probation, according to Liska.
“Vanlees's apartment on Lyndale is just a few blocks south of here,” she said as they picked their way up the sidewalk, stepping in the rut others had stomped into the wet snow. “Don't you just love a coincidence like that?”
“But they seemed not to know each other when you were at the apartment?”
She thought back to the scene, furrowing her brow. “Not more than in passing. They didn't speak. Do you really think she might have caught him looking in Jillian's windows?”
“That was a shot in the dark, but it sure got a rise out of your boy. The thing I'm wondering is, if she caught him doing something like that, why wouldn't she have told you about it?”
“Good question.” Liska tried the building's security door, finding it unlocked. “Let's go get an answer.”
The elevator smelled of bad Chinese takeout. They rode up to the fourth floor with an emaciated hype who huddled into one corner, trying to look inconspicuous and eye Quinn's expensive trench coat at the same time. Quinn gave him a flat stare and watched the sweat instantly bead on the man's pasty forehead. When the doors opened, the hype hung back in the elevator and rode it back down.
“You must be something at a poker table,” Liska said.
“No time for it.”
She arched a brow, blue eyes shining invitingly. “Better watch out. All work and no play makes John a dull boy.”
Quinn ducked her gaze, mustering a sheepish smile. “I'd put you to sleep, Tinks.”
“Well, I doubt that, but if you need to prove it scientifically . . .”
She stopped in front of Fine's door and looked at him. “I'm just giving you a hard time, you know. The sad truth is, you strike me as a man who has someone on his mind.”
Quinn rang the bell and stared at the door. “Yeah. A killer.” Though for the first time in a very long time, his thoughts were not entirely on his work.
As if Liska had given him permission, he flashed on Kate. Wondered how she was doing, what she was thinking. He wondered if she had yet gotten his message that the victim in the car had not been her witness. He hated the idea of her blaming herself for what had happened, and he hated even more the idea of her boss blaming her. It made his protective instincts rise up, made him want to do something more violent to Rob Marshall than knock him on his ass. He wondered if Kate would be amused or annoyed to know that.
He rang the bell again.
“Who is it?” a voice demanded from inside the apartment.
Liska stood in view of the peephole. “Sergeant Liska, Michele. I need to ask you a couple more questions about Jillian.”
“I'm sick.”
“It'll only take a minute. It's very important. There's been another murder, you know.”
The door opened a crack, and Fine peered out at them from the other side of the safety chain. The wedge of space framed the scarred portion of her narrow, angular face. “That's got nothing to do with me. I can't help you.”
She saw Quinn then, and her gaze hardened with suspicion. “Who's he?”
“John Quinn, FBI,” Quinn said. “I'd like to talk with you a little about Jillian, Ms. Fine. I'm trying to get a better idea of who she was. I understand you and she were close friends.”
The seconds ticked past as she stared at him, sizing him up in a way that seemed odd for a waitress in a trendy coffee bar. It was more the look of someone who had seen too much of the streets. As she raised her hand to undo the safety chain, he caught a glimpse of the snake tattooed around her wrist.
She opened the door and stepped back reluctantly.
“You haven't heard from her since Friday?” Quinn asked.
Fine gave him a look of suspicion and dislike. “How could I hear from her?” she asked bitterly, her eyes filling. “She's dead. Why would you ask me something like that?”
“Because I'm not as certain about it as you seem to be.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, looking frustrated and confused. “It's all over the news. Her father is offering a reward. What kind of game are you trying to play?”
Quinn let her hang as he looked around the room. The apartment was vintage seventies—original, not retro —and he figured nothing had been changed or dusted since. The woven drapes looked ready to rot off their hooks. The couch and matching chair in the small living room were square, brown and orange plaid, and worn nubby. Dog-eared travel magazines lay on the cheap coffee table like abandoned dreams beside an ashtray brimming with butts. Everything had been permeated by the smell of cigarette and pot smoke.
“I don't need you trying to fuck with my mind,” Fine said. “I'm sick. I'm sick about Jillian. She was my friend —” Her voice broke and she looked away, her mouth tightening in a way that emphasized the scar hooking down from the one corner. “I'm—I'm just sick. So, whatever you want, ask for it and get the hell out of my life.”
She plucked up her smoke and sidestepped away, hugging her free arm across her middle. She was an unhealthy kind of thin, Quinn thought, pale and bony. Maybe she really was sick. She wore a huge, ratty black cardigan sweater, and beneath it a grimy white T-shirt, so small it looked as if it had been intended for a child. Her legs looked as skinny as pegs in worn black leggings. Her feet were bare on the filthy carpet.
“So, what have you got?” Liska asked.
“Huh?”
“You said you were sick. What have you got?”
“Uhhh . . . the flu,” she said absently, looking at the television, where a grotesquely obese woman appeared to be telling Jerry Springer all about her relationships with the pockmarked dwarf and the black transsexual sitting on either side of her. Fine picked a fleck of tobacco off her tongue and flicked it in the direction of the screen. “Stomach flu.”
“You know what I hear is good for nausea?” Liska said, deadpan. “Marijuana. They're using it for chemotherapy patients. Of course, it's otherwise illegal . . .”
The threat was subtle. Maybe just enough to weigh in their favor if Fine found herself struggling with the idea of cooperation.
Fine stared at her with flat eyes.
“The other day—when we ran into the caretaker at Jillian's place,” Liska said. “You didn't have much to say about him.”
“What's to say?”
“How well did Jillian know him? Were they friends?”
“No. She knew him enough to call him by name.” She went to the postage-stamp-sized dining table, sat down, and propped herself against it as if she didn't have enough strength to sit up on her own. “He had his eye on her.”
“In what way?”
Fine looked at Quinn. “In the way men do.”
“Did Jillian ever say he was hitting on her, watching her, anything like that?” Liska asked.
“You think he killed her.”
“What do you think, Michele?” Quinn asked. “What's your take on the guy?”
“He's a loser.”
“Did you ever have any kind of run-in with him?”
She lifted a shoulder as thin as a bird's wing. “Maybe I told him to fuck off once or twice.”
“Why?”
“Because he was staring at us. Like maybe he was picturing us naked together. Fat bastard.”
“And what did Jillian say about it?”
Another shrug. “She said once if that was the biggest thrill of his life, let him stare.”
“She never said anything to you about him bothering her.”
“No.”
“She ever mention anything to you about feeling like she was being watched or followed, anything like that?”
“No. Even though she was.”
