He checked his phone messages more to escape his own melancholy than anything else. He had a dozen messages, a couple from other cops working the Doc Holiday cases in other states, most from esteemed members of the press wanting to know more about the dead zombie. Fucking newsies.
Like most cops, he hated the media. Their usefulness was far outstripped by their ability to annoy, to misinform, to fuck up, and to do outright damage to a case. Their stock-in-trade was human tragedy, the more grotesque, the better. A young woman with no name dying was of no interest to them. Murder her, and they would prick up their ears. Chuck her from a moving vehicle, and they would come running. Call her a zombie, and they would wet themselves getting there.
Their interest in the case would run equal to the life of the shock factor. For that reason he supposed he should have been grateful his victim had been disfigured by having some sick fuck pour acid in her face while she was still breathing. That would hold the public’s interest longer than a mere stabbing or shooting.
“Aloha! Welcome to paradise!”
Tippen had dressed in baggy khaki shorts and a loud Hawaiian shirt, black socks, and sandals. His bony knees looked as big as doorknobs on his skinny, hairy white legs. He sauntered toward the cubicle wearing Ray-Bans, an umbrella drink in hand.
“You look like a fucking cartoon,” Kovac said.
“Absurdity is the humor of the superior mind,” Tippen returned without rancor.
“Yeah, well, you’ve got that covered. The socks are an especially nice touch. What are you doing here?” Kovac asked. “Are the strip clubs closed for the holiday?”
Tippen leaned a shoulder against the cubicle wall and shoved the sunglasses on top of his head. “You’re not the only one without a life, you know. I came in and commandeered a conference room. I thought maybe if we pretend we have a task force on this, the boss will just go along. We’ll act like it’s been going on for weeks. He’ll be too embarrassed to call us on it.”
“A pretend task force,” Kovac said. “I like it. Do we get to spend pretend money on it?”
“And get imaginary overtime pay too.”
“Is there another kind?”
“Not in this economy.”
“Ah, well, what the hell would we do with money anyway?” Kovac asked. “Buy shit we don’t have time to use ’cause we’re always on the job on account of the city can’t afford to hire enough cops?”
He poured more Scotch into his coffee mug and cast the pink umbrella in Tippen’s drink a dubious look as they walked toward the conference room. “What the hell are you drinking?”
“A mai tai. In keeping with our tropical surroundings.”
“That’s a chick’s drink.”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“If I’m gonna get fired for drinking on the job, I’m going down drinking a man’s drink,” Kovac said, raising his mug.
“Belching and farting all the way.”
“Damn straight.”
“You’re a man’s man, my friend. A credit to our gender. I’m proud to know you. How did the autopsy go?”
Kovac took another sip of the Scotch as he took a seat at the table where Tippen had deposited several cardboard file boxes full of paperwork generated by the Doc Holiday murders. The room was small and windowless and as hot as a freaking sauna.
“Not so well for the victim,” he said, rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Turns out, she’s dead.”
“Of what?”
“Undecided. Möller wants more time to go over the results and get the labs back. We know she probably didn’t die from the stab wounds. She was still alive—technically, at least—when her killer poured acid on her face.”
“Charming.” Tippen perched a hip on the tabletop, settling in. “So Tinks is right? She could have been alive when she came out of that trunk?”
“Not likely. If the knife didn’t kill her, she could have died from inhaling the acid. There was lung damage. Can’t breathe if your lungs have melted.”
“Can’t live if half your brain is knocked out of your skull by a Hummer either.”
“True enough,” Kovac said. “Or she could have died of shock. Or she could have died from ingesting the acid—it burned the hell out of her esophagus. Or maybe she had her head bashed in with a hammer like Doc Holiday did to how many of his victims? And we’ll never know for sure because she was then run over by a Hummer, which busted her skull like a rotten melon.
“At this point, I don’t even care what killed her,” he said. “All I want to know right now is who she is. If we can’t get an ID, where the hell do we go with the investigation? We can want to believe Doc Holiday killed her, but what do we know? Jack nothing, that’s what.
“Could be she had a rotten boyfriend,” he said. “Could be she had a rotten father. Could be she pissed off a dealer or a pimp. Could be everyone in this girl’s life hated her and had a reason to want her dead. Could be anything. We need a starting place. If we don’t know who she is, we can’t know why she’s a victim.”
“No word on the prints?” Tippen asked.
“Nada. She’s got about seven teeth left in her head, and Möller pulled a couple of loose ones out of her airway. We might be able to get a match if we can get dental records to compare to,” he said. “She had a bunch of body piercings. Five in each ear, a nose ring, a belly ring. A couple others. All the jewelry is missing.”
“Doc Holiday took the jewelry from the others.”
“But he didn’t pour acid on them,” Kovac said.
“Maybe he’s trying something new, broadening his torture horizons.”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But the knife is wrong too. Too small. Seventeen stab wounds and none of them significant enough to kill her. What’s that about?”
“What a great terror factor,” Tippen said. “He gets to look in their eyes every time he sinks the knife in, over and over and over. All the better if it doesn’t kill the victim.”
Kovac wasn’t convinced. “These tigers don’t change that many stripes in one go. Maybe he changes the knife. Or maybe he adds the acid. But both?”
Tippen raised his hands in frustration. “He’s ambitious. He’s bored. He’s got time on his hands. He saw it on Dexter. I don’t know. Do you want the bad guy not to be Doc Holiday?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Kovac said. “I want world peace. I want not to have acid reflux after eating pizza. Nobody gives a shit what I want. I want the truth. I want to know who this girl is and who killed her.”
“And if we press the theory Doc Holiday killed her, then maybe we get our task force, and maybe we get to investigate our other two cases in something other than our spare time, of which we have none,” Tippen pointed out. “And maybe we get the media to show some renewed attention in those other cases, and maybe something shakes loose for one of them, if not for all of them.”
Kovac sighed and rubbed a hand across his jaw. He needed a shave. “I’ve got no problem with that part of it. It’s the media part I hate.”
“The media is the key. If we chum the water for them with our zombie girl, they’ll create the public pressure we need with the brass,” Tippen said. “We need these cases in the public eye. If people think there’s a monster running around the metro area, they’ll want action. Nothing captures the public imagination quite like a serial killer.”
“You think we should yell ‘fire’ in a theater?”
Tippen made a face. “No one is going to start a stampede. It’s not like Doc Holiday is breaking into homes and dragging young women from their beds,” he said. “The threat is a couple of steps removed from most people’s comfort zone. But the idea of a killer stalking innocent coeds and young mothers along the roadways still strikes a significant amount of fear. All we need is a good dose of vocal public outrage.”
Kovac considered the argument and sighed. “I’m not against it.”
The downside would be the glaring spotlight that kind of publicity would bring to the investigation itself. They had a victim with no face and no name. They had their work cut out for them. To run that investigation under a media microscope would not be a pleasant thing. He could already hear the questions: Why haven’t you caught him yet? What did you discover today? Why haven’t you identified the victim? Every moron who had ever watched an episode of CSI thought they were a fucking expert in forensic sciences and criminal investigation.