Tuesday, May 30638Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUzNmNnUR1R
By 6:00 he was pulling up in the parking lot of the Tip-Top Grille just off Sycamore near the Oxway Collegiate Institute of Law. Open around the clock, the Tip-Top always had a scattering of students and businessmen and was owned and operated by a small, henna-haired French woman in her fifties named Camille. Camille manned the cash register and looked after her clientele with hawk-eyed efficiency, while the kitchen was run by her husband, a Polish ex-merchant marine named Marian. On the morning shift they had two Honduran waitresses, sisters---one shy and one flirty----and a Chinese dishwater and assistant cook named Hou. Marian and the Chinese (who, Camille said, knew more dirty jokes than the whores of Nice) laughed and talked incessantly and turned out more good food in less time than any other two cooks in Tolumura. Inexplicably, they communicated only in Spanish so that the two Honduran girls, blushing or laughing lubricously as suited their personalities, where the only ones who understood what was happening in the kitchen.
Noah parked under the catalpa tree in the parking lot and bought a newspaper from one of the wire cages outside. He went in, took a booth by a window that looked out onto Sycamore, and ordered breakfast from Sophie, the shy sister. The place was still quiet, with only a coatless businessman on one of the stools at the counter. The place was still quiet, with only a coatless businessman on one of the stools at the counter. Noah turned first to the section of short articles covering the police news. After the initial mention of Dowey's death on Tuesday morning, there had been nothing else about it, which was unusual. The press, like the police tended to pay a little more attention when the victim's address was in the high-dollar real estate. Mayhem in the middle class was cause for alarm, perhaps a sign that the felonious minorities and poor white trash were pushing their social disorder out of bounds. Still, it was good that no reporter had yet made the connection, but Noah couldn't expect that kind of luck to last very long.
When his food came, Noah folded the paper a quarter of its size and kept reading while he ate. By the time he finished, the traffic was starting to pick up both in the diner and outside. Leaving a good tip for Sophie, Noah paid Camille at the cash register, and stepped outside in the cool morning. He loved this time of day. It was as cool as it was going to be until the same time the next day. At this time of monitoring it was possible to be optimistic.
He was already sitting at her computer terminal when the 7:00 shift began arriving. He had been up until 2:00 filling out what he could of the VICAP crime analysis report forms for both the San Felipe and Dowey cases and now was almost through with Dowey's narrative summary. Although photographic services were true to their word and had two sets of Dowey's crime scene photographs on his desk, when he got there early that morning, the material Noah would be submitting to the FBI was less than ideal by its standards. He would not yet have a victimology or autopsy protocol for Dowey, nor would he have the crime lab's results on the pubic hair, swabs, and smears. However, since he did have everything for San Felipe's case, and since the police report would make it clear that the crime scene behavior was obviously similar to that in the case of Vicki San Felipe, he felt justified in requesting a "rough draft" profile in light of the fact that they might have a possible repeat killer with distinctive ritual behavior.
Noah was starting his third cup of coffee, his desk was covered with forms and photocopies and photographs and computer printouts of the crime report, and he was folding her leg up under him in his chair when he heard Yung say, "You really think this's going to get you anywhere?"
He was standing in the doorway holding a black coffee mug he'd ordered from Penthouse with a wraparound Asian nude painted on it in pink flesh tones and in such a posture that the mug's handle became a partially penetrated phallus. He had seen the mug before, but only as a pornographic curiosity sitting on the filing cabinet in Yung's office. He had never actually used it for coffee until this morning. HIs silk shirt was a little blousy in the arms, and his full, pleated trousers a little narrow at the ankles. The thick scent of too much Aramis followed him into the room.
"What do you think I think, Al?" Noah said, dropping his pencil and turning to him. "Why am I doing this?"
"No, really, Noah. I've seen some real fuckups in those profiles. Missed 'em by a mile. Not even close. They could get you thinking all wrong about how you should go after this guy, I wouldn't put too much stock in them."
He casually set the coffee mug on the edge of his Noah's desk, pretending he had to tuck his shirttail in a little tighter.
"They've messed you up before?" Noah asked, looking at Yung, who was holding back a grin.
"Not me personally, but I've known other guys, yeah." He picked up the mug again and sucked loudly from it, his lips covering a strategically painted pink breast. "Higgins, ask Lars Higgins. He's had dealings with them before. One time they told him his guy ought to be a Swedish bachelor in his forties with a persecution complex and a harelip, or something like that. Turned out to be a Mexican national who looked like Robert di Nero and had four kids."
"Maybe I should just tell Abbot you've decided we ought to just forget the FBI and get Higgins in on this?"
Yung shrugged. "Hey," he said.
"Right." Noah nodded and looked at him. The technique was variously praised or maligned, depending on what he'd heard. It wasn't widely used because the kinds of cases in which it was employed were a relatively small percentage of all homicide cases investigated, and even the agent-analysts stressed that the method was never meant to be a substitute for good, solid investigative procedures. It should be used only as an additional tool to supplement everything else available to the investigator. However, the cases in which it was employed were by nature sensational so that the technique had gained a larger-than-life reputation that was easily disparaged by skeptics.
Yung sucked more coffee from his mug, this time playing with the sound a little bit. They looked at each other for a moment and then Yung, one hand in his pocket, turned around hurriedly and meandered out into the squad room. He watched him go and saw him join two other detectives who had been watching Yung's conversation with him through the window. All of them were laughing and Yung was talking and gesturing with his coffee mug.
Then Overpeck walked into the office.
"Sorry I'm late," he said, pulling off his jacket and hanging it behind the door. "Long story----about a dog and a root canal and Karen and a Peeping Tom garbageman." He flopped down in his chair, sighed enormously, and looked at a blue Tupperware bowl sitting on his desk that he had brought in with him. He looked at Noah and tapped the plastic. "Lasagna. Very good last night. Kim swears it'll warm up just fine in the cafeteria's microwave." He pulled down the sides of his mouth and slowly shook his head. "It won't." He looked at Noah's desk. "That the FBI stuff?"
Noah nodded. "I'm almost through with it. I've already called Ashton over at the FBI offices and told him I would drop the stuff by there later this morning."
"This'll be fun,' Overpeck said. He smiled at Noah. "You want this guy's ass, don't you?"
"I do," said Noah. "I really do."
"Don't get carried away with it."
"I'm already carried away with it."
"Work out some little personal vendettas, maybe?"
"Can you think of a better way to do it?"
Overpeck snorted and shook his head. "Hell, no."
"I talked to San Felipe last night."
Overpeck held up his hand. "Wait. Let me get some coffee." He grabbed his mug off his desk and lumbered out to the squad room, around the island of cubicles to the sink and coffeepot just outside Abbot's office. Noah watched him wave off Abbot and a couple of secretaries in Abbot's office, strike up a conversation with several detectives hanging around the coffeepot---he nudged Moore (probably kidding him about his picture in the paper at a recent homicide scene), grabbed the spare tire at Woolf's waistline (probably kidding him about the obvious)----all the time talking, bullshitting, and whipping up his coffee concoction (he used everything).
When he got back to the office he said, "Okay, let's hear it," as he came in the door.
Noah told him.
"Poor bastard," Overpeck said when Noah had finished. He drank his coffee and thought for a moment. "This one's a bad dream he's not ever going to wake up from." He looked at Noah. "Did you believe him when he said he didn't think the stuff was used for S&M?"
Noah smiled to himself. Overpeck was good. "Yeah, I'm bothered by some things that I can't quite pin down. Despite what he says, I wondered just how sensitive he was to his wife's sexual needs. I would almost bet money that the paraphernalia he found was not limited to autoerotic use, but San Felipe's absolutely incapable of entertaining the idea of her infidelity. Under the circumstances most men's imagination would run wild with something like this. Whatever she was into, it was so foreign to his concept of what she was all about that he has no idea what to do with the evidence to the contrary. There's no doubt that the man's a total wreck over this, but a lot of stuff doesn't add up. I mean, he didn't find his wife's cache of toys until after we'd urged him to go through her things and cautioned him to be meticulous in doing so. We pointed out the importance of finding anything out of the ordinary. Then he threw the stuff out. Gee, I dunno."
"Sure."
Noah looked at him. "What, he was ashamed of it?"
"I imagine."
"That's what I thought, too. But then why did he finally come across with the information? We'd never have known the difference."
Overpeck gave Noah one of his slow looks, and then turned his eyes to his desk, picked up a pencil, and played with the green feathers of a fishing lure stuck into the fabric covering the cubicle wall. "Well, you know, there's a difference. On the one hand the guy admits the stuff was there, that it actually existed. He did the stand-up thing. On the other hand he gives the stuff to a bunch of detectives, a bunch of guys who'll paw through it, handle it, look it over, joke about it, the actual stuff his wife had been---using." Without looking at Noah, Overpeck jerked his head in a shrug. "Damn, I don't blame him."
Noah remembered San Felipe's reluctance to enumerate the items he had found in the black box, and she felt a pang of discomfort at not having been sensitive to the difference Overpeck had pointed out. He was so used to the veterans acting as if they didn't have any emotions at all that sometimes they caught her off guard with their unexpected sensitivity, and in doing so made her realize just how frighteningly successful she had been in shutting out her own feelings.
"A guy like that," Overpeck added. "There're things he'd probably never tell us that would be useful to the investigation. But you have to let some things go."
"Like if he really knew if she might've been having an affair?"
"Maybe. You don't believe he was telling the truth about that, either?"
"I don't know," Noah said, exasperated. "I want to blame him for not being observant, for not being sensitive to----something."
"There may be some of that," Overpeck conceded. "But I can tell you that when it comes to deceit, neither sex of this species has got a corner on the market. If you want to deceive somebody bad enough you can do. And for a long time, too. T here must have been a lot about her he didn't know, and maybe his ignorance wasn't a result of his being a klutz. I'm guessing that Vicki San Felipe, in addition to being all the good things her friends claimed, was also a real piece of work."
"And what do you make of the fact that Toby San Felipe knew Lauralee Dowey. At least had met her."
Overpeck shook his head. "Now that's the one that interests me. It's just the kind of thing that could be a fluke, something that seems so obviously a 'link' that it throws off the whole perspective of the investigation. Or it could be the real thing. Damn, what a coincidence. You'd almost have to believe it meant something."
"I need to talk to Yung and Pittman before they go over to TechCube. They ought to know about this."
"Yeah, you should," Overpeck said, looking at his watch. "And I need to get my ass over to Underwood, chat up the neighbors, go through the place, and talk to the pizza folks. It's gonna be a great morning."638Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtIIn4wPVgZ
