Savant

13

Kansas City, Missouri

Why don't we let this short cut grow out, Julie?" the hairdresser asked. "I've got a great cut in mind for your head."

"I like it like this, Sandra. It's nice 'n' short and I don't have to fool with it."

"You've got some natural curl in your hair. Do you know how many heads I cut would kill for some natural curl? My God, woman…"

"Whack it off," Julie said, laughing, knowing it bugged Sandra. Julie Hilliard was thirty-two and, like many women, had different looks at different times. She knew she could let it grow out a bit and Sandra would tease it to hell, and she'd put on a bunch of makeup, a ton of blush and lip gloss and mascara for miles, and some big dangly earrings, and smile with lots of teeth showing instead of her usual thin-lipped cop look, and she looked like an attractive woman. But Julie Hilliard was a cop, one of Kansas City's finest in a progressive shop that was staffed with more female dicks than any other homicide department in the country. She was also one of only two women on the prestigious Kansas City Metro Homicide Squad, a slot that had taken her eleven kick-ass years of casemaking to attain. Homicide was what she lived, breathed, and ate. And her look was just fine, thank you.

"Not only that, this cut is all wrong for your face." Sandra had the scissors going but she was going to bitch about it all the same. "You've got terrific eyes, and you should spotlight them. This downplays them."

"The A-holes I deal with, they don't like my eyes anyway."

"Yeah, but God forbid you'd want to get married someday…"

"Oh, Lord."

"Meet a nice guy, settle down—"

"You sound like my mother, now."

"Well, I'm just saying…I could make you so much prettier. Check it out, perm those curls, eh? Layer through here, bevel the ends, keep it short back on your nape, but longer here on the sides and maybe streak it here, see? All you do is scrunch it. Shampoo, towel it off. Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am!"

"Whack it off," Julie Hilliard told her, looking into the mirror but seeing the bulletin board above Llewelyn's disaster-area of a desk.

"Well, at least let me spike it."

She finally took her freshly shorn head, and all the rest of her well-distributed 127 pounds, and got in her unmarked unit, returning to 1125 Locust. At headquarters, she immediately headed for the squad room, She nodded to people on the way up, and familiar faces in the hallways, but did not speak until she was inside the door marked Metropolitan Major Case Squad, which was the real name of the unit, but which nobody ever used.

Leo and T.J., the only other female detective on the squad, and the El Tee, were occupied elsewhere. Marlin Morris had been waiting for her so he could brief the three detectives present at one time. Michael Apodaca and his partner George Shremp, nicknamed "Abba-dabba" and "Jumbo" respectively by the other cops, and Julie Hilliard—who normally worked alone—were the only dicks in the room. Sergeant Morris did not have to refer to notes.

"Honcho's with Leo 'n' T.J. They're working the firebombing. We've got thirteen people on Boyles. Rotating teams." Boyles was the name of the file on the "pro" hits, as they were perceived, beginning with the slaughter of a guy who appeared to have no ties to anyone, a colorless loner of a person, a part-time cabby, a twenty-three-year-old man named David Boyles. "That's not counting us. Right now we're going to concentrate on Mr. Dillon and see what we can break loose." He handed out a photocopy of a two-page report and a composite of twelve shooting victims' pictures. There was a second composite showing thirteen faces of young gang members killed in the firebombing/shooting incident. "I think an obvious possible tie is Tom Dillon to the bike gang. He coulda been dealing easy. He was a thief. Maybe he was selling or fencing stuff through the gang? Anyway let's look at everything. Show those pictures. See if anybody makes anybody." They knew what he meant.

Detective Sergeant Morris, a thirty-year-old lifer with a droopy semi-Fu mustache and thinning hair, a hardcore casemaker, talked about the weapon that had been used on some of the bikers outside their clubhouse, and discussed the reports on the various victims, speculating as to what had killed them. Julie Hilliard made notes as he spoke, realizing she was just doodling, really, as she saw she'd written acceleration…explosive… and propellant and had no idea what Morris was saying. She snapped back to life and listened to firearms and high-explosive talk.

"Neither the regional crime lab nor the FBI has anything yet?" Jumbo Shremp asked. She was thinking the same question.

"Huh-uh. Negative, so far."

"Some kind of rifle grenade," Shremp said. "That's what I think. Fits the pattern. A pro."

"Are we—" Julie heard her own voice. "Is anybody asking the military? This guy obviously has a background—a military service record, right? Couldn't we put it on the computer and program it through to give us likely names on who has the expertise for all this stuff…uh, you know, capabilities. Demolition. Firearms. And then run those names against the vics? Would that work?"

"Yeah," Morris said. "That wouldn't take more than about ten million hours to program. No—it's probably the way to go." He shrugged. "But we gotta narrow this thing down first. You got too many guys in the services know this shit. We probably need to start trying to get some patterns here. I don't think this is random work. I think we're gonna find Dillon and some of the bikers tied together."

"I know one thing about the son of a bitch. He's hitting too close to home," Apodaca said.

"Yeah." Connally's was two blocks from the police headquarters.

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