Louis resisted the urge to reach over and grab a handful of Van Slate’s T-shirt.

Van Slate’s grin widened. “This is a real kick in the ass, ain’t it?” he said. “Me helping you guys.”

“Go get the paint, Van Slate. That would be a help to us,” Wainwright said.

“Get a warrant,” he said.

“I will if I have to,” Wainwright said.

Van Slate was shaking his head, still smiling. “You guys are fishing, aren’t you? You don’t know who the fuck you’re looking for. You don’t even know why these poor assholes were even offed in the first place.”

He paused to pull a pack of Marlboros out of his jeans. “I read the paper. I know what they’re saying, that some guy with a hard-on toward black guys is doing it. You know what I think? I think these guys were all asking for it some way.”

Louis suddenly realized that here they were, four experienced cops, standing and listening to this scumbag’s opinions. He knew that suspects who could manipulate an interrogation were dangerous to investigations. But he wasn’t sure that’s what Van Slate was doing.

“Shut up, Van Slate,” Wainwright interrupted. “Nobody wants to hear your theories.”

“I do,” Louis said.

Van Slate’s eyes snapped to Louis, along with Wainwright’s. He lit his cigarette and blew the smoke over his head before he answered.

“You want to hear my opinion?”

“I do, too,” Emily said.

Van Slate focused on her for a second, as if he had just now noticed she was there.

“I can’t believe I’m helping you,” he said, smiling. “Okay, here it is. None of these dead guys had it coming for the reasons you’re thinking. From all appearances, they lived a very normal black life. They were no threat.”

“To who?” Louis asked.

Van Slate met his eyes. “To guys like me.” He took a quick drag on his cigarette. “Besides, no self-respecting racist—which I am not, by the way—would do these guys the way they were done.”

“Enlighten us,” Louis said tightly.

Van Slate’s eyes focused for a moment on Emily, on the pad and pencil in her hands. “Let me put it this way, if I’m going to beat the shit out of somebody, I ain’t going to get my hands dirty doing it.”

“Is that why you used a board on Zengo?” Wainwright asked.

Van Slate looked at him, a smirk on his face. “You’re learning.”

Louis looked away, his gaze settling on a dandelion poking through the gravel.

“Plus,” Van Slate said, “if this guy is a racist—which I am not, by the way—he’d be proud of what he did. He’d leave you a message. You know, like a dog pissing to show you he was there. And from what I hear, this guy leaves nada.”

Louis had heard enough. He turned and started back to the squad car.

Van Slate was an idiot, but one thing he had said had stuck in Louis’s mind: And you call me a racist?

A long time ago, he had learned not to turn a deaf ear when his instinct was trying to tell him something. But instinct—vibrations, gut feeling, whatever it was that had worked for him so well in the past—had failed him in Michigan. He’d been blindsided, not only by a killer, but by people he had grown to trust. He’d been wrong. Fatally wrong.

Was he wrong here, too? Was he going after Van Slate just because he was a small-minded bigot? Because he was white?

He heard Wainwright finishing up with Van Slate, but he didn’t care. Van Slate hadn’t murdered those men. Van Slate wanted no contact with blacks; he would never have gone to Queenie Boulevard. And his bigotry was too generalized, his hatred too unspecific. He had attacked Joshua Zengo, true, but it had come from some warped personal motive. These murders were seemingly without any reason. There was still no why—at least not that they had been able to see.

If a white man like Van Slate doesn’t kill a black stranger out of hate, what else could it be?

Wainwright, Emily, and Candy were coming toward him. They all stood, watching as Van Slate busied himself rearranging the tarp in the flatbed.

“He made a good point,” Emily said, closing her notebook.

“About what?” Wainwright said.

“About the murderer being proud of what he does,” she said. “Whoever murdered Tatum, Quick, and the homeless man doesn’t seem to care what we think. He hasn’t contacted anyone, hasn’t taken any souvenirs from his victims or left his mark. Most serial killers do.”

“You don’t call the paint a mark?” Wainwright said.

Emily shook her head. “I agree with Louis. I think it’s a symbol, something important to him alone. It’s not a sign that he was there. He’s not like the Zodiac killer. He’s not saying, ‘Remember me.’ ”

“What’s your take on Van Slate, Farentino?” Louis asked.

“Well, he definitely doesn’t fit the disorganized offender category. I guess a case could be made for organized—”

“In English, Farentino,” Wainwright said patiently.

She sighed. “I think Matt Van Slate is mean-spirited and a bigot. But I don’t think he’s a murderer. At least not this one.”

Wainwright looked at Louis. “You agree?”

Louis nodded. “I guess I couldn’t see past my disgust of this guy.”

Van Slate gunned the black truck. He gave them a taunting wave as he peeled out, spraying gravel.

“What an asshole,” Candy offered.

Wainwright watched the truck tear down the road. “Yeah,” he said. “But unfortunately being an asshole isn’t against the law.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

Wainwright came out of his bathroom, buttoning a fresh shirt. He stared at Louis and Emily, who were slumped in chairs around the conference table. It was heaped with files, faxes, and coffee cups.

“Why don’t you two go home and change? You’re starting to stink up the joint,” Wainwright said.

Emily was on the phone, on hold, but she ignored him. Louis rubbed his bristly jaw and took a sip of coffee. It was cold.

They had been up all night. Emily had worked feverishly, still plowing through the VI-CAP files. She had also called everyone she had already contacted, telling them to switch their focus to white suspects and racially motivated crimes. New faxes had begun coming in around eleven this morning, forming a pile on the table next to the discarded ones that focused on black suspects. Every hour, Candy had come in and deposited new faxes on the table. Emily doggedly went through each one, methodically reading it and assigning it its own file.

Louis had felt sorry for her and stayed to help, even though he thought the chances of finding a related case this way was like trying to find a lost pearl on the beach. But he had to admire her stamina if nothing else.

In the background, Louis could hear the crackle of the radio. Another shift was signing on after a long night of surveillance. Now it was four in the afternoon. They were still waiting for a fresh body to turn up. And they were all running on adrenaline, stale coffee, and frayed nerves.

Wainwright picked a bear claw out of the Dunkin’ Donuts box on the desk.

“Did the lab call back yet on whether Van Slate’s knives match?”

“Not yet,” Louis said. “They do have something on Roscoe Webb, though. No hairs, but they did find hair cream under his nails. It’s standard Vitalis.”

“Did Van Slate’s alibi check out?”

Louis nodded. “The bartender at the Lob Lolly said he was there until it closed at two and then he left.”

“So Van Slate couldn’t have been in that parking lot with Webb,” Wainwright said. He took a bite of the stale bear claw and tossed it back into the box.

“You find anything in the new VI-CAP stuff?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Fuck. When are we going to catch a break on this?”

Emily slammed down the phone. Louis and Wainwright looked over at her.

“Assholes,” she said. She felt them staring at her. “He says he doesn’t have time to look up cases that are five years old.”