“You have a real grasp of the obvious there. And I could tell as soon as he stepped in the room you and him probably don’t spend a lot of time bowling and drinking beer together. I want to know who he is.”

“He’s army. Did a tour in ’Nam. He’s been on the job here a little longer than me. Dixon hired him out of LA County.”

“So they go back.”

“Yeah.”

“If Dixon brought him here, he must be a good cop.”

“Yeah. Commendations out the wazoo. He’s a hard-ass, though. If you’re two miles over the speed limit he’ll pull you over and write you up. No mercy. He’s all about the rules. All about the uniform.”

“Rigid.”

“Like a ramrod.”

Mendez started the car and cranked up the air-conditioning.

“He doesn’t like me,” he confessed. “He sees me as some arrogant affirmative action prick who jumped the food chain because I didn’t come up the ranks right before his eyes. And I don’t need to tell you, but he doesn’t like you either.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Vince said. “That’s nothing new. Every department has a Frank Farman. Some of them have nothing but Frank Farmans. We’re ahead of the game here.

“Profiling is still a relatively new tool, and it’s subjective. Guys like Farman want hard physical evidence. They don’t trust a guy like me who’s going to come in here and tell him the killer probably tortured squirrels as a kid and talks with a lisp. They need to see for themselves it’s a useful tool. The only way to do that is for me to do my job well.”

Mendez turned the car around and headed out of the parking lot.

“Let me tell you something, kid,” Vince said. “This will get you further in life and in this business than anything else anyone will ever teach you.

“Leave your ego at home and find a way to make it work with whoever you have to work with. Other cops, witnesses, vics, perps, whoever you’re dealing with—learn to figure out in a hurry what makes them tick. If you can do that, you can always get what you need. Even from the Frank Farmans of the world.

“When I was going around interviewing serial killers for the criminal personality research project, do you think I would have gotten anywhere with those creeps if I had gone in, looked them in the eyes, and told them what I really thought of them? Hell no. I had to figure out in five seconds what each of them was about and adjust my approach accordingly.

“What do I care if some serial rapist thinks I agree with his views that all women are whores? That’s his perception; it’s not my reality. Get it?”

“Yeah, I get it.”