said. “My gut feeling is we won’t get a full-on task force, which is fine with me. I don’t want to lose time with all the front-end bullshit and red tape of a multi-agency thing. I’m hoping we keep it in-house but pull in a couple of detectives from Sex Crimes or somewhere else.
“In the meantime, we just have to get on it. Hopefully, we’ll end up with enough manpower to revisit the first two Doc Holiday cases, but our priority for now is to get an ID on our new girl.”
All eyes went to the horror-movie still of Zombie Doe’s face taped to the wall as the centerpiece of a macabre montage.
“God help us,” Tinks muttered.
“He’d better,” Kovac said. “He already missed his chance with her.”
12
Gerald Fitzgerald never missed the news if he could help it. It was a Minnesota thing. Minnesotans, from childhood, watch the news daily. He had not realized there was anything unusual in that until he heard Garrison Keillor make jokes about it on A Prairie Home Companion. He still didn’t get why people thought that was funny.
Some of his earliest memories were of sitting on the living room floor watching Walter Cronkite while his mother banged pots and pans together in the kitchen, making supper. As an adult, the first thing he did upon waking up was turn on the TV to catch the news. Lunch and dinner happened in front of the television, watching the local news. The day officially ended with the ten o’clock news.
The news was the scale of the day, the place to find out if society was in balance or out of whack. People trusted the news, and they trusted the people who delivered the news. News was truth. At least it had been in Cronkite’s day.
Nowadays, you couldn’t trust the news. Used to be you went to the news to get the facts. Now you had to fact-check everything that came over the airwaves yourself. News personalities seemed to have no compunction lying outright to slant things in the favor of whomever they worked for. Cronkite had to be rolling over in his grave. It was disgraceful.
The headline on the screen caught his attention first.
ZOMBIE MURDER.
He grabbed the remote off the nightstand and jacked up the volume. The perky blonde seemed to look right at him as she spoke.
“Sources close to the investigation of a New Year’s Eve homicide in Minneapolis say this murder may be the work of a serial killer law enforcement agencies have dubbed ‘Doc Holiday.’
“The partially nude body of an unidentified female fell from the trunk of a vehicle New Year’s Eve in the Loring Park area. The gruesome condition of the disfigured corpse led one witness to describe the deceased woman as a zombie !”
Film footage showed the New Year’s Eve scene. A giant white Hummer sitting crosswise in the road. Emergency vehicles with strobe lights rolling. Uniformed officers walking around.
“No official statement has been made by the Minneapolis Police Department regarding the victim or the possibility of a serial killer in the metro area. The detective in charge of this most recent case would neither confirm nor deny any possible connection to several similar crimes committed over the course of the last year with the bodies of victims being discovered on holidays.”
He spotted the detective. Kovac. He knew him. He had met him, had spoken with him. Decent guy, Kovac. A straight shooter, an old-school cop. Appropriately suspicious, thorough. But, like all cops, he was not an original thinker. He put one foot in front of the other and plodded along.
And there was his partner, the little blonde. Liska. She was a pistol. He liked the look of her, but she was too old for his tastes, and he had no doubt that messing with her would be like grabbing a wildcat by the tail. Way too much trouble. He didn’t mind a little sporting fight in his girls, but one that could seriously mess him up? No, thanks. Maybe when she was eighteen or nineteen . . .
The blonde giving the news was more his
“In the meantime, we just have to get on it. Hopefully, we’ll end up with enough manpower to revisit the first two Doc Holiday cases, but our priority for now is to get an ID on our new girl.”
All eyes went to the horror-movie still of Zombie Doe’s face taped to the wall as the centerpiece of a macabre montage.
“God help us,” Tinks muttered.
“He’d better,” Kovac said. “He already missed his chance with her.”
12
Gerald Fitzgerald never missed the news if he could help it. It was a Minnesota thing. Minnesotans, from childhood, watch the news daily. He had not realized there was anything unusual in that until he heard Garrison Keillor make jokes about it on A Prairie Home Companion. He still didn’t get why people thought that was funny.
Some of his earliest memories were of sitting on the living room floor watching Walter Cronkite while his mother banged pots and pans together in the kitchen, making supper. As an adult, the first thing he did upon waking up was turn on the TV to catch the news. Lunch and dinner happened in front of the television, watching the local news. The day officially ended with the ten o’clock news.
The news was the scale of the day, the place to find out if society was in balance or out of whack. People trusted the news, and they trusted the people who delivered the news. News was truth. At least it had been in Cronkite’s day.
Nowadays, you couldn’t trust the news. Used to be you went to the news to get the facts. Now you had to fact-check everything that came over the airwaves yourself. News personalities seemed to have no compunction lying outright to slant things in the favor of whomever they worked for. Cronkite had to be rolling over in his grave. It was disgraceful.
The headline on the screen caught his attention first.
ZOMBIE MURDER.
He grabbed the remote off the nightstand and jacked up the volume. The perky blonde seemed to look right at him as she spoke.
“Sources close to the investigation of a New Year’s Eve homicide in Minneapolis say this murder may be the work of a serial killer law enforcement agencies have dubbed ‘Doc Holiday.’
“The partially nude body of an unidentified female fell from the trunk of a vehicle New Year’s Eve in the Loring Park area. The gruesome condition of the disfigured corpse led one witness to describe the deceased woman as a zombie !”
Film footage showed the New Year’s Eve scene. A giant white Hummer sitting crosswise in the road. Emergency vehicles with strobe lights rolling. Uniformed officers walking around.
“No official statement has been made by the Minneapolis Police Department regarding the victim or the possibility of a serial killer in the metro area. The detective in charge of this most recent case would neither confirm nor deny any possible connection to several similar crimes committed over the course of the last year with the bodies of victims being discovered on holidays.”
He spotted the detective. Kovac. He knew him. He had met him, had spoken with him. Decent guy, Kovac. A straight shooter, an old-school cop. Appropriately suspicious, thorough. But, like all cops, he was not an original thinker. He put one foot in front of the other and plodded along.
And there was his partner, the little blonde. Liska. She was a pistol. He liked the look of her, but she was too old for his tastes, and he had no doubt that messing with her would be like grabbing a wildcat by the tail. Way too much trouble. He didn’t mind a little sporting fight in his girls, but one that could seriously mess him up? No, thanks. Maybe when she was eighteen or nineteen . . .
The blonde giving the news was more his
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