Ashes to Ashes

12

CHAPTER

THE TRAFFIC ANNOYS him. He takes 35W south out of downtown to avoid traffic lights and the tedious twists and turns of the alternate route. Stop-and-go traffic until he wants to abandon the car and walk down the shoulder, randomly pulling people out of their vehicles and beating their heads in with a tire iron. It amuses him that other motorists are likely entertaining the same fantasy. They have no idea that the man sitting in the dark sedan behind them, beside them, in front of them, could act on that fantasy without turning a hair.

He looks at the woman in the red Saturn beside him. She is pretty, with Nordic features and white-blond hair done in a voluminous, airy, tousled style that has been sprayed into place. She catches him looking, and he smiles and waves. She smiles back, then makes a gesture and a funny face at the traffic snarled ahead of them. He shrugs and grins, mouths “What can you do?”

He imagines that face drawn tight and pale with terror as he leans down over her with a knife. He can see her bare chest rise and fall in time with her shallow breathing. He can hear the tremor in her voice as she begs him for her life. He can hear her screams as he cuts her breasts.

Desire stirs deep in his groin.

“Probably the most crucial factor in the development of a serial rapist or killer is the role of fantasy.”—John Douglas, Mindhunter.

His fantasies have never shocked him. Not in childhood, when he would think of what it might be like to watch a living thing die, what it would be like to close his hands around the throat of a cat or the kid down the block and hold the power of life and death literally within his grasp. Not in adolescence, when he would think of cutting the nipples from his mother's breasts, or cutting out her larynx and smashing it with a hammer, or cutting out her uterus and throwing it into the furnace.

He knows that for killers such as himself, these thoughts are a sustained part of the internal processing and cognitive operations. They are, in effect, natural for him. Natural, and, therefore, not deviant.

He exits on 36th and drives west on tree-lined side streets toward Lake Calhoun. The blonde is gone and the fantasy with her. He thinks again of the afternoon press briefing, both amused and frustrated. The police had a sketch—this amused him. He stood there in the crowd as Chief Greer held up the drawing that was supposed to be a rendition of him so accurate that people would recognize him at a glance on the street. And when the briefing had ended, all those reporters had walked right past him.

The frustration has its source in John Quinn. Quinn made no appearance at the briefing, and has made no official statement, which seems a deliberate slight. Quinn is too wrapped up in his deduction and speculation. He is probably focusing all his attention on the victims. Who they were and what they were, wondering why they were chosen.

“In a sense the victim shapes and molds the criminal . . . To know one we must be acquainted with the complementary partner.”—Hans von Hentig.

Quinn believes this too. Quinn's textbook on sexual homicide is among many on his shelf. Seductions of Crime by Katz, Inside the Criminal Mind by Samenow, Without Conscience by Hare, Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives by Ressler, Burgess, and Douglas. He has studied all of them and more. A voyage of self-exploration.

He turns onto his block. Because of the way the lakes lie in this part of town, the streets immediately around them are often irregular. This one has a bend in it that gives the houses larger lots than usual. More privacy. He parks the car on the concrete apron outside the garage and gets out.

Night has inked out what meager daylight there had been earlier. The wind is blowing out of the west and bringing with it the scent of fresh dog shit. The smell hits his nostrils a split second before the sound of rapid-fire toy-dog barking.

Out of the darkness of the neighbor's yard darts Mrs. Vetter's bichon frise, a creature that looks like a collection of white pompoms sewn loosely together. The dog runs to within five feet of him, then stops and stands its ground, barking, snarling like a rabid squirrel.

The noise instantly sets off his temper. He hates the dog. He especially hates the dog now because it has triggered the return of his foul mood from the traffic jam. He wants to kick the dog as hard as he can. He can imagine the high-pitched yip, the animal's limp body as he picks it up by the throat and crushes its windpipe.

“Bitsy!” Mrs. Vetter shrieks from her front step. “Bitsy, come here!”

Yvonne Vetter is in her sixties, a widow, an unpleasant woman with a round, sour face and a shrill voice. He hates her in a deeply visceral way, and thinks of killing her every time he sees her, but something equally deep and fundamental holds him back. He refuses to examine what that feeling is, and becomes angrier imagining what John Quinn would make of it.

“Bitsy! Come here!”

The dog snarls at him, then turns and runs up and down the length of the garage, stopping to pee on the corners of the building.

“Bit-sy!!”

A pulse begins to throb in his head and warmth floods his brain and washes down through his body. If Yvonne Vetter were to cross the lawn now, he will kill her. He will grab her and smother her screams with the newspapers he holds. He will quickly pull her into the garage, smash her head against the wall to knock her out, then kill the dog first to stop its infernal barking. Then he will let loose his temper and kill Yvonne Vetter in a way that will satiate a vicious hunger buried deep within him.

She begins to descend the front steps of her house.

The muscles across his back and shoulders tighten. His pulse quickens.

“Bit-sy!! Come now!!”

His lungs fill. His fingers flex on the edge of the newspapers.

The dog barks at him one last time, then darts back to its mistress. Fifteen feet away, Vetter bends down and scoops the dog into her arms as if he were a child.

Opportunity dies like an unsung song.

“He's excited tonight,” he says, smiling.

“He gets that way when he's inside too much. He doesn't like you either,” Mrs. Vetter says defensively, and takes the dog back to her house.

“Fucking bitch,” he whispers. The anger will vibrate within him for a long while, like a tuning fork still trembling long after it's been struck. He will play through the fantasy of killing Yvonne Vetter again and again and again.

He goes into the garage, where the Blazer and a red Saab sit, and enters the house through a side door, eager to read about the Cremator in the two newspapers. He will cut out all stories pertaining to the investigation and make photocopies of them, because newsprint is cheap and doesn't hold up over time. He has taped both the network evening news and the local evening news, and will watch for any mention of the Cremator.

The Cremator. The name amuses him. It sounds like something from a comic book. It conjures images of Nazi war criminals or B-movie monsters. The stuff of nightmares.

He is the stuff of nightmares.

And like the creatures of childhood nightmares, he goes to the basement. The basement is his personal space, his ideal sanctuary. The main room is outfitted with an amateur sound studio. Walls and ceiling of sound-absorbing acoustic tile. Flat carpet the color of slate. He likes the low ceiling, the lack of natural light, the sensation of being in the earth with thick concrete walls around him. His own safe world. Just like when he was a boy.

He goes down the hall and into the game room, holding the newspapers out in front of him to admire the headlines.

“Yes, I am famous,” he says, smiling. “But don't feel bad. You'll be famous soon too. There's nothing quite like it.”

He turns toward the pool table, holding the newspapers at an angle so that the naked woman bound spread-eagle on it can glance at the headlines if she wants to. She stares, instead, at him, her eyes glassy with terror and tears. The sounds she makes are not words, but the most basic vocalizations of that most basic emotion—fear.

The sounds touch him like electrical currents, energizing him. Her fear gives him control of her. Control is power. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

“Soon you'll be a part of this headline,” he says, running a finger beneath the bold black print on page one of the Star Tribune. “Ashes to Ashes.”

DAY SLIPPED INTO evening, into night. Quinn's only indicator was his watch, which he seldom checked. There were no windows in the office he'd been given, only walls, which he'd spent the day papering with notes, often with the telephone receiver sandwiched between ear and shoulder, consulting on the Blacksburg case, where the suspect seemed on the brink of confession. He should have been there. His need for control fostered the conceit that he could prevent all mistakes, even though he knew that wasn't true.

Kovac had offered him space at what the task force had unofficially dubbed the Loving Touch of Death offices. He had declined. He needed separation, isolation. He couldn't be there when a dozen cops were tossing theories and suspect names like a chopped salad. He already felt tainted as it was.

Now word was out that John Quinn had been brought on board the Cremator case. Kovac had called with the bad news after the press briefing. It was only a matter of hours before he would have to deal with the media himself.

Damn, he'd wanted more time. He had these next few hours. He should have settled in and lost himself, but he couldn't seem to. Exhaustion pulled at him. His ulcer was burning. He was hungry and knew he needed fuel to keep his brain running, but he didn't want to waste the time going out. There was too much information and the buzz of too much caffeine swarming in his head. And there was a familiar sense of restlessness vibrating deep within—the urgency that came with every on-site case, compounded this time by extenuating circumstances and intrusive, fragmented memories from the past. Compounded again by a feeling that had been creeping up on him more and more and more lately—fear. The fear that he wouldn't make a difference in the case fast enough. The fear that he would screw up. The fear that the fatigue pressing down on him would suddenly be too much. The fear that what he really wanted was to just walk away from it all.

Needing to move to escape the emotions, he began to pace back and forth in front of the wall of notes, taking in snatches of them at a glance. The faces of Bondurant and Brandt blew around inside his head like leaves.

Peter Bondurant was holding back more than he was giving them.

Lucas Brandt had a license to keep secrets.

Quinn wished he'd never met either of them. He should have argued harder against coming here so early in the investigation, he thought, rubbing at a knot in his right shoulder. The issue was control. If he walked onstage with his strategy mapped out, he had the upper hand.

That methodology applied to more than just this case. It was how he ran his whole life—from dealing with the bureaucracy on the job, to dealing with the Chinese people who ran the mailbox place where he kept a box, to buying his groceries. In any and all situations and relationships, control was key.

Kate slipped into the back of his mind, as if to taunt him. How many times over the years had he replayed what had happened between them, adjusting his own actions and reactions to get a different outcome? More times than he would admit. Control and strategy were his watchwords. He'd had neither where Kate was concerned. One minute they'd been acquaintances, then friends, then in over their heads. No time to think, too tangled up in the moment to have any perspective, drawn together by a need and a passion that was stronger than either of them. And then it was over, and she was gone, and . . . nothing. Nothing but regrets that he had let lie, sure that they both would eventually see it was for the best.

It was for the best. For Kate anyway. She had a life here. She had a new career, friends, a home. He should have had sense enough to back away from all that, leave well enough alone, but the temptation of opportunity lured him like a crooked finger and a seductive smile. And the force of all those regrets pushed him from behind.

He supposed five years was a long time to carry regrets, but he'd carried others longer. Cases not solved, trials lost, a child-killer who had slipped away. His marriage, his mother's death, his father's alcoholism. Maybe he never let anything go. Maybe that was why he felt so hollow inside: There was no room left for anything but the dried detritus of his past.

He swore under his breath, disgusted with himself. He was supposed to be delving into the mind of a criminal, not his own.

He didn't remember sitting back against the desk, had no idea how many minutes he'd lost. He rubbed his big hands over his face, licked his lips, and caught the phantom taste of scotch. An odd psychological quirk, and a need that would go unfulfilled. He didn't allow himself to drink. He didn't allow himself to smoke. He didn't allow himself much. If he added regret to that list, what would he have left?

He walked to the section of wall where he had taped up brief notes on the Cremator's victims, scrawled in his own hand in colored markers. All caps. Tight, with a hard right-hand slant. The kind of handwriting that made graphologists raise their brows and give him a wide berth.

Photographs of all three women were taped above his notes. A three-ring binder lay open on the desk, filled with page after page of neatly typed reports, maps, scale drawings of the crime scenes, crime scene photographs, autopsy protocols—his portable bible of the case. But he found it helpful to lay out some of the basic information in a more linear way, and thus the notes on the wall and the photographs of three smiling women—gone now from this world, their lives snuffed out like candles, their dignity torn violently from them.

Three white women. All between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-three. Height varied from five five to five nine. Body types ranged from large-boned Lila White to petite Fawn Pierce to average Jane Doe/Jillian Bondurant.

Two prostitutes and a college student. They had lived in different parts of town. The hookers worked two different neighborhoods as a rule, neither of which was frequented by Jillian Bondurant. Lila and Fawn may have crossed paths occasionally, but it was highly unlikely Jillian would have frequented any of the same bars or restaurants or stores.

He had considered the drug connection, but they had nothing to support it so far. Lila White had gotten straight after entering a county program more than a year ago. Fawn Pierce had never been known to use, although she'd had a reputation for the occasional days-long bender on cheap vodka. And Jillian? No drugs had been found in her home, none in her system. She had no criminal record relating to drug use. As yet, no anecdotal stories of drug use.

“You think they'd like people to know why their daughters became whores and drug addicts?”

He could still hear the bitterness in Peter Bondurant's voice. Where had it come from?

Jillian was the piece that didn't fit in the puzzle of these crimes. She was the one that skewed the profile. There was a common type of killer who preyed on prostitutes. Prostitutes were high-risk victims, easy pickings. Their killers tended to be socially inadequate, underemployed white males who had a history of humiliating experiences with women and sought to get back at the gender by punishing what they considered to be the worst of the lot.

Unless Jillian had led a secret life as a hooker . . . Not beyond the realm, he supposed, but so far there were no indications Jillian had had a single boyfriend, let alone a list of johns.

“Boys didn't interest her. She didn't want temporary relationships. She'd been through so much. . . .”

What had she been through? Her parents' divorce. Her mother's illness. A stepfather in a new country. What else? Something deeper? Darker? Something that pushed her into therapy with Lucas Brandt.

“. . . You should consider that the problems Jillian brought to me may have had nothing whatsoever to do with her death. Her killer may not have known anything at all about her.”

“But I'll bet you a dollar he did, Dr. Brandt,” he said softly, staring at the snapshot of the girl. He could feel it in his gut. Jillian was the key. Something in her life had put her in the crosshairs of this killer. And if they could find out what that something was, then they might have a hope in hell of catching the son of a bitch.

He went back to the desk and flipped through the binder pages to the section of photographs: eight-by-ten color prints, neatly labeled as to subject matter. The crime scenes: general shots, lay-of-the-land shots, body position from various angles, close-ups of the burned, defiled women. And from the ME's office: general and close-up shots of the victims before and after clean-up at the morgue, autopsy photographs, close-up shots of wounds. Wounds inflicted before death—indicative of a sexual sadist. Wounds inflicted after death—which were more fetishistic than sadistic, intrinsic to the killer's fantasies.

Sophisticated fantasies. Fantasies he'd been developing for a long, long time.

He paged slowly through the close-ups of the wounds, examining every mark the killer had left, lingering on the stab wounds to the victims' chests. Eight stab wounds clustered in a group, longer wounds alternating with shorter in a specific pattern.

Of all the gruesome aspects of the murders, this bothered him most. More than the burning. The burning seemed more for show, making a public statement. Ashes to ashes. A symbolic funeral, the end of his connection to the victim. These stab wounds meant something more personal, intimate. What?

A cacophony of voices filled Quinn's head: Bondurant's, Brandt's, the medical examiner's, Kovac's; cops and coroners and experts and agents from hundreds of past cases. All of them with an opinion or a question or an ax to grind. All of them so loud he couldn't hear himself think anymore. And the fatigue only seemed to magnify the noise until he wanted to beg someone to turn it off.

The Mighty Quinn. That was what they called him back in Quantico. If they could see him now . . . Feeling as if he might choke on the fear of missing something or turning the investigation in the wrong way.

The system was on overload, and he was the one at the switch—and there was the most frightening thought: that only he could make things change, and he wouldn't make things change because as awful as this was, the alternative scared him even more. Without the job, there was no John Quinn.

A fine trembling started deep within him and subtly worked its way out into his arms. He fought against it, hating it, tightening his biceps and triceps, trying to force the weakness back down inside him. Eyes squeezed shut, he dropped to the floor and began push-ups. Ten, twenty, thirty, more, until his arms felt as if the skin would burst open, unable to contain the straining muscle mass, until the pain burned the noise out of his mind and all he could hear was the pounding of his own pulse. And then he forced himself to his feet, breathing hard, warm and damp with sweat.

He focused on the photograph before him, seeing not the torn flesh or the blood or the corpse; seeing only the pattern of the wound. X over X.

“Cross my heart,” he murmured, tracing a fingertip over the lines. “Hope to die.”

“A SERIAL KILLER stalks the streets of Minneapolis. Today, Minneapolis police released a composite sketch of the man who may have brutally slain three women, and that is our top story tonight . . .”

The women of the Phoenix House sat in, on, and around the mismatched assortment of chairs and couches in the living room, their attention on the broad-shouldered, square-jawed anchor of the Channel Eleven news. The camera cut to film footage of the afternoon press briefing, the chief of police holding up the sketch of the Cremator, then the screen was filled with the sketch itself.

Angie watched from the doorway, her attention on the women. A couple of them weren't much older than she was. Four were in their twenties. One was older, fat, and ugly. The fat one wore a sleeveless top because the furnace had gone haywire and the house was as hot and dry as a desert. Her upper arms were flabby and fish-belly white. Her stomach rested on her thighs when she sat down.

Angie knew the woman had been a hooker, but she couldn't imagine a man ever being hard up enough to pay to have sex with her. Men liked pretty girls, young girls. Didn't matter how old or ugly the man was, they all wanted pretty girls. That was Angie's experience. Maybe that was why Fat Arlene was there. Maybe she couldn't get a man to pay her, and the Phoenix was her retirement home.

A redhead who had the thin, pale, bruised look of an addict started to cry when photographs of the three murder victims came onscreen. The other women pretended not to notice. Toni Urskine, who ran the Phoenix, perched on the arm of the redhead's chair, leaned down, and touched her shoulder.

“It's okay,” she said softly. “It's okay to cry. Fawn was your friend, Rita.”

The redhead pulled her bony bare feet up onto the seat of her chair and buried her head against her knees, sobbing. “Why'd he have to kill her that way? She didn't hurt nobody!”

“There's no making sense of it,” another one said. “It could have been any of us.”

A fact that was clear to all of them, even the ones who tried to deny it.

Fat Arlene said, “You gotta be smart about who you go with. You gotta have a sense about it.”

A black woman with ratty dreadlocks shot her a mean glare. “Like you got to pick and choose. Who wanna tie your fat ass down? See all that fat jiggling like Jell-O while he cut you up.”

Arlene's face went red and squeezed tight, eyes disappearing in the round mounds of cheeks and puffy brows. She looked like a chow chow Angie had seen once. “You can just shut your hole, you bony bitch!”

Looking angry, Toni Urskine left the crying redhead and moved toward the middle of the room, holding her hands up like a referee. “Hey! None of that! We've got to learn to respect and care for one another. Remember: group esteem, gender esteem, self-esteem.”

Easy for her to say, Angie thought, slipping back from the door. Toni Urskine had never had to go down on some old pervert to get enough money for a meal. She was little miss do-gooder, in her casual-chic outfits from Dayton's and a hundred-dollar hairdo by Horst. She drove up to this crappy house in her Ford Explorer from some beautiful home out in Edina or Minnetonka. She didn't know what it did to a person inside to find out she was worth only twenty-five bucks.

“We all care about these murder victims,” Urskine said passionately, dark eyes shining, her sharp-featured face aglow. “We all are angry that the police have done virtually nothing until now. It's an outrage. It's a slap in the face. It's the city of Minneapolis telling us the lives of women in desperate circumstances mean nothing. We need to be angry about that, not angry with each other.”

The women listened, some intent, some halfheartedly, some pretending not to.

“I think what we need here is involvement. We need to be proactive,” Urskine said. “We'll go down to city hall tomorrow. The press can hear our side of it. We'll get copies of the composite sketch and canvass . . .”

Angie backed away from the door and moved silently down the hall. She didn't like it when people started talking about the Cremator cases. The Phoenix women weren't supposed to know who she was or that she was involved in the case, but Angie always got the tense feeling that the other women would look at her and somehow figure out she was the mystery witness. She didn't want anyone to know.

She didn't want it to be true.

Sudden tears filled her eyes and she rubbed her hands against them. No show of emotion. If she showed what she felt, then someone would see a weakness in her, or a need, or the madness that sucked her into the Zone and made her cut herself. No one would understand that the blade severed the connection to insanity.

“Is everything all right?”

Startled, Angie jerked around and stared at the man standing in the open doorway to the basement. Late thirties, good-looking, dressed in tan chinos and a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt to work on the furnace: He had to be some relation to Toni Urskine. Sweat and dirt streaked his face. He worked a gray rag between hands dark with grime and something the color of blood.

He glanced down as Angie did and looked back up with a crooked smile. “The old furnace in this place,” he said by way of explanation. “I keep it running with willpower and rubber bands.

“Greggory Urskine,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“You cut yourself,” Angie said, not accepting the gesture, her gaze still on the smear of blood that crossed his palm.

Urskine looked at it and rubbed the rag over it, chuckling in that nervous way people sometimes have when they are trying to make a good impression. Angie just stared at him. He looked a little like Kurt Russell, she thought: a wide jaw and small nose, tousled sandy hair. He wore glasses with silver wire rims. He had cut himself that morning shaving his upper lip.

“Aren't you hot in that jacket?” he asked.

Angie said nothing. She was sweating like a horse, but the sleeves of her sweater were too short and didn't cover all the scars on her arms. The jacket was a necessity. If she got any money out of Kate, she was going to buy herself some clothes. Maybe something brand new and not from the Goodwill or a thrift shop.

“I'm Toni's husband—and handyman,” Urskine said. He narrowed his eyes. “I'm guessing you're Angie.”

Angie just stared at him.

“I won't tell anyone,” Urskine said in a confidential tone. “Your secret's safe with me.”

It seemed like he was making fun of her somehow. Angie decided she didn't like him, handsome or not. There was something about the eyes behind the expensive designer glasses that bothered her. Like he was looking down at her, like she was a bug or something. She wondered idly if he had ever paid a woman for sex. His wife seemed like the kind of woman who thought sex was dirty. Saving women from having to do it was Toni Urskine's mission in life.

“We're all very concerned about this case,” he went on, looking serious. “The first victim—Lila White—was a resident here for a while. Toni took it hard. She loves this place. Loves the women. Works like a trooper for the cause.”

Angie crossed her arms. “And what do you do?”

Again with the flashing smile, the nervous chuckle. “I'm an engineer at Honeywell. Currently on leave so I can help fix this place up before winter—and finally finish my master's thesis.”

He laughed like that was some kind of big joke. He didn't ask Angie what she did, even though not all of the women in this place were hookers. He was looking at her stomach, at the navel ring and tattoos revealed as her too-small sweater crept up. She cocked a hip, flashing a little more skin, and wondered if he was thinking he might want her.

He glanced back up at her. “So, they've got a good chance of catching this guy, thanks to you,” he said as a half-statement, half-question. “You actually saw him.”

“No one's supposed to know that,” Angie said bluntly. “I'm not supposed to talk about it.”

End of conversation. She ignored the closing niceties, backed away from him, then headed up the stairs. She felt Greggory Urskine's eyes on her as she went.

“Uh, good night, then,” he called as she disappeared into the darkness of the second story.

She went to the room she shared with a woman whose ex-boyfriend had held her down and cut all her hair off with a hunting knife because she refused to give him her AFDC check so he could buy crack. The woman's kids were in foster care now. The boyfriend had skipped to Wisconsin. The woman had been through drug rehab and come out of it with a need to confess. Therapy did that to some people. Angie had been too smart to let it happen to her.

Don't tell your secrets, Angel. They're all that make you special.

Special. She wanted to be special. She wanted not to be alone. It didn't matter that there were other people in this house. None of them were here with her. She didn't belong. She'd been dropped here like an unwanted puppy. Fucking cops. They wanted things from her, but they didn't want to give her anything back. They didn't give a shit about her. They didn't care about what she might want from them.

At least Kate was halfway honest, Angie thought as she paced the room. But she couldn't forget that Kate was still one of them. It was Kate Conlan's job to try to wedge open her defenses so the cops and the county attorney could get what they wanted. And that would be the end of it. She wasn't really a friend. Angie could count the only friends she'd ever had on one hand and have fingers left over.

She wanted one tonight. She wanted not to be stuck in this house. She wanted to belong somewhere.

She thought of the woman burning in the park, thought of where that woman had belonged, and wondered fancifully what would happen if she just took that woman's place. She would be a rich man's daughter. She would have a father and a home and money.

She'd had a father once: She had the scars to prove it. She'd had a home: She could still smell the sour grease in the kitchen, could still remember the big, dark closets with the doors that locked from the outside. She'd never had money.

She went to bed with her clothes on and waited until the house was quiet and her roommate was snoring. Then she slipped out from under the covers and out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house through the back door.

The night was windy. Clouds rolled across the sky so fast, it looked almost like time-lapse photography. The streets were empty except for the occasional car rolling down one of the big cross streets going north and south. Angie headed west, jittery, skittish. The feeling that she was being watched constantly scratched at the back of her neck, but when she looked over her shoulder, there was no one.

The Zone was chasing her like a shadow. If she kept walking, if she had a purpose, focused on a goal, maybe it wouldn't catch her.

The houses along the way were dark. Tree limbs rattled in the wind. When she came to the lake, it was as black and shiny as an oil slick. She stuck to the dark side of the street and walked north. People in this neighborhood would call the cops if they saw someone out walking this late at night.

She recognized the house from the news reports—like something from England with a big iron fence around it. She turned and climbed the hill to the back side of the property, the big trees giving her cover. Hedges blocked the view of the house three seasons of the year, but their leaves were gone now, and she could look through the tangle of fine branches.

A light was on inside the house, in a room with fancy glass-paned doors that let out onto a patio. Angie stood at the fence, careful not to touch it, and gazed into Peter Bondurant's backyard. She looked past the swimming pool and the stone benches and the wrought iron tables and chairs that hadn't yet been taken into storage for the winter. She looked at the amber glow in the window and the figure of a man sitting at a desk, and wondered if he felt as alone as she did. She wondered if his money gave him comfort now.

PETER ROSE FROM the desk and moved around his office, restless, tense. He couldn't sleep, refused to take the pills his doctor had prescribed and had delivered to the house. The nightmare was alive in his mind: the orange brilliance of the flames, the smell. When he closed his eyes he could see it, feel the heat of it. He could see Jillian's face: the shock, the shame, the heartbreak. He could see her face floating free, the base of her throat ragged and bloody. If his mind was filled with images like these when he was awake, what would he see if he went to sleep?

Going to the French doors, he stared out at the night, black and cold, and imagined he felt eyes staring back. Jillian. He thought he could feel her presence. The weight of it pressed against his chest as if she had wrapped her arms around him. Even after death she wanted to touch him, cling to him; desperate for love, the meaning of it for her skewed and warped.

A strange, dark arousal flickered deep inside him, followed by disgust and shame and guilt. He turned away from the window with an animal roar and flung himself at his desk, sweeping everything from the tidy surface. Pens, Rolodex, paperweights, files, appointment book. The telephone jingled a protest. The lamp hit the floor, the bulb bursting with an explosive pop!, casting the room into darkness.

The final bright flash of light remained in Peter's eyes, twin flares of orange that moved as he moved. Flames he couldn't escape. Emotion was a rock in his throat, lodged there, hard and jagged. He felt a pressure within his eyeballs, as if they might burst, and he wondered wildly if he might not still see the flames anyway.

A harsh, dry choking sound rasped from him as he stumbled in the dark to a floor lamp, tripping over the things he'd knocked from the desk. Calmer in the light, he began to pick up the mess. He put the things back one at a time, aligning them precisely. This was what he had to do: Put his life back together with seamless precision, smooth the tears in the surface and go on, just as he had when Sophie had taken Jillian and left him all those years ago.

He picked up the appointment book last and found it opened to Friday. Jillian: dinner, written in his own precise hand. It sounded so innocent, so simple. But nothing was ever simple or innocent with Jillie. No matter how hard she tried.

The phone rang, startling him from the dark memories.

“Peter Bondurant,” he said as if this were normal business hours. In the back of his mind he was trying to remember if he'd been expecting a call from overseas.

“Daddy dearest,” the voice sang softly, seductively. “I know all your secrets.”