Ashes to Ashes

17

CHAPTER

THE MEETING IS in his honor, in a manner of speaking. He sits in the crowd, watching, listening, fascinated and amused. The people around him—he estimates 150, many of them with the media—have come here because they fear him or are fascinated by him. They have no idea the monster is sitting beside them, behind them, shaking his head as they comment on the frighten-ing state of the world and the vicious mentality of the Cremator.

He believes some of them actually envy the Cremator his boldness, though they will never admit it. None of them have the nerve, the clarity of vision, to act on their fantasies and release the dark power within.

The meeting comes to order, the spokesman of the task force stating the alleged purpose of the meeting, which is a lie. The meeting is not to inform, or even to offer the community a show of action. The purpose of the meeting is Quinn's.

“More important in this ongoing cycle of murders, I told them, was to begin going proactive, using police efforts and the media to try to lure the guy into a trap. For example, I suggested the police might set up a series of community meetings to ‘discuss' the crimes. I was reasonably certain the killer would show up at one or more of these.” —John Douglas, Mindhunter.

The purpose of the meeting is to trap him, and yet he sits here, cool and calm. Just another concerned citizen. Quinn is watching the crowd, looking for him, looking for something most people won't recognize: the face of evil.

“People expect evil to have an ugly face, a set of horns. Evil can be handsome. Evil can be ordinary. The ugliness is internal, a black, cancerous rot that consumes conscience and moral fiber and the controls that define civilized behavior, and leave an animal hiding behind the normal facade.” —John Quinn, in an interview with People magazine, January 1997.

In his sharp tailored gray suit, Quinn is obviously a cut above the local stiffs. He has the bored, superior expression of a GQ model. This stirs anger—that Quinn has finally deigned to acknowledge him in public, and he looks as if he couldn't be less interested.

Because you think you know me, Quinn. You think I'm just another case. Nothing special. But you don't know the Cremator. Evil's Angel. And I know you so well.

He knows Quinn's record, his reputation, his theories, his methods. In the end, he will have Quinn's respect, which will mean more to Quinn than it does to him. His dark, true self is above the need for approval. Seeking approval is weak, reactive, induces vulnerability, invites ridicule and disappointment. Not acceptable. Not allowed on the dark side.

He recites his credo in his mind: Domination. Manipulation. Control.

Lights flash and camera motors whir as Quinn takes the podium. The woman sitting next to him begins to cough. He offers her a Life Saver and thinks about cutting her throat for disrupting his concentration.

He thinks about doing it here, now—grabbing a fistful of blond hair, pulling her head back, and in one quick motion slicing through her larynx and her jugular and her carotid—all the way back to her spine. The blood will flood out of her in a gushing wave, and he will melt back through the hysterical crowd and slip away. He smiles at the thought and thumbs off a piece of candy for himself. Cherry—his favorite.

Quinn assures the people the full services of the Bureau are at the disposal of the task force. He talks about the VICAP computers, NCIC and the NCAVC, ISU and CASKU. Reassurance through confusion. The average person can't decipher the alphabet soup of modern law enforcement agencies and services. Most people don't know the difference between the police department and the sheriff's office. They know only that acronyms sound important and official. The people gathered here listen with rapt attention and sneak glances at the person sitting beside them.

Quinn gives away only the barest details of the profile he's building, experience allowing him to make a little information seem like the mother lode. He speaks of the common killer of prostitutes: an inadequate loser who hates women and chooses what he deems the worst of the lot to exact revenge for the sins of his mother. Quinn speculates this is not an entirely accurate profile of the Cremator, that this killer is special—highly intelligent, highly organized, clever—and it is going to take the diligence of not only the law enforcement community, but of the community itself to catch him.

Quinn is right about one thing—there is nothing common about the Cremator. He is superior rather than inadequate. He cares so little about the woman who spawned him, he could never be inspired to revenge against her memory.

And yet, in the back of his mind he hears her voice berating him, criticizing him, taunting him. And the anger, ever banked, begins to heat. Goddamn Quinn and his Freudian bullshit. He doesn't know anything about the power and euphoria in taking a life. He has never considered the exquisite music of pain and fear, or how that music elevates the musician. The killing has nothing to do with any feelings of inadequacy of his common self, and everything to do with power.

On one far side of the room, the contingent from the Phoenix House take up their chant: “Our lives matter too!”

Toni Urskine introduces herself and starts in. “Lila White and Fawn Pierce were forced by circumstance into prostitution. Are you saying they deserved what happened to them?”

“I would never suggest that,” Quinn says. “It's simply a fact that prostitution is a high-risk profession compared to being an attorney or an elementary-school teacher.”

“And so they're considered expendable? Lila White's murder didn't rate a task force. Lila White had been a resident of the Phoenix House at one time. No one from the Minneapolis Police Department has come to reinvestigate her death. The FBI didn't send anyone to Minneapolis for Fawn Pierce. One of our current residents was a close friend of Ms. Pierce. No one from the Minneapolis Police Department has ever interviewed her. But Peter Bondurant's daughter goes missing and suddenly we have network news coverage and community action meetings.

“Chief Greer, in view of these facts, can you honestly say the city of Minneapolis gives a damn about women in difficult circumstances?”

Greer steps up to the podium, looking stern and strong. “Mrs. Urskine, I assure you every possible measure was taken to solve the murders of the first two victims. We are redoubling our efforts to seek out and find this monster. And we will not rest until the monster is caught!”

“I want to point out that Chief Greer isn't using the term monster literally,” Quinn says. “We're not looking for a raving lunatic, foaming at the mouth. For all appearances, he's an ordinary man. The monster is in his mind.”

Monster. A word ordinary people misapply to creatures they don't understand. The shark is labeled a monster when in fact it is simply efficient and purposeful, pure in its thought and in its power. So, too, the Cremator. He is efficient and purposeful, pure in thought and in power. He doesn't waver in action. He doesn't question the compulsion. He gives himself over wholly to the needs of his Dark Self, and in that complete surrender rises above his common self.

“At this instant, when the victims were dying at their hands, many serial killers report an insight so intense that it is like an emotional quasar, blinding in its revelation of truth.” —Joel Norris, Serial Killers.

SPECIAL AGENT QUINN, what are your theories regarding the burning of the bodies?”

The question came from a reporter. The danger with these open community meetings was having them turn into press conferences, and a press conference was the last thing Quinn wanted. He needed a controlled situation—for the purpose of the case, and for himself. He needed to give out just enough information, not too much. A little speculation, but nothing that could be construed by the killer as arrogance. He needed to condemn the killer, but be certain to weave into that condemnation a certain kind of respect.

A direct challenge could result in more bodies. Play it too soft and Smokey Joe might feel he needed to make a statement. More bodies. A wrong word, a careless inflection—another death. The weight of that responsibility pressed against his chest like a huge stone.

“Agent Quinn?”

The voice hit him like a prod, jarring him back to the moment. “The burning is this killer's signature,” he answered, rubbing a hand against his forehead. He was hot. There wasn't enough air in the room. His head was pounding like a hammer against an anvil. The hole in his stomach lining was burning bigger. “Something he feels compelled to perform to satisfy some inner need. What that need might be, only he knows.”

Pick a face, any face, he thought as he looked out at the crowd. After all the years and all the cases and all the killers, he sometimes thought he should have been able to recognize the compulsion to kill, to see it like an unholy aura, but it didn't work that way. People made much of the eyes of serial killers—the stark, flat emptiness that was like looking down a long, black tunnel where a soul should have been. But a killer like this one was smart and adaptable, and no one except his victims would see that look in his eyes until he stood for his mug shot.

Any face in the crowd could be the mask of a killer. One person in this group might listen to the descriptions of the crimes, smell the fear in this room, and feel elated, aroused. He had actually seen killers get erections as their monstrous exploits were related to a stunned and sickened jury.

The killer would be here with his own agenda. To gauge, to judge, to plan his next move. To enjoy the fuss being made over him. Maybe he would come forward as a concerned citizen. Maybe he would want the thrill of knowing he could stand within their grasp, then walk away. Or maybe he would choose his next victim from the women in this room.

Quinn's gaze went automatically to Kate as she slipped in the door at the back of the room. He scanned her face, careful not to linger, even though he wanted to. He wanted it too much, and she wanted nothing to do with him. He'd taken that hint once. He sure as hell should have been smart enough to take it now. He had a case to focus on.

“What about the religious overtones?”

“There may not be any as far as he's concerned. We can only speculate. He could be saying ‘sinners burn in hell.' Or it could be a cleansing ceremony to save their souls. Or it could be that he deems burning the bodies the ultimate disrespect and degradation.”

“Isn't it your job to narrow down the possibilities?” another reporter called out. Quinn almost looked for Tippen in the crowd.

“The profile isn't complete,” he said. Don't tell me my job. I know my job, asshole.

“Is it true you were pulled off the Bennet child abduction in Virginia to work this case?”

“What about the South Beach gay murders?”

“I have a number of ongoing cases at any given time.”

“But you're here because of Peter Bondurant,” another stated. “Doesn't that reek of elitism?”

“I go where I'm sent,” he said flatly. “My focus is on the case, not where the orders came from or why.”

“Why hasn't Peter Bondurant been formally questioned?”

Chief Greer stepped up to the podium to put the official shut-down on that line of inquiry, to expound on Peter Bondurant's virtues in front of Edwyn Noble and the Paragon PR person who had attended on Bondurant's behalf.

Quinn stepped back beside Kovac and tried to breathe again. Kovac had his cop face on, the eyes hooded and flat, taking in far more than anyone in the audience would have imagined.

“You see Liska's mutt sitting next to her?” he said under his breath. “He came in uniform, for chrissake.”

“That would be handy for getting his victims to go with him,” Quinn said. “He's got a petty record that might be something more.”

“He's connected to Jillian Bondurant,” Kovac said.

“Have Liska ask him in for a sit-down.” Quinn wished for that rush of gut instinct that this might be the guy, but that sense had abandoned him, and he felt nothing. “Let it sound like a consultation. We're asking for his assistance, we want his take on things, his opinion as a trained observer. Like that.”

“Kiss his wanna-be ass. Jeez.” Kovac's mustache twitched with distaste. “You know, he's not far off that piece-of-shit drawing we've got.”

“Neither are you. Get a Polaroid when he comes in. Build a photo array for the witness. Maybe she'll tag him.”

Greer finished his talk with a final dramatic plea for the public's assistance in the case, and pointed out detectives Liska and Yurek as being available to take information tonight. As soon as he declared the meeting over, the reporters started in like a pack of yapping dogs. The crowd instantly became a moving mass of humanity, some drifting toward the door, some moving toward the end of the room, where Toni Urskine from the Phoenix House was trying to rally support for her cause.

Kate wedged her way to the front of the pack, her attention on Kovac. As Kovac stepped toward her, Edwyn Noble moved in on Quinn like the specter of death, his wide mouth set in a hard line. Lucas Brandt stood beside him, hands in the pockets of his camel-hair topcoat.

“Agent Quinn, can we have a word in private?”

“Of course.”

He led them away from the podium, away from the press, into the kitchen of the community center, where industrial-sized coffeepots lined the red Formica countertop, and a hand-lettered sign taped above the sink read PLEASE WASH YOUR CUPS!

“Peter was very upset by your visit this evening,” Noble began.

Quinn raised his brows. “Yes, I know. I was there.” He slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the edge of the counter. Mr. Relaxation. All the time in the world. He gave a thin smile. “The two of you sat through this meeting to tell me that? Here I thought you were just another pair of concerned citizens.”

“I'm here to represent Peter's interests,” Noble said. “I think you should know he's talking about calling Bob Brewster. He's extremely displeased that you seem to be wasting valuable time—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Noble, but I know my job,” Quinn said calmly. “Peter doesn't have to like the way I do it. I don't work for Peter. But if Peter is unhappy, then he can feel free to call the director. It won't change the fact that Jillian made two phone calls after she left his home that night, or that neither Peter nor you, Dr. Brandt, bothered to mention that to the police. Something was going on with Jillian Bondurant that night, and now she may be dead. Certain questions need to be answered one way or another.”

The muscles in Brandt's square jaw flexed. “Jillian had problems. Peter loved his daughter. It would kill him to see her past and the difficulties she'd had splashed across the tabloids and paraded before America on the nightly news.”

Quinn abruptly straightened away from the counter, putting himself into Brandt's space, frowning into his face. “I'm not in the business of selling cases to the media.”

Noble spread his hands. The peacemaker, the diplomat. “Of course not. We're simply trying to be as discreet about this as possible. That's why we're talking to you rather than to the police. Peter and Lucas and I have discussed this, and we feel that you may be able to steer the rudder of the case, so to speak. That if we could satisfy you with regard to the calls Jillian made that night, the matter could be put to rest.”

“What about your ethics?” Quinn asked, still looking at Brandt.

“A small sacrifice to the greater good.”

His own, Quinn suspected.

“I'm listening.”

Brandt took a breath, bracing himself for this breach of his patient's trust. Somehow Quinn didn't think it bothered his conscience nearly as much as defying Peter Bondurant would bother him socially and financially.

“Jillian's stepfather had contacted her several times in the past few weeks, implying he wanted to mend their relationship. Jillian had very complicated, very mixed feelings toward him.”

“Would she have wanted to resume some kind of relationship with him?” Quinn asked. “Her friend implied Jillian had been in love with him, that she wanted him to divorce her mother for her.”

“Jillian was a very unhappy, confused girl when she was involved with Serge. Her mother had always been jealous of her, from Jillie's infancy. She was starving for love. I'm sure you know people will go to terrible lengths to get it—or, rather, to get what will pass for love for them.”

“Yes. I've seen the result in crime scene photographs. Why was the stepfather never prosecuted?”

“No charges were ever brought. LeBlanc had brainwashed her,” Noble said with disgust. “Jillian refused even to talk to the police.”

“Peter had hoped that in moving back to Minnesota and getting therapy, she had put it all behind her,” Brandt said.

“And had she?”

“Therapy is a long, ongoing process.”

“And then LeBlanc started calling her again.”

“Friday night she decided to tell Peter about it. Naturally, he was upset. He was frightened for Jillie. She'd been doing so well.” Another strategically placed sigh. “Peter has difficulty expressing emotion. His concern came out as anger. They ended up arguing. Jillie was upset when she left. She called me from her car.”

“Where was she?”

“In a parking lot somewhere. She didn't really say. I told her to go back to Peter and talk it through, but she was embarrassed and hurt, and in the end she just called him,” Brandt said. “That's the whole story. It's as simple as that.”

Quinn doubted him on both counts. What Lucas Brandt had just told him was by no means the whole story, and nothing about Jillian Bondurant's life or death would prove to be simple.

“And Peter couldn't have just told this story to Sergeant Kovac and me four hours ago when we were standing in his foyer.”

Noble cast a nervous glance over his shoulder at the closed door on the other side of the room, as if he were waiting for the reporters to ram it down and storm in, microphones thrust before them like bayonets.

“It isn't easy for Peter to talk about these things, Agent Quinn. He's an intensely private man.”

“I realize that, Mr. Noble,” Quinn said, casually fishing a peppermint out of his pocket. He spoke as he unwrapped it. “The trouble with that is that this is a murder investigation. And in a murder investigation, there's no such thing as privacy.” He set the wrapper on the counter and popped the candy in his mouth. “Not even if your name is Peter Bondurant and you have the ear of the director of the FBI—not as long as it's my case.”

“Well,” Edwyn Noble said, stepping back, his long face as cold and hard as marble. “It may not be your case much longer.”

They left looking like spoiled children who would immediately run home and tell on him. They would tell Bondurant. Bondurant would call Brewster. Brewster might call and reprimand him, Quinn supposed. Or he might simply have the ASAC pull him off the case and send him on to another stack of bodies somewhere else. There was always another case. And another . . . and another . . . And what the hell else did he have to do with his life?

He watched as Noble and Brandt worked their way toward the exit, reporters dogging their heels.

“What was that about?” Kovac asked.

“Heading us off at the pass, I think.”

“Kate says our wit came clean with her. Little Mary Sunshine says she was in the park that night earning a Jackson doing the hokey-pokey with some loser.”

“This loser have a name?”

Kovac snorted. “Hubert Humphrey, he tells her. BOLO: republican asshole with a bad sense of humor.”

“That narrows it down,” Quinn said dryly.

The television crews were packing up lights and cameras. The last of the crowd was drifting out. The party was over, and with it went the adrenaline that had elevated his heart rate and tightened his nerves. He actually preferred the tension because it fended off the depression and the sense of being overwhelmed and exhausted and confused. He preferred action, because the alternative was to be alone in his hotel room with nothing but the fear to keep him company. The fear that he wasn't doing enough, that he was missing something; that despite the accumulated knowledge from a thousand or more cases, he had lost his feel for the job and was just stumbling around like a newly blinded man.

“Of course, she didn't get a license number,” Kovac went on. “No address. No credit card receipt.”

“Can she describe him?”

“Sure. He was about four inches long and made a sound like a meat grinder when he came.”

“That'll be an interesting lineup.”

“Yeah. Just another pathetic yuppie with an SUV and a wife who won't give him a blow job.” Quinn looked at him sharply. “A what?”

“A wife who—”

“The other part. He was driving what?”

“A sport utility vehi—” Kovac's eyes rounded and he threw down the cigarette he had been about to light. “Oh, Jesus.”

HE MOVES WITH the last of the crowd out of the doors of the community center, picking up bits and pieces of conversation about himself.

“I wish they would have talked more about the burning.”

“I mean, the FBI guy says this killer looks and acts like anyone else, but how can that be? Setting bodies on fire? That's nuts. He's gotta be nuts.”

“Or just smart. The fire destroys evidence.”

“Yeah, but cutting someone's head off is nuts.”

“Don't you think the fire is symbolic?” he asks. “I think maybe the guy has some kind of religious mania. You know: ashes to ashes and all that.”

“Maybe.”

“I'll bet when they catch him, the cops find out he had some kind of religious fanatic stepfather or something. A mortician, maybe,” he says, thinking of the man who had been involved with his mother during much of his youth. The man who had believed he had been charged by God to redeem her through sexual subjugation and beatings.

“Sick bastard. Going around torturing and killing women because of his own inadequacies. Should have been drowned in a sack at birth.”

“And these creeps always put everything off on their mothers. Like they have no minds of their own.”

He wants to grab the two women saying these things. Grab them by their throats, scream his name in their purpling faces, and crush their windpipes with his bare hands. The anger is now a living flame, blue-centered and hot.

“I've read about that Quinn. He's brilliant. He caught that child-killer out in Colorado.”

“He can interrogate me anytime he wants,” the other woman says. “George Clooney's got nothing on him.”

They laugh, and he wants to pull a claw hammer out of the air and smash their skulls in with it. He feels the heat of the fire in his chest. His head is throbbing. The need is a fever just beneath the surface of his skin.

Outside the community center, the parking lot is in a state of gridlock. He goes to the car and leans back against it, crossing his arms.

“No point trying!” he calls to one of the uniformed cops directing traffic.

“Might as well wait it out.”

The idiot. Who in this picture is inadequate? Not the Cremator, but those who look for him and look at him and see a common man.

He watches others exit the building and come out onto the sidewalk. The yellow-white floodlight washes over them. Some are citizens. Some are cops assigned to the task force. Some he recognizes.

Quinn emerges from a side door toward the back of the building—a spot the media had chosen to ignore. He rushes out with no overcoat and stands just out of cover of the shadows in the doorwell, hands on hips, shoulders square, his breath clouding the air as he looks around.

Looking for me, Agent Quinn? The inadequate loser with the mother complex? The mental monster. You're about to find out what a monster really is.

The Cremator has a plan. The Cremator will be a legend. The killer who broke John Quinn. The ultimate triumph for the ultimate killer over the ultimate hunter of his kind.

He slides behind the wheel of the car he had driven here, starts the motor, adjusts the heater, and curses the cold. He needs a warmer hunting ground. He backs the car out of the slot and follows a silver Toyota 4Runner out of the parking lot and into the street.