by Tami Hoag
“Had she mentioned seeing anyone in particular last summer?” she asked when the rant ended. “A steady boyfriend? Someone who might have been a problem to her?”
“We've answered all these questions before,” Jeannie White said impatiently. “It's like you people don't bother to write anything down. 'Course it didn't matter when it was just our girl dead,” she said, the sarcasm as pointed as a needle. “We didn't see no task force on the news when it was just our Lila murdered. The police never cared—”
“That's not true, Mrs. White.”
“They never cared when that drug dealer beat her up last fall neither. They never even bothered to have a trial. It's like our girl didn't count.” The woman's eyes and throat filled with tears. “She wasn't important enough to anyone but us.”
Moss offered apologies, knowing they wouldn't be accepted. No explanation could penetrate the hurt, the imagined insult, the anger, the pain. It didn't matter to the Whites that an individual murder was, by necessity, handled differently from a string of related murders. It mattered to them that the child they had loved had fallen down one of life's darker paths. It mattered to them she had died a prostitute. That was how she would be remembered by the world, when she was remembered at all. Victim number one, convicted prostitute and drug addict.
The Whites probably saw the headlines in their sleep. The hopes they had held for their daughter to turn her life around had died unfulfilled, and no one else in the world cared that Lila had wanted to become a counselor or that she had been a B student in high school or that she had often cried her heart out over not being able to raise her own child.
In the file folder on the passenger seat of Moss's car were snapshots of Lila and Kylie in the Whites' backyard. Smiling and laughing, and wearing party hats for Kylie's fourth birthday. Photos of mother and daughter splashing in a green plastic wading pool. Three weeks later someone had tortured the life from Lila White, desecrated her body and set it on fire like a pile of garbage.
Victim number one, convicted prostitute and drug addict.
Moss went through the reassurances in her own mind. The police couldn't form a task force for every homicide in the city. Lila White's murder had been investigated fully. Sam Kovac had caught the case, and Kovac's reputation was that he did his best for every victim, regardless of who or what they had been in life.
Still, she couldn't help but wonder—as Jeannie White had wondered aloud—how differently things might have turned out if Jillian Bondurant had been victim number one.
THE LOCKS HAD been changed on Jillian Bondurant's town house at Edgewater and a new key delivered to the PD. Liska worked the shiny new key into the dead bolt and opened the door. She went to the bedrooms with Michele Fine and watched as Fine looked through the closets, pausing now and again to linger briefly over something that struck a memory for her.
“Jesus, it's eerie,” she said, looking around. “Seeing the place so clean.”
“Jillian didn't have a cleaning service?”
“No. Her old man tried to give her maid service as a present once. He's the most anal man on the planet. Jillie said no. She didn't want people going through her stuff.
“I don't see anything missing,” she said finally.
As she stood at Jillian's dresser, her gaze drifted across the few objects there: a mahogany jewelry box, some scented candles in mismatched holders, a small porcelain figurine of an elegant woman in a flowing blue dress. She touched the figurine carefully, her expression wistful.
As Fine gathered her few clothing items from the guest bedroom, Liska walked down the steps and took in the main rooms at a glance, seeing the place differently from before she'd met Jillian's friend. It should have been a mess, but it wasn't. She'd never known a killer to offer maid services as part of the package, but someone had cleaned the place up. Not just wiped it down to get rid of prints. Cleaned it, folded and put away clothes, washed the dishes.
Her thoughts turned back to Michele Fine and Jillian as friends. They must have seemed an unlikely pair: a billionaire's daughter and a coffeehouse waitress. If there had been a ransom demand to Peter Bondurant, the relationship would have automatically fallen under scrutiny. Even without it, the suspicions flashed through Liska's mind out of habit.
Considered and dismissed. Michele Fine was cooperating fully. Nothing she had said or done seemed out of place. Her grief appeared genuine, and was colored with the shades of anger and relief and guilt Liska had encountered time and again in the people a murder victim left behind.
Still, she would run Michele Fine's name through the computer and see if anything kicked up.
She crossed the living room to the electronic piano. Jillian Bondurant had written music but was too shy to perform. That was the kind of detail that made her a real person in a way that knowing she was Peter Bondurant's daughter did not. The sheet music stacked neatly on the stand was classical. Another contradiction in Jillian's image. Liska lifted the padded seat and glanced through the collection there: folk, rock, alternative, new age—
“Hold it right there!”
Her first impulse was to go for her gun, but she held herself bent over at the piano stool, breathing through her mouth. Slowly, she turned her head and relief swept through her, her temper hot on its heels.
“It's me, Mr. Vanlees. Detective Liska,” she said, straightening. “Put the gun down, please.”
Vanlees stood just inside the doorway in his security guard's uniform, a Colt Python clutched in his hands. Liska wanted to pull the gun away from him and smack him in the head with it.
He blinked at her and lowered the weapon, a barely sheepish grin pulling at his mouth. “Oh, jeez, Detective, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were coming over. When I saw there was someone moving around over here, I thought the worst. You know, tabloid reporters have been coming around. I hear they'll steal anything that's not nailed down.”
“You didn't recognize my car, then?” Liska said with a little too much edge.
“Uh, I guess I didn't. Sorry.”
Like hell, she thought. Wanna-bes like Vanlees took note of everything about the cops they encountered in the real world. She would have bet he had her tag number written down somewhere. He sure as hell recognized the make and model. This little show had been about impressing her. Gil Vanlees: Man of Action. On his toes. On the job. Ever diligent. God help us all.
Liska shook her head. “That's quite the gun you've got there, Gil,” she said, moving toward him. “Don't suppose I've got to ask if you've got a permit for it?”
The eyes went a little cold and the smile sagged out of his face. He didn't like having her reprimand him. He didn't want to be reminded his uniform wasn't the real deal. He stuck the nose of the Python under his belt and eased the gun into place alongside his gut. “Yeah, I got a permit.”
Liska forced a smile. “That's some piece of hardware. Not really a good idea to come up behind people with it, Gil. You never know what might happen. Reflexes a little too sharp that day and you blow somebody away. That'd be a bad deal all the way around, you know.”
He wouldn't meet her eyes now, like a kid being scolded for getting into his father's tools.
“You say reporters have been nosing around here? No one's been in the house though, right?”
His attention shifted further away, and he frowned harder. Liska glanced over her shoulder. Michele Fine stood at the bottom of the steps with her messy pile of black clothing clutched to her. She looked offended by Vanlees's presence.
“Mr. Vanlees?” Liska prompted, turning back to him as Michele went into the kitchen. “No one's been in the house that you know of, right?”
“Right.” He moved back a step toward the door, his hand resting on the butt of the Python. He kept his gaze on Michele, watching her as she dumped her clothes on the counter that divided kitchen and eating area. “I gotta go,” he said glumly. “I was just keeping an eye out, that's all.”
Liska followed him out onto the stoop. “Hey, G
il, I'm sorry if I snapped at you back there. You got the drop on me. Shook me up, you know.”
He didn't bite this time. She had questioned his honor, impugned his status as a peer, bruised his ego. The rapport she had built two days ago teetered on its foundation. She had expected it to hold up better, and found its fragility telling. Another point to bring up with Quinn: Vanlees's self-image.
He barely looked at her, pouting. “Sure. No problem.”
“I'm glad you're keeping an eye out,” she said. “You heard about the community meeting tonight, right? You might want to drop by that if you get a chance.”
Liska watched him walk away, wondering. From a distance Vanlees looked like a city cop in his blue-over-black uniform. It would be an easy thing for a guy in a uniform to get a woman to stop for him, talk to him. All three of Smokey Joe's victims had vanished with no report of a scream, no suspicious activity in the area. On the other hand, no one had mentioned seeing a uniform in the vicinity either.
“I'm ready.”
She started a little at Michele Fine's announcement, and turned to find her standing in the doorway, her clothes crammed into a plastic bag from Rainbow Foods.
“Right. Great. I'll drive you back.”
She locked up the house, Fine waiting for her at the bottom of the steps. Vanlees had disappeared down the winding path, but not from Liska's mind.
“You know that guy?” she asked as they settled into the car.
“Not personally,” Fine said, hugging her Rainbow bag as if it were an infant. “Like I said before, who pays any attention to the losers?”
No one, Liska thought as she put the car in gear. And while no one was paying any attention to them, the losers were allowed to brood and fantasize and imagine getting back at all the women who didn't want them and would never love them.
15
CHAPTER
“SO, WHAT DO you think, John?” Sabin asked. “Is the girl holding back on us?”
They sat in a conference room in the county attorney's offices: Quinn, Sabin, Kate, and Marshall. Quinn looked at Kate, sitting across from him with her jaw set and fire in her eyes, plainly telegraphing violence if he stepped on the wrong side of this argument. Just another minefield to cross. He kept his gaze on hers.
“Yes.” The fire flared brighter. “Because she's afraid. She's probably feeling that the killer somehow knows what she's doing, as if he's watching her when she's talking with the police or describing him to your sketch artist. It's a common phenomenon. Isn't that right, Kate?”
“Yes.” A banked fire in the eyes now. Reserving the right to burn him later. He liked it too much that she could still feel that strongly about him. Negative emotion was still emotion. Indifference was the thing to dread.
“A sense of omniscient evil,” Marshall said, nodding wisely. “I've seen it time and again. It's fascinating. Even the most logical, sensible victims experience it.”
He played with the VCR remote, running the tape back to the beginning of Angie DiMarco's initial interview, which had occurred within an hour of her being picked up. They had already gone through it. Freezing the tape at significant points, when Marshall and Sabin would then turn and stare at Quinn, waiting for a revelation like the disciples sitting at the feet of Christ.
“She's clearly terrified here,” Marshall said, repeating with authority what Quinn had said the first time they'd run through it. “You can see her shaking. You can hear it in her voice. You're absolutely right, John.”
John. My buddy, my pal, my colleague. The familiarity rubbed Quinn the wrong way, even though it was something he purposely cultivated. He was tired of people pretending to know him, and even more tired of the people overly impressed with him. He wondered how impressed Rob Marshall would be to know he woke up in the middle of most nights, shaking and sick because he couldn't handle it anymore.
Marshall edged up the volume at a point where the girl lost her temper and shouted, voice quavering, “I don't know him! He set a fucking body on fire! He's some kind of fucking psycho!”
“She's not faking that,” he pronounced quietly, squinting hard at the television screen, as if that would sharpen his myopic vision and allow him to see into the girl's mind.
Sabin looked displeased, as though he had been hoping for some excuse to put the girl on the rack. “Maybe she'd feel safer behind bars.”
“Angie hasn't done anything wrong,” Kate snapped. “She never had to admit she even saw this creep. She needs our help, not your threats.”
Color starting creeping up from the county attorney's collar.
“We don't want an adversarial situation here, Ted,” Quinn said calmly. Mr. Laid Back. Mr. Coolheaded.
“The girl set herself up that way,” Sabin argued. “I had a bad feeling about her the minute I set eyes on her. We should have called her bluff right off the bat. Let her know we're not screwing around here.”
“I think you handled her perfectly,” Quinn said. “A kid like Angie doesn't trust the system. You needed to give her a friend, and Kate was the ideal choice. She's genuine, she's blunt, she's not full of crap and phony sympathy. Let Kate handle her. You won't get anything out of her with threats. She expects threats; they'll just bounce off her.”
“If she doesn't give us something we can use, there's nothing to handle,” Sabin came back. “If she can't give us anything, then there's no point in wasting county resources on her.”
“It's not a waste,” Kate insisted.
“What do you think here, John?” Marshall asked, pointing to the screen with the remote. He had run the tape back again. “Her use of personal pronouns—I don't know him. He's some kind of psycho. Do you think it could be significant?”
Quinn blew out a breath, impatience creeping in on his temper. “What's she going to call the guy—it?”
One corner of Kate's mouth twitched.
Marshall sulked. “I've taken courses in psycholinguistics. The use of language can be very telling.”
“I agree,” Quinn offered, recovering diplomatically. “But there is such a thing as overanalyzing. I think the best thing you can do with this girl is step back and let Kate deal with her.”
“Dammit, we need a break,” Sabin said almost to himself. “She barely added anything to that sketch today. She stood right there and looked at the guy, and the picture she gives us could be anybody.”
“It might be all her mind is allowing her to see,” Kate said. “What do you want her to do, Ted? Make something up just so you believe she's trying harder?”
“I'm sure that's not what Mr. Sabin was suggesting, Kate,” Marshall said with disapproval.
“I was being facetious to make a point, Rob.”
“She's valuable to the investigation regardless,” Quinn said. “We can use the threat of her. We can leak things to the press. Make it sound like she's told us more than she has. We can use her any number of ways. At this point she doesn't have to be a Girl Scout and she doesn't have to have total recall.”
“My fear here is that she's lying about the whole thing,” Sabin admitted, Edwyn Noble's skepticism having taken root.
Kate tried not to roll her eyes. “We've been over that. It doesn't make any sense. If all she wanted was money, she would have booked it out of that park Sunday night and never said a word until the reward was offered.”
“And if the only thing on her mind was the money,” Quinn added, “then she'd be going out of her way to give us details. In my experience, greed outranks fear.”
“What if she's involved in some way?” Marshall suggested. “To try to throw us off track or to get inside info—”
Kate glared at him. “Don't be absurd. If she was involved with this creep, then she'd be giving us a detailed sketch of a phantom to chase. And she isn't privy to any information the Cremator can't read in the paper.”
Marshall looked down at the table. The rims of his ears turned hot pink.
“She's a scared, screwed-up kid,” Kate said, rising. “And I h
ave to get back to her before she sets my office on fire.”
“Are we done here?” Marshall asked pointedly. “I guess we are. Kate has spoken.”
She looked at him with undisguised dislike and walked out.
Sabin watched her go—his eyes on her ass, Quinn thought—and when she was out the door said, “Was she this headstrong at the Bureau?”
“At least,” Quinn said, and followed her out.
“You're defecting too?” she said as he caught up with her. “You didn't want to stay and let Rob suck up to you? It's what he's best at.”
He flashed her a grin. “You don't think much of your boss. Not that that's anything new.”
“You don't think much of him either.” Kate cast a precautionary glance back over her shoulder. “Rob Marshall is an obsequious, fussy little ass-kissing toad. But, in all fairness, he genuinely cares about the job we do and he tries to do it justice.”
“Yes, well, he is trained in psycholinguistics.”
“He's read your book.”
Quinn raised his brows. “There are people who haven't?”
The reception area outside the secured boundaries of the major prosecution unit was vacant. The receptionist had slipped away from her post behind a sheet of bulletproof glass. Stacks of the new Yellow Pages had been left on the floor. The latest issue of Truth & Justice lay on the end table with half a dozen outdated news magazines.
Kate blew out a breath and turned to face him. “Thank you for backing me up.”
Quinn winced. “Did it really hurt that much? God, Kate.”
“I'm sorry. I'm not like you, John. I hate the game-playing that goes on in a case like this. I didn't want to have to ask for your help at all. But I suppose the least I could do is show some genuine gratitude.”
“Not necessary. All I had to do was tell the truth. Sabin wanted a second opinion and he got it. You were right. That should make you happy,” he said dryly.