Ashes to Ashes

32

CHAPTER

KATE SAT ON the old leather couch in her study, curled into one corner, warding off the old house's morning chill with black leggings, thick wool socks, and a baggy old sweatshirt she hadn't worn in years. Quinn had given it to her back when. The name of the gym he frequented was stitched across the front. That she'd kept it all this time should have told her something, but then, she'd always been selectively deaf.

She had pulled it out of her closet after Quinn had gone to meet with the task force, freshening it in the clothes drier for a few minutes, and putting it on while it was still warm, pretending it was his warmth. A poor substitute for the feel of his arms around her. Still, it made her feel closer to him somehow. And after a night in his arms, the need for that was strong.

God, what an inconvenient time to rediscover love. But given their professions and their lives, what choice did they have? They were both too aware that life held no guarantees. Too aware that they had already given up too much time they could never get back because of fear and pride and pain.

Kate imagined she could look down from the height of another dimension and see the two of them as that time had passed. Her time spent focusing myopically on the minutiae of building a “normal” life for herself with a job and hobbies and people she saw socially at the requisite functions and holidays. Nothing deeper. Going through the motions, pretending not to mind the numbness in her soul. Figuring it was preferable to the alternative. Quinn's time poured into the job, the job, the job. Taking on more responsibility to fill the void, until the weight of it threatened to crush him. Crowding his brain with cases and facts until he couldn't keep them straight. Giving away pieces of himself and masking others until he couldn't remember what was genuine. Exhausting the well of strength that had once seemed almost bottomless. Wearing his confidence in his abilities and his judgment as threadbare as the lining of his stomach.

Both of them denying themselves the one thing they had needed most to heal after all that had happened: each other.

Sad, what people could do to themselves, and to each other, Kate thought, her gaze skimming across the pages of the victimologies she had spread out on the coffee table. Four more lives fucked up and ruined before they had ever met the Cremator. Five with Angie. Ruined because they needed love and couldn't find anything but a twisted, cheap replica. Because they wanted things out of their reach. Because it seemed easier to settle for less than work for more. Because they believed they didn't deserve anything better. Because the people around them who should have, didn't believe they deserved better either. Because they were women, and women are automatic targets in American society.

All of those reasons made a victim.

Everyone was a victim of something. The difference in people was what they did about it—succumb or rise above and move beyond. The women whose pictures lay before her would not be given that choice again.

Kate leaned over the coffee table, skimming her gaze across the reports. She had called the office to say she was taking some personal time. She'd been told Rob was out as well, and that office speculation was that they had beaten each other up and didn't want anyone to see the bruises. Kate said it was more likely Rob was still working on his written complaint to put in her personnel file.

At least she was free of him for the day. Which would have been a sweet deal if not for the photographs she had to look at of burned and mutilated women, and if not for all the emotions and depressing realities that those photographs evoked.

Everyone was a victim of something.

This group presented a depressing laundry list. Prostitution, drugs, alcohol, assault, rape, incest—if what Kovac had been told about Jillian Bondurant was true. Victims of crime, victims of their upbringing.

From a distance, Jillian Bondurant would have seemed to have been the anomaly because she wasn't a prostitute or in any sex-associated profession, but from the standpoint of her psychological profile, she wasn't all that far removed from Lila White or Fawn Pierce. Confused and conflicted feelings about sex and about men. Low self-esteem. Emotionally needy. Outwardly, she would seem not to have had as hard a life as a streetwalking prostitute because she wasn't as vulnerable to the same kind of crime and open violence. But there was nothing easy about suffering in silence, covering up pain and damage to save face for the family.

Quinn said there was considerable doubt that Jillian was dead at all, but that didn't mean she wasn't a victim. If she was Smokey Joe's accomplice, she was just a victim of another sort. The Cremator himself had been a victim once. Victimization as a child was one of many components that went into making a serial killer.

Everyone was a victim of something.

Kate turned to her own notes about Angie. Spare. Mostly hunches, things she had learned in her years of studying people to see what shaped their minds and their personalities. Abuse had shaped Angie DiMarco. Likely from a very early age. She expected the worst of people, dared them to show it to her, to prove her right. And that had undoubtedly happened again and again, because the kind of people who lived in Angie's world tended to live down to expectations. Angie included.

She expected people to dislike her, to distrust her, to cheat her, to use her, and made certain that they did. This case had been no exception. Sabin and the police had wanted nothing more than to use her, and Kate had been their tool. Angie's disappearance was an inconvenience to them, not a tragedy. If not for her status as a witness, no one on earth would have posted a reward or flashed her photograph on television asking “Have you seen this girl?” Even then, the police were not putting forth a tremendous search effort to find her. The energies of the task force were all dedicated to finding the suspect, not the AWOL witness.

Kate wondered if Angie might have seen the spots on the news. She would have enjoyed the notoriety, the attention. She might secretly have pretended to believe someone actually cared about her.

“Why would you care what happens to me?” the girl had asked as they stood in the hall outside Kate's office.

“Because no one else does.”

And I didn't care enough, Kate thought with a heavy heart. She'd been afraid to. Just as she had been afraid to let John back into her life. Afraid to feel that deeply. Afraid of the pain that kind of feeling could bring with it.

What a pathetic way to live. No—that wasn't living, that was simply existing.

Was the girl alive? she wondered, getting up from the couch to prowl the room. Was she dead? Had she been taken? Had she just left?

Am I being unrealistic to think there's even a question here?

She'd seen the blood for herself. Too much of it for a benign explanation.

But how could Smokey Joe have known where she was? What were the chances of his having spotted her at the PD and followed her to the Phoenix? Slim. Which would mean he would have to have found out some other way. Which meant he either had some in with the case . . . or an in with Angie.

Who had known where Angie was staying? Sabin, Rob, the task force, a couple of uniforms, the Urskines, Peter Bondurant's lawyer—and therefore Peter Bondurant.

The Urskines, who had known the first victim and had a peripheral connection to the second. They hadn't known Jillian Bondurant, but her connection to these crimes had given Toni Urskine a platform for her cause.

Gregg had been there at the house Wednesday night when Kate had left Angie off. Just Gregg and Rita Renner, who gave all the appearances of being an Urskine puppet. Rita Renner, who had been friends with Fawn Pierce.

Kate had known the Urskines for years. While Toni might drive someone to kill, she couldn't imagine the couple practicing that hobby themselves. Then again, no one in Toronto had ever suspected the Ken and Barbie killers, and that couple had committed murders so hideous, veteran cops had broken down and wept on the witness stand during the trial.

God, what a sinister thought—that the Urskines might take women in using kindness and caring as a front for a sadistic hunting game. But surely they wouldn't be so stupid as to prey on their own clientele. They would be automatic suspects. And if the man Angie had seen in the park that night had been Gregg Urskine, then she would have recognized him at the Phoenix, wouldn't she?

Kate thought of the vague description the girl had given of Smokey Joe, the almost nondescript sketch, trying to make some sense of it all. Had she been so reluctant, so vague, because she was frightened, as Kate had suspected? Or because—as Angie said—it was dark, he wore a hood, it happened so fast? Or did her motivation lie elsewhere?

The task force had a hot suspect, Kate knew. Quinn was probably interviewing him right now. The caretaker from Jillian's town house complex. He had no inside connection to the case, but she supposed he could have known Angie if she had ever trolled for johns in the area around the Target Center, where he worked as a security guard.

But it didn't make sense for Angie to have a connection to the killer. If she knew him and wanted him caught, she would have given him up. If she knew him and didn't want him caught, she would have given a clear description of a phantom for the cops to chase.

And if she hadn't seen anything at all in the park that night, why would she say she had? For three squares and a place to stay? For attention? Then it would have made more sense for her to be cooperative rather than difficult.

Everything about this kid was a mystery inside a puzzle wrapped in an enigma.

Which is why I don't do kids.

But this one was—had been—her responsibility, and she would find out the truth about her or die trying.

“Poor choice of words, Kate,” she muttered, heading upstairs to change clothes.

Twenty minutes later, she was out the back door. It had snowed another inch during the night, giving the landscape a clean dusting of fresh white powder, coating the back steps . . . where a pair of boots had left tracks.

Quinn had gone out the front this morning, to a waiting cab. The tracks were too small to be his, at any rate. They were more the size of Kate's feet, though that didn't necessarily establish gender.

Carefully staying to one side of them, Kate followed the tracks down the stairs to the yard. The trail led past the end of her garage and down the far side, down the narrow corridor between the building and the neighbor's weathered-gray privacy fence, to the side entrance of the garage. All the doors were closed.

A chill ran through her. She thought back to last night and someone defecating in the garage. She thought of the suddenly burned-out light, the feeling Wednesday night that someone had been watching her as she'd made her way from the garage to the house.

She looked around, down the deserted alley. Most of the neighbors had fences that hid the first stories of their homes from view. Second-story windows looked black and empty. The neighborhood was full of white-collar professionals, most of whom left for work by seven-thirty.

Kate backed away from the garage, heart pumping, hand digging in her bag for her cell phone. Moving toward the house, she pulled the phone out, flipped it open, and punched the power button. Nothing happened. The battery had died in the night. The inconvenience of modern convenience.

She kept her eyes on the garage, thought she saw a movement through the side window. Car thief? Burglar? Rapist? Disgruntled client? Cremator?

She stuffed the phone back in her bag and pulled out her house keys. She let herself in, locked herself in, and breathed again.

“I need this like I need the plague,” she muttered, going into the kitchen. She put her tote and her purse on the table and started to slip out of her coat, when the sound registered in her brain. The low, feral growl of a cat. Thor was under the table, snarling, ears flat.

The fine hair rose up on the back of Kate's neck, and with it the itchy feeling of being watched.

Options raced through her mind. She had no idea how close the person might be behind her, or how close they might be to the door. The phone was on the wall on the other end of the room—too far away.

Casually opening the tote, she looked inside with an eye for a weapon. She didn't carry a gun. The canister of pepper spray she had carried for a while had expired and she'd thrown it out. She had a plastic bottle of Aleve, a packet of Kleenex, the heel from the shoe she'd ruined Monday. She dug a little deeper and found a metal nail file, palmed that, and slipped it into her coat pocket. She knew her escape routes. She would turn, confront, break right or left. Plan set, she counted to five and turned around.

The kitchen was empty. But framed by the doorway to the dining room, sitting on one of Kate's straight-backed oak chairs, was Angie DiMarco.

“HE CONFESSES TO having Jillian Bondurant's underpants, and you don't think he's the guy?” Kovac said, incredulous.

His temper had a direct effect on his driving, Quinn noticed. The Caprice roared down 94, rocking like a clown car. Quinn braced his feet in the floor well, knowing his legs would snap like toothpicks in the crash. Of course, it probably wouldn't matter, because he would be dead. This piece-of-crap car would crumple like an empty beer can.

“I'm just saying there are some things I don't like,” he said. “Vanlees doesn't strike me as a team player. He lacks the arrogance to be the top dog, and the sadistic male is virtually always the dominant partner in a couple that kills. The woman is subservient to him, a victim who counts herself lucky not to be the one he's murdering.”

“So this time it's reversed,” Kovac insisted. “The woman runs the show. Why not? Moss and Liska say his wife had him pussy-whipped.”

“His mother probably did too. And yes, it's often a domineering or manipulative or otherwise influential woman in his past or present a sexual sadist is killing symbolically when he kills his victims. That all fits, but there are holes too. I wish I caould say I just look at him and like him for these murders, but I'm not feeling that bolt of lightning.”

But then, that feeling had more or less deserted him in recent years, he reminded himself. Doubt had become more the rule than the exception, so what the hell did he know anymore? Why should he trust his instincts now?

Kovac swerved the car across three lanes to the exit he wanted. “Well, I can tell you, the powers that be like this guy fine. You talk about lightning. They're all getting a goddamn thunderstorm in their pants over Vanlees. He's got a history, he fits the profile, he has a connection to Jillian, access to hookers, and he's not Peter Bondurant. If they can find a way to charge him, they will. If they can, they'll do it in time for the press conference today.”

And if Vanlees wasn't the guy, they ran the risk of pushing the real killer into proving himself again. The thought made Quinn ill.

“Vanlees says Peter was in Jillian's place predawn Sunday morning, and sent Noble on Monday to pay him to keep his mouth shut,” he said, drawing a frighteningly long stare from Kovac. The Caprice began to drift toward a rusted-out Escort in the next lane.

“Jesus, will you watch the road!” Quinn snapped. “How do they give out driver's licenses in this state? You save up bottle caps or something?”

“Beer-can tabs,” Kovac replied, returning his attention to the traffic. “So Bondurant was the one who cleaned up Jillian's house and erased the messages on the answering machine.”

“I'd say so—if Vanlees is telling the truth. And I think it's a safe bet then that Peter is the reason you didn't find any of Jillian's own musical compositions. He might have taken them because they revealed something about his relationship with Jillian.”

“The sexual abuse.”

“Possibly.”

“Son of a bitch,” Kovac muttered. “Sunday morning. Smokey Joe didn't light up the body until midnight. Why would Bondurant go to her place Sunday morning, wipe the place down, take the music, if he didn't already know she was dead?”

“Why would he wipe the place down at all?” Quinn asked. “He owns the town house. His daughter lived there. His fingerprints wouldn't be out of place.”

Kovac cut him a glance. “Unless they were bloody.”

Quinn braced a hand against the dash as a tow truck cut in front of them and Kovac hit the brakes. “Just drive, Kojak. Or we won't live long enough to find out.”

WITH RUMORS OF a suspect in custody, the media circus had begun anew on the street in front of Peter Bondurant's house. Videographers roamed the boulevard, taking exterior shots of the mansion while on-air talent did their sound checks. Quinn wondered if anyone had even bothered to call the families of Lila White or Fawn Pierce.

Two Paragon security officers stood at the gate with walkie-talkies. Quinn flashed his ID and they were waved through to the house. Edwyn Noble's black Lincoln was parked in the drive with a steel-blue Mercedes sedan beside it. Kovac pulled in behind the Lincoln, so close the cars were nearly kissing bumpers.

Quinn gave him a look. “Promise you'll behave yourself.”

Kovac played it innocent. He had been relegated to the role of driver and wasn't to leave the car. He wasn't to cross Peter Bondurant's field of vision. Quinn had kept Gil Vanlees's revelation to himself, as an added precaution. The last thing he needed was Kovac bulling his way into this.

“Take your time, GQ. I'll just be sitting here reading the paper.” He picked up a copy of the Star-Tribune from the pile of junk on the seat. Gil Vanlees took up half the front page—headline story, sidebar, and a bad photograph that made him look like Popeye's archnemesis, Bluto. Kovac's eyes were on the house, scanning the windows.

Noble met Quinn at the door, frowning, looking past him to the Caprice. In the car, Kovac had his newspaper open. He held it in such a way as to give Edwyn Noble the finger.

“Don't worry,” Quinn said. “You managed to get the best cop on the case busted to chauffeur.”

“We understand Vanlees has been taken into custody,” the attorney said as they went into the house, ignoring Kovac as an unworthy topic.

“He was arrested on a DUI. The police will hold him as long as they can, but at the moment they don't have any evidence he's the Cremator.”

“But he had . . . something of Jillian's,” Noble said with the awkwardness of a prude.

“Which he says Jillian gave to him.”

“That's preposterous.”

“He tells a very interesting story. One that includes you and a payoff, by the way.”

Fear flashed cold in the lawyer's eyes. Just for an instant. “That's absurd. He's a liar.”

“He hasn't exactly cornered the market there,” Quinn said. “I want to speak with Peter. I have some questions for him regarding Jillian's state of mind that night and in general.”

The lawyer cast a nervous glance at the stairs. “Peter isn't seeing anyone this morning. He isn't feeling well.”

“He'll see me.” Quinn started up the stairs on his own, as if he knew where he was going. Noble hurried after him.

“I don't think you understand, Agent Quinn. This business has taken a terrible toll on his nerves.”

“Are you trying to tell me he's what? Drunk? Sedated? Catatonic?”

Noble's long face had a mulish look when Quinn glanced over his shoulder. “Lucas Brandt is with him.”

“That's even better. I'll kill two birds.”

He stepped aside at the top of the stairs and motioned for Noble to lead the way.

THE ANTECHAMBER OF Peter Bondurant's bedroom suite was the showcase of a decorator who likely knew more about the house than about Peter. It was a room fit for an eighteenth-century English lord, all mahogany and brocade with dark oil hunting scenes in gilt frames on the walls. The gold damask wing chairs looked as if no one had ever sat in them.

Noble knocked softly on the bedroom door and let himself in, leaving Quinn to wait. A moment later, Noble and Brandt came out together. Brandt had his game face on—even, carefully neutral. Probably the face he wore in the courtroom when he testified for whoever was paying him the most money that day.

“Agent Quinn,” he said in the hushed tones of a hospital ward. “I understand you have a suspect.”

“Possibly. I have a couple of questions for Peter.”

“Peter isn't himself this morning.”

Quinn lifted his brows. “Really? Who is he?”

Noble frowned at him. “I think Sergeant Kovac has been a bad influence on you. This is hardly the time to be glib.”

“Nor is it the time for you to play games with me, Mr. Noble,” Quinn said. He turned to Brandt. “I need to speak with him about Jillian. If you want to be in the room, that's fine by me. Even better if you want to offer your opinion as to her mental and emotional state.”

“We've been over that issue.”

Quinn ducked his head, using a sheepish look to cover the anger. “Fine, then don't say anything.”

He started toward the door as if he would just knock Brandt on his ass and walk over him.

“He's sedated,” Brandt said, standing his ground. “I'll answer what I can.”

Quinn studied him with narrowed eyes, then cut a glance to the lawyer.

“Just curious,” he said. “Are you protecting him for his own good, or for yours?”

Neither batted an eye.

Quinn shook his head. “It doesn't matter—not to me anyway. All I'm interested in is getting the whole truth.”

He told the story Vanlees had given him about the window-peeping incident.

Edwyn Noble rejected the tale with every part of him—intellectually, emotionally, physically—reiterating his opinion of Vanlees as a liar. He paced and clucked and shook his head, denying every bit of it except the idea that Vanlees had been looking in Jillian's window. Brandt, on the other hand, stood with his back to the bedroom door, eyes downcast, hands clasped in front of him, listening carefully.

“What I want to know, Dr. Brandt, is whether or not Jillian was capable of that kind of behavior.”

“And you would have told Peter this story and asked Peter this question? About his child?” Brandt said with affront.

“No. I would have asked Peter something else entirely.” He cut a look at Noble. “Like what he was doing at Jillian's apartment before dawn on Sunday that was worth paying off a witness.”

Noble drew his head back, offended, and started to open his mouth.

“Save it, Edwyn,” Quinn advised, turning back to Brandt.

“I told you before, Jillian had a lot of conflicted emotions and confusion regarding her sexuality because of her relationship with her stepfather.”

“So the answer is yes.”

Brandt held his silence. Quinn waited.

“She sometimes behaved inappropriately.”

“Promiscuously.”

“I wouldn't call it that, no. She would . . . provoke reactions. Deliberately.”

“Manipulative.”

“Yes.”

“Cruel?”

That one brought his head up. Brandt stared at him. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because if Jillian isn't dead, Dr. Brandt, then there's only one logical thing she can be: a suspect.”