Ashes to Ashes

9

CHAPTER

“IF THE NEWSIES find us here, I'll eat my shorts,” Kovac declared, turning around in a circle in the middle of the floor.

One wall was papered in a montage of naked women engaged in various erotic pursuits, the other three in cheap red flocked paper that best resembled moth-eaten velvet.

“Something tells me you could have gotten that done here for you,” Quinn remarked dryly. He sniffed the air, identifying the smells of mice, cheap perfume, and damp underwear. “For a bargain price.”

“The newsies find us here, our careers are toast,” Elwood Knutson said. The big homicide sergeant pulled a giant ceramic penis out of a drawer behind the counter and held it up for all to see.

Liska made a face. “Jesus, Sam. You sure know how to pick 'em.”

“Don't look at me! You think I hang out in massage parlors?”

“Yeah.”

“Very funny. These lovely accommodations are courtesy of Detective Adler, Hennepin County Sheriff's Office. Chunk, take a bow.”

Adler, a chunk of muscle with ebony skin and a tight cap of steel-gray curls, gave a sheepish grin and a wave to the rest of the task force. “My sister works for Norwest Banks. They foreclosed on the building after sex crimes shut the place down last summer. The location is perfect, the price is right—meaning free—and the press lost interest in the place after the hookers moved out. No one's going to suspect this is where we're meeting.”

Which was the main point, Quinn thought as he followed Kovac down the narrow hall, the detective turning on lights in the succession of four smaller rooms—two on either side of the hall. It was essential that the task force be allowed to do their jobs without interruption or distraction, without having to run a gauntlet of reporters. A place where the case could be contained and leaks kept to a minimum.

And if the leaks continued, Elwood was right. The press would roast their careers on a public bonfire.

“I love it!” Kovac declared, striding back down the hall to the front room. “Let's set up.”

Liska wrinkled her nose. “Can we hose it down with Lysol first?”

“Sure, Tinks. You can redecorate the place while the rest of us are solving these murders.”

“Oh, fuck you, Kojak. I hope you're the first to catch the cooties from the toilet seat.”

“Naw, that'll be Bear Butt in there with the Reader's Digest. Cooties see his hairy ass and come running. He's probably got a whole civilization living in that pelt.”

Elwood, who was roughly the size and shape of a small grizzly, raised his head with dignity. “On behalf of hairy people everywhere, I take umbrage.”

“Yeah?” Kovac said. “Well, take your umbrage outside and grab some stuff. We're burning daylight.”

Two unmarked utility vans from the PD fleet were parked in the alley, loaded with the necessary office furniture and equipment. All of it was carried into the former Loving Touch Massage Parlor, along with boxes of office supplies, a coffeemaker, and, most important, the boxes containing the files on all three murders attributed to the killer the detectives privately called Smokey Joe.

Quinn worked alongside the others. Just one of the guys. Trying to blend into another team like a free agent cleanup hitter drifting from one baseball park to another. Brought in by management to hit a dinger in the big game, then cut loose and sent on to the next crucial moment. The jokes felt forced, the attempts at camaraderie false. Some of these people would feel they knew him by the time all this was over. They wouldn't really know him at all.

Still, he went through the motions as he always did, knowing none of the people around him could tell the difference—the same way people working side by side with this serial killer wouldn't know or suspect. People in general had a myopic view of their own small worlds. They focused on what was important to them. The rotting soul of the guy in the next cubicle didn't matter to them—until his disease touched their lives.

In short order, the Loving Touch had been transformed from a brothel to a tactical war room. By nine o'clock the entire task force had assembled: six detectives from the Minneapolis PD, three from the Sheriff's Office, two from the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Quinn, and Walsh.

Walsh looked like he had malaria.

Kovac briefed them on all three murders, finishing with the autopsy of the Jane Doe victim, complete with photographs that had been rushed through the lab for processing and enlarging.

“We'll have some of the preliminary lab results today,” he said as he passed the gruesome pictures around the table. “We've got a blood type—O positive—which happens to be Jillian Bondurant's—and a gazillion other people's.

“I want you to note the photographs of wounds where sections of flesh have been cut from the body. We had similar wounds on the first two vics. We're speculating the killer may be cutting away bite marks. But with this latest, he might have cut away any identifying marks that could prove or disprove the victim's identity: scars, moles, et cetera.”

“Tattoos,” someone said.

“Bondurant's father is unaware of Jillian having any tattoos. According to his lawyer, he couldn't come up with any distinguishing marks at all. Jillian had been out of his life for about half of hers, so I guess it's not surprising. We're trying to come up with photographs of her in a bathing suit or something, but no luck so far.

“We're proceeding on the assumption that Jillian Bondurant is the vic,” he said, “but staying open to other possibilities. There've been a few calls to the hotline, people claiming they've seen her since Friday, but none of them have panned out yet.”

“Are you going to bring up the K word?” asked Mary Moss from the BCA. She looked like a soccer mom from the suburbs in a turtleneck and tweed blazer. Oversize glasses dominated her oval face. Her thick gray-blond pageboy seemed in need of a serious thinning.

“There haven't been any ransom demands that we know of,” Kovac said, “but it's not beyond the realm.”

“Big Daddy Bondurant sure never jumped to the kidnapping conclusion,” Adler said. “Anyone find that strange besides me?”

“He heard about the driver's license found with the body and accepted the probability the body was hers,” Hamill concluded.

Adler spread hands the size of catcher's mitts. “I say again: Anyone find that strange besides me? Who wants to believe their child is the decapitated victim of a homicidal maniac? Man as rich as Bondurant, isn't he gonna think kidnapping before murder?”

“Is he talking yet?” Elwood asked, chowing down a bran muffin as he perused the autopsy photos.

“Not to me,” Kovac said.

“I don't like the smell of that either.”

“His attorney called me last night and left a message,” Quinn said. “Bondurant wants to see me this morning.”

Kovac stepped back, nonplussed. “No shit? What'd you tell him?”

“Nothing. I let him hang overnight. I don't particularly want to meet him at this stage of the game, but if it helps you get a foot in his door . . .”

Kovac smiled like a shark. “You need a lift over to the Bondurant house, don't you, John?”

Quinn tipped his head, wincing. “Do I have time to call and up my life insurance?”

Laughter erupted around the table. Kovac made a face.

“He gave me a lift from the morgue last night,” Quinn explained. “I thought I'd be going back in a black bag.”

“Hey,” Kovac barked with false annoyance. “I got you there in one piece.”

“Actually, I think my spleen is over on Marquette somewhere. Maybe we can pick it up on the way.”

“He's been here a day and already he's got your number, Sam,” Liska joked.

“Yeah, like you should talk, Tinks,” someone else countered.

“I drive like Kovac only when I've got PMS.”

Kovac held up a hand. “Okay, okay, back to business. Back to the bite marks. We ran that feature through the database back when we were looking at the first murder, searching for any known offenders in the metro—murderers or sex offenders—who had bitten or cannibalized victims, and came up with a list. We also ran it through VICAP and came up with another list.” He lifted a sheaf of computer printouts.

“How long before we can confirm or deny this body is Bondurant's?”

Gary “Charm” Yurek of the PD had been designated media spokesman for the task force, giving the line of official bullshit to the press every day. He had a face worthy of a soap star. People tended to become distracted by the utter perfection of his smile and miss that he hadn't really told them anything.

Kovac looked now to Walsh. “Vince, any word on the girl's health records?”

Walsh hacked a phlegm-rattling cough, shaking his head. “The Paris office is tracking them down. They've been trying to contact the stepfather, but he's somewhere between construction sites in Hungary and Slovakia.”

“Apparently, she's been the picture of health since her return to the States,” Liska said. “She's had no serious injuries or illness, nothing to warrant X rays—except her teeth.”

“He screwed us up but good taking her head,” Elwood complained.

“You come up with any ideas on that, John?” Kovac asked.

“Could be he meant to jam up the investigation. Could be that the body isn't Jillian Bondurant and he's sending some kind of message or playing a game,” Quinn suggested. “Maybe he knew the victim—whoever she was—and decapitated her to depersonalize her. Or the decapitation could be the new step in the escalation of his violent fantasies and how he plays them out. He could be keeping the head as a trophy. He could be using it to further act out his sexual fantasies.”

“Judas,” Chunk muttered.

Tippen, another of the sheriff's detectives, scowled. “You're not exactly narrowing it down.”

“I don't know enough about him yet,” Quinn said evenly.

“What do you know?”

“Basics.”

“Such as?”

He looked to Kovac, who motioned him to the head of the table.

“This is not by any means the completed analysis. I want that made clear. I did a quick read-through of the reports last night, but it takes more than a couple of hours to build a solid, accurate profile.”

“Okay, you've covered your ass,” Tippen said impatiently. “So who do you think we're looking for?”

Quinn held his temper in check. It was nothing new to have a skeptic in the crowd. He had learned long ago how to play them, how to pull them around a little at a time with logic and practicality. He leveled his gaze on Tippen, a lean, homely man with a face like an Irish wolfhound—all nose and mustache and shaggy brows over sharp, dark eyes.

“Your UNSUB is a white male, probably between the ages of thirty and thirty-five. Sadistic sexual serial killers hunt within their own ethnic group as a rule.” Pointing to the close-ups of wounds from the crime scene photos, he said, “You've got a very specific pattern of wounds, carefully repeated on each victim. He's spent a long time perfecting this fantasy. When you find him you'll find a collection of S&M pornography. He's been into it for a long while. The sophistication of the crimes, the care taken to leave no usable physical evidence, suggests maturity and experience. He may have an old record as a sex offender. But record or no, he's been on this course from when he was in his late teens or early twenties.

“He likely started with window peeping or fetish burglaries—stealing women's underwear and so forth. That may still be a part of his fantasy. We don't know what he's doing with the victims' clothing. The clothes he dresses them in after he's killed them are clothes he's chosen for them from his own source.”

“You suppose he played with Barbie dolls as a kid?” Tippen said to Adler.

“If he did, you can bet they ended up with limbs missing,” Quinn said.

“Jesus, I was kidding.”

“No joke, Detective. Aberrant fantasies can begin as young as five or six. Particularly in a home with sexual abuse or open sexual promiscuity going on—which is almost a sure bet in this case.

“He's likely murdered long before your first victim and gotten away with it. Escaping detection will make him feel bold, invulnerable. His presentation of the bodies in a public area where he could have been seen and where the bodies would certainly be found is risky and suggests arrogance. It also suggests the type of killer who can be drawn to the investigation. He wants attention, he's watching the news, clipping articles from the paper.”

“So Chief Greer was right yesterday when he said we should make a statement to this creep,” Kovac said.

“He'll be just as right today or tomorrow, when we're ready to make a move.”

“And it looks like your idea,” Tippen muttered.

“I'll be happy to let you suggest it to the brass, Detective,” Quinn said. “I don't give a rat's ass who gets credit. I don't want my name in the paper. I don't want to see myself on TV. Hell, I'd just as soon be doing this job in my office sixty feet underground back in Quantico. I have one objective here: helping you nail this son of a bitch and take him out of society forever and ever, amen. That's all this is about for me.”

Tippen dropped his gaze to his notepad, a nonbeliever still.

Kovac huffed a little sigh. “You know, we got no time for fence pissing. I'm sure no one in the general public gives a rip which one of us has the biggest dick.”

“I have,” Liska chirped, snatching the giant ceramic penis away from Elwood, who had set it on the table as a centerpiece. She held it up as proof of her claim.

Laughter broke the tension.

“Anyway,” Quinn went on, sliding his hands into his pants pockets and cocking a leg, settling in, subtly letting Tippen know he wasn't going anywhere and wasn't bothered by his opinions. “We have to be careful about how we draw him in. I'd suggest starting with a heavily publicized community meeting held in a location central between the dumping sites. You're asking for help, for community participation. It's nonaggressive, nonthreatening. He can come into that scenario feeling anonymous and safe.

“It won't be easy to trick him unless his arrogance gets out of hand. He's organized. He's of above-average intelligence. He's got a job, but it may be beneath his capabilities. He knows the city parks system, so if you haven't done so already, you'll want to get a parks service employee roster, see if anyone has a criminal record.”

“Already happening,” Kovac said.

“How do you know he has a job at all?” Tippen challenged. “How do you know he's not some drifter, familiar with the parks because that's where he hangs out?”

“He's no drifter,” Quinn said with certainty. “He's got a house. The crime scenes are not the death scenes. The women were abducted, taken someplace, and held there. He needs privacy, a place where he can torture his victims without having to worry about anyone hearing.

“Also, he may have more than one vehicle. He probably has access to a Suburban-type truck or a pickup. A basic package, older, dark in color, fairly well kept. Something to transport the bodies in, a vehicle that wouldn't seem out of place pulling into the service lot of a city park. But this may not be what he's picking them up in, because a big vehicle would be conspicuous and memorable to witnesses.”

“How do you know he's an underachiever?” Frank Hamill asked.

“Because that's the norm for this type of killer. He has a job because it's necessary. But his energies, his talents, are applied to his hobby. He spends a lot of his time fantasizing. He lives for the next kill. A corporate CEO wouldn't have that kind of free time.”

“Even though they're mostly psychopaths,” someone joked.

Quinn flashed a shark smile. “Be glad some of them like their day jobs.”

“What else?” Liska asked. “Any guesses on appearance?”

“I've got mixed feelings on this because of the conflicting victimology.”

“Hookers go for cash, not flash,” Elwood said.

“And if all three victims were hookers, I'd say we're looking for a guy who's unattractive, maybe has some kind of problem like a stutter or a scar, something that would make it difficult for him to approach women. But if our third vic is the daughter of a billionaire?” Quinn arched a brow.

“Who knows what she might have been into.”

“Is there any reason to think she was involved in prostitution?” Quinn asked. “On the surface she wouldn't seem to have much in common with the first two victims.”

“She doesn't have a record,” Liska said. “But then, her father is Peter Bondurant.”

“I need more extensive victimology on all three women,” Quinn said. “If there's any kind of common link between them, that's a prime spot for you to start developing a suspect.”

“Two hookers and a billionaire's daughter—what could they possibly have in common?” Yurek asked.

“Drugs,” Liska said.

“A man,” Mary Moss offered.

Kovac nodded. “You two want to work that angle?”

The women nodded.

“But maybe the guy just nabbed these women from behind,” Tippen suggested. “Maybe he didn't need to finesse them. Maybe he picked them because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“It's possible. It just doesn't feel that way to me,” Quinn said. “He's too smooth. These women just vanished. No one saw a struggle. No one heard a scream. Logic tells me they went with him willingly.”

“So where's Bondurant's car?” Adler asked. Jillian's red Saab had yet to be located.

“Maybe she picked him up,” Liska said. “It's the nineties. Maybe he's still got her car.”

“So we're looking for a killer with a three-car garage?” Adler said. “Hell, I am in the wrong line of work.”

“You want to start whacking ex-wives for a living, you could fill the damn garage with Porsches,” Kovac joked.

Liska punched him in the arm. “Hey! I'm an ex-wife.”

“Present company excluded.”

Quinn took a long drink of his coffee while the jokes ran through the group. Humor was a safety valve for cops, releasing measured bursts of pressure the job built up inside them. The members of this team were standing at the start of what would undoubtedly be a long, unpleasant gauntlet. They would need to squeeze a joke in wherever they could. The better their rapport as a unit, the better for the investigation. He usually tossed in a few jokes himself to bend the image of the straitlaced G-man.

“Sizewise,” he went on, “he'll probably be medium height, medium build—strong enough to tote a dead body around but not so big as to seem a physical threat when he's approaching his victims. That's about as much as I can give you for now.”

“What? Can't you just close your eyes and conjure up a psychic photograph or something?” Adler said, only half joking.

“Sorry, Detective,” Quinn said with a grin and a shrug. “If I were psychic, I'd be making my living at the racetrack. Not a psychic cell in my body.”

“You would have if you was on TV.”

“If we were on TV, we'd have solved these crimes in an hour,” Elwood said. “TV is why the public gets impatient with an investigation that lasts more than two days. The whole damn country lives on TV time.”

“Speaking of TV,” Hamill said, holding up a videocassette. “I've got the tape from the press conference.”

A television with a built-in VCR sat atop a wheeled metal cart near the head of the table. Hamill loaded the cassette and they all sat back to watch. At Quinn's request, a videographer from the BCA special operations unit had been stationed discreetly among the cameramen from the local stations with instructions to capture not the event, but the people gathered to take it in.

The voices of the mayor, Chief Greer, and the county attorney droned in the background as the camera scanned the faces of reporters and cops and news photographers. Quinn stared at the screen, tuned to pick up the slightest nuances of expression, the glint of something knowing in a pair of eyes, the hint of something smug playing at the corners of a mouth. His attention was on the people at the periphery of the crowd, people who seemed to be there by accident or coincidence.

He looked for that intangible, almost imperceptible something that set a detective's instincts on point. The knowledge that their killer might have been standing there among the unsuspecting, that he could have been looking at the face of a murderer without knowing, stirred a deep sense of frustration within. This killer wouldn't stand out. He wouldn't appear to be nervous. He wouldn't have the wild-eyed edginess that would give him away as disorganized offenders often did. He'd killed at least three women and gotten away with it. The police had no viable leads. He had nothing to worry about. And he knew it.

“Well,” Tippen said dryly. “I don't see anyone carrying an extra head with them.”

“We could be looking right at him and not know it,” Kovac said, hitting the power button on the remote control. “But if we come up with a possible suspect, we can go back and look again.”

“We gonna get that composite from the wit today, Sam?” Adler asked.

Kovac's mouth twisted a little. “I sure as hell hope so. I've already had calls from the chief and Sabin about it.” And they would ride his ass until they got it. He was the primary. He ran the investigation and took the heat. “In the meantime, let's make assignments and hit the bricks before Smokey Joe decides to light up another one.”

PETER BONDURANT'S HOME was a sprawling old Tudor with an expensive view of Lake of the Isles beyond its tall iron bar fence. Tall bare-branched trees studded the lawn. One broad wall of the stucco home was crazed with a network of vines, dry and brown this time of year. Just a few miles from the heart of Minneapolis, it discreetly displayed signs of city life paranoia along the fence and on the closed driveway gate in the form of blue-and-white security company signs.

Quinn tried to take it all in visually and still pay attention to the call on his cell phone. A suspect had been apprehended in the child abduction in Blacksburg, Virginia. The CASKU agent on site wanted to confirm a strategy for the interrogation. Quinn was sounding board and guru. He listened, agreed, made a suggestion, and signed off as quickly as he could, wanting his focus on the matter at hand.

“The man in demand,” Kovac remarked as he swung the car into the drive too fast and hit the brakes, rocking to a stop beside the intercom panel. His gaze moved past Quinn to the news vans parked on either side of the street. The occupants of the vans stared back. “Lousy vultures.”

A voice crackled from the intercom speaker. “Yes?”

“John Quinn, FBI,” Kovac said with drama, flashing a comic look at Quinn.

The gate rolled open, then closed behind them. The reporters made no move to rush in. Midwestern manners, Quinn thought, knowing full well there were places in this country where the press would have stormed the place and demanded answers as if they had a right to tear apart the grief that belonged to the victim's family. He'd seen it happen. He'd seen promotion-hungry reporters dig through people's garbage for scraps of information that could be turned into speculative headlines. He'd seen them crash funerals.

A black Lincoln Continental polished to a hard shine sat in the driveway near the house. Kovac pulled his dirt-brown Caprice alongside the luxury car and turned the key. The engine rattled on pathetically for half a minute.

“Cheap piece of crap,” he muttered. “Twenty-two years on the job and I get the worst fucking car in the fleet. You know why?”

“Because you won't kiss the right ass?” Quinn ventured.

Kovac huffed a laugh. “I'm not kissing anything that's got a dick on the flip side.” He chuckled to himself as he dug through a pile of junk on the seat, finally coming up with a mini-cassette recorder, which he offered to Quinn.

“In case he still won't talk to me . . . By Minnesota law, only one party to a conversation needs to grant permission to tape that conversation.”

“Hell of a law for a state full of Democrats.”

“We're practical. We've got a killer to catch. Maybe Bondurant knows something he doesn't realize. Or maybe he'll say something that won't ring a bell with you because you're not from here.”

Quinn slipped the recorder into the inside breast pocket of his suit coat. “The end justifies the means.”

“You know it.”

“Better than most.”

“Does it ever get to you?” Kovac asked as they got out of the car. “Working serial murders and child abductions twenty-four/seven. I gotta think that'd get to me. At least some of the stiffs I get deserved to get whacked. How do you cope?”

I don't. The response was automatic—and just as automatically unspoken. He didn't cope. He never had. He just shoveled it all into the big dark pit inside him and hoped to hell the pit didn't overflow.

“Focus on the win column,” he said.

The wind cut across the lake, kicking up whitecaps on water that looked like mercury, and chasing dead leaves across the dead lawn. It flirted with the tails of Quinn's and Kovac's trench coats. The sky looked like dirty cotton batting sinking down on the city.

“I drink,” Kovac confessed amiably. “I smoke and I drink.”

A grin tugged at Quinn's mouth. “And chase women?”

“Naw, I gave that up. It's a bad habit.”

Edwyn Noble answered the door. Lurch with a law degree. His expression froze at the sight of Kovac.

“Special Agent Quinn,” he began as they moved past him into an entry hall of carved mahogany paneling. A massive wrought iron chandelier hung from the second-story ceiling. “I don't remember you mentioning Ser-geant Kovac when you called.”

Quinn flashed him innocence. “Didn't I? Well, Sam offered to drive me, and I don't know my way around the city, so . . .”

“I've been wanting to talk to Mr. Bondurant myself anyway,” Kovac said casually, browsing the artwork on display in the hall, his hands stuffed into his pockets as if he were afraid of breaking something.

The lawyer's ears turned red around the rim. “Sergeant, Peter's just lost his only child. He'd like to have a little time to collect himself before he has to be subjected to any kind of questioning.”

“Questioning?” Kovac's brows arched as he glanced up from a sculpture of a racehorse. He exchanged a look with Quinn. “Like a suspect? Does Mr. Bondurant think we consider him a suspect? Because I don't know where he would have gotten that idea. Do you, Mr. Noble?”

Color streaked across Noble's cheekbones. “Interview. Statement. Whatever you'd like to call it.”

“I'd like to call it a conversation, but, hey, whatever you want.”

“What I want,” came a quiet voice from beyond an arched doorway, “is to have my daughter back.”

The man who emerged from the dimly lit interior hall was half a foot shy of six feet, with a slight build and an air of neatness and precision even in casual slacks and a sweater. His dark hair was cropped so close to his skull it looked like a fine coating of metal shavings. He stared at Quinn with serious eyes through the small oval lenses of wire-framed glasses.

“That's what we all want, Mr. Bondurant,” Quinn said. “There may still be a chance of making that happen, but we'll need all the help we can get.”

The straight brows drew together in confusion. “You think Jillian might still be alive?”

“We haven't been able to conclusively determine otherwise,” Kovac said. “Until we can positively identify the victim, there's a chance it's not your daughter. We've had some unsubstantiated sightings—”

Bondurant shook his head. “No, I don't think so,” he said softly. “Jillie is dead.”

“How do you know that?” Quinn asked. Bondurant's expression was somber, tormented, defeated. His gaze skated off somewhere to Quinn's left.

“Because she was my child,” he said at last. “I can't explain it any better than that. There's a feeling—like a rock in my gut, like some part of me died with her. She's gone.

“Do you have children, Agent Quinn?” he asked.

“No. But I've known too many parents who've lost a child. It's a terrible place to be. If I were you, I wouldn't be in any hurry to get there.”

Bondurant looked down at Quinn's shoes and breathed a sigh. “Come into my study, Agent Quinn,” he said, then turned to Kovac, his mouth tightening subtly. “Edwyn, why don't you and Sergeant Kovac wait for us in the living room?”

Kovac made a sound of dissatisfaction.

Concern tightened the lawyer's features. “Perhaps I should sit in, Peter. I—”

“No. Have Helen get you coffee.”

Clearly unhappy, Noble leaned toward his client across the hall like a marionette straining against its strings. Bondurant turned and walked away.

Quinn followed. Their footfalls were muffled by the fine wool of a thick Oriental runner. He wondered at Bondurant's strategy. He wouldn't talk to the police, but he banished his attorney from a conversation with an FBI agent. It didn't make sense if he was trying to protect himself. Then again, anything incriminating he said in the absence of his attorney would be worthless in court, audiotape or no audiotape.

“I understand you have a witness. Can she identify the man who did this?”

“I'm not at liberty to discuss that,” Quinn said. “I'd like to talk about you and your daughter, your relationship. Forgive me for being blunt, but your lack of cooperation with the police thus far comes across as puzzling at best.”

“You think I'm not reacting in the typical way of a parent of a murdered child? Is there a typical reaction?”

“Typical is maybe not the word. Some reactions are more common than others.”

“I don't know anything that would be pertinent to the case. Therefore, I have nothing further to tell the police. A stranger abducted and murdered my daughter. How could they expect me to have any information relevant to such a senseless act?”

Bondurant led the way into a spacious office and closed the door. The room was dominated by a massive U-shaped mahogany desk, one wing of which was devoted to computer equipment, one to paperwork. The center section was meticulously neat, the blotter spotless, every pen and paper clip in its place.

“Take your coat off, Agent Quinn. Have a seat.” He gestured a thin hand toward a pair of oxblood leather chairs while he went around the desk to claim his own place in a high-backed executive's throne.

Putting distance and authority between them, Quinn thought, shrugging out of his topcoat. Putting me in my place. He settled into a chair, realizing immediately that it squatted just a little too low to the ground, just enough to make its occupant feel vaguely small.

“Some maniac murdered my daughter,” Bondurant said again calmly. “In the face of that, I can't really give a good goddamn what anyone thinks of my behavior. Besides, I am helping the investigation: I brought you here.”

Another reminder of the balance of power, softly spoken.

“And you're willing to talk to me?”

“Bob Brewster says you're the best.”

“Thank the director for me the next time you speak to him. Our paths don't cross that often,” Quinn returned, deliberately unimpressed by the man's implied cozy familiarity with the director of the FBI.

“He says this type of murder is your specialty.”

“Yes, but I'm not a hired gun, Mr. Bondurant. I want to be very clear on that. I'll do what I can in terms of building a profile and advising as to investigative techniques. If a suspect is brought in, I'll offer an interview strategy. In the event of a trial, I'll testify as an expert witness and offer my expertise to the prosecution regarding the questioning of witnesses. I'll do my job, and I'll do it well, but I don't work for you, Mr. Bondurant.”

Bondurant absorbed this information expressionless. His face was as bony and severe as his attorney's, but without the relief of the too-wide smile. A hard mask, impossible to see past.

“I want Jillian's killer caught. I'll deal with you because you're the best and because I've been told I can trust you not to sell out.”

“Sell out? In what way?”

“To the media. I'm a very private man in a very public position. I hate the idea that millions of strangers will know the intimate details of my daughter's death. It seems like it should be a very private, personal thing—the ending of a life.”

“It should be. It's the taking of a life that can't be kept quiet—for everyone's sake.”

“I suppose what I really dread isn't people knowing about Jillie's death so much as their ravenous desire to tear apart her life. And mine—I'll admit that.”

Quinn shifted in his chair, casually crossing his legs, and offered the barest hint of a sympathetic smile. Settling in. The I-could-be-your-friend guise. “That's understandable. Has the press been hounding you? It looks like they're camped out front.”

“I refuse to deal with them. I've pulled in my media relations coordinator from Paragon to handle it. The thing that angers me most is their sense of entitlement. Because I'm wealthy, because I'm prominent, they think they have some right to invade my grief. Do you think they parked their news vans in front of the homes of the parents of the two prostitutes this maniac killed? I can assure you they didn't.”

“We live in a society addicted to sensationalism,” Quinn said. “Some people are deemed newsworthy and some are considered disposable. I'm not sure which side of the coin is worse. I can just about guarantee you the parents of those first two victims are sitting at home wondering why news vans aren't parked in front of their houses.”

“You think they'd like people to know how they failed as parents?” Bondurant asked, a slim shadow of anger darkening his tone. “You think they'd like people to know why their daughters became whores and drug addicts?”

Guilt and blame. How much of that was he projecting from his own pain? Quinn wondered.

“About this witness,” Bondurant said again, seeming a little shaken by his last near-revelation. He moved a notepad on his desk a quarter of an inch. “Do you think she'll be able to identify the killer? She doesn't sound very reliable.”

“I don't know,” Quinn said, knowing exactly where Bondurant had gotten his information. Kovac was going to have to do his best to plug that leak, which would mean stepping on some very sensitive, influential toes. The victim's family was entitled to certain courtesies, but this investigation needed as tight an environment as possible. Peter Bondurant couldn't be allowed total access. He in fact had not been ruled out as a viable suspect.

“Well . . . we can only hope . . .” Bondurant murmured.

His gaze strayed to the wall that held an assortment of framed photographs, many of himself with men Quinn had to assume were business associates or rivals or dignitaries. He spotted Bob Brewster among the crowd, then found what Bondurant had turned to: a small cluster of photographs on the lower left-hand corner.

Quinn rose from his chair and went to the wall for a closer inspection. Jillian at various stages of her life. He recognized her from a snapshot in the case file. One photograph in particular drew his eye: a young woman out of place in a prim black dress with a white Peter Pan collar and cuffs. Her hair was cut boyishly short and bleached nearly white. A striking contrast to the dark roots and brows. Half a dozen earrings ornamented one ear. A tiny ruby studded one nostril. She resembled her father in no way at all. Her body, her face, were softer, rounder. Her eyes were huge and sad, the camera catching the vulnerability she felt at not being the politely feminine creature of someone else's expectations.

“Pretty girl,” Quinn murmured automatically. It didn't matter that it wasn't precisely true. The statement was made for a purpose other than flattery. “She must have felt very close to you, coming back here from Europe for college.”

“Our relationship was complicated.” Bondurant rose from his chair and hovered beside it, tense and uncertain, as if a part of him wanted to go to the photographs but a stronger part held him back. “We were close when she was young. Then her mother and I divorced when Jillie was at a vulnerable age. It was difficult for her—the antagonism between Sophie and me. Then came Serge, Sophie's last husband. And Sophie's illness—she was in and out of institutions for depression.”

He was silent for a stretch of time, and Quinn could feel the weight of everything Bondurant was omitting from the story. What had precipitated the divorce? What had driven Sophie's mental illness? Was the distaste in Bondurant's voice when he spoke of his successor bitterness over a rival or something more?

“What was she studying at the university?” he asked, knowing better than to go directly for the other answers he wanted. Peter Bondurant wouldn't give up his secrets that easily, if he gave them up at all.

“Psychology,” he said with the driest hint of irony as he stared at the photo of her in the black dress and bleached boy-cut, the earrings and pierced nose and unhappy eyes.

“Did you see her often?”

“Every Friday. She came for dinner.”

“How many people knew that?”

“I don't know. My housekeeper, my personal assistant, a few close friends. Some of Jillian's friends, I suppose.”

“Do you have additional staff here at the house or just the housekeeper?”

“Helen is full-time. A girl comes in to help her clean once a week. There's a grounds crew of three who come weekly. That's all. I prefer my privacy to a staff. My needs aren't that extravagant.”

“Friday's usually a hot night on the town for college kids. Jillian wasn't into the club scene?”

“No. She'd grown past it.”

“Did she have many close friends?”

“Not that she spoke about with me. She was a very private person. The only one she mentioned with any regularity was a waitress at a coffee bar. Michele something. I never met her.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“No,” he said, turning away. French doors behind his desk led out to a flagstone courtyard of vacant benches and empty planters. He stared through the glass as if he were looking through a portal into another time. “Boys didn't interest her. She didn't want temporary relationships. She'd been through so much. . . .”

His thin mouth quivered slightly, and a deep pain came into his eyes. The strongest sign of inner emotion he had shown. “She had so much life ahead of her,” he murmured. “I wish this hadn't happened.”

Quinn quietly moved in alongside him. His voice was low and soft, the voice of sad experience and understanding. “That's the hardest thing to cope with when a young person dies—especially when they've been murdered. The unfulfilled dreams, the unrealized potential. The people close to them—family, friends—thought they had so much time to make up for mistakes, plenty of time down the road to tell that person they loved them. Suddenly that time is gone.”

He could see the muscles of Bondurant's face tighten against the pain. He could see the suffering in the eyes, that hint of desperation at the knowledge the emotional tidal wave was coming, and the fear that there may not be enough strength to hold it back.

“At least you had that last evening together,” Quinn murmured. “That should be some comfort to you.”

Or it could be the bitter, lasting reminder of every unresolved issue left between father and daughter. The raw wound of opportunity lost. Quinn could almost taste the regret in the air.

“How was she that night?” he asked quietly. “Did she seem up or down?”

“She was”—Bondurant swallowed hard and searched for the appropriate word—“herself. Jillie was always up one minute and down the next. Volatile.”

The daughter of a woman in and out of institutions for psychiatric problems.

“She didn't give any sign something was bothering her, that she was worried about anything?”

“No.”

“Did you discuss anything in particular, or argue about—”

Bondurant's explosion was sudden, strong, surprising. “My God, if I'd thought there was anything wrong, if I'd thought something was going to happen, don't you think I would have stopped her from leaving? Don't you think I would have kept her here?”

“I'm sure you would have,” Quinn said softly, the voice of compassion and reassurance, emotions he had stopped giving out in full measure long ago because it took too much from him and there was no one around to help him refill the well. He tried to keep his focus on his underlying motive, which was to get information. Manipulate, coax, slip under the guard, draw out the truth a sliver at a time. Get the info to get the killer. Remember that the first person he owed his allegiance to was the victim.

“What did you talk about that night?” he asked gently as Bondurant worked visibly to gather his composure.

“The usual things,” he said, impatient, looking out the window again. “Her classes. My work. Nothing.”

“Her therapy?”

“No, she—” He stiffened, then turned to glare at Quinn.

“We need to know these things, Mr. Bondurant,” Quinn said without apology. “With every victim we have to consider the possibility that some part of their life may have a link to their death. It may be the thinnest thread that ties one thing to the other. It might be something you don't think could be important at all. But sometimes that's all it takes, and sometimes that's all we have.

“Do you understand what I'm telling you? We'll do everything in our power to keep details confidential, but if you want this killer apprehended, you have to cooperate with us.”

The explanation did nothing to soften Bondurant's anger. He turned abruptly back to the desk and pulled a card from the Rolodex. “Dr. Lucas Brandt. For all the good it will do you. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that anything Jillian related to Lucas as a patient is confidential.”

“And what about anything she related to you as her father?”

His temper came in another quick flash, boiling up and over the rigid control. “If I knew anything, anything that could lead you to my daughter's murderer, don't you think I would tell you?”

Quinn was silent, his unblinking gaze steady on Peter Bondurant's face, on the vein that slashed down across his high forehead like a bolt of lightning. He pulled the Rolodex card from Bondurant's fingers.

“I hope so, Mr. Bondurant,” he said at last. “Some other young woman's life may depend on it.”

“WHAT'D YOU GET?” Kovac asked as they walked away from the house. He lit a cigarette and went to work sucking in as much of it as he could before they reached the car.

Quinn stared down the driveway and past the gate where two cameramen stood with eyes pressed to view-finders. There was no long-range audio equipment in sight, but the lenses on the cameras were fat and long. His period of anonymity was going into countdown.

“Yeah,” he said. “A bad feeling.”

“Jeez, I've had that from the start of this deal. You know what a man like Bondurant could do to a career?”

“My question is: Why would he want to?”

“'Cause he's rich and he's hurting. He's like that guy with the gun in the government center yesterday. He wants someone else to hurt. He wants someone to pay. Maybe if he can make someone else miserable, he won't feel his own pain so much. You know,” he said in that offhand way he had, “people are nuts. So what'd he say? Why won't he talk to us locals?”

“He doesn't trust you.”

Kovac straightened with affront and tossed his cigarette on the driveway. “Well, fuck him!”

“He's paranoid about details leaking to the media.”

“Like what details? What's he got to hide?”

Quinn shrugged. “That's your job, Sherlock. But I got you a place to start.”

They climbed into the Caprice. Quinn pulled the cassette recorder from his coat pocket and laid it on the seat between them with the Rolodex card on top of it.

Kovac picked up the card and frowned at it. “A shrink. What'd I tell you? People are nuts. Especially rich people—they're the only ones who can afford to do anything about it. It's like a hobby with them.”

Quinn stared up at the house, half expecting to see a face at one of the windows, but there was no one. All the windows were blank and black on this dreary morning.

“Was there ever any mention in the press about either of the first two victims being drug users?” he asked.

“No,” Kovac said. “The one used to be, but we held it back. Lila White. ‘Lily' White. The first vic. She was a basehead for a while, but she got herself straightened out. Went through a country program, lived at one of the hooker halfway houses for a while—only that part didn't take, I guess. Anyway, the drug angle didn't develop. Why?”

“Bondurant made a reference. Might have just been an assumption on his part, but I don't think so. I think either he knew something about the other victims or he knew something about Jillian.”

“If she was using anything around the time of her death, it'll show up in the tox screen. I went through her town house. I didn't see anything stronger than Tylenol.”

“If she was using, you might have a connection to the other victims.” And thereby a possible connection to a dealer or another user they could develop into a suspect.

The feral smile of the hunter on a fresh scent lifted the corners of Kovac's mustache. “Networking. I love it. Corporate America thinks they're on to something new. Crooks have been networking since Judas sold Jesus Christ down the river. I'll call Liska, have her and Moss nose around. Then let's go see what Sigmund Fraud here has to say about the price of loose marbles.” He tapped the Rolodex card against the steering wheel. “His office is on the other side of this lake.”