“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.