“Final outcome.”
“Dig deeper. A lot of Peeping Toms bargain down their first couple of offenses. They seem too pathetic to be worth charging out on a low-end sex crime. Check out the tickets too. Check the locations the tickets were issued in relation to the address of the trespass charges.”
Tippen leaned toward Adler. “Yeah, we might have a serial weenie wagger on our hands.”
“They all start somewhere, Tippen,” Quinn said. “The Boston Strangler started out looking in windows, jerking off, and some asshole cop shrugged that off too.”
The detective started to come up out of his chair. “Hey, fu—”
“Put 'em back in your pants, guys,” Kovac ordered. “We got no time to get out the yardstick. Tinks, find out if this mutt did his community service in the parks.”
“And find out what kind of car he's driving,” Quinn added.
“Will do. I made a point of telling him about the meeting tonight. I'm betting he shows.”
“Speaking of,” Kovac said. “I want everyone there by seven-thirty. We'll have surveillance units from the BCA and from narcotics pulling plate numbers off the cars in the parking lot. Yurek will be our master of ceremonies. I want the rest of you in the crowd, and for God's sake, try not to look like cops.”
“Except the cover boy,” Tippen said, holding up a copy of the day's Star Tribune with the headline FBI's Top Profiler on the Case. “You might get two headlines in a row, Slick.”
Quinn frowned, reining in his temper, fighting the urge to put his fist in Tippen's mouth. Christ, he knew better than to let jerks like Tippen yank his chain. He'd dealt with a hundred of them in the last year alone. “I don't want a headline. I'll say a few words, but I'll keep it brief and I'll keep it vague.”
“Just like you have with us?”
“What do you want me to tell you, Tippen? That the killer will be wearing one red shoe?”
“It'd be something. What the hell have you given us so far for our tax dollars? An age range, the possible description of two vehicles the guy may or may not drive. That he slept with his mother and jacked off with porno magazines? Big deal.”
“It will be if you get a suspect. And I don't believe I ever said anything about him sleeping with his mother.”
“Tip reliving his childhood.”
“Fuck you, Chunk.”
“Maybe,” Quinn said, watching the homely sheriff's detective just to see him twitch. “The UNSUB, that is. It's likely there was inappropriate sexual behavior both in the home in general and toward this man specifically when he was a child. His mother was probably promiscuous, possibly a prostitute. His father was a weak or absent figure. Discipline was inconsistent, swinging from nonexistent to extreme.
“He was a bright kid, but in trouble a lot at school. He couldn't relate to other kids. His mind was full of thoughts of domination and control of his peers. He was cruel to animals and to other children. He started fires, he stole things. He was a pathological liar at an early age.
“In high school he had trouble concentrating because of his addiction to his sexual fantasies, which were already becoming violent. He got into trouble with authority figures, maybe had run-ins with the police. His mother smoothed over the problems, rationalized for him, got him off the hook, thereby reinforcing a pattern where he was never held accountable for his destructive actions toward others. This empowered him and encouraged him to try even more extreme behavior. It also reinforced a lack of respect for his mother.”
Tippen raised his hands. “And unless the guy sitting next to me tonight turns and says, ‘Hi, my name is Harry. My mother had sex with me when I was a kid,' it's all just so much crap.”
“I think you're full of crap, Tippen,” Liska said. “When I'm digging up stuff on Vanlees, if I see any of these red flags, I can use them.”
“The analysis is a tool,” Quinn said. “You can make it work for you or you can leave it in the toolbox.
“When you're in the crowd tonight, watch for anyone who seems overstimulated—excited or nervous or too conscious of the people around them. Listen for anyone who seems to have too great a command of the facts of the case, anyone who seems unusually familiar with police work. Or you can take Detective Tippen's approach and wait for someone to tell you he fucked his mother.”
“G, you know what you can do with that smart mouth?” Tippen said, rising again.
Kovac stepped between them. “Take yours over to Patrick's and stick a sandwich in it, Tippen. Go now, before you piss me off and I tell you not to come back.”
A sour look twisted Tippen's face. “Oh, fuck this,” he muttered, grabbing his coat and walking away.
Kovac looked askance at Quinn. A phone was ringing in one of the rooms down the hall. The rest of the task force began to disperse, everyone wanting to grab a bite or a drink before the big event.
“Being a good cop and being an asshole are not exclusive,” Liska said, pulling on her coat.
“You talking about him or me?” Quinn said with chagrin.
“Hey, Sam!” Elwood called. “Come take a look at this.”
“Tippen's a jerk, but he's a good detective,” Liska said.
“It's all right.” Quinn gave an absent smile as he slipped his trench coat on. “Skepticism makes for a good investigator.”
“You think so?” She narrowed her eyes and looked at him sideways, then laughed and popped him on the arm. “Just a little cop humor. So, we've got some more background on Jillian and the two hookers. You want to sit down over dinner and go over it? Or maybe after the meeting tonight we could get a drink somewhere. . . .”
“Hey, Tinks,” Kovac barked as he strode back into the room with a fistful of fax paper. “No hitting on the fed.”
Liska reddened. “Go bite yourself, Kojak.”
“You'd pay money to see that.”
“I'd throw pennies at your ugly butt.”
He hooked a thumb in her direction as she walked away and gave Quinn a wry look. “She's crazy about me.”
Liska flipped him off over her shoulder.
Kovac shrugged and turned to business. “You up for a ride, GQ? I need an extra hammer in my toolbox.”
“What's the occasion?”
His eyes were as bright as a zealot's as he held up the fax. “Jillian Bondurant's cell phone records. She made two phone calls after midnight Saturday morning—after she left the old homestead. One to the headshrinker and one to Daddy Dearest.”
HE SAW THEM coming. Standing in the immaculate music room beside the baby grand piano that held a small gallery of framed photos of Jillian as a small child, he saw the car pull up at the gate. A dirt-brown domestic piece of junk. Kovac.
The intercom buzzed. Helen hadn't left yet. She was in the kitchen preparing his dinner. She would get the buzzer and she would let Kovac in because he was with the police, and like every older middle-class American woman in the country, she would not defy the police.
Not for the first time he thought he should have brought his personal assistant in from Paragon to guard his gates both figuratively and literally, but he didn't want another person that close to him now. Bad enough to have Edwyn Noble at his heels every time he turned around. He had purposely sent his media relations coordinator away from him to deal with the news and sensation seekers, who insisted on crowding his gate nevertheless.
Car doors. Quinn walked around from the passenger's side, an elegant figure, head up, shoulders square. Kovac, disheveled, hair sticking up in back, finished a cigarette and dropped it on the driveway. His trench coat flapped open in the wind.
Peter stared at the photographs for another minute. Jillian, too serious at the keyboard. Always something dark and turbulent and sad in her eyes. Her first recital. And her second, and third. Dressed up in frilly frocks that had never suited her—too innocent and prim, representative of the kind of carefree girlishness his daughter had never possessed.