Kovac And Liska: The 9th Girl Part 20

He thought about Tinks and what she had said about changing jobs. He couldn't imagine doing that. Over his career he had put in time in different departments, but nothing suited him like Homicide.

Eventually he would have to retire, but the idea of that secretly struck fear in him. Like every cop he knew, he b.i.t.c.hed about the job and joked around about retiring. He knew to the day how long before he got his thirty years in. But the reality of it was something he didn't want to face. Most cops he knew took their twenty years and got out. He had already pa.s.sed that milestone. What would he do with himself when his career was over? He couldn't see it. He didn't want to.

He went through his checklist in his head as he parked his car in the structure that had been named for a murdered cop a couple of decades past. He had already sent a young detective to Liska's house to gather as much information as possible from Penelope Gray's Facebook page. It made more sense to him to do it there, where they already had access to the page, than to waste time going through the process of setting everything up from scratch in the office.

He wanted as much information as possible about the girl's Facebook friends-names, contact info, what connected them to Gray. He wanted their posts looked at with an eye for anything angry, violent, disturbing. Had any of them threatened Gray? Were they into anything that might have led to the girl's death?

He wanted to know who was the liar she had written about in her last Facebook post. The obvious a.s.sumption was another kid her own age, a schoolmate, someone in her social circle. But he knew better than to a.s.sume. She could have been talking about an adult, a teacher, someone in a position of authority, someone who would have been ruined by a revelation. Had her threat to expose that person been enough to motivate a killer? Possibly.

They needed to talk to the other kids who had been in that group at the Rock & Bowl, find out what exactly had set the girl off that night. They had to get Penelope Gray's cell phone records ASAP. They had to get her medical records, get the films of her once-broken wrist to Moller at the morgue to see if they would match up with their victim. They would do a DNA test for absolute proof, but DNA tests took time, and time was a luxury they didn't have.

The CID office was already bustling with the extra detectives Ka.s.selmann had a.s.signed to the case, answering phones, taking down tips, tracking down leads.

Ka.s.selmann appeared in the door of his office, looking like a Wall Street executive in a crisp navy-blue suit, every silver hair on his head perfectly in place. He hailed Kovac like he was taxicab.

"You think this Gray girl is your victim?" he asked, taking his seat behind the desk.

Kovac slouched into a chair. "I think so. There's too much that matches up. We have to get her old X-rays from her doctor this morning and get them to Moller to compare a healed fracture, but I'd put money on it."

"Why wasn't she reported missing?"

"The mother thought she was staying with a friend, and the friend a.s.sumed she had gone home. And apparently the girl will up and take off for days at a time, so no one was really alarmed not to hear from her. Then the mother got a couple of text messages supposedly from the girl. She didn't think she had a reason to be concerned. We're tracking down the girl's friends off her Facebook page. And we'll get her cell phone records this morning."

"What's the family situation?"

"Strained. It's pretty clear the mother finds the daughter a major problem and a disappointment. The girl resents the mom. There was some serious rebellion going on. The father is out of the picture for the most part. Mom is dating a shrink, and the shrink's daughter and this girl don't get along. They had an argument at the Rock & Bowl on the night in question. Our girl left the club in a huff and was never seen again."

"You're getting a lot of media attention with the AMBER Alert for a girl you think is in cold storage at the morgue."

Kovac shrugged. "I don't know for a fact. In the meantime, maybe we stir up someone who saw something. Maybe we locate the girl's car."

"I'll make a statement for the press later this morning," Ka.s.selmann said. "I'd like the mother to be there. She can make an appeal."

"I'll put Elwood on that," Kovac said. "I want her to come in anyway. We need a more detailed timeline about who was where, when."

"An added bonus to the AMBER Alert: I think I'll get the green light from upstairs to add a couple more warm bodies to your team," Ka.s.selmann said.

"Great. I'll take them."

"The state patrol has a chopper in the air. BCA has offered a.s.sistance."

"And I'd like to bring in John Quinn to have a look at the case. See if he thinks this is Doc Holiday's handiwork."

Quinn had been one of the FBI's top profilers, brought in by money and political influence to a.s.sess the Cremator murders several years past. He had since retired from the bureau and settled in the Minneapolis suburbs to work in the private sector and raise a family.

"I'll see what I can do about that," Ka.s.selmann said.

Kovac pushed to his feet. "You'd better. He'll be here at nine."

Ignoring his captain's mutterings, Kovac left the office and went to the room they had set up as command central for the case. The new photograph of Penelope Gray had been added to the montage on the wall, along with the sketch artist's rendering. It wasn't an exact match, but it wasn't bad considering what he'd had to work from.

Kovac stared at the picture he'd gotten from Brittany Lawler. He had enlarged the photo and cropped the Lawler girl out. The girl her friends called Gray looked at him coyly from over her shoulder. She had been portrayed by people who knew her as an angry girl, but she wasn't angry in the photo. She looked bright and mischievous. Her dark eyes had a spark in them.

Kovac wondered if she meant to make a statement with the half-shaved head and the piercings. Or was all that a disguise, intended to distract the eye from the essence of her-the sensitive, misunderstood poet? Probably a bit of both.

In the best scenarios, kids that age were a bundle of insecurities. They were children who thought they wanted to be adults but at the same time were afraid to let go of teddy bears and dolls. They thought they wanted to be individuals, yet they clung to their peer group, desperate for acceptance. Penelope Gray looked like the poster girl for contradictions.

Liska and Tippen came into the room, Tippen with a venti iced coffee, wearing a silk necktie with a palm tree painted on it. Liska clutched a cup of coffee to her chest as if hoping to will the caffeine directly into her veins.

"Jesus Christ," she grumbled, "when are they going to get this f.u.c.king furnace situation under control? It's like the ninth circle of h.e.l.l in here."

"I'm starting to like it," Tippen said. "It's kind of like visiting my parents in Boca Raton. They set their thermostat at ninth circle of h.e.l.l."

Kovac studied his partner as he rolled up his s.h.i.+rtsleeves. "Jeeze, Tinks, you look like a heroine addict."

She narrowed her bloodshot eyes. "Thanks. That makes me feel so much better about myself. You need to make a motivational video and sell it on the Internet."

"Did you get any sleep?"

"I'll sleep when I'm dead."

"Yeah, well, you're looking like that could be sooner rather than later."

"Shut up," she snapped. "What's next?"

"We need to talk to the kids who were at the Rock and Bowl. Maybe that can happen right at the school," he suggested. "Faster and easier than trying to drag them down here."

Tippen raised his eyebrows. "Privileged darlings at a fancy private school? Parents with lawyers on retainer? I don't think any part of that is going to be easy."

"Let's get on it right away, then," Kovac said. "Tinks, you must have an in with the princ.i.p.al at PSI."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. He's a pompous a.s.s who can never get my name straight and believes my son is a violent thug who draws gay p.o.r.nography. I'll have him wrapped around my little finger."

"Just be your usual charming self, then," Tippen suggested. "Put his b.a.l.l.s on the table and smash them with your tactical baton."

"If only . . ."

"I'll go with you," Kovac said. "Make sure you don't get called up on brutality charges."

"You spoil all my fun," she said, pouting.

"Later I'll let you roll a junkie, just for kicks."

"There's no sport in that."

"If you want a sport, take up cage fighting," he said. "You can beat the s.h.i.+t out of people and get paid for it."

"Sounds good to me."

"In the meantime, I'll get Quinn set up to look over what we have with an eye toward Doc Holiday; then you and I can hit the bricks. Tip, I want you to go have a chat with Penelope Gray's father. See what he's all about."

He turned and looked at the horrific autopsy photos.

"Somebody in this girl's life hated her enough to do this. Let's find out if it was personal."

"IT'S ABSOLUTELY OUT OF THE QUESTION," Princ.i.p.al Rodgers stated. His tone had the ring of finality, like a steel door slamming shut. "I won't have my students interrogated."

They stood in his office, where everything was perfectly in place, perfectly polished-including Rodgers himself. The blotter on the desk was pristine white. Papers were stacked in perfect alignment, books on the bookshelves arranged by size. All this tidiness made Liska wonder if the man actually did any real work.

She glanced at her partner. Kovac had on his poker face, but she could feel his irritation. She raised her eyebrows at him as if to say, See what a d.i.c.k this guy is?

"We're not looking to interrogate anyone," Kovac said. He picked up a paperweight off the desk, a solid gla.s.s ball with some trite motivational phrase etched on it, and tossed it back and forth from one hand to the other. Rodgers s.n.a.t.c.hed it away from him and put it back exactly where it had been. "We just need to talk to them about what they might have seen, noticed, heard that night and the days leading up to that night. We're trying to put together a picture of the events that led up to Penelope Gray's disappearance."

"We need to establish a timeline, Mr. Rodgers," Liska said. "We know these kids were all at the Rock and Bowl the night Penny Gray went missing. It's essential that we speak to them."

"I can't have you question my students without parental consent."

Kovac stepped over to the credenza and gave the globe there a lazy spin. Rodgers put a hand on it to stop it.

"Please don't touch my things, Detective."

"Sorry."

Kovac went around the front of the desk and plucked up a family photograph in a silver frame. "Do you have kids, Mr. Rodgers?"

Rodgers leaned across the desk and pulled the picture away from him. "I have a niece and a nephew," he said, rubbing at Kovac's fingerprints with a small cloth meant for cleaning eyegla.s.ses.

"I think you would feel differently if one of them were missing," Kovac said.

"That would be different," Rodgers said. "That would be strictly a personal reaction. I can't do that here. I have a job to do. I have an obligation to my students and to their parents."

"Penny Gray is your student too," Liska said. "Do you have any concern for her, for her family?"

Rodgers gave her a look like she was a t.u.r.d on his rug. "Of course I do. I won't have you question my dedication to these young people, Mrs. Liska."

"Really? Tell me about Penelope Gray, then," she challenged. "Who are her friends? Who are her enemies? Does she have a boyfriend? What are her interests? Does she have a teacher or an uppercla.s.sman mentoring her? Was she having difficulties with anyone in the days before the holiday vacation started?"

"I have over five hundred students here," he said defensively. "You can't expect me to know all the small details of their personal lives."

"No, but so far you don't seem to know any details of her life," Kovac said. "Do you even know what this girl looks like, Mr. Rodgers?"

"She has dark hair and recently shaved part of it off," he said. "She has multiple piercings-which are against our appearance code here at PSI."

"You know how she annoys you," Liska said. "You know how she doesn't fit your profile of the perfect PSI student."

"That's unfair."

"I would say so."

"It's unfair to me," Rodgers specified. "Miss Gray works at standing out in a negative way. If she was an outstanding student or an outstanding leader, those would be the things I would remember her for."

"If she was like Christina Warner, for instance," Kovac suggested.

"Christina is an exemplary student."

"We understand the two girls didn't get along."

"Christina's father brought that to my attention," Rodgers said. "Penelope is jealous of Christina and resentful of Dr. Warner's relations.h.i.+p with her mother. He wanted me to be aware of the situation and take it into account if Miss Gray began exhibiting disruptive behavior."

"Did she?" Kovac asked.

"Nothing over and above the average for Miss Gray."

"I've been told that a particular clique of kids bullied Penny Gray," Liska said. "That they made fun of her poetry and taunted her about the way she looked and about her s.e.xuality."

"That seems like an exaggeration," Rodgers said.

"But you're not out in the middle of it, are you?" Kovac said, picking up a fat black Mont Blanc pen from beside the spotless blotter. "Something you see from a distance as 'kids will be kids,' the kids might see something else entirely. We need to talk to them."

Rodgers stared at the pen as Kovac twirled it around his fingers, visibly fighting the urge to grab it away from him.

"I can't make promises, but I'll try to arrange something for this afternoon. There's a protocol to be observed here, Detective," Rodgers said. "I have to contact the parents and consult them. I would recommend they be present at any kind of questioning. They may want to consult their attorneys-"

"And while all this protocol is going on, Penny Gray is missing and possibly in the hands of a madman," Liska said.

She didn't believe that. She believed the girl was dead in the morgue, but she wanted Rodgers to think otherwise. She wanted to make him feel guilty and responsible.

"I think Julia Gray will take a very different view of your stalling tactics, Mr. Rodgers," she said. "Her daughter is missing. You should probably think about her consulting her attorney. If this was my son missing, I would be on the air with every TV station in the metro area, calling you out. How would that look for PSI?"

"My hands are tied, Mrs. Liska," Rodgers said primly. "I'll get back to you as soon as I've contacted the parents."

Kovac set the pen back down on the desk, just far enough out of the princ.i.p.al's reach that he had to lean across the desk to retrieve it and put it back just so beside the blotter.

"Frankly," Rodgers said, looking at Liska, "I don't think it's appropriate for you to be one of the people questioning these children, considering the situation with your son."

"What situation is that?" Liska asked.

"Your son is involved with Miss Gray."

"They know each other. I don't consider that a situation."

"And there's this latest outrage concerning the other students on your list." He glanced at Kovac, pausing for drama.

"What outrage?" Liska asked.

Rodgers heaved a put-upon sigh. "I was going to call you this morning."