Savant

19

Kansas City, Missouri

Okay, Buzz. I think I get the idea. And I could get all that stuff—you know—without a problem?"

"Go over a few blocks to Radio Shack, man. Get everything you need to build a great bug." He shook his head. "Get your earplug or headset, your connectors, your listening unit, monitor, recording unit, everything you'd need to be in business."

"I didn't know it was so easy to record private conversations."

"For all we know this could be recorded. The guy who owns it is worried one of his waitresses is running setups, okay? People eating steaks and lobster and paying half their tab. The waitress and the customers are both ripping him off. Happens." He shrugged again. "He thinks the cook's in on it. So he bugs a few of the booths and tables. We could be on tape right now. You called the station—for all we know that's on tape. It's absurdly easy to record conversations."

"But you wouldn't use the, uh, jammer thing."

"No. See—that tells them you're hip to being recorded. Hell, if somebody is bugging you, get smart. Get even. Bug them." The thin, wiry man took a noisy sip of coffee. "Fuck 'em all, down with everything, and up with the ladies' dresses."

Trask laughed quietly and unfolded a twelve-by-eighteen-inch sheet of art paper he'd been working on—a rough layout of the radio station. "Recognize it?"

Reid just stared for a minute.

"KCM."

"Yeah. I see it. There's the front doors. What's all that shit?" Reid pointed.

"That's the second floor—see—upstairs?

"Um."

"Wow, Buzz. You mean you don't think I'm too great an artist, eh? Man, I'm hurt."

"I wouldn't give up your other job yet."

"Okay. Anyway, let's say you wanted to do what we had discussed? How would you do it? You got a twenty-four-hour security guy right here."

"Okay. That's easy. You come in to work. Do your thing. Go home. But you forget something. You go back—all right? This is about three-thirty-five A.M. There are fewer employees between three-thirty A.M. and four-thirty than at any other time. Right?"

"Yeah."

"You come back. 'I forgot something, damn it,' you say as you bullshit with the guard. I assume you bullshit back and forth, right?"

"Not really. They just wave you on in. We don't talk that much back and forth."

"Okay. You go in. Walk back, go in the elevator. Get off on the second floor, and you go right back to Engineering. Now the last time I was there they had monitor cameras here, here, and here." Reid made dots in the foyer, in the elevator, and across from the programming department in the hallway.

"As far as I can recall—yeah. I think those are the ones I'd go past on the way to Engineering."

"There aren't any cameras back there. You'd open the door across from Purchasing with a key I would make a copy of for you. You unlock the Engineering Supply door. You close it behind you and lock it."

Trask sneezed. "Sorry about that." He blew his nose.

"You close and lock the door. You try not to sneeze real loud." They both laughed. "You unlock the cabinets against the west wall with a key—as before, I make a copy of for you. You pull out the shit on the floor, stack it neatly in a row, and pull the floor hatch out. If it's locked, you'll take a prybar or whatever—you'll get it open. No big deal. You'll see a ladder. You'll carefully climb down. There's a little ledge just a few feet away. You'll have a flashlight—and get the kind with a ring you can attach a cord to and tie this thing to you so it can't be dropped. Make sure your batteries are new. Okay, you still with me?"

"Uh-huh." Trask felt as if he were in dire need of a half hour on the po-po. This could be a miracle discovery—want to be regular again? Move up to the ultimate laxative-contemplate burglary!

"You're standing on the ledge now right back of the heating ducts, the pipes are in front and back, electrical cables, air conditioning, and what you do now is—"

It was way too much for him. He'd known it to begin with but the idea kept appealing to him. What a payoff to the violence-theme series, to have proof of his own employer's intrusions against the staff. He didn't have a clear way to tie it in yet, but something along the lines of psychological battering might work. Wasn't this a kind of force being exerted against the worker ants?

He listened to Buzz tell him how simple it would be to remove, bulk erase, or simply rewind and sabotage the six security camcorders with the remote unit. Photograph the room, take examples of illegally taped phone conversations and bugged offices, and go back up the ladder, replacing hatchways and locking doors.

"'Course—" he heard Reid tell him by way of a disclaimer in case he was caught or captured, "I'm not sure how you neutralize a hidden security monitor, but I don't see 'em being that smart or whatever. I think you'd have some trouble bypassing an alarm system, too, so if they got an alarm set you might trip that. But they're probably too fuckin' cheap for that. With those two exceptions, it would go smoothly. It would all be a lot easier than it sounds."

"Man, I gotta tell you." Vic Trask smiled. "There's no fucking way. I'd love to do it. They deserve it. But halfway through your thing there, I felt my balls shrink to approximately the size of frozen peas. Okay? I just don't think so. Thanks anyway, buddy."

"Fine. Okay. Just go to the Shack, or go to Bob's Electronics and get what you need. Bug 'em back. Get your proof thataway."

"Yeah. Write down what I need to get and show me how it. connects together." He folded the large piece of art paper so Reid could write on the back.

They shot the breeze a while longer and Trask thanked him and they said their farewells.

Less than two hours later he was back in his apartment sitting on the john, sipping O.J., munching aspirin, and wondering what to do next. On the table in the next room, in a Bob's Electronics bag, were a few small packages that had kicked a great big hole in the middle of his checkbook. But he now had the ability to secretly record private conversations.

Trask went back to the station the next afternoon with roughly the same feeling of happiness one has on the way to an IRS audit or triple-bypass surgery. Gloom descended over him the moment he came through the big showy double doors, clip-clopped down the impressive first-floor foyer past Security and the front desk, and hit the UP button on the elevator. It took some discipline not to look up at the camcorders, but he made it upstairs. Monica Heartbreak said nice things to him, cooed solicitously, and he started feeling a bit better.

But just as he rounded the corner by Louie Kidder's office he ran into the dour Babaloo Metzger, who greeted him in typical fashion.

"Welcome back. Come on, we've got a production meeting." He never got to open his office door, take a leak, or plant a bug in Barb Rose's potted plant—just "hi, how are ya, let's go."

His distaff nemesis was out on assignment. Metzger, Laymon at his side, and Flynn distanced from them by the length of the Programming Conference Room table, kicked around concepts.

"Got anything for the hole?" Flynn asked. It was his turn. He slid a pile of papers over to The Man. Sean Flynn was in his customary garb, dress shirt open at the throat, silk tie pulled loose, trousers of an expensive business suit on, looking very serious and somewhat pissed.

Flynn read for a moment and spoke. "I like the media thing. The post-Gulf War coverage through Somalia to present day. I like some of this. Let's clean it up and do something with it. But you don't have a slant yet." He went back to the pile, reading a few lines as he shook his head.

"The Big Bang. It may have killed all the dinosaurs and it's going to smash into the earth again. Giant meteorites on the way.…Tie it in to the Jurassic Age theories.…Palimony…Love Gone Sour…from Marvin to Martina…"

Flynn was again getting that look he got when he was pissed off. He'd started losing it with the media thing, but he had it back, a serious, worried expression on his face, as he rubbed his forehead and eyebrows with the fingers of his right hand.

"Out of Gas Again? Solar power, electric cars, gasohol-the fuel of the future." Flynn looked up at the Mystery Tramp. "Jerri, make a note to check on state vehicles using the gasohol mix, I'll understand what it means.

"Yes, we have Joe Bananas." Was he really the boss of bosses? Is Big-Time Payola Back? Dubious Cures for Terminal Diseases. The Deficit and the Coming Catastrophe. The Other Sex, What Men and Women Want from Each Other.

"Vic?" Flynn looked at Trask directly. "You know what killed the dinosaurs?"

Trask saw it coming but he shook his head no.

"Forget the meteorite business. I'll tell you what killed the dinosaurs…ennui. They were bored to death."

Gee, Sean, he thought, smiling on the outside, does that mean you don't like my ideas so far?

Trask, ensconced in the snug privacy of the tiny cubicle he called an office, sorted through a pile of news clippings and wire service copy, culling the stuff that was going to go inside his pocket. He took two write-ups on the "crucifixion/mutilation killings," and some miscellaneous stories on violent crimes. Made a few telephone calls just to get on the books, in case his phone was being monitored, and went through the motions of typing up some Factlets for Flynn.

When he could do so with a reasonable measure of impunity, he got up and walked out of the office, turning right past the talent lounge, and again in the direction of the programming foyer. He was pleased to see the hallway empty, so raging was his professional paranoia. Monica Heartbreak was occupied, and he was able to make it to the elevator without having to exchange pleasantries, much less explain why he was leaving so early.

Outside he found a public phone and dialed the police, asking for the Homicide unit.

"Apodaca, Homicide," came a terse male voice, succinct to the point of being unclear. It sounded like "bakka-dakkaahm-side." Each concise syllable spat out and bitten off as if the man had said it ten thousand times and to say it once more would poison teeth, lips, tongue, and roof of mouth. It threw Trask, who was nervous and shaky, off so badly he couldn't remember Julie's last name for a second. "Bakkadakka-ahm-side" had knocked it right out of his mind.

"Is—uh—may I speak to Julia, you have a detective by that name?"

"A detective named Julia?"

"Julie," Trask corrected, his mind an absolute blank.

"Detective Julie Hilliard," the desk officer volunteered in that suspicious tone cops have.

"That's the one. Is she in, please?"

"I'll see. Just a second."

"Thanks."

In a moment the voice came back on the line.

"She's not here right now. She'll be back in a half hour or so, I believe. Would you like to leave word?"

"I'll call her back. Thanks."

"Could I say who's calling?"

"Thanks. I'll call back." Trask hung up abruptly before the cop could pressure him to leave his name. The last thing he wanted was Julie Hilliard to call up KCM and ask for him. He could see the pink message form on the spike: Mr. Trask, it would say, call Hilliard at Police HQ. No. He didn't think so. Trask walked to the parking lot, got his car, and headed home.

He pictured how the conversation would go, tried to imagine what he'd say to her. Would she snarl "Hilliard, Homicide" into the line like the other dicks? Probably. The woman had a way of wearing her cop identity as if it were a shield, which, in a way, he supposed it was.

Trask knew some of the guys at KCPD fairly well, others just as familiar faces. He wasn't sure why he hit on Julie, except that they shared some history between them—not good history—but at least something. She didn't care for Trask at all, and she'd not been one of his favorite people either, but this was business. Hers, presumably, as well as his.

There was some heavy baggage between them. Vic's ex-wife and Julie Hilliard had been close buddies years ago, and she and Vic had not been at all close under the best of circumstances.

Once, when his ex had become fed up with him for the umpteenth time, it was to Julie's apartment she'd gone. There'd been the usual angry words. Many a tear had fallen. He barely remembered the incident, but felt sure Julie would.

His ex was now living in Aurora, Colorado, married to a rich podiatrist, and was the mother of three "used kids," as someone had put it. Their beautiful daughter, Kit—short for Kitty—had detested "the, proctologist," as she insisted on calling her new stepfather, and all siblings attached thereto. She blamed Victor, her dad, for every second she'd had to spend under the man's roof.

Kit, who was cursed in that every day she looked more and more like a beautiful and worldly woman, had become wilder and tougher to control. Now, at fifteen, she was living with her second live-in lover and was a year out of the nest. Gorgeous, smart, she was a champion skier, and barely spoke to either parent, but seemed to have the greatest animosity for Vic. He had written his family off, he realized. It killed him that he no longer even thought about his daughter, and he knew this made him an asshole, but he was what he was. If you wrote him off, he wrote you off. He was sure Julie Hilliard would know all this.

After a half hour had gone by he called and got her on the phone. She was coolly professional and agreed to meet him, but couldn't get away for a couple of hours. He told her no problem and they decided on a downtown restaurant. He was evasive when she tried to ask what it was about, and she didn't press the matter.

Julie was unnerved a bit by the call. She wondered if the daughter had got into trouble. Probably not. If she was a runaway it wouldn't have been Vic Trask who called her. She hoped nothing had happened to Jasmine, her friend of years gone by, but pushed it out of her thoughts and concentrated on the meeting.

The metro squad was in the conference room, away from prying eyes. Unlike what films and TV shows often depict, the K.C. Metro Homicide Squad room was not covered in maps with push pins showing all the murder locations. As a matter of fact, there was little that a civilian could see. The ongoing investigations were contained inside the file folders and attach6 cases of the investigating detectives, or they were kept in locked file drawers behind closed office doors.

Llewelyn was doing a chalk talk inside the conference room, and it would be scrubbed off with wet erasers when they left that particular enclosure. A homicide investigation, especially one like this, was a very confidential matter.

"Boyles," he said, and the word tasted bad in the lieutenant's mouth, like a disease. He said it as one would say "trichinosis." An unpleasant, distasteful matter, for a career guy who was seeing his ambitious job plans get sacrificed.

Julie Hilliard opened the file labeled BOYLES HOMS.

"Hildebrande," he said, writing the name on the upper right of the blackboard in hurriedly printed letters. "See the notes on disintegration of brain matter." He circled her name. "Two immediate ties." He wrote PROS above her name and said it, pronouncing it "pross." He drew a squeaky chalk arrow to the name Tom Dillon. Another to the long, thin rectangle containing the first thirteen victims of the SVS/M club. He wrote RIF GRENDS and drew another squeaky emphasis line beneath it.

"Ms. Hildebrande was a pross. On at least one occasion, she was arrested propositioning a vice guy in Connelly's Pub. Tom Dillon was into prostitution, Hildebrande's specialty was freak action, the Steel Vengeance outfit were freaks." He circled the three Mount Ely kills. "One, two, fifteen, eighteen victims connect in two ways, weaponry and possible motive." He drew a sloppy line running from Dillon to Hildebrande to the SVS/M rectangle to the Mount Ely names.

"So where does that leave us with Boyles? We've connected over half to prostitution. Are these johns? Are these people witnesses to something? Is this a sex freak blowing people apart with rifle grenades? The FBI laboratory confirms the regional lab findings. A disintegrating-type fragmentation device or projectile. Frags? Rifle grenades? Firebomb devices of some kind? Whatever the killer is using, one thing is certain—it's a military weapon. This guy has munition chops out the kazootsky. He knows firebombs, submachine guns—you name it."

"El Tee, are you saying this is one guy?" Hilliard asked.

"That's it. The Mount Ely homicides link all the kills together. The same weapon that took off the biker's heads when they were on the crosses did all the others. He may have used some sort of modified frag to firebomb their club headquarters. Those are the only two times he used his machine gun. And the only time he took several down who were in one place. Although here"—Llewelyn pointed to a series of half a dozen homicides linked together in a continuous line—"he did all these victims within ten minutes or so. That's firing his weapon over a space of two miles or more. Makes you wonder how he lined them up, or if he did line them up in some way."

"Didn't those have to be random?" Shremp asked.

"It's possible, but it's also possible this guy wanted them to look random. Look here: Number five, Ms. Dukodevsky. Had a couple of things for suspected child abuse. A drug charge. Number six, Mr. Watson. Got him once for possession. Maybe he was into something kinky, too. Number seven, Mr. Yoe. Young guy who was a suspected part-time dealer. Looks like he might be gay. This is a freak doing these killings. I figure it's one guy, who has weapons and munitions capabilities to the max. Probably a former soldier. When we can nail the motive that ties all these kills together we can go for him." Llewelyn swallowed a yawn. He was used to hard work and long hours. A bottomless in-tray full of paperwork without end. A never-ceasing flood of crises, large and small. A parade of witnesses, victims and their family and friends, suspects, endless details, ringing phones and calls you had to make. Doors. The ten million doors you had to pound on, the shoe leather you had to wear out. But this case was something else. It was the sort of investigation that would steal more than your time. It would take your job if you let it.

"You got to find somebody who saw something. All these homicides and not one damn witness. Why? Get out there and find that person who'll tell us what they saw. The biker-gang thing must have looked like World War Three out in the street—find one of your informants and shake some info out of 'em. Every hour goes by we get colder on these victims. Remember that the first order of business here is containment. Don't let this son of a bitch get out on the street. Boyles, the case itself, does not exist. There is nothing so far in the papers or on TV where anybody has linked the two biker scenes to the others. Anybody gets fancy about witness reports, you sit on it. Anybody says—okay that 'mysterious fatality' where the fifth-grade teacher and that other guy had their heads blown off—is the perpetrator's firearm matched up to the heads that were blown off here?" He pointed to the Mount Ely crosses. "Stonewall. You can categorically state there are no such findings. The lab work is verboten territory. Stress that the biker thing was internecine warfare with a rival gang—or whatever. These thirteen and these three were horrible, violent homicides. The mutilation and crucifixion stuff—which God knows how all this information leaks out—but just take the position this was the rival gang trying to cover their tracks and make the crime scene appear to be a ritual deal. No. Don't even say that. Just admit that the two incidents were connected to each other but are not connected to any other recent homicides. If you have to, you can point to the increased national statistics in homicides—Kansas City is just part of the national picture—blah, blah. You know how to do all that. All right?" Everyone nodded.

"Informants. That's your key. They could solve this one for us. Freaks. We want to know about freaks, maybe some guy really into pain. Kind of a joker who would seek out Ms. Hildebrande or the sort of working girl who frequents Connelys. Concentrate especially on Indiana Avenue, east of downtown, Thirty-first to Thirty-sixth and Main, 'chickenhawk alley.'" He meant the area around Tenth and Cherry. "Let's go nail this asshole."

"Hi, stranger," Trask said, when Julie Hilliard strode up to him in the downtown beanery.

"Hi, Vic," she said, and they had that awkward moment when two persons meet in public and can't quite decide whether to hug or kiss. They touched each other in tentative embracing handshakes, and pecked in the air like California society matrons'at a fund-raising gala.

She didn't think Trask had aged a day, but was mildly surprised to see him in such sloppy attire. He wore faded jeans and an open shirt. She supposed people dressed in a more businesslike fashion working for a radio station. His lined face with the pitted, acne-scarred cheeks appeared the same. He had a craggy look that—combined with his go-to-hell air—gave him the appearance of someone much younger than his thirty-six years.

"You haven't changed a bit," he said. She was fairly tall—five feet six or seven, he guessed—slim and trim at a muscular 130, tops. She had wiry brunette hair and fair skin. He knew she'd spent her entire working life, at age thirty-two or thereabouts, as a homicide cop. Her profile would never adorn the cover of a woman's magazine. Her mouth was overly wide, the upper lip not as full as the lower one, and her fashionably mannish hair, curve-concealing outfit, and "dyke boots"—as he thought of them—made an immediate statement. To Trask, sexist pig that he was, the statement was somewhere between an advertisement for the lesbian lifestyle and a defiant "don't worry about my appearance, bozo" kind of proclamation. Either way, she always managed to goad him.

"I was about to say the same thing about you." You still dress like a loser, she thought. His shoes were scuffed and there was a little hayseed scoop in back of his shirt collar when they slid into a booth. Everything she recalled about him was negative. But at least in her memory he dressed like an adult. She thought he looked like he'd been doing yard work.

"What's it been—five years?"

"Every bit of that," she said. She wanted to ask about Jasmine and Kitty, but she swallowed the thought.

"I'm sure you wonder why I got you down here. First, it's nothing to do with the past. Nothing about Kit—or Jazz—I, uh, haven't heard from them in a long time. Kit's left home and living with a guy, but that's neither here nor there." She was staring a couple of holes through him, and not making the meeting any easier. He plunged on. "I'm still researching for KCM; I'm senior researcher for 'Inside America.' And I have been working on some recent homicides."

Christ almighty, she thought, I believed this was something serious and this asshole wants to interview me. "I don't mean to cut you short, but I don't do press interviews at all, Vic. I have a firm policy on that. We have a press—"

"No. I understand. This isn't about an interview. Hear me out a second." Already she'd pissed him off. "I think I may have inadvertently stumbled on some information the police may not have. It may be bullshit, but I want you to take a look at some of my findings. Also, I'm trying to put together news material for the show that ties all this together, and if I help the police I want to feel like my material will be treated in confidence. I don't want to be scooped because I'm coming forward with information I've uncovered, you know?" He was smiling as if he thought he'd told a joke. She just raised her eyebrows and continued to stare holes in him. She had steady, wide-set, piercing eyes, and she made him uncomfortable as hell.

"What is it you think you've found?"

"Okay," he said, bringing out some large, folded pieces of twelve-by-eighteen-inch Strathmore artist paper. There were photos of homicide victims, which she saw that he'd cut from newspapers mostly. Crime-scene shots. Polaroids. Faces and places linked together with arrows. Charts. Trask's neatly typed summaries and bios of the decedents. He'd been a busy boy, she'd give him that. "See?" he said, showing her more.

"So what is it you think you've discovered?"

"The connecting motive behind all this violence. Do you see anything unusual about all these faces?"

"Nope. Not really."

"There aren't any blacks."

"Yeah. So?"

"I think…I know I've hit on something here. You've got a gang of drug dealers who've been killing mostly whites, people encroaching on their territory probably. It ties the killings of the motorcycle gang into all these people. You've got all these mysterious deaths and shootings and drive-by murders…it's obvious, when you study it, that the one thing that links all these homicides together is drugs. And the M.O. is usually the same—right? So my conclusion is this: a black drug cartel has hired an assassin to begin executing non-African-Americans who are dealing drugs. And—"

"Can I be straight with you—I mean, without you taking offense? You've seen too much television. It's that simple." She couldn't help it. She laughed in his face.

"No, I know what I'm saying. I'm not talking TV fantasies here—there are too many killings in a short period of time." He shook his head. Fuck her and her tough diesel dyke attitude. "And you didn't let me finish what I'd found."

"Sorry. Go ahead."

"Thanks." Patronizing bitch. "If it isn't an assassin hired by a drug gang, then the alternative is that we've got one of the worst serial murderers of all time killing people right and left. Am I right?"

She laughed again in spite of herself. He looked so serious. With his charts and amateur detective bullshit.

"Too much TV, Vic. It's nothing to be ashamed of. We run into it all the time. You've taken stories about certain homicides and made a neat scenario like a television show, and there's nothing to it. Sorry." She smiled.

"What do you mean certain homicides? I've taken every violent homicide in the Kansas City area within the last four weeks—and there's one black in the lot."

"First, the stories you clip out of the paper or that you get from the press room at headquarters are only a portion of what actually goes down. Number one: not everything is released to the press for dissemination, surely you know that?" The chill was thick in the air between them like a layer of frost on a windowpane.

"You're saying—"

"I'm saying you don't show Jeffrey Hawkins, or James Copeland, or DaVelle Yates, or Tyrone Phelbs, or Manuel Calderon—just off the top of my head—and none of them are white, and each is a violent death that occurred in the last few weeks in Jackson County alone. You get out into Clay, and Platte, or Cass County—"

"Hawkins—and these other killings—how come they never made the news?"

"Homicides are frequently kept confidential, depending on the nature of the investigation. I thought you were aware of that—being in the business as long as you have."

"I'll bet Adam David would be surprised to learn he's not being given access to all the news. I never heard of such a thing."

"I'm giving you background information—strictly off the record—and expect you to treat it that way. We know each other. If I thought you'd act irresponsibly, or put it on the radio, I wouldn't even be talking to you. But that's the truth of it. Some investigations are of a nature that preclude the dispensing of those stories to the press while the cases are being made." She looked up as a waitress came to take their order.

"Would you folks like something?"

"Just coffee."

"Nothing. Can't stay," she said.

"One black coffee, please."

They sat mutely waiting while the waitress brought him a cup, poured, and asked if there'd be anything else. He told her no and she left. The two of them were taking up a booth for the price of a cup of coffee, and the waitress was doubtful the guy would even leave a tip.

"These aren't gangbanger shootings. They're random incidents, Vic. Believe me."

"I know if they're not drug related it's gotta be the work of a serial killer. Got to be." He had his teeth in this story and he wasn't giving up.

"Hawkins was shot in the projects Friday night. Small caliber pistol to the back of the head. We're working a black suspect," she whispered to him, wondering if he was wearing a wire. She'd have to have, the El Tee put a "copperstopper," a deletion order, in his information bottle when she went back to the shop. She didn't want to hear all this bullshit voice-tracked in the six o'clock newscast. "All this is strictly confidential and sensitive, not to be repeated, okay? But I'm just showing you. Yates took a shotgun blast in the face. Blew the kid's head off, darn near. We know who did it. Calderon and Phelbs were both stabbing victims and we're looking for the doer. Again, the person is known to us. You just happened to research some homicides in an unusually busy time frame and when, coincidentally, some of the homicides involving blacks were ongoing or sensitive investigations. Understand?"

"The killings are all drug related, though." He tried to hang in, as somehow he saw his entire theme show concept eroding if she shot him down on the serial theory.

"Vic, all homicides are either over drugs or money or women—I mean going back for years and in every major city in the country."

"Maybe so but…" He couldn't think. Jesus! "What about your ballistics department? Isn't it true that all the so-called random shootings are with the same two or three weapons?" He was fishing.

"First, it isn't a ballistics department, okay? Ballistics refers to the trajectory of projectiles." That patronizing ha-ha voice of hers was making him nuts. "The department is Firearms and Toolmakers and, no, the random violence is just that. There is no common link with respect to forensics or lab findings, or match-ups on bullets and so forth. There's just a lot of violent crime going on—not just Kansas City. I know the statistics for other large population areas are much worse. No—"

"You guys never talk about serial murders anyway, right? You wouldn't tell me if it was a serial killer, would you?" He had her on that one.

"Well," she said, breathing deeply, "I'm sure you're aware that the policy of the department is not to identify serial homicides during investigations because of obvious reasons. We know that such publicity very often fuels more killings, or if not feeding and stimulating the ego of the killer or killers, it can also create copycats."

"Is that what you have here—copycat killers?"

"No," she said with a pinched-up face, really selling it to him. "These homicides aren't related in M.O. or any other way. Every one is a different story."

"Okay, what about the biker gang and the three who got crucified? Those are tied together—everybody knows that."

"You know I can't talk about specific details on that one. That's still ongoing." He took a sip of his coffee and she used that second to slide out from the booth. "Gotta run. Believe me," she said, "you're off on the wrong track."

"Thanks for your time."

"No problem," she said, and with a curt nod was gone.

She hadn't even bothered to read his background stuff. He knew things about David Boyles and some of the others that he was sure the guy's casual buddies hadn't told the cops. They hated cops. But she didn't want to hear it. She couldn't be bothered. He'd go over her head. To the chief of detectives. He paid his check, left a dollar tip, surprising the waitress, and went out to his car.

The El Tee was gone when Hilliard returned to the squad bay, and she was wading through paperwork when Victor Trask's voice startled her.

"Long time no see." He was standing at her desk.

"Yeah, really." She made no effort to keep the irritation out of her tone.

"I forgot to give this to you—and you were in a hurry, so it didn't dawn on me until you'd left." He handed her one of the copies of the page on HOMICIDE VICTIMS WITH BACKGROUNDS AS DRUG DEALERS. She looked at it and was mildly surprised at the information.

"How did you get this?"

"Interviews with the decedent's acquaintances. People will tell reporters and researchers things they won't always tell cops."

"Um." She appeared stone-faced as usual. "Well, I'll see this gets passed along, okay. Thanks."

"You didn't have that information, did you?"

"I really couldn't say," she said. "Was that it?"

"Yeah." He turned and started out the door, cursing her mentally. There were three men and Hilliard in the squad room. Each working at a desk. He saw computer terminals and files everywhere, but little else. He could hear a telephone ringing. As he walked out of the metro squad section, he passed a closed office door with a lieutenant's name on it. He tried the knob and peeked in, prepared to say, "Oh—I thought this was the way out" or some dumb thing. "I can't read English." Something. Nobody at the desk. Trask did something with a piece of equipment about the size of a large push pin, and turned, leaving, and a man filled the doorway.

"Can I help you?"

Trask just about let it go in his pants. "No." He laughed, as if this fellow had just told him the funniest joke in the world. "I took a wrong turn." He stepped back into the hallway feeling the man's eyes burn into him. "Which way to get back downstairs?"

"Right there to your right. You here on business, sir?" There was an official edge to the man's voice.

"I'm an old friend of Hilliard's," Trask said. Big smile. He waved as he turned away. "Thanks."

"Uh-huh."

Trask kept going, waiting to hear the command to stop, but none came. His bed was made and there'd be no unmaking it now. The bug from Bob's Electronics was stuck under a shelf in Lieutenant John J. Llewelyn's office—for whatever that was worth.

Outside on the street, he bought a couple of papers. In one of them he saw the headline "Police Deny Mysterious Slayings Related to Sixteen Gang Killings." Clearly he hadn't been the first person to go fishing in this particular stagnant pond.

"Hey, Snooze," Sean Flynn called out from fifty feet away, as Trask rounded the turn to Production and Programming back inside KCM. Flynn, obviously in a good mood, was coming from the conference room. He only used his nicknames when he was in a good mood, which was-fortunately or unfortunately—almost never.

"Yo.

"Got a hole next week. Whatcha working on?"

"Right now?" Trask was ready for him this time.

"No. Not right now. What were you working on last February? Yeah, right now," Flynn said brightly.

"Telecommunications for the deaf. I've got a whole thing on the technology, the various devices, the way the operators work, the backgrounder—I've got staff and management types lined up. There's an eight-hundred number tie-in. A thing about prejudice against the deaf—they don't like the phrase 'hearing impaired,' by the way—and I, uh—"

"That's good. What else?"

"I got a thing on how parents, students, and media people have been acting as a pressure group, trying to get the U.S. Education Department to change its position on releasing crime reports at colleges and universities."

"Borrrrrrr-ing!"

"No. Wrong! Wrong, 0 mighty Flynn of the night. I got a bitchin' hot interview set with this gal who edits the student newspaper. She took 'em to court and won. It's perfect for you—the ant kicks the elephant's ass, so to speak."

"That is good. You're right. It's unboring as hell. I take it back. I stand chastised. Work that up. Like maybe three examples—each with a guest."

Sure.

"One other thing," Trask said, "I know what really killed the dinosaurs."

Flynn's handsome puss broke into a big smile. "Yeah? What's that?"

"They died trying to find a parking space."

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