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
'Ms. Hildebrande was a
'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
'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.'
