'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
'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
