“Her friend, Michele Fine, claims not to know of any either,” Liska said. “And I think she'd know. She's a walking scratch pad herself.”
“Did she ever come in to get printed?” Kovac asked, digging through a messy stack of notes.
“I haven't had time to check.”
A cell phone rang, and Quinn swore and got up from the table, digging in the pocket of his suit coat.
Adler pointed at the television, where scenes from the car fire filled the screen. “Hey, there's Kojak!”
The sun guns washed Kovac's skin out to the color of parchment. He frowned heavily at the cameras and shut down the questions with a stiff rendition of “The investigation is sensitive and ongoing. We have no comment at this time.”
“You need to lose that mustache, Sam,” Liska said. “You look like Mr. Peabody from Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
“Any mutilation on the latest vic?” Tippen called from the coffeepot.
“Autopsy's scheduled for eight,” Kovac said, check-ing his watch. Seven-forty. He turned to Moss. “Rob Marshall from legal services will meet you at the Phoenix. That's the brass making public nice-nice with the Urskines after the Bitch Queen of the North kicked up that stink last night.
“Personally, I don't care how offended they are. I want someone to have a heart-to-heart with Vampira's mate at the station later today. Mary, ask him to come in, and be vague when they demand to know why. Routine procedure, like that. And ask if they have a credit card receipt or canceled check from the cabin they were in the weekend Lila White was killed.
“Gregg Urskine was one of the last people to see our witness last night. The first vic was a guest of theirs. The second was a friend of one of their current hookers. That's too many close calls for me,” Kovac declared.
“Toni Urskine will be on the phone to every news outlet in the metro,” Yurek cautioned.
“If we're polite, that only makes her look bad,” Kovac said. “We're being thorough, leaving no stone unturned. That's what Toni Urskine wanted.”
“Did we get anything from the meeting last night?” Hamill asked.
“Nothing of use to us from the cars,” Elwood said. “Just the videotape.”
Kovac checked his watch again. “I'll look at it later. Doc'll be sharpening her knives. You with me, GQ?”
Quinn held up a hand in acknowledgment and signed off on his call. They grabbed their coats and went out the back way.
The snow had covered the filth of the alley—including Kovac's car—camouflaging tire hazards like broken Thunderbird and Colt 45 malt liquor bottles, which covered the ground in these downtown alleys like dead leaves. Kovac pulled a brush out from under a pile of junk in the backseat and swept off the windshields, the hood, and the taillights.
“You got back to your hotel all right last night?” he asked as they slid into their seats and he turned the engine over. “'Cause I sure could've taken you. It's not that much out of my way.”
“No. I was fine. It was fine,” Quinn said, not looking at him. He could feel Kovac's gaze on him. “Kate was so upset over that tape, I wanted to make sure she was all right.”
“Uh-huh. Was she? All right?”
“No. She thinks that body was her witness, that those screams were the screams of her witness being tortured. She blames herself.”
“Well, it's probably a good thing you saw her home, then. What'd you do? Catch a cab downtown?”
“Yeah,” he lied, the morning scene playing through his mind.
Waking up and looking at Kate across the pillow in the faint light, touching her, watching those incredible clear gray eyes open, seeing the uncertainty there. He would rather have been able to say making love had solved all their problems, but that wasn't true. It had given them some solace, reconnected their souls, and complicated everything. But, God, it had been like returning to heaven after years in purgatory.
Now what? The unspoken question had hung between them awkwardly as they'd cleaned up, gotten dressed, grabbed bagels, and hustled out the door. There had been no morning afterglow touching, kissing, lingering passion. There had been no time to talk, not that he could have gotten Kate to. Her first tendency when feeling cornered was to retreat within herself, shut the door, and stew. God knew he wasn't much better.
She'd dropped him off at the Radisson. He'd shaved too hastily, thrown on a fresh suit, and run out the door, late.
“I tried to call you this morning,” Kovac said, putting the car in reverse but keeping his foot on the brake. “You didn't answer.”
“Must have been in the shower.” Quinn stayed poker-faced. “Did you leave a message? I didn't take time to check.”
“Just wanted to see how Kate was doing.”
“Then why didn't you call her?” Quinn asked, his temper tightening. He looked at Kovac and turned the conversation around on a dime. “You know, if you'd shown this much interest in the White murder back when, we may not be here right now.”
Kovac flushed. More with guilt than anger, Quinn thought, though the cop played the latter. “I did that case by the numbers.”
“You took the express lane, Sam. How else do you explain missing that tattoo?”
“We asked. I'm sure we did. We must have,” Kovac said, certain, then less so, then not at all. He craned his neck and looked out the back window as he let his foot off the brake. “Maybe we didn't ask the right person. Maybe no one had noticed the goddamn thing.”
“Her parents are a couple of square pegs from a farming town. You think they wouldn't have noticed their daughter had a calla lily tattooed on her chest? You think none of her regular johns noticed it?”
Kovac gunned the engine, rocked the car out of its spot too fast, then hit the brakes too hard. The Caprice slid on the slick wet snow and the back bumper met the corner of a trash Dumpster with a nasty thud.
“Shit!”
Quinn winced, then relaxed, his attention still on Kovac. “You never checked the Urskines' alibi when Lila White was killed.”
“I didn't make them produce the receipt. What motive did they have to kill the woman? None. Besides, Toni Urskine was kicking up such a stink that we weren't trying hard enough . . .”
“I read the reports,” Quinn said. “You worked the case hard for a week, then less and less and less. Same thing with Fawn Pierce.”
Kovac cracked the window open, lit a cigarette, and blew the first lungful outside. The Caprice still sat cockeyed, ass up against the Dumpster. Liska came out of the building and pointed at him, shaking her head, then climbed into her car.
“You've seen enough of these cases to know how it works,” he said. “A hooker buys it, the department is about as concerned as if someone had run over a stray dog. Tag 'em, bag 'em, give 'em the no-frills investigation. If the case isn't solved fast, it gets pushed to the back burner to make way for the taxpaying citizens getting murdered by jealous husbands and crack-crazed carjackers.
“I did what I could while I could,” he said, staring out the windshield at the falling snow.
“I believe you, Sam.” Though Quinn thought Kovac did not entirely believe himself. The regret was etched in the lines of his weathered face. “It's just too bad for those other three victims that it wasn't enough.”
“HOW LONG HAD you known Fawn Pierce?” Mary Moss asked.
In the den of the Phoenix House, she sat down at one end of a pea-green couch, silently inviting Rita Renner to take the other end, creating a certain sense of intimacy. A spring poked her in the butt.
“About two years,” Renner said, so softly Mary reached out to the small tape recorder on the coffee table and pushed it closer. “We met downtown and we just got to be friends.”
“You worked the same territory?”