Lauren left a trace of perfume and a room full of detectives fantasizing Walter Mitty heroics for the dame in distress. After Mulrooney watched her exit, he retrieved his iPad from his file drawer. He grabbed a newspaper, his phone, and the Connolly file before exiting his closet cubby hole.
Still sweating as he rushed out of the station, Mulrooney then got in his car and drove toward the ocean. As the sun burned off the morning fog, the day promised to be more like summer than late spring. Continuing along Ocean Boulevard, Mulrooney cruised leisurely down the small peninsula that jutted out from Belmont Shore like a paint drip.
At the tip of the peninsula, he parked in a lot near the channel that connected Alamitos Bay to the Pacific. With his gear in hand, he made his way out onto the
