The Hollow

Paul Masser, like Laffont, was one of Ballard’s volunteers on the cold-case unit, where she was the only full-time sworn LAPD officer. So were the tulips — left to help sell the misdirection that whoever delivered the flowers had seen the recipient as vulnerable and come back later to break in and commit the crime. Because the search warrants were authorized under the investigation of the Wonderland case and did not specifically cite the stolen missiles, an FBI bomb squad was placed on standby, ready to move in if the weapons were located at any of the sites. Looking back and forth from the lenses to the map page, he finally found the road and moved his focus along the string of houses that ran the length of it, scanning for anything that might narrow down his search.