Quinn flashed his ID and a no-nonsense G-man look.
“Damnation. It's Scully and Mulder,” Tiny Marvin said, unimpressed, as he pulled a coffeepot off its warmer.
Kate planted her butt on a barstool. “Coffee's fine, thanks.”
There were maybe a dozen serious players at the pool tables. A pair of hookers served as ornamentation, looking bored and impatient at the downtime. One caught an eyeful of Quinn and nudged the other, but neither made a move to get closer.
Tiny Marvin squinted at Quinn. “Hey, man, didn't I see you on TV? For real?”
“We're looking for a girl,” Quinn said.
Kate slid the Polaroid across the bar, expecting Marvin to give it as little attention as every other bartender had. He picked it up with fingers as short and thick as Vienna sausages and squinted harder.
“Yeah, she been in here.”
Kate sat up straighter. “Tonight?”
“Naw, Sunday night, around ten-thirty, eleven. Came in to warm up, she said. Jailbait. I chased her skinny white ass outta here. I mean, consenting adults is one thing, man—you know what I mean? That child's trouble. I don't want no part of that shit.”
“Did she leave with anybody?” Quinn asked.
“Not from here she didn't. She went back on the street and walked up and down for a while. Then I start feeling bad—like, what if she was my niece or something, and I found out some hard-ass threw her out on the street? Man, I'd bust his hard ass. So I go to tell her she can have a cup of coffee if she wants, but she's got a ride and they're going down the road.”
“What kind of car?” Kate asked.
“Some kind of truck.”
Her heart started to beat a little harder, and she looked to Quinn, but his attention was still on Tiny Marvin.
“Don't suppose you got the plates?”
“Hey, man, I ain't no neighborhood watch commander.”
“It didn't bother you the guy was breaking the law,” Kate said.
Tiny Marvin frowned at her. “Look, I take care of what goes on in here, Scully. Rest of the world ain't my problem. The girl was doing what hookers do. Wasn't none of my business.”
“And if she'd been your niece?”
Quinn gave her a warning look and spoke again to the bartender. “Did you see the driver?”
“Didn't look. I just thought, man, what about his sorry ass, picking up a kid like that. The world's a cold, sick place—you know what I'm saying?”
“Yeah,” Kate muttered, picking up the snapshot of Angie from the bar, looking at the pretty, exotic face, the frowning mouth, the angry eyes that had seen too much. “I know exactly what you're saying.”
She put the photo back in her purse, tossed a buck on the bar for the coffee she hadn't touched, and walked out. The snow had started in flurries, the clouds sending down a handful at a time on gusts of cold wind. The street was deserted, the sidewalks empty, the dingy storefronts dark except for the bail-bonds place across the street.
She leaned back against the building and wished the wind would blow away the feelings that were stacking up inside her. They'd about reached the back of her throat and she couldn't even begin to swallow them down.
She knew too much about the world to let its injustices and cruelties get to her too easily. Of course a bartender in a pool hall on Lake Street wouldn't be overly concerned about the life of a hooker, young or not. He saw it every day and never looked too closely. He had his own life to worry about.
It hit Kate hard only because she knew the next chapter to the story. The ride that had taken Angie DiMarco away from Eight Ball's had taken her to a crime scene, and the driver of that nondescript truck might have been a killer. Even if he'd been just another pathetic loser willing to pay for sex, he'd delivered her to a rendezvous with a fate that may just have gotten her killed.
Quinn came out of the pool hall, eyes narrowed against the cold and wind as he flipped up the collar of his trench coat.
“Kovac says: ‘Good police work, Red.' If you ever want to give up the soft life, he'll put a word in for you.”
“Yeah? Well, I've always wanted to work nights, weekends, and holidays up to my ass in dead bodies. Now's my big chance.”
“He's sending a team out to talk to the bartender and whoever else they can find. If they can come up with somebody who remembers more about the vehicle, or saw the driver that night, they've got something to run with.”
Kate pulled her coat closed up around her throat and stared across the empty street at the bail-bonds place. A red neon light glowed through the barred window: CHECK$ CA$HED HERE.
“Timing is everything,” she said. “If Angie hadn't been standing on this street at the exact moment that truck pulled up, I'd be home in bed, and you'd be digging in someone else's boneyard.”
She laughed at herself and shook her head, the wind catching a rope of hair and whipping it across her face. “As long as I've been around, I still shake my fist at chance. How stupid is that?”
“You always took the prize for stubborn.” Quinn reached out automatically to brush her hair back, his fingertips grazing her cheek. “A cynic is a disappointed idealist, you know.”
“Is that what happened to you?” she tossed back.
“I never saw life as ideal.”
She knew that, of course. She knew about his life, about the abusive alcoholic father, and the grim years growing up in working-class Cincinnati. She was one of the few people he had allowed to see in that window.
“But that never saved you from disappointment,” she said quietly.
“The only thing that can save you from disappointment is hopelessness. But if you don't have hope, then there's no point in living.”
“And what's the difference between hope and desperation?” she asked, thinking of Angie, wondering if she dared hope.
“Time.”
Which might have already run out for Angie DiMarco, and which had run out for the two of them years earlier. Kate felt disappointment sink down through her. She wanted to lay her head against Quinn's shoulder and feel his arms slip around her. Instead, she pushed away from the wall and started for the 4Runner parked down by the Laundromat. The homeless guy was looking in her back window as if considering it for his night's accommodations.
“I'll drop you off at your hotel,” she said to Quinn.
“No. I'll ride home with you and call a cab. Tough as you are, I don't want you going home alone, Kate. It's not smart. Not tonight.”
If she'd been feeling stronger, she might have argued just on principle, but she wasn't feeling strong, and the memory of phantom eyes watching her as she'd let herself in her back door just hours before was still too fresh.
“All right.” She hit the remote lock. The alarm system on the truck beeped loudly, sending the homeless guy scuttling back into the doorwell of the Suds-O-Rama. “But don't try anything funny, or I'll sic my cat on you.”
20
CHAPTER
“ANYTHING ON THE house-to-house yet?” Kovac asked, lighting a cigarette.
Tippen hunched his bony shoulders. “A lot of people pissed off about having cops pounding on their doors in the middle of the night.”
They stood on the front porch of the Phoenix, huddled under a jaundice-yellow bug light. The B of I van was still on the yard. The yard had been cordoned off to create a media-free zone.
The press had swooped in like a flock of vultures, suspiciously in sync. Kovac squinted through the smoke and the falling snow, staring out at the end of the sidewalk, where Toni Urskine was being interviewed in the eerie glow of portable lights.
“How much you wanna bet I pull the phone records for this dump tonight I find calls to WCCO, KSTP, and KARE?” he muttered.