The 9th Girl (8 page)

Kovac considered the argument and sighed. “I’m not against it.”

The downside would be the glaring spotlight that kind of publicity would bring to the investigation itself. They had a victim with no face and no name. They had their work cut out for them. To run that investigation under a media microscope would not be a pleasant thing. He could already hear the questions:
Why haven’t you caught him yet? What did you discover today? Why haven’t you identified the victim?
Every moron who had ever watched an episode of
CSI
thought they were a fucking expert in forensic sciences and criminal investigation.

But he also knew the media would lose interest quickly if no answers were forthcoming, and by then he would have gotten what he needed.

“All we need is that initial excitement,” Tippen said, reading his mind. “It’s not our fault if their headlines dry up.”

“That’s true.”

“Was there any sign of sexual assault?”

“Nothing obvious. No semen present.”

“That fits. There was no semen with the others.”

“A lot fits,” Kovac conceded. “But the others were obvious sexual assaults, this one . . . I don’t know.”

He sat back in his chair and looked at the wall where Tippen had put up the photographs and sketches of the supposed victims of Doc Holiday—the three dumped in the Twin Cities, and five others whose bodies had been discovered in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. If they decided Zombie Doe had enough in common with the other cases, she would be the ninth victim. She was already their ninth Jane Doe of the year. She was the ninth girl on two counts.

“She has a tattoo,” he said. “Some Chinese gibberish on her shoulder. Tinks took a picture.”

“That’s something. We can hit the tattoo parlors tomorrow.”

“And hope that she’s from here. If she’s one of Doc’s, Christ only knows where she came from.”

They both heaved a sigh over that prospect and took a pull on their drinks.

“She had skin and blood under her fingernails,” Kovac said.

“Enough for a DNA profile?” Tippen asked. “That would be a hell of a break.”

“Yeah. Why would we get that lucky? The guy hasn’t put a foot wrong in eight murders. Why would he be so careless with this one?”

“Because that’s what happens,” Tippen said. “That’s what always trips these guys up. They get cocky. They get careless. They think we’re too stupid to solve a case, so they get sloppy. They make mistakes.”

“He can’t manage to kill his vic with a too-short knife and a gallon of acid,” Kovac said. “She falls out of his car on the road. She’s got his DNA under her fingernails. That’s a lot of mistakes for a guy who’s gotten away with eight murders.”

“And if we say Zombie Doe is his ninth girl, we get our task force,” Tippen said, pressing the issue. “We have to leak something, get the ball rolling.”

The department had an official press person, but official press releases went through official channels, their content scrutinized and sanitized and overanalyzed by people who had little to do with the actual investigation—especially when it came to high-profile cases. A leak, on the other hand, would be exactly what they wanted it to be, just the right piece of information to hit just the right nerve. The department would be forced to respond to a public now paying attention and demanding answers.

“Who’s your best contact?”

“You know I don’t play favorites,” Kovac said. “I hate all of them equally.”

“It should be a woman,” Tippen said. “Outrage increases exponentially with the degree of personal threat. Angry women make a lot of noise. I happen to know an angry woman.”

Kovac raised an eyebrow. “Just one?

“Very funny. I happen to know the perfect young angry woman to connect us to more angry young women. I’ll make a phone call.”

“I can’t wait,” he said with a decided lack of enthusiasm. “Why do I feel like I’m going to live to regret this?”

“Because you’re a fatalist,” Tippen said, digging his cell phone out of the breast pocket of his aloha shirt. “Which isn’t a bad thing. You can’t be disappointed if your expectations are low. But in this case I say don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, my friend.”

Kovac tossed back the last of his Scotch, grimacing not at the liquor but at his distaste for dealing with reporters.

“Here’s what I know about horses,” he said. “They bite.”

8

Liska groaned aloud at
the sight of the black Jeep parked in front of her house. Speed. As much as she had wanted to dump her frustration and anxiety regarding Kyle all over her ex, she had wanted to do it over the airwaves and be able to turn the phone off afterward. Neat and clean—at least in the moment. She didn’t have the energy to do it in person. She was exhausted, operating on three hours of sleep in the last thirty-three. The last thing she wanted to add to this shit day was a mental sparring match with her ex-husband.

She told herself she should have been glad he had shown up—for the boys’ sake. No matter how many times he let them down, he was still their dad, and they loved him. It was important for them to have their father’s presence in their lives, even if it was sporadic. But there was always an emotional price to pay after the fact—for the boys and for her.

The television was blaring a football bowl game in the living room as Nikki let herself in. The house was warm and smelled of chili simmering in the Crock-Pot. She wanted to feel the tension melt away, but that wasn’t going to happen.

She peeled off the layers of outerwear and wedged her coat in among the boys’ things in the tiny hall closet, then ducked into the powder room, disheartened to see she hadn’t turned into a Swedish bikini model in the last three minutes. It pissed her off that it mattered to her. She didn’t want to care what Speed thought when he looked at her, but she couldn’t seem to shake that particular vanity.

Unfortunately, she looked exactly how she felt: older than she wanted to be, worn, tired and jaded by life and by having just watched the autopsy of a young woman whose gruesome death had earned her the nickname Zombie Doe. Möller had estimated the dead girl to be between fourteen and eighteen—roughly the same age as Nikki’s own children.

She splashed cold water on her face and rubbed some color into her cheeks with the towel, then finger-combed her hair and muttered, “Fuck it,” under her breath.

In the living room Speed and R.J. were playing Nerf football as the television crowd cheered. Speed, ball cap backward on his head, grunted out a play, ran backward in his stocking feet, and fired the bright green football with a rocket arm. R.J. bolted across the width of the room, hurdled an ottoman, and crashed onto the sofa, then leapt up with the ball in hand. Father and son hooted and hollered and did a victory dance that knocked over a lamp.

Nikki said nothing. She would already be considered the bad guy by default in this scenario. No need to dig the hole any deeper over a lamp.

Neither Speed nor R.J. had noticed her yet. She watched them with an old familiar pang of envy in her chest. Hallmark couldn’t have conjured up a more adorable father-son picture: the matching football jerseys, the matching backward caps, the matching bad-boy grins as they grabbed hold of each other and wrestled each other to the floor.

R.J. had always been a mini-Speed. Looking at them side by side was like looking at some kind of crazy time-warp photo. At thirteen, R.J.’s body was only just beginning its metamorphosis from boy to adolescent. He was still on the small side. His shoulders were just starting to widen. The baby fat was beginning to melt from his once-cherubic cheeks. Beside him was the grown man he would become: broad shouldered, flat bellied, square jawed, handsome.

These days Speed was sporting a laser-sharp trimmed mustache and goatee that emphasized the angles of his face and gave him a certain sinister edge. Time and life had etched lines beside his too-blue eyes, but instead of aging him, instead of making him look tired—as those same lines did to her—they only served to give him a sexy ruggedness. She hated him for that.

“Uh-oh,” Speed said, looking up. “We’re busted, sport!”

“Nice to see you too, Speed,” she said. “I thought you’d left the country. You haven’t been answering your phone.”

“Lost it,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Again?”

He shrugged, unconcerned with the phone or the lie. He shoved up the sleeves of his jersey, displaying a blue-inked sleeve of tattoos on his left arm. A tat artist’s masterpiece, the work of art ran from shoulder to wrist, depicting an epic battle of good and evil, complete with a horned demon and an avenging angel.

Nikki always wondered which character represented Speed. The conclusion she inevitably came to was both. Working undercover narcotics, Speed Hatcher’s world was gray with the rot of moral ambiguity. He was both the good guy and the bad guy, depending on the scenario, depending on the point of view. He had always been too comfortable with that dichotomy. What made him so very good at his job made him equally bad at being a husband and a father.

“I smell chili,” she said, choosing diplomacy. “Hungry, R.J.? Or have you guys spent the whole afternoon eating junk?”

“Both,” R.J. said, tossing the Nerf ball back to his father.

“Where’s Kyle?” she asked, turning for the kitchen.

“Who cares?” R.J. crabbed. “He’s a jerk.”

“He went to a friend’s house,” Speed said.

Nikki turned back around. “And you let him?”

“Sure. What’s the big deal?”

“R.J., please go wash up for dinner,” she said pointedly.

Her son rolled his eyes. “Are you guys gonna have a fight already? Jeez, Mom. You just got here.”

“We’re not having a fight; we’re having a discussion,” Nikki said. “And not in front of you, so as not to further warp your perception of male-female relationships. Go wash up.”

Father and son exchanged a glance and a shrug that clearly said,
Women. What can you do?
R.J. bounded up the stairs.

Nikki put her full attention on her ex, giving him a meaningful look as she stepped across the hall into her small home office. He followed, rolling his shoulders back like a fighter getting loose before the bell. She closed the door behind him.

“Did you truly not get my messages?” she asked. “Kyle was in a fight last night. He’s got half a concussion. How could you just let him go?”

“What was I supposed to do? Arrest him?”

She thought her eyes might burst from her head at the sudden rise in her blood pressure. Her jaw hurt from biting back a flood of angry words. “Did you speak to him?”

“About what?”

“Oh my God, I want to hit you in the head with a brick,” she said. “I don’t know what would be worse—believing you’re a flip asshole or believing you really are just that obtuse.”

Speed rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, Nikki, he’s a fifteen-year-old boy. He got in a scrape. It’s not the end of the fucking world.”

“He
lied
to me about it.”

“Did you miss the part where I said he’s a fifteen-year-old boy?”

“Kyle does not lie to me. He didn’t inherit your comfort with it, thank God,” she said. “He lied to me about what happened. I believe he lied to me about where he was when it happened—”

“Have you checked his story out?”

“I’ve been at an autopsy all afternoon.”

“And your vic is going to get more dead while you take the time to make a couple of phone calls?”

Nikki gasped. “Don’t you dare give me a hard time about making a phone call! You can’t even be bothered to answer when I leave you a message that your son is in trouble. And don’t give me that bullshit story about losing your phone. I called every number you have. Why don’t you just say you don’t give a shit?”

“You overreact to everything, Nikki! A kid gets a fucking hangnail and you’re texting me with the 911! So he got in a scrape. So he got popped. So he hit the kid back. So what?”

“Thank you for reminding me yet again why I’m not still married to you. You don’t get this at all, do you?”

“I guess not. Never mind that I was a fifteen-year-old boy once.”

“You’re still a fifteen-year-old boy,” Nikki argued. “That’s half the problem.”

“And what’s the other half?” he asked. “Not you. Not you blowing every fucking thing out of proportion.”

“When am I supposed to bring you into the equation, Speed?” she asked. “When are you available for consultation on this? He’s having problems at school—a kid who has
never
had problems at school. He’s having problems getting along with other kids—a kid who has
never
been in a fight in his life. He’s lying to me about where he’s going and what he’s doing—a kid who has
never
told me a lie. Just when are you willing to get involved here,
Dad
? When am I supposed to call you? When he’s jacked an automatic weapon and gone into school with guns ablazing?”

Speed slapped his hands to the sides of his head as if to keep it from popping off his neck. “That is
so
you, Nikki! You jump from
A
to fucking Armageddon! He’s embarrassed to tell you he got his ass kicked, and you’ve got him planning the next Columbine massacre. Jesus!”

“And you don’t find any of this alarming in the least?” she said. “Mr. Drug Enforcement Officer. A fifteen-year-old boy’s grades are suddenly slipping. He’s having trouble with friends. He’s lying to his parents and exhibiting secretive behavior. This doesn’t send up a red flag with you at all?”

“Kyle’s not using,” he said, and though his attitude was dismissive, Nikki thought she might have caught the briefest flash of alarm in the very backs of his blue eyes. “He’s too smart a kid for that.”

“He’s fifteen,” Nikki said, happy to throw one of his own lines back at him.

Speed physically took a step back from the argument, resting his hands at his waist, and blew out a sigh. “I’ll have a talk with him when he gets home.”

“Thank you.”

They both stood there, breathing hard, as if they had been wrestling physically as well as verbally. The fight was over. All the hard energy had been burned off. Awkwardness descended.
So strange,
Nikki thought. They’d spent so many years fighting, it didn’t make any sense that they still felt awkward in the aftermath.