Ashes to Ashes (36 page)

“A maroon GMC Jimmy.”

Kovac felt like someone had punched him in the diaphragm. “A bartender on Lake Street spotted our witness Sunday night getting into a dark-colored truck or SUV. This was the john she did in the park before she came across victim number three.”

“Did she name this john?” Adler asked.

“No.”

“Would Vanlees have had any way of knowing the girl was staying here?” Moss asked.

Liska shook her head. “I don’t see how, unless he somehow managed to tail her here from downtown. Seems unlikely.”

“Who all
did
know the witness was here?” Adler asked.

“Us, Sabin, the vic/wit people, the brass cupcake out there”—Kovac hooked a thumb in Toni Urskine’s direction—“and the husband. The mayor, Bondurant’s people—”

“And a partridge in a pear tree,” Elwood finished.

“One of the other victims had a connection to this place,” Moss pointed out.

“And when she turned up croaked back when, we interviewed everybody at the house, checked records, alibis, known associates, yadda, yadda, yadda,” Kovac said. “I remember the body was found on a Friday. She’d been out of here six months or more. I make it over here on Sunday to see if she was still tight with anyone. The Urskines are gone to some cabin up north, so I can’t talk to them, right? Monday morning, eight o’clock, Toni Urskine’s on the horn to the lieutenant, demanding he ream me a new one because I hadn’t called her yet.”

“Now we get to do it all again for a fresh batch of hookers.” Tippen groaned. “Like we need more fucking paperwork to do.”

“Hey, that’s why they pay you slave wages and treat you like dirt,” Kovac said.

“Here I thought it was something personal.”

“Okay. Who wants to hit Lake Street?” Kovac asked. “See if you can find anyone who might have seen the DiMarco girl get in that truck Sunday night? If you can get a plate number, I’ll kiss you full on the mouth.”

“That ain’t no incentive, Kojak,” Adler said.

“Let Tippen do it,” Liska said. “He might find a girlfriend.”

“Send Charm,” Tippen said. “The hookers will pay
him
.”

“The two of you,” Kovac said, pointing to Yurek and Tippen both. “You’re the perfect pair.”

“God’s Gift and the Mercy Fuck,” Liska snickered.

Tippen jerked the end of the scarf around her throat. “You’ll get it one of these days, Liska.”

“Not if I stay more than three inches away from you.”

“Hit the bricks,” Kovac ordered. “Time’s a-wastin’ and this case is starting to cook. No pun intended. Let’s get this dirtbag before he lights someone else’s fire.”

“THAT’S A HELL of a cat,” Quinn remarked, regarding Thor as Thor regarded him from the front hall table. “But I think I could take him.”

The cat had to be twenty pounds. Fantastic tufts of hair sprouted from his ears. His whiskers looked a foot long. He tucked his chin back into a great ruff of fur and made a sound like “hmmm” deep in his throat. He raised his hind leg up behind his ear in a yoga move and licked his butt.

Quinn made a face. “Guess I know what he thinks of me.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Kate said. “Thor is above the petty considerations of mere humans.”

She hung her coat in the hall closet and nearly reached for a second empty hanger, but stopped herself.

“Thanks for your help tonight,” she said, closing the door and leaning back against it. “I was less than gracious about the offer, but I know it’s not your job to investigate.”

“Or yours.”

“True, but I needed to do something proactive. You know I can’t bear to just sit back and let things happen. What about you? It wasn’t your job to go to the Phoenix with Kovac.”

“This case has been anything but normal.”

“Because of Peter Bondurant. I know.” She stroked a hand over Thor. The cat gave her a look of affront, hopped down, and trotted away, belly hanging low to the ground.

“Money changes all the rules,” Kate said. “There’s not a politician in the Cities who wouldn’t bend over backward to kiss Peter Bondurant’s ass, then tell him it smells like a rose. Because he’s got money and they want him to keep it here. Because of that his attorney can sit in on meetings with Sabin, and he can have the ear of the mayor, and of the director of the FBI, no less. I’ll bet Lila White’s parents couldn’t get past Director Brewster’s secretary. If it would even occur to them to try.”

“Now you’re sounding like Toni Urskine, saying there’s no equal justice under the law.”

“It’s a lovely ideal we both know doesn’t hold water in the real world. Money can and does buy justice—and injustice—every day.

“Still, I guess I can’t blame Bondurant. What parent wouldn’t do everything in their power to get their child back?” she said, her expression somber. “I would have made a deal with the devil himself when Em got sick. In fact, I believe I tried,” she confessed, forcing a lopsided smile. “No takers. Shook my faith in evil.”

Her pain was still a palpable thing, and Quinn wanted to pull her into his arms and invite her to divide it between the two of them, like old times.

“Bondurant’s money didn’t stop his daughter’s death either,” he said. “If that body is Jillian’s. He’s convinced it is.”

“Why would he want to believe that?” Kate asked, bewildered by the notion. She had been so violently resistant to the news of Emily’s death that even after a nurse had taken her into the room to see her daughter’s body, to touch the cold little hand, to feel for herself there was no pulse, no breath, she had insisted it wasn’t true.

“What an odd man,” she said. “I was surprised to see him at the meeting tonight. He’s been keeping such a low profile.”

The offhand remark hit Quinn like an invisible fist. “You saw Bondurant at the meeting? Are you sure?”

“Sure looked like him to me,” Kate said. “I saw him on my way out. I thought it was strange he wasn’t with his camp, but it was clear he didn’t want any attention. He was dressed down like one of the common folk in a parka and a crumpled-looking hat, trying to look anonymous, slipping out the back with the rest of the crowd.”

Quinn frowned. “I can’t get a handle on him. I’d say he’s being uncooperative, but he’s the one who brought me in, then he turns around and refuses to answer questions. He’s one contradiction after another.

“Christ, I can’t believe I didn’t see him there.”

“You weren’t looking for him,” Kate said reasonably. “You were looking for a killer.”

And did I miss him too?
Quinn wondered, rubbing harder at the sudden searing pain in his gut. What else had he missed? Some subtle sign: a look, a squint, the hint of a smile. And if he’d seen it, would Angie DiMarco be in bed at the Phoenix right now? Logically, he thought no. But catching a killer like this one required something more than logic. It required instinct, and it seemed that he was feeling around in the dark through a blanket for his these days.

“I can’t shake the feeling that his daughter is the key to this whole thing,” he said. “If she’s the third vic. Smokey Joe deviated from the pattern with that one. Why? With the first two, he burned the bodies but didn’t try to make them unrecognizable in any other way. With number three he obliterates her fingertips and the soles of her feet. He takes her head. He makes it as difficult as possible to identify her.”

“But he left her driver’s license.”

“Why do both?”

“Maybe the first as part of the torture,” Kate suggested. “As part of the depersonalization. He reduced her to no one. He doesn’t care if we know who she is after she’s dead, so he leaves the DL as if to say ‘Hey, look who I killed.’ But maybe he wanted this victim to feel like nobody in those last few moments of her life, let her die thinking no one would be able to identify her or take care of her body or mourn her.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “And maybe this extreme depersonalization is the deviation in his pattern because he knew Jillian. If, for instance, we can develop this security guard who lived at Jillian’s town house complex, we might speculate he killed the two prostitutes for practice, projecting his feelings for Jillian onto them. But that didn’t satisfy his need, so he does Jillian, goes overboard, keeps her head because he wants to own her.

“Or maybe the killer takes the head because that body
isn’t
Jillian Bondurant and he wants us to believe it is. But that’s definitely her DL, and if the body isn’t her, then how’d Smokey Joe get it?” he asked. “We know this is no kidnapping. It’s been days with no call, no ransom demand—at least that we know of. Bondurant won’t allow a tap on his phone—another odd bit of behavior on his part.”

“And if Jillian is alive,” Kate said, “then where is she and how is she tied to all this?”

“I don’t know. And there doesn’t seem to be anyone who knew Jillian willing or able to tell us. This case gives me a bad feeling, Kate.”

“The kind you should see a doctor for?” she asked with a pointed look to the hand he was rubbing against his stomach. “You keep doing that.”

He killed the gesture. “It’s nothing.”

Kate shook her head. “You’ve probably got a hole in your stomach lining big enough to drive a Buick through. But God forbid you admit it. Think what that would do to the Quinn mystique. It would bring you down to the level of Superman with his weakness for kryptonite. How embarrassing.”

She wanted to ask if he had talked to anyone in Psych Services, but she knew it would be a waste of breath. Every other agent in Investigative Support could line up at the shrink’s door and no one would bat an eye. Stress disorders were the norm in the unit. Everyone understood. They saw too much, got too deep into the heads of victims and killers in case after horrific case. They saw the worst the world had to offer every day, and made life-and-death decisions based on an inexact science: their own knowledge of human behavior. But John Quinn would never admit to bending beneath the strain of that. Vulnerability did not become a legend well.

“Bullets don’t really bounce off you, John,” she said quietly.

He smiled as if she had amused him in some small, endearing way, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It’s nothing.”

“Fine.” If he wasn’t taking care of himself, that was his problem—or the problem of some faceless woman back in Virginia, not hers. “I’m having that drink now. You want something before you go? Maalox? Mylanta? A roll of Tums to chew on for the cab ride?”

She headed for the kitchen, kicking herself for giving him the opportunity to linger, then rationalized it was payback. She owed him for tonight. Besides, he looked like he could do with a drink.

Of course, she knew he wouldn’t allow himself one. He was too conscious of the alcoholism that ran rampant both in his family and in his profession. As much as he may have needed to douse the frustration and the tension the job induced, the risk of drowning was too high.

“Great house,” he said, following her to the kitchen.

“I bought it from my parents when they lost their minds and moved to Las Vegas.”

“So you really did come home.”

From the shattered mess that had been her life in Virginia to a house with warm memories and a sense of security. The house would have substituted its comfort for the comfort of her family—whom he doubted she had ever told the whole story. When everything had broken in Quantico, she’d been embarrassed and ashamed. It still hurt him to think of it. What they’d had together had been a connection deeper than any other he’d ever known, but not deep enough or strong enough to survive the stress of discovery and disapproval and Kate’s predisposition to guilt.

He watched her now as she moved around the kitchen, getting a cup from the cupboard and a box of herbal teabags, her long hair falling down her back in a wave of red-gold. He wanted to stroke a hand over it, rest that hand at the small of her back.

He had always seen her femininity, her vulnerability. He doubted many people looked at Kate and thought she might need protecting. Her strength and tenacity were what others noted. But just behind that wall was a woman not always so certain as she seemed.

“How are you, Kate?”

“Hmm? What?” She turned toward him from the microwave, her brow knit in confusion. “I’m tired. I’m upset. I’ve lost a witness—”

Stepping close, Quinn put a finger to her lips. “I don’t mean with the case. It’s been five years. How are you, really?”

Kate’s heart thumped hard against her sternum. Answers log-jammed in her throat. Five years. The first was remembered as a pain so sharp, it stole her breath. The second had been like trying to relearn how to walk and talk after a stroke. Then came the third and the fourth and another after that. In that time she’d built a career, made a home for herself, done some traveling, settled into a nice, safe rut. But the answers that rushed to mind were other words.

How are you? Empty. Alone. Walled off.

“Let’s not play that game,” she said softly. “If you’d really wanted to know, it wouldn’t have taken you five years to ask.”

She heard the regret in those words and wished them back. What was the point now, when all they would have was a few days. Better to pretend there’d been no fire at all than to poke at the ash and stir up the dust of memories. The timer went off on the microwave, and she turned her back to him and busied herself making a cup of tea.

“You told me that was what you wanted,” he said. “You wanted out. You wanted a clean break. You wanted to leave, to start over. What was I supposed to do, Kate?”

Ask me not to go. Go with me
. The answers were right there, as fresh as yesterday and just as futile. By the time she’d left Virginia, the anger and the pain had taken them past the point of his asking her not to go. And she knew without having to ask that he would never have left Investigative Support to go with her. The job was who John Quinn was. He was bound to it in a way he would never be bound to a woman. And, God, how it still hurt to think that.

“What were you supposed to do? Nothing,” she whispered. “You did it well.”

Quinn moved in close behind her, wanting to touch her, as if that might magically erase the time and the trouble that had passed between them. He wanted to tell her the phone worked both ways, but he knew she would never have backed away from her pride or the insecurity it covered. A part of him had been relieved that she had never called, because he would then have had to face himself in life’s big mirror and finally answer the question of whether or not there was enough left in him to build a lasting relationship. His fear of the answer had kept him running from that question for a long, long time.