Midnight Baby

Book excerpt: Maggie investigates the murder of a strange young streetwalker In Los Angeles making a documentary about upscale day cares, Maggie MacGowen visits MacArthur Park to get contrasting footage of the pubescent prostitutes that populate its dark corners. There she meets Pisces, a fourteen-year-old hooker with manners that don’t match her profession. As they bond over a plate of pastrami, Maggie talks her into spending the night in a shelter. But Pisces comes with baggage: a nine-year-old hoodlum named Sly. Maggie takes them both to a convent, where they are fed, bathed, and tucked into bed, just like normal children. The next day, Pisces is dead, her throat slashed by an unknown hand. The Los Angeles Police Department has little time for murdered hookers, so it falls to Maggie to find the killer. The keys to the case are the young girl’s manners, and the fact that she died with her virginity intact.