'We don't have a sheet on him. I contacted Buffalo, where he grew up. He's clean there, too. Might as well be an Eagle Scout.'
'He looks like a damned junkie. If he's not a known user, he must be on something legal, like glue or gasoline.' He bowed his head and gazed thoughtfully at the killer's note lying in the center of his desk. 'Some of them just don't get caught.'
Pearl didn't know if he meant junkies or serial killers. 'I had another talk with Lauri,' she said.
He glanced up at her, surprised. 'Duty above and beyond. Thanks.'
'It was her idea.'
Quinn leaned back in his chair so he could see her without craning his neck and began to swivel inches this way and that, as if experiencing the beginning of uneasiness. 'Lauri's idea?'
'Yeah. We met at a restaurant near the Hungry U and had sodas, then walked around the Village a while. She's a great kid, got more sense than most her age.'
'But not enough sense.'
'Well, at that age, no. Even thee and me. If you can remember back that far.'
'She told me she likes you,' Quinn said. 'Really admires you.'
'She used those words?'
'Verbatim.'
'That's nice to know.' Pearl was surprised by how pleased she felt. 'It partly explains why she wanted to tag along with me while I work.'
Quinn stopped swiveling gently back and forth in his chair. He looked mystified. 'Tag along?'
'That's what she wanted. Why she phoned and asked to meet with me.'
'You mean she wants to hang out with you, even while you're working?'
'She wants to watch and learn, Quinn. She told me she wants to become a cop.'
Quinn sat stunned. Lauri? A cop? His own little girl? She had no idea what that meant. What she'd see and do, and how it would change her.
'She damned well better not tag along with you,' he told Pearl.
She smiled. 'That's exactly what I told her, Dad. Almost verbatim.' She went to the door and looked back at him. 'Still, I'm flattered she thinks highly of me.'
'I don't want her hurt,' he said helplessly.
'Neither of us does, Quinn.'
'Jesus, what would May say if she knew?'
'I guess you're gonna find out.'
He watched Pearl go out into the already steamy morning.
For a long time he sat staring at the closed door. Being a father-a close-by father-wasn't easy. Nothing seemed to work out as he planned. Lauri didn't act or react the way he imagined she would. Hardly ever. Turning up unexpectedly at his door, the job at the restaurant, going out with that Wormy misfit. What next, a tattoo?
He'd tried to act in her best interests, got Pearl to talk with her, the better to understand her. That had sure as hell backfired. Now his daughter wanted to be like Pearl. A cop.
Like me.
His brief flush of pride became a stab of pain.
A life like mine.
Quinn noticed he was squeezing the desk edge with both hands so hard that his fingers where white.
Daughters!
He could barely contain his frustration.
31
Pearl sat in the unmarked parked across the street from the Waverton Hotel and watched a sprinkling of raindrops dot the windshield. Rain wasn't in the forecast and she knew it would stop soon. A brief summer spritzing that would juice up the humidity and make the day even hotter.
She wasn't much concerned with the weather. Pearl hadn't yet visited any of the victims' apartments, per Quinn's instructions. She was holding her cell phone loosely in her right hand, hefting it as if contemplating throwing it.
But she didn't throw it. She used it.
Jeb Jones was in his room at the Waverton when Pearl called. When he picked up on the third ring and said hello, she said, 'This is Detective Kasner, Mr. Jones.'
'Ah, Pearl.'
'Detective Kasner,' she repeated.
'Sorry. I shouldn't have assumed we were on a first-name basis.'
Pearl felt frustrated. Already she'd botched this up. 'I didn't mean to sound unfriendly, just professional.'
And just distant enough.
'We'll make it professional, then. I'm ready and willing to answer all your questions.' He sounded more amused than miffed.
'When can we meet?'
'You don't want to do this by phone?'
'No. I like to see people when I talk to them in the course of an investigation.' She sounded like a bureaucratic prig even to herself.
'Suspects, you mean?'
'For God's sake, no.'
Too fast. And I shouldn't have told him that.
He laughed, gaining confidence. 'I figured you were about to tell me that at this point everyone's a suspect.'
'No, it's not like on television.'
'Well, I can meet with you just about any time.'
'Now?'
'Sure. Where?'
'How about the lobby?'
He laughed. 'You like to surprise people, don't you?'
'I guess I do. It's part of my job.'
'Let's meet in the hotel coffee shop in ten minutes.'
Pearl told him she'd be waiting, and broke the connection.
This wasn't all professional, and they both knew it. Odd how sexual tension could make its way across a phone connection. What life was about-connections.
She turned off the engine and climbed out of the coolness of the air-conditioned car into the heat. The drizzle wasn't enough to worry about, not much more than a mist, but it sure upped the humidity. Almost immediately her clothes felt damp and as if they were sticking to her flesh.
After waiting for a bus to rumble past, she crossed the street and used a revolving door to enter the Waverton Hotel.
Cool air again. Refreshing.
She made her way across the carpeted lobby toward a wide archway and went down two steps to the coffee shop. It was surprisingly large, with rows of tables and a long counter. The floor was oversize black and white tiles in a checker-board pattern. The place gave the impression of being almost devoid of customers, but there were more than a dozen people at the tables, and three at the counter. Pearl noticed a street door at the far end of the counter and figured many of the diners weren't hotel guests.
She found a table where she could be seen. A placard propped next to a cluster of condiments said there was a sale on pie. She ordered a diet Coke.
