365 deadtime

. she told him about the timing of oden's move from arizona to california . sam told her he found that interesting . she;s saiod asian , sam . not all asian , but part . japanese , by my guess . you can tell clear from ythe picture the kid's got asian features ."
ramona explained to sam that she had been in the navy . she'd been stational on okinawa for a while . she knew the japanese .
sam hasd understood the relevance of oden's son asian features immediately .
"oden got a wife ? girlfriend ?" sam had asked ." she asian ?"
ram,ona had wondered the same thing .so she had called oden's house just minutes before she phoned sam in the back of the LAPD  patrol car .
ramona told sam that when a woman had answered at oden 's house , she'd said , " mrs , oden ?"
the woman had said ," si ."
ram,ona told sam ," i speak some spanished . we talked a little . i told her i was an old colleague of her husband's . she said he was out of town on business , he's be back that evening . she's from oaxaca . i don't think that lady is the kid's natural mom ."
sam didn't either .
"the kid's the right age , sam ." ramona told him .
"the right age for what ?" i asked at that point in his story .
i blamed it on the concussion , of corse , but i didn't add things up right away . sam was able to recognize that some of my neurons weren't firing on command . he encouraged me to lie back on the gurney in the exam room .
in a kind voice , he said ." oden 'sd kid has asian blood . alan . the only asian on the roster we've developoed from that week in the the grand canyon is jaana's old flame in vegas . that rich guy i talked to , nick paulson , he's definitely part japanesse . i sqaw him . sure . there are other explanatiions for the kid having asian features - oden could've married an asian woman that no one knew about , thatr's one - but the most  obvious explanation is that oden somehow eneded up with th e baby that jaana was pregnant with when she disappeared from the canyon ."
i said ," there're lots of asian adoptions these days . lots of mixed race kids . LA 's diverse , sam ."
"you playing deviul's advocate , or are you inured worese than i think ? chna ? yeah . there're adoptions . korean? sure . other place ?yeah .but not too many from japan ," sam said ." bet you the kid isn't adopted ."
"then where 's jaana ?" i asked . as soon as i said her name alound . the pieces fell together in my head . i said ."oh shit , that's the two ."
"what ?"sam said ." what's the two ?"
"jaana and her friend from estonia ?" i said . i was frustrated that my memory was returning in burps ." they 're the two people that oden said he dumped int he desert .oh my  god , oden told me that he had dumped two people once before . he left their bodies in the desert . two people , sam . i couldn't figured it out . but it had to be jaana and her friend , right ?"
sam's shoulders drooped ." if my theory is correct about oden , it has to be jaana and her friend," he said .
"nick paulson ?" i asked .
sam thought about iut ," asshole?he's guilty of that . everything else  ? my guess is the guy skates ."
the ER  doc was a moonlighting resident from UCLA . she was a tall , thin black woman with a wry wit , she cheecked me for other things - a fractured skull and a subdural hematoma- but settled on the diagnosius of a concussion ," common things happen commonly ," she explained .she told sam and me what to watch for , and she sent us on our way .
the camry had been wounded . it had taken three slugs during the  mojave shootout . i was trying not to think about what amountof additional brain damage i would suffer making hertz happy with me again .