The girl had clearly expected a confrontation. She sat back, a little bemused, slightly disappointed. “You're not like any social worker I ever knew.”
“How many have you known?”
“A few. They were either bitches or so goody-goody, I wanted to puke.”
“Yeah, well, plenty of people will tell you I qualify on one count.”
“But you're different. I don't know,” she said, struggling for the definition she wanted. “It's like you've been around or something.”
“Let's just say I didn't come into this job via the usual route.”
“What's that mean?”
“It means I don't sweat the small stuff and I don't take any shit.”
“If you don't take any shit, then who beat you up?”
“Above and beyond the call of duty.” Kate tossed the Tylenol back and washed it down with water. “You should see the other guy. So, any familiar faces in those mug books today?”
Angie's mood shifted with the subject, her pouty mouth turning down at the corners, her gaze dropping to the tabletop. “No. I would have said.”
“Would you?” Kate muttered, earning a sullen glance. “They'll want you to work with the sketch artist in the morning. How do you think that'll go? Did you see him well enough to describe him?”
“I saw him in the fire,” Angie murmured.
“How far away were you?”
Angie traced a gouge mark in the tabletop with one bitten fingernail. “I don't know. Not far. I was cutting through the park and I had to pee, so I ducked behind some bushes. And then he came down the hill . . . and he was carrying that—”
Her face tightened and she bit her lip, hanging her head lower, obviously in the hope that her hair would hide the emotion that had rushed to the surface. Kate waited patiently, keenly aware of the girl's rising tension. Even to a streetwise kid like Angie, seeing what she had seen had to be an unimaginable shock. The stress of that and the stress of what she had been through at the police station, compounded by exhaustion, would all have to eventually take a toll.
And I want to be there when the poor kid breaks down, she thought, never pleased with that aspect of her job. The system was supposed to champion the victim, but it often victimized them again in the process. And the advocate was caught in the middle—an employee of the system, there supposedly to protect the citizen who was being dragged into the teeth of the justice machine.
The waitress returned with their drinks. Kate ordered cheeseburgers and fries for both of them and handed the menus back.
“I—I didn't know what he was carrying,” Angie whispered when the waitress was out of earshot. “I just knew someone was coming and I needed to hide.”
Like an animal that knew too well the night was stalked by predators of one kind or another.
“A park's a scary place late at night, I suppose,” Kate said softly, turning her wineglass by the stem. “Everybody loves to go in daylight. We think it's so pretty, so nice to get away from the city. Then night comes, and suddenly it's like the evil forest out of The Wizard of Oz. Nobody wants to be there in the dead of night. So what were you doing there, Angie?”
“I told you, I was just cutting through.”
“Cutting from where to where at that hour?” She kept her tone casual.
Angie hunkered over her rum and Coke and took a long pull on the straw. Tense. Forcing the anger back up to replace the fear.
“Angie, I've been around. I've seen things even you wouldn't believe,” Kate said. “Nothing you tell me could shock me.”
The girl gave a humorless half-laugh and looked toward the television that hung above one end of the bar. Local news anchor Paul Magers was looking grave and handsome as he related the story of a madman run amok in the county government center. They flashed a mug shot and told about the recent breakup of the man's marriage, his wife having taken their children and gone into hiding in a shelter a week before.
Precipitating stressors, Kate thought, not surprised.
“Nobody cares if you were breaking the law, Angie. Murder overrules everything—burglary, prostitution, poaching squirrels—which I personally consider a service to the community,” she said. “I had a squirrel in my attic last month. Vermin menace. They're nothing but rats with furry tails.”
No reaction. No smile. No overblown teenage outrage at her callous disregard for animal life.
“I'm not trying to lean on you here, Angie. I'm telling you as your advocate: The sooner you come clean about everything that went down last night, the better for all concerned—yourself included. The county attorney has his shorts in a knot over this case. He tried to tell Sergeant Kovac he should treat you as a suspect.”
Alarm rounded the girl's eyes. “Fuck him! I didn't do anything!”
“Kovac believes you, which is why you're not sitting in a cell right now. That and the fact that I wouldn't allow it. But this is serious shit, Angie. This killer is public enemy number one, and you're the only person who's seen him and lived to tell the tale. You're in the hot seat.”
Elbows on the table, the girl dropped her face into her hands and mumbled between her fingers, “God, this sucks!”
“You've got that right, sweetie,” Kate said softly. “But here's the deal, plain and simple. This nut job is going to go on killing until somebody stops him. Maybe you can help stop him.”
She waited. Held her breath. Willed the poor kid over the edge. She could see through the bars of Angie's fingers: the girl's face going red with the pressure of holding the emotions in. She could see the tension in the thin shoulders, feel the anticipation that thickened the air around her.
But nothing in this situation was going to be plain or simple, Kate thought as her pager began to shrill inside her purse. The moment, the opportunity, was gone. She swore silently as she dug through the bag, cursing the inconvenience of modern conveniences.
“Think about it, Angie,” she said as she rose from her chair. “You're it, and I'm here to help you.”
That makes me IT by association, she thought as she headed to the pay phone in the alcove by the bathrooms.
No. Nothing about this would be plain or simple.
7
CHAPTER
“WHAT THE HELL did you do with my witness, Red?” Kovac leaned against the wall of the autopsy suite, the receiver of the phone jammed between his shoulder and his ear. He slipped a hand inside the surgical gown he wore over his clothes, pulled a little jar of Mentholatum from his jacket pocket, and smeared a gob around each nostril.
“I thought it'd be nice to treat her like a human being and feed her a real meal as opposed to the crap you give people at the cop shop,” Kate said.
“You don't like doughnuts? What kind of American are you?”
“The kind who has at least a partial grasp of the concept of civil liberties.”
“Yeah, fine, all right, I get it.” He plugged his free ear with a finger as the blade of a bone saw whined against a whetstone in the background. “Sabin asks, I'm gonna tell him you nabbed her before I could throw her in the slammer—which is true. Better your lovely tit in a wringer than my johnson.”
“Don't worry about Sabin. I've got his okay on a memo.”
“Do you have a picture of him signing it? Is it notarized?”
“God, you're a raving paranoid.”
“How do you think I've lived this long on the job?”
“It wasn't from kissing ass and following orders. That's for damn sure.”
He had to laugh. Kate called a spade a spade. And she was right. He handled his cases as he thought best, not with an eye to publicity or promotion. “So where are you taking the angel after this grand feast?”