Ashes to Ashes (43 page)

“Listen, lady,” the manager said, “maybe you ought to talk to Melanie about this before you go around threatening people, ’cause I don’t think she’s all that bent out of shape about it. I haven’t heard boo from her all week.”

“I thought you said you fired her.”

“I did. I left it on her machine.”

“You
fired
her on her answering machine? What kind of rotten coward are you?”

“The kind that’s hanging up on you, bitch,” he said, slamming down the receiver.

Kate hung up absently, trying to think when she had last spoken to Melanie Hessler. A week ago at most, she thought. BC—before the Cremator case. There hadn’t been time to call her since. Angie had taken up all her time. It seemed too long now that she thought of it. Melanie’s calls had become more frequent as the trial drew closer and her nerves wound tighter and tighter.

“I haven’t heard boo from her all week.”

Kate supposed she might have gone out of town, but Melanie would have let her know. She checked in as if Kate were her parole officer. This felt wrong. The court, in its infinite wisdom, had seen fit to release Melanie’s attackers on bail, but the cops had been good about keeping tabs on them, with the detective in charge of the case staying on top of the situation.

I’m just spooked about everything because of Angie
, Kate thought. There was probably no cause for alarm. Still, she followed her instincts, picked up the phone again, and dialed the detective in sex crimes.

He’d heard nothing from their victim either, but knew that one of her perps had been picked up over the weekend for assaulting a former girlfriend. Kate explained what she knew and asked him to drop by Melanie Hessler’s house, just to check.

“I’ll head over that way after lunch.”

“Thanks, Bernie. You’re a peach. I’m probably just being paranoid, but …”

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean life’s not out to get you.”

“True. And my luck isn’t exactly on high tide here.”

“Hang in there, Kate. Things can always get worse.”

Cop humor. She couldn’t quite appreciate it today.

She tried to turn her attention to a stack of paperwork, but turned away from it and pulled Angie’s file instead, hoping she might see something in it that would prompt an idea for some kind of action. Sitting in this office, waiting, was going to make her brain explode.

The file was woefully thin. More questions than answers. Could the girl have left the Phoenix herself? If so, where had the blood come from? She flashed on the scene in the bathroom: the bloody handprint on the tile, the diluted blood trickling down the tub drain, the bloody towels in the hamper. More blood than any reasonable explanation could account for.

But if Smokey Joe had come for her, how had he found her, and how was it Rita Renner had heard nothing—no doors, no struggle, no nothing?

More questions than answers.

The phone rang, and Kate picked it up, half hoping, half dreading to hear Kovac on the other end of the line with news of the autopsy on victim number four.

“Kate Conlan.”

The polished voice of a secretary delivered unwelcome news of another variety. “Ms. Conlan? Mr. Sabin would like to see you in his office now.”

“SO, IS THIS Sergeant Kovac coming or what?”

Liska checked her watch as she walked back into the interview room. It was almost noon and the room was uncomfortably hot. Vanlees had been waiting almost an hour, and he wasn’t liking it.

“He’s on his way. He should be here anytime now. I called him the minute you said you’d come talk, Gil. He really wants to get your take on things regarding Jillian. But, you know, he’s over at that autopsy—the woman that got lit up last night. That’s why he’s running late. It won’t be much longer.”

She’d given him that line at least three times, and he was clearly tired of hearing it.

“Yeah, well, you know I want to help, but I got other things to do,” he said. He sat across the table from her wearing work clothes—navy pants and shirt. Like a janitor might wear, Liska thought. Or like a cop uniform with no embellishments. “I’ve got to work this afternoon—”

“Oh, you’re squared with that.” She waved off his concern. “I called your boss and cleared it. Didn’t want you getting into trouble for being a good citizen.”

He looked as if he didn’t like that idea much either. He shifted on his chair. His gaze went to the mirror on the wall behind Liska. “You know we have one of those at the Target Center, back in the offices. Anybody on the other side?”

Liska blinked innocence. “Why would there be anybody on the other side? It’s not like you’re under arrest. You’re here to help us.”

Vanlees stared at the glass.

Liska turned and stared at it too, wondering how she must look to Quinn. Like some worn-out barfly in a smoky lounge, no doubt. If the bags under her eyes got any bigger, she was going to need a luggage cart to carry them. The middle of a serial murder investigation was not the time to want to impress anyone with her fresh good looks.

“So you heard about the fourth victim,” she said, turning back to Vanlees. “That’s some balls this guy has, lighting her up in that parking lot, huh?”

“Yeah, like he’s trying to send a message or something.”

“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 leaned across the table to suggest intimacy. “Don’t tell anyone I told you that. 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 inside secrets. Mr. Professional.

“SHE’S GOOD,” QUINN said, watching through the glass. He and Kovac had been 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 his tail from the second he leaves. See what he does. If he spooks hard enough, you might get a search warrant out of it,” Quinn said, his eyes never leaving Vanlees. “He fits in a lot of ways, but he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, is he?”

“Maybe he just plays it stupid so people expect less of him. I’ve seen that more than once.”

Quinn made a noncommittal sound. As a rule, the type of killer they were looking for went out of his way to show off what brains he had. That vanity was a common downfall. Invariably, they were not as smart as they wanted to believe, and screwed up trying to show off to the cops.

“Let him know you know about the window peeping,” Quinn said. “Press on that nerve. He won’t like it. He won’t want cops thinking he’s a pervert. And if he’s held to the usual pattern, if he’s looked in windows, he’s maybe tried fetish burglaries. These guys work their way up. Fish in that pond a little.

“Keep him off balance,” he suggested. “Let him think you might do something 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 to give me the fucking Oscar.”

“DO THEY KNOW yet who the vic is?” Vanlees asked.

The
vic
.

“I heard they found her ID during the autopsy,” Liska said. “Kovac wouldn’t tell me about it, except to say it made him sick. He said he wants to find this sick son of a bitch and stick something in him.”

“It was
in her body
?” Vanlees said with a mix of horror and fascination. “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 prostitute, and because of that he hated prostitutes, and so he killed them. And he always stuck something in their—” He caught himself and blushed. “Well, you know …”

Liska didn’t blink. “Vagina?”

Vanlees looked away and shifted on his chair again. “It’s really hot in here.”

He picked up a glass, but it was empty and so was the plastic pitcher on the table.

“What do you suppose the killer gets out of that?” Liska asked, watching him closely. “Sticking things in a woman’s vagina. You think it makes him feel tough? Powerful? What?

“Is it disrespect on an adult level?” she posed. “It always strikes me as something a snotty brat little boy would do—if he knew what a vagina was. Like sticking beans up his nose, or wanting to poke the eyes out of a dead cat in the road. It seems juvenile somehow, but on this job I see where 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 some foreign object up a woman’s vagina? Because you couldn’t do the job with your dick? Is that it?”

Vanlees had turned pink. He wouldn’t look at her. “Shouldn’t Kovac be here 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, then turned 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 shit.

“I got four women hacked up like Halloween pumpkins and burned to a crisp. I’m in no mood to fuck 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—?”

“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 willy 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 shit 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 need 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 shit.”

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 he might look at a wild gorilla had he found himself accidentally locked in the pen with one at the Como Park Zoo.

“Do I need a lawyer?” he asked Liska again.

“Why would you need a lawyer, Gil? You haven’t done anything wrong that I 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 his shirt 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 in years.” He shook his head and stared at the table. “What was done to this woman—”

He let the silence drag, smoking his cigarette as if they were all in the break room taking their fifteen minutes away from the desk. Finally, he stubbed it out on the sole of his shoe and dropped the butt in an empty coffee cup. He rubbed his hands over his face and combed his mustache 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 you been doing that—house-sitting?”

“Off and on. The guy travels a lot.”

“What’s he do?”

“He imports electronics and sells them over the Internet. Computers and stereos, and stuff like that.”

“So why don’t you just bunk in with him all the time and dump the apartment?”

“He’s got a girlfriend. She lives with him.”

“She there now?”

“No. She travels with him.”

“So, how about you, Gil? You seeing anybody?”

“No.”

“No? You been separated for a while. A man has needs.”

Liska made a sound of disgust. “Like you think a woman doesn’t?”

Kovac gave her a perturbed look. “Tinks, your needs are common knowledge. Would you pretend for a minute you’re not liberated and go get us some more water? It’s hotter than hell in here.”