person is known to us. You just happened to research some homicides in an unusually busy time frame and when, coincidentally, some of the homicides involving blacks were ongoing or sensitive investigations. Understand?'
'The killings are all drug related, though.' He tried to hang in, as somehow he saw his entire theme show concept eroding if she shot him down on the serial theory.
'Vic, all homicides are either over drugs or money or women—I mean going back for years and in every major city in the country.'
'Maybe so but…' He couldn't think. Jesus! 'What about your ballistics department? Isn't it true that all the so-called random shootings are with the same two or three weapons?' He was fishing.
'First, it isn't a ballistics department, okay? Ballistics refers to the trajectory of projectiles.' That patronizing ha-ha voice of hers was making him nuts. 'The department is Firearms and Toolmakers and, no, the random violence is just that. There is no common link with respect to forensics or lab findings, or match-ups on bullets and so forth. There's just a lot of violent crime going on—not just Kansas City. I know the statistics for other large population areas are much worse. No—'
'You guys never talk about serial murders anyway, right? You wouldn't tell me if it was a serial killer, would you?' He had her on that one.
'Well,' she said, breathing deeply, 'I'm sure you're aware that the policy of the department is not to identify serial homicides during investigations because of obvious reasons. We know that such publicity very often fuels more killings, or if not feeding and stimulating the ego of the killer or killers, it can also create copycats.'
'Is that what you have here—copycat killers?'
'No,' she said with a pinched-up face, really selling it to him. 'These homicides aren't related in M.O. or any other way. Every one is a different story.'
'Okay, what about the biker gang and the three who got crucified? Those are tied together—everybody knows that.'
'You know I can't talk about specific details on that one. That's still ongoing.' He took a sip of his coffee and she used that second to slide out from the booth. 'Gotta run. Believe me,' she said, 'you're off on the wrong track.'
'Thanks for your time.'
'No problem,' she said, and with a curt nod was gone.
She hadn't even bothered to read his background stuff. He knew things about David Boyles and some of the others that he was sure the guy's casual buddies hadn't told the cops. They hated cops. But she didn't want to hear it. She couldn't be bothered. He'd go over her head. To the chief of detectives. He paid his check, left a dollar tip, surprising the waitress, and went out to his car.
The El Tee was gone when Hilliard returned to the squad bay, and she was wading through paperwork when Victor Trask's voice startled her.
'Long time no see.' He was standing at her desk.
'Yeah, really.' She made no effort to keep the irritation out of her tone.
'I forgot to give this to you—and you were in a hurry, so it didn't dawn on me until you'd left.' He handed her one of the copies of the page on HOMICIDE VICTIMS WITH BACKGROUNDS AS DRUG DEALERS. She looked at it and was mildly surprised at the information.
'How did you get this?'
'Interviews with the decedent's acquaintances. People will tell reporters and researchers things they won't always tell cops.'
'Um.' She appeared stone-faced as usual. 'Well, I'll see this gets passed along, okay. Thanks.'
'You didn't have that information, did you?'
'I really couldn't say,' she said. 'Was that it?'
'Yeah.' He turned and started out the door, cursing her mentally. There were three men and Hilliard in the squad room. Each working at a desk. He saw computer terminals and files everywhere, but little else. He could hear a telephone ringing. As he walked out of the metro squad section, he passed a closed office door with a lieutenant's name on it. He tried the knob and peeked in, prepared to say, 'Oh—I thought this was the way out' or some dumb thing. 'I can't read English.' Something. Nobody at the desk. Trask did something with a piece of equipment about the size of a large push pin, and turned, leaving, and a man filled the doorway.
'Can I help you?'
Trask just about let it go in his pants. 'No.' He laughed, as if this fellow had just told him the funniest joke in the world. 'I took a wrong turn.' He stepped back into the hallway feeling the man's eyes burn into him. 'Which way to get back downstairs?'
'Right there to your right. You here on business, sir?' There was an official edge to the man's voice.
'I'm an old friend of Hilliard's,' Trask said. Big smile. He waved as he turned away. 'Thanks.'
'Uh-huh.'
Trask kept going, waiting to hear the command to stop, but none came. His bed was made and there'd be no unmaking it now. The bug from Bob's Electronics was stuck under a shelf in Lieutenant John J. Llewelyn's office—for whatever that was worth.
Outside on the street, he bought a couple of papers. In one of them he saw the headline 'Police Deny Mysterious Slayings Related to Sixteen Gang Killings.' Clearly he hadn't been the first person to go fishing in this particular stagnant pond.
'Hey, Snooze,' Sean Flynn called out from fifty feet away, as Trask rounded the turn to Production and Programming back inside KCM. Flynn, obviously in a good mood, was coming from the conference room. He only used his nicknames when he was in a good mood, which was-fortunately or unfortunately—almost never.
'Yo.
'Got a hole next week. Whatcha working on?'
'Right now?' Trask was ready for him this time.
'No. Not right now. What were you working on last February? Yeah, right now,' Flynn said brightly.
'Telecommunications for the deaf. I've got a whole thing on the technology, the various devices, the way the operators work, the backgrounder—I've got staff and management types lined up. There's an eight-hundred number tie-in. A thing about prejudice against the deaf—they don't like the phrase 'hearing impaired,' by the way—and I, uh—'
'That's good. What else?'
'I got a thing on how parents, students, and media people have been acting as a pressure group, trying to get the U.S. Education Department to change its position on releasing crime reports at colleges and universities.'
'Borrrrrrr-ing!'
'No. Wrong! Wrong, 0 mighty Flynn of the night. I got a bitchin' hot interview set with this gal who edits the student newspaper. She took 'em to court and won. It's perfect for you—the ant kicks the elephant's ass, so to speak.'
'That is good. You're right. It's unboring as hell. I take it back. I stand chastised. Work that up. Like maybe three examples—each with a guest.'
Sure.
'One other thing,' Trask said, 'I know what really killed the dinosaurs.'
Flynn's handsome puss broke into a big smile. 'Yeah? What's that?'
'They died trying to find a parking space.'
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20
Bobby Price had slept on the floor of a deserted office and woke up stiff in most of his joints, no pun intended. He could not force more than one push-up out of his muscular bod, so gripped he was by a languorous, listless, languid, lovely, lethargic lassitude. He was up on those hard, extended arms, toes erect, frozen in midpush, thinking of lazy words that began with
