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
“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
“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
