“Let’s go see your Mr. Sells,” Vince said, getting up slowly. He stuck his reading glasses on top of his head and picked a folder from a neat stack on the table. “Dixon gave me the go-ahead to interview him. I want to know what pushes his buttons.”

Gordon Sells looked at Mendez as they entered the room, and jabbed a finger in his direction. “I got nothin’ to say to you, you fuckin’ spic.”

Mendez looked at Vince and shrugged. Vince tipped his head toward the door. He didn’t want Sells pissed off just because he didn’t like Mendez.

Vince sat down, perched his reading glasses on his nose and paged slowly through the notes that had been made thus far regarding Gordon Sells. Sells watched him suspiciously and fidgeted in his chair as the minutes ticked past.

Finally Vince sighed and looked up.

“Mr. Sells,” he said with a friendly smile. “I don’t care how many stolen cars you’ve shipped to Mexico.”

Sells didn’t deny it.

“That’s not important. Not to me, not to you. You’ve got other issues,” Vince said. “I’ve talked to a lot of guys like you over the years. Guys who had that same . . . attraction . . . you have. None of them wanted to have it, you know. You probably don’t want to have it either. I mean we all know it’s against society, but you didn’t ask to be that way. It’s not your fault you like girls younger than other people think is right.”

“Who are you?” Sells asked. “Are you a shrink?”

“Something like that,” Vince said. “I’m Vince.”

He reached across the table to shake the grubby hand of Gordon Sells.

“Now, Gordon. May I call you Gordon?”

Sells shrugged. “I guess.”

“So, Gordon, Detective Mendez thinks you have something to do with the murder of a woman—Lisa Warwick.”

“Never heard of her.”

“And the disappearance of another woman—Karly Vickers.”

“Don’t know nothing about it.”

Vince got up, went to the wall, and taped up three black-and-white crime scene photos. The partially decomposed remains of Julie Paulson. “Come have a look.”

Sells came over and looked at the gruesome pictures, held his hands up and turned away. “That’s sick. I got no stomach for that. I maybe have done some things in my time that ain’t right, but nothing like that.”

“See? That’s what I figured,” Vince said. He went back to the table and took a couple more photos out of the file, pornographic images of well-endowed women in their twenties. He stuck them up on the wall beside the others.

“I need coffee,” he said. “Would you like some coffee, Gordon?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I’ll be right back.”

He went out the door and across the hall.

Dixon looked at him as he strolled into the monitor room and went to the coffeemaker. “What’s the point of that?”