Ashes to Ashes

31

CHAPTER

“WHAT'S YOUR DREAM job?” Elwood asked.

“Technical consultant to a cop movie, set in Hawaii and starring Mel Gibson,” Liska said without hesitation. “Turn the motor on. I'm cold.” She shivered and burrowed her hands down into her coat pockets.

They sat in an employee lot near the Target Center, watching Gil Vanlees's truck by the white glow of the security light. Like the vultures they were often compared to, reporters circled the block around the building and sat in the many small parking lots scattered around it, waiting. They had been on Vanlees like ticks as soon as his name had been leaked in connection with Jillian Bondurant's murder.

Vanlees had yet to leave the building. Groupies lingering after the Dave Matthews Band concert required his full attention. Word from detectives inside the Target Center was that management had kept him behind the scenes—afraid of a lawsuit from Vanlees if they dismissed him based on suspicion alone, afraid of lawsuits from the public if they let him work as usual and something went awry. Press passes had been handed from music critics to crime reporters, who had roamed the halls, looking for him.

The radio crackled. “Coming your way, Elwood.”

“Roger.” Elwood hung up the handset and chewed thoughtfully on his snack. The whole car smelled of peanut butter. “Mel Gibson is married and has six children.”

“Not in my fantasy he doesn't. Here he comes.”

Vanlees came lumbering through the gate. Half a dozen reporters swarmed after him like a cloud of gnats. Elwood ran the window down to catch their voices.

“Mr. Vanlees, John Quinn has pegged you as a suspect in the Cremator murders. What do you have to say about that?”

“Did you murder Jillian Bondurant?”

“What did you do with her head? Did you have sex with it?”

Elwood sighed heavily. “It's enough to put you off the First Amendment.”

“Assholes,” Liska complained. “They're worse than assholes. They're the bacteria that gather in assholes.”

Vanlees had no comment for the reporters. He kept moving, having quickly learned that rule of survival. When he was directly in front of their car, Elwood cranked the key and started the engine. Vanlees bolted sideways and hurried on toward his truck.

“A nervous, antisocial individual,” Elwood said, putting the last of his sandwich in a plastic evidence bag as Vanlees fumbled with his keys at the door of his truck.

“The guy's a twitch,” Nikki said. “My twitch. Do you think I'll get anything out of it if we nail him for these murders?”

“No.”

“Be brutally honest, why don't you? I don't want to hold any false expectations.”

Vanlees gunned his engine and pulled out of his slot, scattering the reporters. Elwood eased in behind him, then turned the headlights on bright for an instant.

“A commendation would look good on my résumé when I send it off to Mel Gibson's people.”

“The credit will go to Quinn,” Elwood said. “The media is enamored of mind hunters.”

“And he looks great on television.”

“He could be the next Mel Gibson.”

“Better—he's not losing his hair.”

They sat behind Vanlees as he waited to pull onto First Avenue, and rolled out right behind him, causing an oncoming car to hit the brakes and the horn.

“Think Quinn would hire me as a technical adviser when he goes Hollywood?” Liska asked.

“It seems to me advising isn't your true goal,” Elwood observed.

“True. I'd rather have a participatory role, but I don't think that'll happen. I think he's haunted. Doesn't he seem haunted to you?”

“Driven.”

“Driven and haunted. Double whammy.”

“Very romantic.”

“If you're Jane Eyre.” Liska shook her head. “I don't have time for driven or haunted. I'm thirty-two. I've got kids. I need Ward Cleaver.”

“He's dead.”

“My luck.”

They stayed on the truck's tail, negotiating the maze of streets going toward Lyndale. Elwood checked the rearview, grumbling.

“We look like a funeral procession. There must be nine loads of newsies behind us.”

“They'll get everything on videotape. Put away the nightsticks and saps.”

“Police work just isn't the fun it used to be.”

“Watch him in here,” Liska said as they came to the worst of the confusing tangle of streets. “We might get him on a traffic violation. I break nine laws every time I drive through here.”

Gil Vanlees didn't break any. He kept his speed a fraction under the limit, driving as if he were carrying a payload of eggs in crystal cups. Elwood stayed on the truck's tail, riding Vanlees's bumper a little too close, violating his space, goading him.

“What do you think, Tinks? Is he the guy, or is this the Olympic Park bombing all over again?”

“He fits the profile. He's hiding something.”

“Doesn't make him a killer. Everybody's hiding something.”

“I would have liked a chance to find out what, without a pack of reporters at our heels. He'd be an idiot to try anything now.”

“They might not be at our heels long,” Elwood said, checking the rearview again. “Look at this son of a bitch.”

An older Mustang hatchback came up alongside them on the left, two men in the front seat, their focus on Vanlees's pickup.

“That's balls,” Liska said.

“They probably think we're the competition.”

The Mustang sped up, passing them, coming even with Vanlees, the passenger's window rolling down.

“Son of a bitch!” Elwood yelled.

Vanlees sped up. The car stayed with him.

Liska grabbed the handset and radioed their position, calling for backup and reporting the tag number on the Mustang. Elwood grabbed the dash light off the seat, slapped it onto the bracket, and turned it on. Ahead of them, the passenger in the car was leaning out the window with a telephoto lens.

Vanlees gunned ahead. The car raced even with him.

The flash was brilliant, blinding.

Vanlees's truck swerved into the Mustang, knocking it ass end into the next lane, directly into the path of an oncoming cab. There was no time for even the screech of tires, no time for brakes, just the horrific sound of tons of metal colliding. The photographer was thrown as the cars hit. He tumbled across the street like a rag doll that had been flung out a window. A ball of flame rolled through the Mustang.

Liska saw it all in slow motion—the crash, the fire, Vanlees's truck ahead of them swerving to the curb, one wheel jumping up, the front bumper taking out a parking meter. And then time snapped back to real speed, and Elwood swung the Lumina past the truck and dove into the curb at an angle, cutting off the escape route. He slammed the car into park and was out the door. Liska clutched the handset in a trembling fist and called for ambulances and a fire truck.

Some of the cars that had been tailing them pulled to the side. Several raced past, making Elwood dodge them as he ran for the burning wreck. Liska shoved her door open and went for Vanlees as he tumbled out of his pickup. She could smell the whiskey on him two feet away.

“I didn't do it!” he shouted, sobbing.

Camera flashes went off like strobes, illuminating his face in stark white light. Blood ran from his nose and his mouth where his face had evidently met with the steering wheel. He threw his arms up to block the glare and spoil the shots. “Goddammit, leave me alone!”

“I don't think so, Gil,” Liska said, reaching for his arm. “Up against the truck. You're under arrest.”

“NOW I KNOW how they break spies with sleep deprivation,” Kovac said, striding toward Gil Vanlees's truck, which was still hung up on the curb. “I'm ready to transfer to records so I can get some sleep.”

Liska scowled at him. “Come crying to me when you have a nine-year-old look up at you with big teary blue eyes and ask why you didn't come to his Thanksgiving pageant at school when he was playing a Pilgrim and everything.”

“Jesus, Tinks,” he growled, hanging a cigarette on his lip. The apology was in his eyes. “We shouldn't be allowed to breed.”

“Tell it to my ovaries. What the hell are you doing here anyway?” she asked, turning him away from the reporters. “Trying to get yourself fired altogether? You're supposed to lie low.”

“I'm bringing you coffee.” The picture of innocence, he handed her a steaming foam cup. “Just trying to support the first team.”

Even as he said it, his gaze was roaming to Vanlees's truck.

The truck was surrounded by uniformed cops and the crime scene team setting up to do their thing. Portable lights illuminated it from all angles, giving the scene the feel of a photo shoot for a Chevy ad. The totaled cars sitting in the middle of the street were being dealt with by tow trucks.

Reporters hung around the perimeter of the scene, backed off by the uniforms, their interest in the accident made all the more keen by their own involvement in the drama.

“Any word on your replacement?” Liska asked.

Kovac lit a cigarette and shook his head. “I put in a word for you with Fowler.”

She looked surprised. “Wow, thanks, Sam. You think they'll listen?”

“Not a chance. My money's on Yurek because they can scare him. So what's the latest here?”

“Vanlees is at HCMC getting looked at before we haul his sorry ass downtown. I think he broke his nose. Other than him, we've got one dead, one critical, one in good condition.” Liska leaned back against the car she and Elwood had been riding in. “The driver of the Mustang is toast. The cabbie broke both ankles and cracked his head, but he'll be okay. The photographer is in surgery. They think his brain is bleeding. I wouldn't be too optimistic. Then again, I wouldn't have said he had a brain, doing what he was doing.”

“Do we know who these guys are—were?”

“Kevin Pardee and Michael Morin. Freelancers looking to score with an exclusive photo. Life and death in the age of tabloid news. Now they're the headline.”

“How'd Vanlees get behind the wheel if he was drunk enough you could smell it on him?”

“You'd have to ask the reporters that. They were the ones crowded around him as he left the building. All our people had to watch him from a distance or spark a lawsuit for harassment.”

“Ask the reporters,” Sam grumbled. “They'll be the first ones to raise questions about our negligence. Scumsuckers. How's Elwood?”

“Burned his hands pretty bad trying to get Morin out of the car. He's at the hospital. Singed his eyebrows off too. Looks pretty damn goofy.”

“He looked goofy to start with.”

“Vanlees registered .08 on the Breathalyzer. Lucky for us. I was able to impound the truck. Gotta inventory everything in it,” she said with a shrug, blinking false innocence. “Can't know what we might find.”

“Let's hope for a bloody knife under the seat,” Kovac said. “He looks like he'd be that stupid, don't you think? Christ, it's cold. And it's not even Thanksgiving.”

“Bingo!” called one of the crime scene team.

Kovac jumped away from the car. “What? What'd you get? Tell me it's got blood on it.”

The criminalist stepped back from the driver's door. “The economy self-gratification kit,” she said, turning around, holding up a copy of Hustler and one very disgusting pair of black silk women's panties.

“The pervert's version of the smoking gun,” Kovac said. “Bag it. We may just have the key to unlock this mutt's head.”

“WHAT'S THE WORD on getting a warrant to search Vanlees's place?” Quinn asked, shrugging out of his trench coat. He wore the same suit he'd had on the night before, Kovac noticed. Heavily creased.

Kovac shook his head. “Based on what we've got, not a chance in hell. Not even with Peter Bondurant's name attached to the case. We went over every inch of that truck and didn't come up with anything that would tie him directly to any of the murder victims. We might get lucky with the panties—a few weeks from now when the DNA tests come back. We can't even run the tests now. The underpants are just part of the inventory of his stuff at this point. We don't know who they belonged to. We can't say he stole them. And whacking off ain't a crime.”

“You hear that, Tippen?” Liska said. “You're in the clear.”

“I heard those were your panties, Tinks.”

“Tinks wears panties?” Adler said.

“Very funny.”

They stood in a conference room at the PD, the task force minus Elwood, who had refused to go home and was now sitting with Vanlees in an interview room down the hall.

“Why couldn't he be dumb enough to keep a bloody knife under the seat?” Adler asked. “He looks like he'd be that stupid.”

“Yeah,” Quinn agreed. “That bothers me. We're not exactly dealing with a brainiac here—unless he's got multiple personalities and one of the alters keeps the brain to himself. What do we know about his background, other than his more recent escapades?”

“I'm checking it,” Walsh said. His voice was almost gone, choked off by his cold and his pack-a-day habit.

“Nikki and I have both talked with his wife,” Moss said. “Should I see if she'll come down?”

“Please,” Quinn said.

“She's gotta know if her husband's this kind of a sick pervert,” Tippen said.

Quinn shook his head. “Not necessarily. It sounds like she's the dominant partner in that relationship. He's likely kept his hobby a secret from her, partly out of fear, partly as an act of defiance. But if he's got a female partner—and we think he has—then who is she? The wife is clean?”

“The wife is clean. Jillian?” Liska ventured.

“Possibly. Has the wife given any indication she thought he might have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

Quinn checked his watch. He wanted Vanlees waiting just long enough to get nervous. “You get anything back on Michele Fine's prints?”

“Nothing in Minnesota.”

“Has Vanlees called a lawyer?”

“Not yet,” Liska said. “He's got his logic going. He says he's not calling a lawyer because an innocent man doesn't need one.”

Tippen snorted. “Christ, how'd he ever find his way out of St. Cloud?”

“Dumb luck. I told him we weren't charging him right off on the accident. I told him we needed to sit down and sort through what happened before we could determine negligence, but that we had to hold him on the DUI. He can't decide if he should be relieved or pissed.”

“Let's go to it before he makes up his mind,” Quinn said. “Sam—you, Tinks, and me. We work him like before.”

“I wouldn't if I were you, Sam,” Yurek cautioned. “Fowler, Little Dick, Sabin, and that assistant prosecutor Logan—they're all there to observe.”

“Fuck me,” Kovac said with abject disgust.

Liska arched a brow. “Will you respect me afterward?”

“Do I respect you now?”

She kicked him in the shin.

“Charm,” he said to Yurek through his teeth. “If you were me, I wouldn't be in this mess.”

GREER, SABIN, LOGAN, and Fowler stood in the hall outside the interview room, waiting. At the sight of Kovac, Fowler got an expression as if he were having angina. Greer's eyes bugged out.

“What are you doing here, Sergeant?” he demanded. “You've officially been removed from the task force.”

“My request, Chief,” Quinn said smoothly. “We've already established a certain way of dealing with Mr. Vanlees. I don't want to change anything at this point. I need him to trust me.”

Greer and Sabin looked sulky; Logan, impatient. Fowler pulled a roll of Turns out of his pocket and thumbed one off.

Quinn dismissed the topic before anyone could think to defy him. He held the door for Liska and Kovac, and followed them in.

Gil Vanlees looked like a giant raccoon. Both eyes had blackened in the hours since the accident. He had a split lip and a wide strip of adhesive tape across his nose. He stood at one end of the room with his hands on his hips, looking pissed and nervous.

Elwood sat in a chair with his back against the wall. Both hands were bandaged. His face was seared red. Without eyebrows his expression seemed one of perpetual unpleasant surprise.

“I hear you had a little accident, Gil,” Kovac said, falling into a chair at the table.

Vanlees pointed a finger at him. “I'm gonna sue. You people harassed me, you let the press harass me—”

“You got behind the wheel of a truck with a snootful,” Kovac said, lighting a cigarette. “Did I buy it for you? Did I pour it down your throat?”

“Your people let me get behind that wheel,” Vanlees began with all the sanctimonious indignation of a master at rationalization. He shot a quick, nervous glance at Elwood.

Kovac made a face. “Next thing you're gonna tell me it's my fault you killed Jillian Bondurant and those other women.”

Vanlees reddened, his eyes teared. He made a sound like a man straining on the toilet. “I didn't.” He turned on Liska then. “You told me this was about the accident. You're such a lying little cunt!”

“Hey!” Kovac barked. “Sergeant Liska's doing you a favor. You killed someone last night, you fucking drunk.”

“That wasn't my fault! That son of a bitch shot a flash off in my face! I couldn't see!”

“That's what Sergeant Liska says. She was there. She's your witness. You want to call her a cunt again? I was her, I'd feed you your dick for dinner, you sorry sack of shit.”

Vanlees looked at Liska, contrite.

“Liska says you're innocent as a vestal virgin,” Kovac went on, “and that you don't want a lawyer. Is that right?”

“I haven't done anything wrong,” he said, sulking.

Kovac shook his head. “Wow. You've got a broad definition of reality there, Gil. We've got you dead to rights on the DUI—which is wrong by law. I know you were looking in Jillian Bondurant's windows. That would be considered wrong.”

Vanlees sat down, chair turned sideways to the table, presenting his back to Kovac and to the people on the other side of the one-way glass. He rested his forearms on his thighs and looked at the floor. He looked prepared to sit there all night without saying another word.

Quinn studied him. In his experience it wasn't the innocent man who refused counsel, it was the man with something on his conscience he wanted to unload.

“So, were those Jillian's panties we pulled out from under your driver's seat, Gil?” Kovac asked bluntly.

Vanlees kept his head down. “No.”

“Lila White's? Fawn Pierce's? Melanie Hessler's?”

“No. No. No.”

“You know, I wouldn't have guessed it looking at you, but you're a complex individual, Gil,” Kovac said. “Multilayered—like an onion. And every layer I peel away smells worse than the last. You look like an average Joe. Peel one layer back and—oh!—your wife's leaving you! Well, that's not so unusual. I'm a two-time loser myself. Peel another layer back and—jeez!—she's leaving you because you're a window peeper! No, wait, you're not just a window peeper. You're a weenie wagger! You're just one big, bad progressive joke. You're a drunk. You're a drunk who drives. You're a drunk who drives and gets somebody killed.”

Vanlees hung his head lower. Quinn could see the man's swollen mouth quivering.

“I didn't mean to. I couldn't see,” Vanlees said in a thick voice. “They won't leave me alone. That's your fault. I didn't do anything.”

“They want to know what happened to Jillian,” Kovac said. “I want to know what happened to her too. I think there was something more going on between you than what you're telling us, Gil. I think you had the hots for her. I think you were watching her. I think you stole those panties out of her dresser so you could whack off with them and fantasize about her, and I'm gonna prove it. We already know the panties are her size, her brand,” he bluffed. “It's just a matter of time before we get the DNA match. A few weeks. You'd better get used to those reporters, 'cause they're gonna be on you like flies on roadkill.”

Vanlees was crying now. Silently. Tears dripping onto the backs of his hands. He was trembling with the effort to hold them back.

Quinn looked to Kovac. “Sergeant, I'd like to have a few moments alone with Mr. Vanlees.”

“Oh, sure, like I got nothing better to do,” Kovac complained, getting up. “I know where this is going, Quinn. You G-men want it all to yourself. Fuck that. His ass is mine.”

“I just want a few words with Mr. Vanlees.”

“Uh-huh. You don't like the way I talk to this piece of cheese. You're sitting there thinking I should go easy on him on account of his prostitute mother used to beat his bare ass with a wire hanger or some such psychobabble bullshit. Fine. I'll see you in the headlines, I'm sure.”

Quinn said nothing until the cops had gone out, and then he said nothing for a long time. He took a Tagamet and washed it down with water from the plastic pitcher on the table. Casually, he turned his chair perpendicular to Vanlees's, leaned ahead, rested his forearms on his thighs, and sat there some more, until Vanlees glanced up at him.

“More of that good cop-bad cop shit,” Vanlees said, pouting. “You think I'm a dumb shit.”

“I think you watch too much TV,” Quinn said. “This is the real world, Gil. Sergeant Kovac and I don't have identical agendas here.

“I'm not interested in headlines, Gil. I've had plenty. You know that. I get them automatically. You know all I'm interested in, right? You know about me. You've read about me.”

Vanlees said nothing.

“The truth and justice. That's it. And I don't care what the truth turns out to be. It's not personal with me. With Kovac, everything is personal. He's got you in his crosshairs. All I want to know is the truth, Gil. I want to know your truth. I get the feeling you've got something heavy on your chest, and maybe you want to get it off, but you don't trust Kovac.”

“I don't trust you either.”

“Sure you do. You know about me. I've been nothing but up front with you, Gil, and I think you appreciate that on some level.”

“You think I killed Jillian.”

“I think you fit the profile in a lot of respects. I admit that. Moreover, if you look at the situation objectively, you'll agree with me. You've studied this stuff. You know what we look for. You know some of your pieces fit the puzzle. But that doesn't mean I believe you killed her. I don't necessarily believe Jillian is dead.”

“What?” Vanlees looked at him as if he thought Quinn might have lost his mind.

“I think there's a lot more to Jillian than first meets the eye. And I think you may have something to say about that. Do you, Gil?”

Vanlees looked at the floor again. Quinn could feel the pressure building in him as he weighed the pros and cons of answering truthfully.

“If you were watching her, Gil,” Quinn said very softly, “you're not going to get in trouble for that. That's not the focus here. The police will gladly let that go in trade for something they can use.”

Vanlees seemed to consider that, never thinking, Quinn was sure, that the “something” they were looking for could in turn be used against him. He was thinking of Jillian, of how he might cast some odd light on her and away from himself, because that was what people tended to do when they found themselves in big trouble—blame the other guy. Criminals regularly blamed their victims for the crimes committed against them.

“You were attracted to her, right?” Quinn said. “That's not a crime. She was a pretty girl. Why shouldn't you look?”

“I'm married,” he mumbled.

“You're married, you're not dead. Looking is free. So you looked. I don't have a problem with that.”

“She was . . . different,” Vanlees said, still staring at the floor but seeing Jillian Bondurant, Quinn thought. “Kind of . . . exotic.”

“You told Kovac she didn't come on to you, but that's not exactly true, is it?” Quinn ventured, still speaking softly, an intimate chat between acquaintances. “She was aware of you, wasn't she, Gil?”

“She never said anything, but she'd look at me in a certain way,” he admitted.

“Like she wanted you.” A statement, not a question, as if it came as no surprise.

Vanlees shied away from that. “I don't know. Like she wanted me to know she was looking, that's all.”

“Kind of mixed signals.”

“Yeah. Mixed signals.”

“Did anything come of it?”

Vanlees hesitated, struggled. Quinn waited, held his breath.

“I just want the truth, Gil. If you're innocent, it won't hurt you. It's just between us. Man to man.”

The silence stretched.

“I—I know it was wrong,” Vanlees murmured at last. “I didn't really mean to do it. But I was checking the yards one night, making the rounds—”

“When was this?”

“This summer. And . . . I was there . . .”

“At Jillian's house.”

He nodded. “She was playing the piano, wearing a silky robe that wanted to fall off her shoulder. I could see her bra strap.”

“So you watched her for a while,” Quinn said, as if it was only natural, any man would do it, no harm.

“Then she slipped the robe off and stood up and stretched.”

Vanlees was seeing it all in his mind. His respiration rate had picked up, and a fine sheen of sweat misted his face. “She started moving her body, like a dance. Slow and very . . . erotic.”

“Did she know you were there?”

“I didn't think so. But then she came to the window and pulled the cups of her bra down so I could see her tits, and she pressed them right to the glass and rubbed against it,” he said in a near whisper, ashamed, thrilled. “She—she licked the window with her tongue.”

“Jesus, that must have been very arousing for you.”

Vanlees blinked, embarrassed, looked away. This would be where parts of the story would go missing. He wouldn't tell about getting an erection or taking his penis out and masturbating while he watched her. Then again, he didn't have to. Quinn knew his history, knew the patterns of behavior, had seen it over and over in the years of studying criminal sexual behavior. He wasn't learning anything new here about Gil Vanlees. But if the story was true, he was learning something very significant about Jillian Bondurant.

“What'd she do then?” he asked softly.

Vanlees shifted on his chair, physically uncomfortable. “She—she pulled her panties down and she . . . touched herself between her legs.”

“She masturbated in front of you?”

His face flushed. “Then she opened the window and I got scared and ran. But later I went back, and she had dropped her panties out the window.”

“And those are the panties the police found in your truck. They are Jillian's.”

He nodded, bringing one hand up to his forehead as if to try to hide his face. Quinn watched him, trying to gauge him. Truth or a tale to cover his ass for having the underwear of a possible murder victim in his possession?

“When was this?” he asked again.

“Back this summer. July.”

“Did anything like that ever happen again?”

“No.”

“Did she ever say anything about it to you?”

“No. She almost never talked to me at all.”

“Mixed signals,” Quinn said again. “Did that make you mad, Gil? That she would strip in front of you, masturbate in front of you, then pretend like nothing happened. Pretend like she hardly knew you, like you weren't good enough for her. Did that piss you off?”

“I didn't do anything to her,” he whispered.

“She was a tease. If a woman did that to me—got me hard and hot for her, then turned it off—I'd be pissed. I'd want to fuck her good, make her pay attention. Didn't you want to do that, Gil?”

“But I never did.”

“But you wanted to have sex with her, didn't you? Didn't some part of you want to teach her a lesson? That dark side we all have, where we hold grudges and plan revenge. Don't you have a dark side, Gil? I do.”

He waited again, the tension coiled tight inside him.

Vanlees looked bleak, defeated, as if the full import of all that had happened tonight had finally sunk in.

“Kovac is going to try to hang that murder on me,” he said. “Because those panties are Jillian's. Because of what I just told you. Even when she was the bad one, not me. That's what's going to happen, isn't it?”

“You make a good suspect, Gil. You see that, don't you?”

He nodded slowly, thinking.

“Her father was there, at the town house,” he mumbled. “Sunday morning. Early. Before dawn. I saw him coming out. Monday his lawyer gave me five hundred dollars not to say anything.”

Quinn absorbed the information in silence, weighing it, gauging it. Gil Vanlees was ass deep in alligators. He might say anything. He might say he'd seen a stranger, a vagrant, a one-armed man near Jillian's apartment. He chose to say he'd seen Peter Bondurant, and that Peter Bondurant had paid him to shut up.

“Early Sunday morning,” Quinn said.

Vanlees nodded. No eye contact.

“Before dawn.”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing around there at that hour, Gil? Where were you that you saw him—and that he saw you?”

Vanlees shook his head this time—at the question or at something playing through his own mind. He seemed to have aged ten years in the last ten minutes. There was something pathetic about him sitting there in his security guard's uniform, the wanna-be cop playing pretend. The best he could do.

He spoke in a small, soft voice. “I want to call a lawyer now.”