We met with Gloria dos Santos at the police station in the Brentwood section of LA. It was a one-story concrete building, about as non-descript as a post office. Detective Peter Kim joined us in a small interview room, which was about six by five feet, soundproof, with padded walls. Kim was slender, around six feet, in his late twenties. He dressed well, and seemed more like an up-and-coming Los Angeles business executive than a policeman to me.  Gloria dos Santos obviously knew Kim, and they didn’t seem too fond of each other. She called him’Detective Fuhrman’, and she used the name over and over, until Kim told her to’can it’or he would lock her the hell up.  dos Santos wore a short black dress, high black boots, leather wristbands. There were about a dozen earrings in strategic locations on her body. Her frizzy black hair was piled high, but some also cascaded down to her shoulders. She was only an inch or two over five feet and had a hard face. Her lashes were thick with mascara and she used purple eye shadow. She looked to be in good physical shape - like all the other victims so far.
She stared at Kirn, then at me, and finally at Jamilla Hughes. She shook her head and smirked. She didn’t like us, which was fine - I didn’t much like her either.
She sneered. ‘Can I smoke in this rat-trap? I’m going to smoke, like it or not. If you don’t like it, then I’m going the hell home.’
‘So smoke,’ Kim said. ‘But you’re not going home under any fucking circumstances.’ He took out some David’s ranch-style seeds and started to eat them. Kim was a strange boy himself.  dos Santos lit up a Camel and blew out a thick stream of smoke in Kirn’s face.
‘Detective Fuhrman knows everything that I know. Why don’t you just get it all from him? He’s brilliant, yknow. Just ask him about it.  Graduated with some cumma honors from UCLA.’
‘There are a few things we aren’t clear about,’ I said to her. “That’s why we came all the way from San Francisco to see you. Actually, I came from Washington, DC.’
‘Long trip for nothing. Shaft,’ she said. Gloria dos Santos had a zinger for every occasion. She wiped her hand over her face a few times as if she were trying to wake herself up.  ‘You’re obviously high as a kite/Jamilla cut in. “That doesn’t matter to us. Relax, girl. These men who attacked you hurt you pretty bad.’ dos Santos snorted. ‘Pretty bad? They broke two ribs, broke my arm. They knocked me down ‘bout six times. Fortunately, they knocked me right down a goddamn hill, side of a mountain, actually.  I started rolling. Got up. Ran my ass off.’
‘The initial report said that you didn’t see eith............