Ashes to Ashes

10

CHAPTER

“SO WHAT DO you think of Quinn?” Liska asked.

Mary Moss rode shotgun, looking out the window at the Mississippi. Barge traffic had given up for the year. Along this stretch, the river was a deserted strip of brown between ratty, half-abandoned industrial and warehouse blocks. “They say he's hot stuff. A legend in the making.”

“You've never worked with him?”

“No. Roger Emerson usually works this territory out of Quantico. But then, the vic isn't usually the daughter of a billionaire captain of industry with contacts in Washington.

“I liked the way he handled Tippen,” Moss went on. “No bully-boy, I'm-the-fed-and-you're-a-hick nonsense. I think he's a quick study of people. Probably frighteningly intelligent. What'd you think?”

Liska sent her a lascivious grin. “Nice pants.”

“God! Here I was being serious and professional, and you were looking at his ass!”

“Well, not when he was talking. But, come on, Mar, the guy's a total babe. Wouldn't you like a piece of that if you could get it?”

Moss looked flustered. “Don't ask me things like that. I'm an old married woman! I'm an old married Catholic woman!”

“As long as the word dead doesn't figure into that description, you're allowed to look.”

“Nice pants,” Moss muttered, fighting chuckles.

“Those big brown eyes, that granite jaw, that sexy mouth. I think I could have an orgasm watching him talk about proactive strategies.”

“Nikki!”

“Oh, that's right, you're a married woman,” Liska teased. “You're not allowed to have orgasms.”

“Do you talk this way when you're riding around with Kovac?”

“Only if I want to get him crazy. He twitches like a gigged frog. Tells me he doesn't want to know anything about my orgasms, that a woman's G spot should just remain a mystery. I tell him that's why he's been divorced twice. You should see how red he gets. I love Kovac—he's such a guy.”

Moss pointed through the windshield. “Here it is—Edgewater.”

The Edgewater town homes were a collection of impeccably styled buildings designed to call to mind a tidy New England fishing village—gray clapboard trimmed in white, cedar shake roofs, six-over-six paned windows. The units were arranged like a crop of wild mushrooms connected by meandering, landscaped paths. All of them faced the river.

“I've got the key to Bondurant's unit,” Liska said, piloting the car into the entrance of the town house complex, “but I called the caretaker anyway. He says he saw Jillian leaving Friday afternoon. I figure it won't hurt to talk to him again.”

She parked near the first unit and she and Moss showed their badges to the man waiting for them on the stoop. Liska pegged Gil Vanlees for mid-thirties. He was blond with a thin, weedy mustache, six feet tall, and soft-looking. His Timberwolves starter jacket hung open over a blue security guard's uniform. He had that look of a marginal high school jock who had let himself go. Too many hours spent watching professional sports with a can in his hand and a sack of chips beside him.

“So, you're a detective?” His small eyes gleamed at Liska with an almost sexual excitement. One was blue and one the odd, murky color of smoky topaz.

Liska smiled at him. “That's right.”

“I think it's great to see women on the job. I work security down at the Target Center, you know,” he said importantly. “Timeberwolves, concerts, truck pulls, and all. We've got a couple gals on, you know. I just think it's great. More power to you.”

She was willing to bet money that when he was sitting around drinking with the boys, he called those women names even she wouldn't use. She knew Vanlees's type firsthand. “So you work security there and look after this complex too?”

“Yeah, well, you know my wife—we're separated—she works for the management company, and that's how we got the town house, 'cause I'm telling you, for what they charge for these places . . . It's unreal.

“So I'm kind of like the super, you know, even though I'm not living here now. The owners here count on me, so I'm hanging in until the wife decides what to do. People have problems—plumbing, electrical, whatnot—I see it gets taken care of. I've got the locksmith coming to change the locks on Miss Bondurant's place this afternoon. And I keep an eye out, you know. Unofficial security. The residents appreciate it. They know I'm on the job, that I've got the training.”

“Is Miss Bondurant's unit this way?” Moss inquired, gesturing toward the river, leaning, hinting.

Vanlees frowned at her, the small eyes going smaller still. “I talked to some detectives yesterday.” As if he thought she might be an impostor with her mousy-mom looks, not the real deal like Liska.

“Yeah, well, we're following up,” Liska said casually. “You know how it is.” Though he clearly didn't have a clue other than what he'd picked up watching NYPD Blue and reading cheesy detective magazines. Some people would cooperate better when they felt included. Others wanted all kinds of assurances neither the crime nor the investigation would taint their lives in any way.

Vanlees dug a ring of keys out of his jacket pocket and led the way down the sidewalk. “I applied to the police department once,” he confided. “They had a hiring freeze on. You know, budgets and all.”

“Jeez, that's tough,” Liska said, doing her best Frances McDormand in Fargo impersonation. “You know, it seems like we always need good people, but that budget hang-up, that's a kicker. . . .”

Vanlees nodded, the man in the know. “Political BS—but I don't need to tell you, right?”

“You got that right. Who knows how many potential great cops like yourself are working other jobs. It's a shame.”

“I could have done the job.” Years-old bitterness colored his tone like an old stain that wouldn't quite wash out.

“So, did you know this Bondurant girl, Gil?”

“Oh, sure, I saw her around. She never had much to say. Unfriendly type. She's dead, huh? They wouldn't say it for sure on the news, but it's her, right?”

“We've got some questions unanswered.”

“I heard there was a witness. To what—that's what I'm wondering. I mean, did they see him kill her or what? That'd be something, huh? Awful.”

“I can't really get into it, you know?” Liska said, apologetic. “I'd like to—you being in a related field and all—but you know how it is.”

Vanlees nodded with false wisdom.

“You saw her Friday?” Moss asked. “Jillian Bondurant?”

“Yeah. About three. I was here working on my garbage disposal. The wife tried to run celery through it. What a mess. Little Miss College Graduate. You'd think she'd have more brains than to do that.”

“Jillian Bondurant . . .” Moss prompted.

He narrowed his mismatched eyes again. “I was looking out the kitchen window. Saw her drive out.”

“Alone?”

“Yep.”

“And that was the last time you saw her?”

“Yeah.” He turned back to Liska. “That nutcase burned her up, didn't he? The Cremator. Jeez, that's sick,” he said, though morbid fascination sparked bright in his expression. “What's this town coming to?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I think it's the millennium. That's what I think,” he ventured. “World's just gonna get crazier and crazier. The thousand years is over and all that.”

“Millennium,” Moss muttered, squinting down at a terra-cotta pot of dead chrysanthemums on the deck of Jillian Bondurant's small front porch.

“Could be,” Liska said. “God help us all, eh?”

“God help us,” Moss echoed sarcastically.

“Too late for Miss Bondurant,” Vanlees said soberly, turning the key in the brass lock. “You need any help here, Detective?”

“No, thanks, Gil. Regulations and all . . .” Liska turned to face him, blocking his entrance to the house. “Did you ever see Miss Bondurant with anyone in particular? Friends? A boyfriend?”

“I saw her dad here every once in a while. He actually owns the unit. No boyfriend. A girlfriend every once in a while. A friend, I mean. Not girlfriend—at least I don't think so.”

“One particular girl? You know her name?”

“No. She wasn't too friendly either. Had a mean look to her. Almost like a biker chick, but not. Anyway, I never had anything to do with her. She—Miss Bondurant—was usually alone, never said much. She didn't really fit in here. Not too many of the residents are students, and then she dressed kind of strange. Army boots and black clothes and all.”

“Did she ever seem out of it to you?”

“Like on drugs, you mean? No. Was she into drugs?”

“I'm just covering my bases, you know, or else my lieutenant . . .”

She let the suggestion hang, the impression being that Vanlees could empathize, blood brother that he was. She thanked him for his help and gave him her business card with instructions to call if he thought of anything that might be helpful to the case. He backed away from the door, reluctant, craning his neck to see what Moss was doing deeper into the apartment. Liska waved good-bye and closed the door.

“Eew, Christ, let me go take a shower,” she whispered, shuddering as she came into the living room.

“Jeez, you didn't like him, then, Margie?” Moss said with an exaggerated north country accent.

Liska made a face at her and at the odd combination of aromas that hung in the air—sweet air freshener over stale cigarette smoke. “Hey, I got him talking, didn't I?”

“You're shameless.”

“In the line of duty.”

“Makes me glad I'm menopausal.”

Liska sobered, her gaze on the door. “Seriously, those cop wanna-bes creep me out. They always have an authority thing. A need for power and control, and a deep-seated poor self-image. More often than not, they've got a thing against women. Hey!” She brightened again suddenly. “I'll have to bring this theory to the attention of Special Agent Quite Good-looking.”

“Hussy.”

“I prefer opportunist.”

Jillian Bondurant's living room had a view of the river. The furnishings looked new. Overstuffed nubby sofa and chairs the color of oatmeal. Glass-topped rattan coffee table and end tables dirty with the fine soot of fingerprint dust left behind by the Bureau of Investigation team. An entertainment center with a large television and a top-line stereo system. In one corner a desk and matching bookshelves held textbooks, notebooks, everything pertaining to Jillian's studies at the U, all of it ridiculously neat. Along another wall sat the latest in shiny black electronic pianos. The kitchen, easily seen from the living room, was immaculate.

“We'll need to find out if she had maid service.”

“Not the digs of the average flat-broke college student,” Liska said. “But then, I gotta think nothing much about this kid was average. She had a pretty atypical childhood trotting all over Europe.”

“And yet she came back here for college. What's with that? She could have gone anywhere—to the Sorbonne, to Oxford, to Harvard, to Southern Cal. She could have gone somewhere warm and sunny. She could have gone somewhere exotic. Why come here?”

“To be close to Daddy.”

Moss walked the room, her gaze scanning for anything that might give a clue about their victim. “I guess that makes sense. But still . . . My daughter Beth and I have a great relationship, but the second that girl graduated high school, she wanted out of the nest.”

“Where'd she go?”

“University of Wisconsin at Madison. My husband isn't Peter Bondurant. She had to fly somewhere with tuition reciprocity,” Moss said, checking through the magazines. Psychology Today and Rolling Stone.

“If my old man had a billion bucks and would spring for a place like this, I'd want to spend time with him too. Maybe I can get Bondurant to adopt me.”

“Who was here yesterday?”

“They sent a couple of uniforms after the body was found with Bondurant's DL—just to make sure she wasn't here, alive and oblivious. Then Sam came over with Elwood to look around. They canvassed the neighbors. Nobody knew anything. He picked up her address book, credit card receipts, phone bills, and a few other things, but he didn't come up with any big prizes. Gotta think if she had a drug habit, the B of I guys would have found something.”

“Maybe she carried everything with her in her purse.”

“And risk losing her stash to a purse snatcher? I don't think so. Besides, this place is way too clean for a druggie.”

Two bedrooms with two full baths on the second level. In her small house in St. Paul, Liska had the cozy pleasure of sharing one small crummy bathroom with her sons, ages eleven and nine. She made good pay as a detective, but things like hockey league and orthodontists cost bucks, and the child support her ex had been directed by the courts to pay was laughable. She often thought she should have had sense enough to get knocked up by a rich guy instead of by a guy named Rich.

Jillian's bedroom was as eerily tidy as the rest of the house. The queen-size bed had been stripped bare by the B of I team, the sheets taken to the lab to be tested for any sign of blood or seminal fluid. There was no discarded clothing draped over chairs or trailing on the floor, no half-open dresser drawers spilling lingerie, no pile of abandoned shoes—nothing like Liska's own crowded room she never had the time or desire to clean. Who the hell ever saw it but herself and the boys? Who ever saw Jillian Bondurant's room?

No snapshots of a boyfriend tucked into the mirror above the oak dresser. No photos of family members. She pulled open the drawers in the nightstands that flanked the bed. No condoms, no diaphragm. A clean ashtray and a tiny box of matches from D'Cup Coffee House.

Nothing about the room gave away any personal information about its occupant—which suggested to Liska two possibilities: that Jillian Bondurant was the princess of repression, or that someone had come through the house after her disappearance and sanitized the place.

Matches and the smell of cigarettes, but every ashtray in the place was clean.

Vanlees had a key. Who else could they add to that list? Peter Bondurant. Jillian's mean-looking girlfriend? The killer. The killer now had Jillian's keys, her address, her car, her credit cards. Kovac had immediately put a trace on the cards to catch any activity following the girl's disappearance Friday night. So far, nothing. Every cop in the greater metro area had the description and tag numbers on Bondurant's red Saab. Nothing yet.

The master bath was clean. Mauve and jade green with decorative soaps no one was supposed to actually use. The shampoo in the bathtub rack was Paul Mitchell with a sticker from a salon in the Dinkydale shopping center. A possible source of information if Jillian had been the kind to confess all to her hairdresser. There was nothing of interest in the medicine cabinet or beneath the sink.

The second bedroom was smaller, the bed also stripped. Summer clothes hung in the closet, pushed out of the master bedroom by the rapid approach of another brutal Minnesota winter. Odds and ends occupied the dresser drawers—a few pair of underpants: black, silky, size five; a black lace bra from Frederick's of Hollywood: skimpy, wash-worn, 34B; a pair of cheap black leggings with a hole in one knee, size S. The clothes were not folded, and Liska had the feeling they did not belong to Bondurant.

The friend? There wasn't enough stuff to indicate a full-time roommate. The fact that this second bedroom was being used discounted the idea of a lover. She went back into the master suite and checked the dresser drawers again.

“You coming up with anything?” Moss asked, stepping into the bedroom doorway, careful not to lean against the jamb, grimy with fingerprint powder.

“The willies. Either this chick was incredibly anal or a phantom house fairy got here before anyone else. She went missing Friday. That gave the killer a good two days with her keys.”

“But there've been no reports of anyone unknown or suspicious coming around.”

“So maybe the killer wasn't unknown or suspicious. I wonder if we could get a surveillance team to watch the place for a couple days,” Liska mused. “Maybe the guy'll show up.”

“Better chance he's already been here and gone. He'd be taking a big risk coming back after the body had been found.”

“He took a pretty big risk lighting up that body in the park.”

Liska pulled her cell phone out of a coat pocket and dialed Kovac's number, then listened impatiently while it rang unanswered. Finally she gave up and stuffed the phone back in her pocket. “Sam must have left his coat in the car again. He oughta wear that phone on a chain like a trucker's wallet. Well, you're probably right anyway. If Smokey Joe wanted to come back here, he'd do it after he'd killed her but before her body had been discovered. And if he's been here already, maybe his prints are being run even as we speak.”

“We should get that lucky.”

Liska sighed. “I found some clothes that probably belong to a girlfriend in the second bedroom, found the name of Jillian's hair salon and a book of matches for a coffeehouse.”

“D'Cup?” Moss said. “I found one too. Should we try it on for size?”

Liska smirked. “A D cup? In my ex-husband's dreams. You know what I found in his sock drawer once?” she said as they walked down into the living room together. “One of those dirty magazines full of women with big, huge, giant, gargantuan tits. I'm talking hooters that would hang to your knees. Page after page of this. Tits, tits, tits the size of the Hindenburg. And men think we're bad because we want six inches to mean six inches.”

Moss made a sound between a groan and a giggle. “Nikki, after a day with you, I'm going to have to go to confession.”

“Well, while you're there, ask the priest what it is about boys and boobs.”

They let themselves out of the apartment and locked the place behind them. The wind blew down the river, sweeping along the scents of mud and decaying leaves and the metallic tinge of the city and the machines that inhabited it. Moss pulled her jacket tight around her. Liska shoved her hands deep in her pockets and hunched her shoulders. They walked back to the car, complaining in advance about how long winter was going to be. Winter was always too long in Minnesota.

As they backed out of the parking slot, Gil Vanlees stood looking out the door of the house he no longer lived in, watching them with a blank expression until Liska raised a hand and waved good-bye.

“WHY DON'T WE try again, Angie?” the forensic artist said gently.

His name was Oscar and he had a voice the consistency of warm caramel. Kate had seen him lull people nearly to sleep with that voice: Angie DiMarco wasn't about to be lulled.

Kate stood behind the girl and a good six feet back, near the door. She didn't want her own impatience compounding Angie's nervousness. The girl sat in her chair, squirming like a toddler in a pediatrician's waiting room, unhappy, uncomfortable, uncooperative. She looked like she hadn't slept well, though she had taken advantage of the bathroom facilities at the Phoenix and showered. Her brown hair was still limp and straight, but it was clean. She wore the same denim jacket over a different sweater and the same dirty jeans.

“I want you to close your eyes,” the artist said. “Take a slow, deep breath and let it out—”

Angie heaved an impatient sigh.

“—slooowly . . .”

Kate had to give the man credit for his tolerance. She personally felt on the verge of slapping someone, anyone. But then, Oscar hadn't had the pleasure of picking up Angie from Phoenix House, where Toni Urskine had yet again unleashed her frustration with the Cremator cases on Kate.

“Two women brutally murdered and nothing gets done because they were prostitutes. My God, the police even went so far as to say there was no threat to the general public—as if these women didn't count as citizens of this city! It's outrageous!”

Kate had refrained from attempting to explain the concept of high-risk and low-risk victim pools. She knew too well what the reaction would be—emotional, visceral, without logic.

“The police couldn't care less about women who are driven by desperation into prostitution and drugs. What's another dead hooker to them—one less problem off the street. A millionaire's daughter is murdered and suddenly we have a crisis! My God, a real person has been victimized!” she had ranted sarcastically.

Kate made an effort to loosen the clenching muscles in her jaw even now. She had never liked Toni Urskine. Urskine worked around the clock to keep her indignation cooking at a slow burn. If she or her ideals or “her victims,” as she called the women at the Phoenix, hadn't been slighted outright, she would find some way of perceiving an insult so she could climb up on her soapbox and shriek at anyone within hearing distance. The Cremator murders would give her fuel for her own fire for a long time to come.

Urskine had a certain amount of justification for her outrage, Kate admitted. Similar cynical thoughts about these cases had run through Kate's own mind. But she knew the cops had been working those first two murders, doing the best they could with the limited manpower and budget the brass allowed for the average violent death.

Still, the only thing she'd wanted to say to Toni Urskine that morning was “Life's a bitch. Get over it.” Her tongue still hurt from biting it. Instead, she'd offered, “I'm not a cop, I'm an advocate. I'm on your side.”

A lot of people didn't want to hear that either. She worked with the police and was considered guilty by association. And there were plenty of times when the cops looked at her and saw her as an enemy because she worked with a lot of bleeding-heart liberals who spent too much time bad-mouthing the police. Stuck in the middle.

Good thing I love this job, or I'd hate it.

“You're in the park, but you're safe,” Oscar said gently. “The danger is past, Angie. He can't hurt you now. Open your mind's eye and look at his face. Take a good long look.”

Kate moved slowly to a chair a few feet from her witness and eased herself down. Angie caught Kate's steady gaze and shifted the other way to find Oscar watching her too, his kindly eyes twinkling like polished onyx in a face that was drowning in hair—a full beard and mustache and a bushy lion's mane worn loose around his thick shoulders.

“You can't see if you won't look, Angie,” he said wisely.

“Maybe I don't want to see,” the girl challenged.

Oscar looked sad for her. “He can't hurt you here, Angie. And all you have to look at is his face. You don't have to look inside his mind or his heart. All you have to see is his face.”

Oscar had sat across from a lot of witnesses in his time, all of them afraid of the same two things: retribution by the criminal sometime in the vague future, and the more immediate fear of having to relive the crime over and over. Kate knew a memory or a nightmare could cause as much psychological stress as an event taking place in real time. As evolved as people liked to believe the human race had become, the mind still had difficulty differentiating between actual reality and perceived reality.

The silence went on. Oscar looked at Kate.

“Angie, you told me you'd do this,” she said.

The girl scowled harder. “Yeah, well, maybe I changed my mind. I mean, what the hell's in it for me?”

“Keeping safe and taking a killer off the street.”

“No, I mean really,” she said, suddenly all business. “What's in it for me? I hear there's a reward. You never said anything about a reward.”

“I haven't had time to talk to anyone about it.”

“Well, you'd better. 'Cause if I'm gonna do this, then I damn well want something for it. I deserve it.”

“That remains to be seen,” Kate said. “So far you haven't given us squat. I'll check into the reward. In the meantime, you're a witness. You can help us and we can help you. Maybe you don't feel ready for this. Maybe you don't think your memory is strong enough. If that's what's really going on here, then fine. The cops have mug books stacked to the rafters. Maybe you'll run across him in there.”

“And maybe I can just get the fuck out of here.” She shoved herself up out of the chair so hard, the legs scraped back across the floor.

Kate wanted to choke her. This was why she didn't work juvenile: Her tolerance for drama and bullshit was too low.

She studied Angie, trying to formulate a strategy. If the kid really wanted to leave, she would leave. No one was barring the door. What Angie wanted was to make a scene and have everyone fuss over her and beg her to come back. Begging was not an option as far as Kate was concerned. She wouldn't play a game where she didn't have a shot at control.

If she called the kid's bluff and Angie walked, Kate figured she could just as well follow the girl out the door. Sabin would put her career through the shredder if she lost his star and only witness. She was already on her second career. How many more could she have?

She rose slowly and went to lean against the door-jamb with her arms crossed.

“You know, Angie, I gotta think there's a reason you told us you saw this guy in the first place. You didn't have to say it. You didn't know anything about a reward. You could have lied and told us he was gone when you came across the body. How would we know any different? We have to take your word for what you saw or didn't see. So let's cut the crap, huh? I don't appreciate you jerking me around when I'm on your side. I'm the one who's standing between you and the county attorney who wants to toss your ass in jail and call you a suspect.”

Angie set her jaw at a mulish angle. “Don't threaten me.”

“That's not a threat. I'm being straight with you because I think that's what you want. You don't want to be lied to and screwed over any more than I do. I respect that. How about returning the favor?”

The girl gnawed on a ragged thumbnail, her hair swinging down to obscure her face, but Kate could tell she was blinking hard, and felt a swift wave of sympathy. The mood swings this kid inspired were going to drive her to Prozac.

“You must think I'm a real pain in the ass,” Angie said at last, her lush mouth twisting at one corner in what looked almost like chagrin.

“Yeah, but I don't consider that a fatal or irreversible flaw. And I know you've got your reasons. But you've got more to be afraid of if you don't try to ID him,” Kate said. “Now you're the only one who knows what he looks like. Better if a couple hundred cops know too.”

“What happens if I don't do it?”

“No reward. Other than that, I don't know. Right now you're a potential witness. If you decide that's not what you are, then it's out of my hands. The county attorney might play rough or he might just cut you loose. He'll take me out of the picture either way.”

“You'd probably be glad.”

“I didn't take this job because I thought it would be simple and pleasant. I don't want to see you alone in all this, Angie. And I don't think that's what you want either.”

Alone. Goose bumps chased themselves down Angie's arms and legs. The word was a constant hollowness in the core of her. She remembered the feeling of it growing inside her last night, pushing her consciousness into a smaller and smaller corner of her mind. It was the thing she feared most in the world and beyond it. More than physical pain. More than a killer.

“We'll leave you alone. How would you like that, brat? You can be alone forever. You just sit in there and think about it. Maybe we'll never come back.”

She flinched at the remembered sound of the door closing, the absolute darkness of the closet, the sense of aloneness swallowing her up. She felt it rising up inside her now like a black ghost. It closed around her throat like an unseen hand, and she wanted to cry, but she knew she couldn't. Not here. Not now. Her heart began beating harder and faster.

“Come on, kiddo,” Kate said gently, nodding toward Oscar. “Give it a shot. It's not like you've got anything better to do. I'll make a phone call about that reward money.”

The story of my life, Angie thought. Do what I want or I'll leave you. Do what I want or I'll hurt you: Choices that weren't choices.

“All right,” she murmured, and went back to the chair to give instructions on drawing a portrait of evil.