“This is not at all what I expected when you called, Jason, my oversized old pal,” Mickey said.
“Excuse me?” Washington said.
“When you summoned me, I expected to find you, Tony Harris, and that black kid from the Roy Rogers-you do recall asking if I would mind going over the whole thing from Step One once again with the aforementioned?”
“That’s at five o’clock this afternoon. That’s when you said you’d be free and when the kid gets off work,” Washington said.
“Then you called again, Jason, twenty minutes ago, and asked if I was free to come here now, and I said yes, and I walk in here, and not only do I get Wyatt Earp and the beauty here, instead of the expected aforementioned, but you ask me the really dumb question ‘do I know why Hyde and Cubellis didn’t take the victim’s door?’ ”
“How’d you know their names?” Olivia blurted.
“I wouldn’t want this to get around, my beauty, but some of my friends are cops.”
“And?” Washington asked.
“What you’ve got are two nice young cops who are sick about maybe being outside doing nothing while thi
s critter was doing what he did to the girl-that’s their first reaction- and second, they are naturally a little worried that the mayor is going to hang them out to turn in the wind. I don’t intend to let that happen. I’m going to do one of my famous think pieces. My working slug is ‘A tough call, but the right one.’ ”
“Thanks, Mick,” Washington said. “That’s what I was hoping to hear.”
“It would help if I knew a little about the doer, or maybe what he did to her.”
“All we really know about him is that he is unquestionably a psychopath,” Washington said.
“Isn’t that a given with a rapist?”
“This guy is sick, Mick,” Washington said.
“How do you know that?”
Washington hesitated just perceptibly.
“Not for publication?”
“Agreed.”
“Show him the pictures, Matt,” Washington ordered, and added: “He left his camera behind.”
Matt took his laptop from his briefcase and slid it across the table.
“You know how to work Photo Smart?”
“Another unnecessary question.”
"The pictures are in ’Wilifoto,’ ” Matt said.
O’Hara turned the laptop on and started the Photo Smart program.
“This fellow is a bit odd, isn’t he?” Mickey said, looking at the first picture, and then, as he ran through the images, twice added: “Jesus H. Christ!”
“May I see those?” Olivia asked.
“No,” Mickey said. “You really don’t want to see them.”
"I’m a cop, Mr. O’Hara,” she said.
"Of that I have no doubt, my beauty,” O’Hara said, as he turned the computer off and closed the lid, “but you are also indisputably a very nice young woman. My sainted mother would never forgive me if I showed those images to a very nice young woman.”