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know?”
    â€œNobody said anything about olive pits.”
    â€œI’m guessing. You got olive pits, that right?”
    â€œYou’re spinning the scenario, you tell me.”
    â€œLook, Detective Blair. Sorry, okay, let’s start over. I’m not trying to put you on the spot, and I’m not here to waste your time. I know of a guy I arrested about eighteen years ago. He used to eat olives obsessively, had a jar of them all the time, worse than a smoker. He’d spit the pits on his victims. Last I heard he was in LaGrange, but he was due out last May. I was thinking he might be your guy.”
    â€œReally? Just like that, you got it solved?”
    Deep breath on the other end. “If I told you I have friends in CSU, that’s all I’d tell you, I don’t want to make anybody mad. Mickey knows me.”
    There was something about his voice. Baritone, self-confident, well-spoken. Not the kind of voice you hung up on.
    Maybe he’s the killer, Sonora thought. Getting in on the investigation.
    â€œNo, Detective, I am not the killer sniffing around for the thrill. But if this is your guy, his name is Aruba, Lanky Aruba. If I’m right, my condolences to your victims. He’s a nasty boy, stone-cold sociopath, not very bright, or if he is he can’t use it. Very dissociated. Dangerous as hell when you trigger the rage. Think Sling Blade meets A Clockwork Orange . You old enough to remember—”
    â€œYeah, I remember the movie.”
    â€œYou don’t sound that old.”
    â€œMy kid rented it.”
    â€œGot you.” He paused a beat, and there was something in his voice, just a hint that he found her sharp and he found her interesting. Or maybe she was hallucinating. “Okay. Now, our boy, Lanky, didn’t specialize in home invasions way back when. He’s kind of a nervous type, not organized enough to be a planner, and he lives in a whole other universe, let me tell you. Back then he was an opportunistic rapist, a petty thief, I think he had a few charges for dealing. He kind of drifts, you know, sort of an odd-job guy. By the time I got ahold of him, his crimes were escalating to murder, no matter what anybody hired him for. He’s tough to keep in line, too, out there. And with a knife this guy is a pretty brutal ripper.”
    â€œGive me specifics,” Sonora said.
    Another beat, while he collected his thoughts. “Takes a woman from behind, slices her from stem to stern. Disembowelment sort of his specialty.”
    Sonora took a breath. Checked the caller ID. One Jack Van Owen. “You better come in. Wait, before you hang up. Our man Lanky got any buds he likes to hang with?”
    â€œLet me think. Yeah, maybe. There was this kid. Sort of his nephew. Kind of a sad case. Mom dumped him in a tub of hot water when he was a toddler, didn’t check the temperature. Just about boiled him, couldn’t have been more than two or three at the time. Not abuse, this one, just unlucky. She wasn’t real bright, but not a bad sort. The thermostat wasn’t working and it jacked the water temperature up to boiling. Or so the kid says. Patch on the top of his head where the hair won’t grow, scar tissue on his hands, arms, and legs. Barton Melville Kinkle, everybody called him Barty. Five feet nine inches tall, light brown hair, wiry build last time I saw him, weight about one fifty-five. Real shy, nervous type. Looks like a computer nerd’s computer nerd, doesn’t meet your eyes, hands shake when he talks to people he doesn’t know. Reasonable IQ, but can’t seem to hold a job. Brown eyes, usually bloodshot, ever enthusiastic about his weed. As I recall he always had a few plants dying under a bed somewhere. Not a green thumb.”
    Sonora wrote like crazy, trying to keep up.
    â€œLast known address?”
    â€œHe’ll be in the system,” Van Owen said. “Lanky’s got a sister, lives in