sundown. I discovered my old, broken down Mustang convertible with a police boot on its rear tire. An officer was slapping another citation onto a damp pile tucked under the windshield. "Hey! Is another freaking ticket really necessary?" I called out. "It's called engined trouble, hello. It's not like I parked here on purpose." He turned around, revealing a chiseled, angular face I didn't recognize -- but a name and badge number I'd know anywhere. "Officer Muñoz," I said. "I'm Cherry Culpepper, from Records? I type your reports."

"You're Culpepper? Why didn't you say so?"

 "I just did. Not that I'm asking any favors." He'd come to be known among the other guys as Bad-Ass Muñoz after arresting the accused serial killer currently being questioned by law enforcement agencies from all over the country about the fate of respective missing girls. If he knew I'd found that nagging error in his initial report and was willing to look the other way, he wasn't going there out loud. In fact, it might have simply been that, after swaggering back in fresh from the national talk show circuit, he was feeling extra generous. He grabbed the whole wad of citations and blew on them -- as if to make them disappear. "Well, I mean, if you're one of us," he said. He had that beat cop way of conveying genuine disinterest while fully prepared to mess you up -- your choice.

The captain appeared from nowhere -- calling on what had become the world's most annoying super power -- to snatch the citations from Muñoz. "I'll take care of this." He continued toward the station, calling back. "See me in my office, Culpepper. We need to talk."

Bad-Ass also withdrew with an imaginary tip of the hat -- perhaps meant to serve as a thank you for our implied exchange of professional courtesies.  Or maybe not. Like I say, cops are trained to speak without words -- and once the rain finally stops, we Los Angelenos see all kinds of things we were never meant to.

13. Death by Kosher Dill

The partially clothed body of an older, Arab-American male was discovered in the alley behind Canter's Delicatessen with a half-corned beef on rye stuffed in his mouth and a kosher dill up his ass. If the good merchants of the Fairfax District were telling their new landlord they didn't like the fat bastard any more than Rita and I did, subtlety was definitely not their deal. The corpse lay in plain view for some time, according to the coroner's report -- with evidence suggesting that numerous passersby had kicked it en route to morning prayers. Finally, a possible homicide -- unofficially dubbed "death by kosher dill" here at Hollywood Division -- was phoned in by a Swedish folk duo named Jim and Sam, playing the Kibbitz Room into the wee hours. You've got to love the Swedes. So neutral. So musical.

Of course I didn't know any of this as I sat across the table from the captain in a police interrogation room of all places. While I assumed we'd be meeting in his office to chat about the "inappropriate attire" Georgia May was always busting my can about, this was pretty much the hottest thing that ever happened to me. Video recorders, two-way mirrors, fluorescent blue mood lighting. I pictured him putting me over his knee and spanking me with a night stick. Nothing painful -- just a few sweet smacks on the fanny to lay down the law.

"Since you don't provide a uniform, sir, you can't really complain about my appearance," I said in reference to the over-sized white polo shirt I wore positioned off my shoulder. So what if it did come off as a micro-mini after I belted it fashionably at the waist and skipped the suggested dark pants. "Is it my fault I have freakishly long legs?"

"Let's talk about your financial situation," he said, masking a little smile. He clipped my stack of unpaid parking citations to my employee file.

"Oh. Well, with all due respect, I don't think that's any of your business."

"This is off the record right now. Would you rather I initiate something more formal?"  Suddenly realizing what he was getting at, I folded like a cheap lawn chair. "Alright!" I blurted out. "I didn't give that reporter anything but the little movie star's birth name, and that's a matter of public record!" Though he seemed to find this mildly amusing, he obviously had no idea that I'd sold a tip to a freelance gossip columnist for the price of a Quiznos sandwich. "Sounds like a bit of a grey area," he advised. "You might want to avoid that kind of transaction in the future."

"Would it count as a free meal if I went home and puked it up?" He chuckled. I giggled. Neither of us seemed to know what to do with that easy rhythm of ours, some wordless alliance of reluctant smiles and accidental glances. "Look, Captain, I've had a pretty rough go of it lately. But everybody's got problems they'd rather keep to themselves. Even you, I'll bet."

Maybe yes, maybe no. Pushing forward, the man had infuriating focus. "How well do you know this girl?" he asked, sliding over a picture. It was Rita -- in a promotional photo of the luscious "Strawberry Margarita" borrowed from a dingy display case outside Starbutts. What I wanted to ask is how well he knew her, since Rita had told me all about the assortment of high ranking cops -- on and off duty -- partying it up in that down market, off-strip nudie bar. "I know her a little," I lied. "What'd she do?"

"Her boss reported her missing. I'm wondering why you didn't," he added, "being that the two of you share a last known address." Though the picture matching what was left of Rita's face was probably already pointing to her gruesome fate -- at least internally -- the captain declined to share any of that with me. I'd like to think he was trying to protect me, rather than doing some advance damage control to guage my reaction to the disturbing turn of events not yet made public. "We used to be tight, back in the day, but whatever that chick is up to now, I swear I got nothing to do with it," I said firmly. "Nothing."

As if to assure me he'd heard all he needed, he reached out and touched my shoulder -- more than enough physical contact to send a a jolt of electricity through both our bodies. "Wow," he said, finally acknowledging the obvious. "That's all you got?" I whispered, before pulling back myself. "Just like a cop."

"You learn fast."

"I should go clock in. Thanks for believing me."

Nodding, he balled up my parking tickets, making a hoop shot into the trash. "How many times do I have to tell you, you're either one of us or you're not?"

Early the next morning, after I heard a police tow-truck depositing my liberated Mustang in Rita's driveway, I tiptoed out to start the mysteriously repaired engine. Who could have guessed that whatever news the morning paper might bring -- even, say, some bizarre connection between a dead stripper I once knew well and a grabby landlord with a pickled rectum -- my loyalty was being bought.

14. Necro-Philing Groovy

Her name was Dr. Allison Knowles, and although she was very highly regarded as a top FBI profiler, she had yet to achieve an elusive career goal of netting a high profile serial killer. As for her personal life, she seemed to have given up on breaking free from a marriage of convenience to a ranking Los Angeles police captain with political aspirations. It would be some time before anyone even dared whisper that Allison was in love with another woman, and her husband was in love with me. Still, if I had to bet on which disgruntled marital partner was more likely to save my life in the days after my roommate's dismembered body was identified, I'd have to go with the jilted lesbian wife. It had all gotten so complicated for a simple-minded blonde from the temporary typing pool.

I guess I fainted when the captain showed up at Rita's to deliver the news. Last thing I remember was sunbathing on the front lawn in a strapless red bikini she never wore, hoping she didn't show up and freak out anyway. I looked up to find the captain blotting out the sun, saying something about bracing myself. "Your friend has been murdered," he told me. "We're going to need some more information from you." I came to thinking about Rita's mother in Havasu -- or was it Sioux City? -- something with a "sue." She used to forward the random threatening collection letter scratched with a personal message, like "So over your bullshit!" and "Not in this, loser!" They weren't close.

I must have spilled my cherry-flavored Slurpee, because I sank onto a lounge chair to swipe at something cold and sticky staining my skin red. "Did you know Hollister -- or any of Margarita's regulars?"

"No! Oh my God. Oh my God." Rocking back and forth, I couldn't wrap my mind around all those crime scene photos of disembodied limbs belonging to Rita. The butchery had been so perfect, like those beautiful steaks you get at Benihana's of Tokyo. I got up to walk it off, my knees buckling beneath me. "Have you had anything to eat today?" he asked. With that, I hurled red Slurpee onto his shiny black shoes.

Setting me onto the lounger beside him, he wrapped a towel around my shoulders. "He claims he didn't rape her, if that helps." As an admitted necrophiliac, Dr. James Dean Hollister was not only attracted to human corpses, but also sexually aroused by their careful dissection and re-assembly. His surgical expertise had probably been born of these unspeakable urges, rather than any genuine interest in healing. "And yet, he's still insisting he's innocent," the captain scoffed. "Where are you getting all this?" I asked, having major trouble even following along. "My wife," he said, simply. "She's a criminal psychiatrist, best in the business. Don't worry. She'll break him."

He rested his hand on my knee, practically daring me to put mine over his, to drop my head on his shoulder and hide from the brutal truth in the safety of his arms. That's when a crime scene truck squealed into the driveway, releasing an army of science geeks to rope off Rita's bungalow with crime scene tape.

A swarm of media vans converged -- hot on the trail of unmarked cars delivering detectives, prosecutors and federal agents. A tall, slim, super friendly suit named Dr. Allison Knowles -- who insists you call her A.K. -- bounded up and introduced herself. I responded with a burst of delayed, uncontrolled sobs. "Go ahead and get her out of here," my closeted lesbian rival ordered her estranged husband -- in case there was any question as to which of the three of us would be running this show from here. "We're going to be awhile."

15. Double In-Dumbnity

When you're young, blonde and maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer, there are two basic rules for surviving in Hollywood. Firstly, never get between a man and his wife, especially when she's the one of the two carrying the bigger gun. Secondly, never let a guy you've got no solid reason to trust run you out of town.

What I'm getting at is I was pretty much hosed the minute I accepted the captain's invitation to hit the road for a few days -- at the suggestion of the missus, of all people.

"Have you spent any time in Baja?" he asked, slamming shut the solid-sounding trunk of a government-issued, navy blue Lincoln. Hers, I'd have bet.

"Nope," I lied. Not unless he meant did Rita and I used to go down to Tijuana every weekend to smuggle back prescription diet pills. "What about you?"

"Not really." Not unless I meant had he and his wife honeymooned there back when they were still in love -- and later bought a timeshare to retreat to in grief after the senseless, random killing of their young son.

Though he and I told each other all kinds of lies on that highway that would eventually come to the fore, you didn't have to be a genius to get the underlying themes right off. He wanted me far removed from the scene to ensure that I -- still reeling from the horrific discovery that I knew the victim -- wouldn't go spilling my guts about things nobody needed to hear. Me, I was after some more information before I decided whether to keep playing along. I suppose that's how we ended up having two completely different conversations, as though stepping into one of those old time crime thrillers they used to make back when movies still had people in them. "I appreciate your doing this and all," I informed him, "but I'm going to have to say no to any kind of hanky panky down there."

"Who asked you? I've got Presidential Medals of Valor older than you."

"Why are the cops all over Rita's place when we already got the guy?" I asked. "You seriously know the President?"

"Can you remember the last time you actually saw Rita?"

"Unless they think there really is more to that freak's story. Oh my God, do they?" 

"Answer the question."

"You first."

Fine, I've met a few Presidents. They kept introducing themselves after the first Gulf War. Something about me being a pretty decent shot." Rolling my eyes, I crossed my legs toward him, nice and slow, placing my hand on my chin. "Alright!" he said. Guys are so easy.

"We're not releasing this kind of detail, so I highly suggest you leave your reporter pal out of this. But there appears to be some physical evidence to suggest that Rita was dead before she ever got to that motel. Would she happen to be missing a pink satin sheet from home?"

"Oh my God, he killed her at home? Our home?" When the captain told me Hollister admitted to having stalked Rita home from work for some time, I was seized by a horrific realization. "I was working the night before they found her. Jesus Christ, he would have killed me, too." He reached out and patted my knee, third time now, not that I was counting. "There might be a couple of things that aren't quite adding up," he said. "Guess there's no such thing as a slam dunk."

"You think?" I couldn't help noting, considering we were skipping the country and all. We passed a trio of local children walking home the family burro, as the raging sun gave way to a muted pink horizon kissing the foamy Pacific. "So what are we doing here, Chuck?"

"Haven't decided yet."

"Who asked you to? I've got heirlooms younger than you. Grannie's rosary. Grandpa's bible."

"You've probably guessed it's complicated."

"You've probably guessed I'm not interested. Were you a secret assassin in the war? Are you still one now?

"You have a very vivid imagination."

"You have no idea."

He finally removed his hand from my knee, where, oh yes, it had innocently remained during this entire exchange. "I'm supposed to be acting as your victim's advocate," he sighed. "Let's talk about survivor's guilt."

"What would you know about that?

"You have no idea," he said, concluding that round.

"What if Hollister isn't the one who killed her?" I added, after a thoughtful pause. "What if he really is innocent?"

16. Tweeter of the Absurd

Until you've been the victim of a violent crime -- or worse yet an unsuspecting target -- you can't begin to understand how bizarre it feels when a wacky cast of characters invades your life like it's some kind of children's play.

Personally, I blame Nancy Grace. Sure, she's the go-to gal when your kid turns up missing -- provided you're not shacking up with some drifter who's got nasty teeth and a checkered past. Me, I had no use at all for her two favorite guests these days, Zach and Zoey Armbruster, the morbidly obese yet freakishly telegenic brother-sister criminal defense team representing the charming young doctor caught in the act of dismembering my roommate.

"The police investigation stinks, Nancy!" Zach barked. "It's a big smelly wheel of contaminated cheese!" Zoey yelped. "There's no evidence of any homicide," said he. "It's is a minor case of corpse abuse," clucked she. "Minimum five." "Maximum ten." "Boom, all she wrote."

There's something seriously sketchy about getting double-teamed by a set of fraternal twins. Demanding that "false" "premature" and "salacious" murder charges against UCLA surgical resident Dr. J.D. Hollister be dropped, they flew around the courtroom like one of those sibling ice skating duos spending a tad too much time with their hands in each others' crotches.

"I deeply loved and respected hashtag Strawberry Margarita," the accused tweeted at reporter Josh Mankiewicz hashtag DatelineNBC, over the repeated objections of the plus-sized twinset mounting his novel defense."I know that sounds crazy but it's true.

"Let's you and I sit down and talk about the hashtag deadhollywoodstripper," the unflappably congenial true crime icon tweeted back. Network sweeps period during the beautiful month of May here in Hollywood is no time to go and get all judgy on your friendly neighborhood necrophiliac.

Even crack FBI profiler Dr. Allison Knowles --  married to the popular, camera-friendly police captain who'd overseen Hollister's arrest -- had to acknowledge some remote plausibility to the suspect's story. "He prefers the company of dead women," was her favored juicy soundbyte. "He's not particularly interested in how they got that way."

"Somebody killed her before I got to her window that night," the serial peeping tom told Mankiewicz over the phone from his private cell at Parker Center. "My first instinct was to get her out of there."  This exclusive interview required the services of a translator, as Hollister was a deaf-mute who'd bucked big odds to become a top surgeon. "I can't explain exactly what happened from there," he signed, pressing a hand against the glass to meet that of his tearful fiancee's. A former Miss USA and dot com millionairess funding the most expensive defense in the history of jurisprudence, the nutty little media whore performed like a champ. "Obviously I have certain dark impulses I'm committed to confronting in therapy," Hollister signed with balletic grace. "It's really a private matter between me and my future wife."

"Oh pah-leez," drawled a disgusted Nancy grace, re-playing the footage until everyone's ears bled. "Somebody get me a tissue so I don't spew a big old honkin' noseful of my own mucous into camera one."

The captain hadn't squired me inside his Baja hideaway more than ten minutes before the evening cable news cycle began to poke multiple holes in the increasingly twisted case. The victim, a failed actress, all-nude dancer and cast-off Hollywood call girl, had allegedly flirted with suicide -- with rumored involvement in drug trafficking, racketeering and internet porn. "Does any of that have even the slightest ring of truth?" the captain asked me. "Not a word," I lied. I was starting to get really good at that, considering I wasn't exactly fluent in legalese. "She had a few issues, but Rita was no racketeer. Sheesh."

Growling her catch phrase, "This! Just! In!," Jane Velez-Mitchell tracked down the boozy excuse for a trailer trash mother Rita had neither seen nor spoken to since shortly after exiting her vagina. "I think I'll pass on that guacamole," I told the captain, suddenly feeling queasy. If there was any thought of forbidden romance lingering between us after our windswept road trip south of the border -- the mood buzzed right out of his pants with a frantic series of pages. "I have to go," he said, heading for the door.

"What? You can't just leave me here!"

"You'll be alright. I'll be back in a couple of days."

I mean, for real? Not a half hour earlier, the guy had practically been feeling me up in his wife's car with the flimsy excuse that "it's complicated," and now he was gone with out a word? Guess I wasn't the only one telling little white lies.

The real kicker would be my learning of the suspiciously coincidental mob hit on Rita's landlord -- which the captain had run off to investigate -- only after Internal Affairs brought me in for questioning. Yet to be outed as the leggy "LAPDitz" behind the rumored cover-up of Hollister's botched arrest, I took a step back and considered my next move. Could it really be true that someone other than Hollister had killed Rita? Whether or not I could trust the captain to clear anybody's name but his own around the mess we were making together, I'd have to figure out exactly who and what I was running from to stay alive through November sweeps.