"Arrogant. That"s what Quinn says. Smokey Joe"s flipping us off."
Vanlees frowned. "Smokey Joe? I thought you called him the Cremator."
"That"s what the press calls him. To us, he"s Smokey Joe." She leanedacross the table to suggest intimacy. "Don"t tell anyone I told youthat.
It"s supposed to be just an inside cop thing-you know?"
Vanlees nodded, hip to the ways of the cop world. Cool with the insidesecrets. Mr. Professional.
"SHE"S GOOD," Quinn said, watching through the gla.s.s. He and Kovac hadbeen standing there twenty minutes, biding their time, watching,waiting, letting Gil Vanlees"s nerves work on him.
"Yeah. No one ever suspects Tinker Bell will work them over."
Kovac sniffed at the lapel of his suit and made a face. "Jesus, I stink.
Eau de autopsy with a hint of smoke, So what do you think of this mutt?"
"He"s twitchy. I think we can scare him a little here, then ride histail from the second he leaves. See what he does. If he spooks hardenough, you might get a search warrant out of it," Quinn said, his eyesnever leaving Vanlees. "He fits in a lot of ways, but he"s not thesharpest knife in the drawer, is he?"
"Maybe he just plays it stupid so people expect less of him. I"ve seenthat more than once."
Quinn made a noncommittal sound. As a rule, the type of killer they werelooking for went out of his way to show off what brains he had. Thatvanity was a common downfall. Invariably, they were not as smart as theywanted to believe, and screwed up trying to show off to the cops.
"Let him know you know about the window peeping," Quinn said "Press onthat nerve. He won"t like it. He won"t want cops thinking he"s apervert.
And if he"s held to the usual pattern, if he"s looked in windows, he"smaybe tried fetish burglaries. These guys work their way up. Fish inthat pond a little.
"Keep him off balance," he suggested. "Let him think you might dosomething crazy, that you"re fighting with yourself to keep control.
The case and the brilliance of this killer are pushing you to the edge.
Suggest it, don"t admit it. Put all your acting skills to use."
Kovac jerked his tie loose and mussed his hair. "Acting? You"ll want togive me the f.u.c.king Oscar."
"DON"T HE KNOW yet who the vic is?" Vanlees asked.
"The vici heard they found her ID during the autopsy," Liska said."Kovac wouldn"t tell me about it, except to say it made him sick. Hesaid he wants to find this sick son of a b.i.t.c.h and stick something inhim."
"What was in her body?" Vanlees said with a mix of horror andfascination. "I read about a case like that once."
"You read true crime?"
"Some," he admitted cautiously. "It gives me insights."
Into what? Nikki wondered. "Yeah, me too. So what was the guy"s story?"
"His mother was a prost.i.tute, and because of that he hated prost.i.tutes,and so he killed them. And he always stuck something in their-" Hecaught himself and blushed. "Well, you know Liska didn"t blink."v.a.g.i.n.a?"
Vanlees looked away and shifted on his chair again. "It"s really hot inhere."
He picked up a gla.s.s, but it was empty and so was the plastic pitcher onthe table.
"What do you suppose the killer gets out of that?" Liska asked, watchinghim closely. "Sticking things in a woman"s v.a.g.i.n.a. You think it makeshim feel tough? Powerful? What?
"Is it disrespect on an adult level?" she posed. "It always strikes meas something a snotty brat little boy would do-if he knew what a v.a.g.i.n.awas. Like sticking beans up his nose, or wanting to poke the eyes out ofa dead cat in the road. It seems juvenile somehow, but on this job I seewhere grown men do it all the time. What"s your take on that, Gil?"
He frowned. A single bead of sweat skimmed down the side of his face.
"I don"t have one."
"Well, you must, all the studying and true crime reading you"ve done.
Put yourself in the killer"s place. Why would you want to stick someforeign object up a woman"s v.a.g.i.n.a? Because you couldn"t do the job withyour d.i.c.k? Is that it?"
Vanlees had turned pink. He wouldn"t look at her. "Shouldn"t Kovac behere by now?"
"Any minute."
"I gotta use the men"s room," he mumbled. "Maybe I should go do that."
The door swung open and Kovac walked in-hair mussed, tie jerked loose,rumpled suit hanging on him like a wet sack. He scowled at Liska, thenturned it on Vanlees.
"This is him?"
Liska nodded. "Gil Vanlees, Sergeant Kovac."
Vanlees started to offer his hand. Kovac stared at it as if it were
covered with s.h.i.t.
"I got four women hacked up like Halloween pumpkins and burned to a
crisp. I"m in no mood to f.u.c.k around. Where were you last night between the hours of ten and two A.M.?"
Vanlees looked as if he"d been hit in the face. "What-T" "Sam," Liska
said with annoyance. "Mr. Vanlees came in to give us some insight on-"
"I want his insight on last night between ten and two. Where were you?"
"Home."
"Home where? I understand your wife threw you out for wagging your w.i.l.l.y
at a friend of hers."
"That was a misunderstanding-"
"Between you and your johnson, or between you and this broad whose
windows you were looking in?"
"It wasn"t like that."
"It never is. Tell me: How much time did you spend looking in Jillian
Bondurant"s windows?"
His face was crimson now. "I didn"t-"
"Oh, come on. She was kind of a hot little ticket, wasn"t she? Curvy.
Exotic. Dressed a little provocatively-those filmy little dresses and
combat boots and dog collars and s.h.i.t like that. A guy might want a piece of that-especially if the home fires went out, you know what I"m saying?"
"I don"t like what you"re saying." Vanlees looked to Liska. "Do I a
lawyer? Should I have a lawyer here?"
"Jesus, Sam," Liska said, disgusted. She turned to Vanlees. "I"m sorry, Gil."
"Don"t apologize for me!" Kovac snapped.
Vanlees looked warily from one to the other. "What is this? Good cop-bad cop? I"m not stupid. I don"t need to take this s.h.i.t."
He started to get out of his chair. Kovac lunged toward him, wild-eyed,
pointing at him with one hand and slamming the other on the tabletop.
"Sit! Please!"
Vanlees dropped back into the chair, his face washing white. Making an
obvious show to control himself, Kovac pulled himself back one step and then another, lifting his hands and lowering his head, breathing heavily
through his mouth.
"Please," he said more quietly. "Please. Sit. I"m sorry. I"m sorry."
He paced for a minute between the table and the door, watching Vanlees
out of the corner of his eye. Vanlees was looking at him the way hemight look at a wild gorilla had he found himself accidentally locked inthe pen with one at the Coma Park Zoo.
"Do I need a lawyer?" he asked Liska again.
"Why would you need a lawyer, Gil? You haven"t done anything wrong thatI know of. You"re not under arrest. But if you think you need one .. ." He looked between the two detectives, trying to figure out if this was some kind of trick.
"I"m sorry," Kovac: said as he pulled a chair out at the end of the
table and sat down. Shaking his head, he fished a cigarette out of hisshirt pocket, lit it, and took a long drag. "I"ve had about three hours of sleep all week," he said on a breath of smoke. "I"ve just come from one of the worst autopsies I"ve seen inyears." He shook his head and stared at the table. "What was done tothis woman-" He let the silence drag, smoking his cigarette as if theywere all in the break room taking their fifteen minutes away from thedesk.
Finally, he stubbed it out on the sole of his shoe and dropped the b.u.t.tin an empty coffee cup. He rubbed his hands over his face and combed hismustache with his thumbs.
"Where is it you"re living now, Gil?" he asked.
"On Lyndale-"
"No. I mean this friend you"re house-sitting for. Where is that?"
"Over by Lake Harriet."
"We"ll need an address. Give it to Nikki here before you go. How long