Sleep Tight

Chapter 6

Gillian stood in the observation room of the Minneapolis Police Station. Beside her was a student intern named Ben Collins. From the second Ben had stepped into the BCA building for his first day on the job, the poor kid had been labeled a lost cause.

His hair was dyed jet black and combed down over his forehead. His fingernails were usually painted purple. If he'd gone to see a band the night before, he could almost always be counted on to have remnants of eyeliner lingering between his lashes. But it wasn't his unconventional looks that made people reluctant to work with him. He talked. All the time. And not about anything remotely related to what was going on. Three people had taken him for a test drive, and none of them had been able to stand him for more than a day. They were getting ready to kick him out of the intern program when Gillian stepped in and offered to be his mentor. She thought he was a nice kid. He just needed to learn to curb his impulsiveness and stay focused.

Less than twenty-four hours after the third victim had been found near Lake Harriet, Gillian and Ben were sent out to interview suspects. The most recent victim had been identified, and when they flashed her photo, a housemate of one of the suspects recalled seeing her at their place a couple of times.

The suspect's name was Sebastian Tate, and his rap sheet was two pages long. At twenty-eight, he had a record of assault and battery, plus two rape charges. Somehow he'd never served time.

So now she and Ben stood in front of one-way glass as Tate was led into the interview room by Detective Wakefield. The door clicked closed, and Tate glanced around, then immediately walked to the window. He rapped his knuckles against it. "Anybody in there?" He put his face two inches from the surface.

"This is so cool," Ben whispered. "Just like The Long Goodbye with Elliot Gould playing Philip Marlowe. Ever see that movie?"

Actually she had, but didn't want to encourage Ben's chatty conversation. Once he got going on a movie, he didn't stop. "I'm not sure."

Tate began making faces.

Ben let out a loud snort. "If you saw it, you'd remember. Elliot Gould is the coolest. He gets called in, and he's fingerprinted; then he starts wiping the ink on his face while he's lookin' through the one-way glass. It's so cool. You should rent it. They have it at Intercontinental Video. They have everything at Intercontinental.'' "I'll have to look for it sometime," Gillian said dryly. There were only two years between them, but sometimes she felt like his mother.

Detective Wakefield finally got Tate corralled so they were sitting across from each other at the long, narrow table.

"What is your full name?"

Tate turned to the glass and smiled. "Sebastian Griffin Tate."

"How old are you?" Wakefield continued.

"Why don't you just invite them in?" Tate asked, obviously enjoying his stardom. "Whoever's behind the glass."

Wakefield lifted his eyebrows and looked in the direction of Gillian and Ben. What do you think?

"Who's there? A couple of detectives? Or how about the agent who came to my place? Gillian Can-trell. Yeah, that was her name. She seemed pretty cool."

"This is going nowhere," Gillian said, moving toward the door. "I may as well make an appearance." Ben started to follow, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm. He might just get the notion to strike up some inane conversation with their suspect. "Stay here. Maybe you'll catch something we miss."

"Ah-hah!" Tate said as soon as Gillian stepped into the interview room. "I knew it was you!" The guy was beaming at her.

Until questioning Tate yesterday, she hadn't thought about the similarity between herself and the victims, and now it was creepy standing there knowing she came close to fitting the physical description of all three of the dead girls.

She sat down at the end of the table, and Wakefield resumed the interview. "How old are you?"

Tate glanced at Gillian, then back to Wakefield.

She could tell he was one of those arrogant guys who thought every girl in the room was attracted to him. Trouble was, a lot of girls probably were attracted to him. She supposed he was nice-looking in a high cheekboned, big-lipped, spooky model sort of way.

"Twenty-eight."

That was followed by his address and phone number.

"What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a full-time student." With every answer, he looked in Gillian's direction and smiled.

"Where do you attend school?"

"The U."

"Would that be the University of Minnesota?"

"Uh-huh."

"What's your major?"

"Theater."

"Have a minor?"

"Photography."

Fraternities were big at the U, and Tate had the closely cropped hair and pumped-up body of a frat weight-room addict. If Tate were the murderer, Gillian found something especially unnerving about a psycho hiding in plain sight while posing as an average student.

"Have you ever seen any of these girls?" Wakefield spread three eight-by-tens on the table. The third victim's name was Justine Ramsey, a twenty-two-year-old former university student who had a reputation for going home with a new guy every night.

Tate leaned forward and looked at the photos one at a time, then fell back in his chair. "No."

"Are you sure? Care to take another look?"

"I don't need to take another look. I've never seen any of 'em."

Wakefield separated the photo of the Ramsey girl from the others. "We checked school records and discovered you had some classes with this individual." He pushed the photo across the table in case Tate wanted to examine it again.

"So? Some of my classes have four hundred kids. How would I recognize everybody?"

"Someone said you and Ramsey went out a few times."

"Who told you that?" he asked, his face turning red.

"Someone reliable-that's all you need to know. Did you maybe forget about going out with Justine Ramsey?" Wakefield paused, giving Tate time to think about the corner he'd painted himself into. "You're a good-looking guy. Probably gone out with a lot of girls. I know how girls can be. Maybe you stop and say hi to one of them, and pretty soon she's telling everybody you're dating."

Gillian had watched several of Wakefield's interviews. He had a nice technique, relaxed, friendly, not too aggressive. And he never directly accused the interviewee of anything if he could give him a way out.

Tate shot Gillian a nervous smile, some of his cool beginning to melt. "What'd you say her name was?" he asked, backpedaling.

"Ramsey. Justine Ramsey."

"You know… maybe that does sound kinda familiar. Yeah, now that I think about it-it does. I totally forgot about her, man. And this picture-" He tapped the photo. "It doesn't really look like her."

"But you remember her now?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"Do you happen to remember a 911 call she made from her residence about eight months ago? You beat her up and she required ten stitches. Do you remember that?"

Tate completely lost his too-cool-for-this-place attitude. "Those charges were dropped. It was an accident."

"What color was Justine Ramsey's hair?"

Tate looked down at the photo, then back up. "Blond. So what?"

"Maybe you can tell me."

"I don't know what you're talkin' about."

Wakefield shifted gears. "How you could forget the name and face of a woman you beat up, someone who called the cops on you? That doesn't make any sense to me," he said with false puzzlement.

"Am I under arrest?"

"Should you be? Is there something you want to tell me?"

"I've had enough of this bullshit." Tate grabbed his jacket and started to get to his feet.

"All I need to do is get a court order and you'll be right back down here. It always looks better if you come in of your own free will." Wakefield put a sincere expression on his face. "A guy just seems less guilty that way."

Tate considered that, then settled back in his chair.

"Why did you lie about knowing Justine Ramsey?"

Tate rubbed his head. "I wanted the interview to be over. I didn't want to get messed up in anything- especially murder. You can understand that, can't you?" He looked at Gillian for reassurance. "You can, can't you?"

She didn't reply or respond in any way.

"It makes it harder for everybody when you don't tell the truth," Wakefield said. "Because chances are, we already know the answer to the question we're asking. And if we don't, we'll find out."

"I'm not falling for that."

"Did I tell you I know your dad?"

That got his attention.

"We went to the same high school," Wakefield said. "He was two years ahead of me, but we were in band and Academic Bowl together. I wasn't surprised when he went into politics. He knew the ins and outs of everything. How's your dad doing nowadays? I heard he was going to run for state senator."

"Maybe. I don't know. I don't talk to him much."

"Only when you're in trouble, right?"

"I see him other times. Christmas, usually."

"Where were you Friday-the night Justine Ramsey's body was dumped near Lake Harriet?"

"Listen, if you're trying to say I killed Justine Ramsey just because I may have hit her once, you're crazy."

"We're not accusing you of anything. We're interviewing everybody who knew Justine. It's standard procedure."

Tate relaxed a little, but kept his arms crossed at his chest, his attitude belligerent. "I was at a party."

"Were you there all night?"

"I stayed a few hours, then went barhopping. Everybody goes barhopping on Fridays."

"Were you with anybody? Someone who can corroborate your story?"

"I left the party by myself."

"What about the bars? Can you give me a list of the bars you went to and the people you saw?"

"Some of them. Listen, I was drunk. I can't remember exactly where I went and who I saw."

Wakefield pulled out a tablet and a piece of paper. "Why don't you try?"

Half an hour later, Wakefield had several bars and names written down, and Tate was out the door.

"What do you think?" Wakefield asked.

"Other than the fact that he's an arrogant ass?" Gillian asked.

"Yeah, other than that."

Ben joined them. "That guy's got the hots for you." He seemed to think that was extremely funny. "He's so not your type."

"I found Tate's reaction to you as telling as anything we got out of him," Wakefield said, flashing Ben a look of resigned irritation.

"He didn't seem at all interested in hiding his attraction," Gillian said. "Which makes me wonder if what we just witnessed was some kind of strategy-or was he just trying to look cool?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if he's been in more trouble than we know and Daddy's gotten him out of it. He's avoided getting his name on the public-access sex offender blacklist. He avoided a prison sentence by agreeing to become a full-time student. That kind of thing is bullshit."

"I've seen him on campus," Ben said. "Girls seem to dig him."

"Not this girl," Gillian said.

"We'll try to get interviews with school acquaintances," Waken"eld said. "See if we can come up with anything."

Outside the police station, Gillian and Ben split up. He headed for a class on West Bank. She needed to report back to the BCA in St. Paul.

She was walking toward her car on the third floor of the Federal Courthouse parking garage when someone jumped out from behind a cement pillar and landed flat-footed in front of her.

She let out a frightened yelp, at the same time recognizing Sebastian Tate.

"Hi." He flashed her a smile, proud of himself.

Her heart was pounding madly in her chest. "What the hell are you doing?" she shouted at him in disbelief.

"It's almost noon. I thought you might want to grab a bite to eat."

"Are you kidding?" If he hadn't just scared the hell out of her, she may have been a little more discreet in her response. As it was, she did nothing to hide her disgust.

He gestured with hands in the pockets of his unzipped, black leather bomber jacket, walking backwards while she strode toward her car. "Why not?" he asked innocently, as if expecting her to say she was too busy.

"Why not? Because you're a fucking asshole, that's why not!"

He stopped walking, and his jaw went slack. She shoved past him, unlocked her car with the remote, and slid behind the wheel. With a trembling hand, she jabbed the key in the ignition. Oh, that was good, she thought sarcastically. She locked the door and pulled the seat belt across her shoulder. Real professional. Cussing out a suspect. She was sure Mary did that all the time.