Ashes to Ashes

2

CHAPTER

“WHY AM I always the one in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Kate Conlan muttered to herself.

First day back from what had technically been a vacation—a guilt-forced trip to visit her parents in hell's amusement park (Las Vegas)—she was late for work, had a headache, wanted to strangle a certain sex crimes sergeant for spooking one of her clients—a screw-up she would pay for with the prosecuting attorney. All that and the fashionably chunky heel on a brand new pair of suede pumps was coming loose, thanks to the stairs in the Fourth Avenue parking ramp.

Now this. A twitcher.

No one else seemed to notice him prowling the edge of the spacious atrium of the Hennepin County Government Center like a nervous cat. Kate made the guy for late thirties, no more than a couple of inches past her own five-nine, medium-to-slender build. Wound way too tight. He'd likely suffered some kind of personal or emotional setback recently—lost his job or his girlfriend. He was either divorced or separated; living on his own, but not homeless. His clothes were rumpled, but not castoffs, and his shoes were too good for homeless. He was sweating like a fat man in a sauna, but he kept his coat on as he paced around and around the new piece of sculpture littering the hall—a symbolic piece of pretension fashioned from melted-down handguns. He was muttering to himself, one hand hanging on to the open front of his heavy canvas jacket. A hunter's coat. His inner emotional strain tightened the muscles of his face.

Kate slipped off her loose-heeled shoe and stepped out of the other one, never taking her eyes off the guy. She dug a hand into her purse and came out with her cell phone. At the same instant, the twitcher caught the interest of the woman working the information booth twenty feet away.

Damn.

Kate straightened slowly, punching the speed-dial button. She couldn't dial security from an outside phone. The nearest guard was across the broad expanse of the atrium, smiling, laughing, engaged in conversation with a mailman. The information lady came toward the twitcher with her head to one side, as if her cotton-candy cone of blond hair were too heavy.

Dammit.

The office phone rang once . . . twice. Kate started moving slowly forward, phone in one hand, shoe in the other.

“Can I help you, sir?” the information woman said, still ten feet away. Blood was going to wreck the hell out of her ivory silk blouse.

The twitcher jerked around.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked again.

. . . fourth ring . . .

A Latina woman with a toddler in tow cut through the distance between Kate and the twitcher. Kate thought she could see the tremors begin—his body fighting to contain the rage or the desperation or whatever was driving him or eating him alive.

. . . fifth ring. “Hennepin County Attorney's Office—”

“Dammit!”

The movement was unmistakable—planting the feet, reaching into the jacket, eyes going wider.

“Get down!” Kate shouted, dropping the phone.

The information woman froze.

“Someone fucking pays!” the twitcher cried, lunging toward the woman, grabbing hold of her arm with his free hand. He jerked her toward him, thrusting his gun out ahead of her. The explosion of the shot was magnified in the towering atrium, deafening all ears to the shrieks of panic it elicited. Everyone noticed him now.

Kate barreled into him from behind, swinging the heel end of her shoe against his temple like a hammer. He expelled a cry of startled shock, then came back hard with his right elbow, catching Kate in the ribs.

The information woman screamed and screamed. Then lost her feet or lost consciousness, and the weight of her falling body jerked down on her assailant. He dropped to one knee, shouting obscenities, firing another round, this one skipping off the hard floor and going God knew where.

Kate fell with him, her left hand clutching the collar of his coat. She couldn't lose him. Whatever beast he'd had trapped inside was free now. If he got away from her, there'd be a hell of a lot more to worry about than stray bullets.

Her nylons giving her no purchase on the slick floor, she scrambled to get her feet under her, to hang on to him as he fought to stand. She swung the shoe again and smacked him in the ear. He twisted around, trying to backhand her with the gun. Kate grabbed his arm and forced it up, too aware as the gun went off again that there were more than twenty stories of offices and courtrooms above.

As they struggled for control of the gun, she hooked a leg around one of his and threw her weight against him, and suddenly they were falling, down and down, tumbling over each other down the biting metal treads of the escalator to the street level—where they were met by half a dozen shouts of “Freeze! Police!”

Kate looked up at the grim faces through the haze of pain and muttered, “Well, it's about damn time.”

“HEY, LOOK!” ONE of the assistant prosecutors called from his office. “It's Dirty Harriet!”

“Very funny, Logan,” Kate said, making her way down the hall to the county attorney's office. “You read that in a book, didn't you?”

“They have to get Rene Russo to play you in the movie.”

“I'll tell them you said so.”

Aches bit into her back and hip. She had refused a ride to the emergency room. Instead, she had limped into the ladies' room, combed her mane of red-gold hair into a ponytail, washed off the blood, ditched her ruined black tights, and gone back to her office. She didn't have any wounds worth an X ray or stitches, and half the morning was gone. The price of being a tough: She would have to make do tonight with Tylenol, cold gin, and a hot bath, instead of real painkillers. She could already tell she was going to be sorry.

The thought occurred to her that she was too old to be tackling lunatics and riding them down escalators, but she stubbornly resisted the idea that forty-two was too old for anything. Besides, she was only five years into what she termed her “second adulthood.” The second career, the second stab at stability and routine.

The only thing she had wished for all the way home from the weirdness of Las Vegas was a return to the nice, normal, relatively sane life she had made for herself. Peace and quiet. The familiar entanglements of her job as a victim/witness advocate. The cooking class she was determined not to fail.

But no, she had to be the one to spot the twitcher. She was always the one who had to spot the twitcher.

Alerted by his secretary, the county attorney opened his office door for her himself. A tall, good-looking man, Ted Sabin had a commanding presence and a shock of gray hair, which he swept back from a prominent widow's peak. A pair of round steel-rimmed glasses perched on his hawkish nose gave him a studious look and helped camouflage the fact that his blue eyes were set too deep and too close together.

While he had once been a crack prosecutor himself, he now took on only the occasional high-profile case. His job as head honcho was largely administrative and political. He oversaw a bustling office of attorneys trying to juggle the ever-increasing workload of the Hennepin County court system. Lunch hours and evenings found him moving among the Minneapolis power elite, currying connections and favor. It was common knowledge he had his eye on a seat in the U.S. Senate.

“Kate, come in,” he invited, the lines of his face etched deep with concern. He rested a big hand on her shoulder and guided her across the office toward a chair. “How are you? I've been brought up to speed about what happened downstairs this morning. My God, you could have been killed! What an astonishing act of bravery!”

“No, it wasn't,” Kate protested, trying to ease away from him. She slipped into the visitor's chair and immediately felt his gaze on her bare thighs as she crossed her legs. She tugged discreetly at the hem of her black skirt, wishing to hell she'd found the spare panty hose she'd thought were in her desk drawer. “I just reacted, that's all. How's Mrs. Sabin?”

“Fine.” The reply was absent of thought. He focused on her as he hitched his pinstriped trousers and perched a hip on the corner of his desk. “Just reacted? The way they taught you at the Bureau.”

He was obsessed with the fact that she had been an agent in what she now deemed a past life. Kate could only imagine the lewd fantasies that crawled like slugs through his mind. Dominatrix games, black leather, handcuffs, spanking. Bleeehhhh.

She turned her attention to her immediate boss, the director of the legal services unit, who had taken the chair next to hers. Rob Marshall was Sabin's opposite image—doughy, dumpy, rumpled. He had a head as round as a pumpkin, crowned with a thinning layer of hair cropped so short, it gave more the appearance of a rust stain than a haircut. His face was ruddy and ravaged by old acne scars, and his nose was too short.

He'd been her boss for about eighteen months, having come to Minneapolis from a similar position in Madison, Wisconsin. During that time they had tried with limited success to find a balance between their personalities and working styles. Kate flat-out didn't like him. Rob was a spineless suckup and he had a tendency to micromanage that rubbed hard against her sense of autonomy. He found her bossy, opinionated, and impertinent. She took it as a compliment. But she tried to let his concern for victims offset his faults. In addition to his administrative duties, he often sat in on conferences with victims, and put in time with a victim's support group.

He squinted at her now from behind a pair of rimless glasses, his mouth pursing as if he'd just bitten his tongue. “You could have been killed. Why didn't you just call for security?”

“There wasn't time.”

“Instinct, Rob!” Sabin said, flashing large white teeth. “I'm sure you and I could never hope to understand the kind of razor-sharp instincts someone with Kate's background has honed.”

Kate refrained from reminding him yet again that she had spent most of her years with the FBI at a desk in the Behavioral Sciences Unit at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Her days in the field were longer ago than she cared to remember.

“The mayor will want to give you an award,” Sabin said brightly, knowing he would get in on the photo op.

Publicity was the last thing Kate wanted. As an advocate, it was her job to hold the hands of crime victims and witnesses, to shepherd them through the justice system, to reassure them. The idea of an advocate being chased down by media hounds was likely to spook some of her clients.

“I'd rather she didn't. I don't think it's the best idea for someone with my job. Right, Rob?”

“Kate's right, Mr. Sabin,” he said, flashing his obsequious smile—an expression that often overtook his face when he was nervous. Kate called it the bootlicker's grin. It made his eyes nearly disappear. “We don't want her picture in the paper . . . all things considered.”

“I suppose not,” Sabin said, disappointed. “At any rate, what happened this morning isn't why we've called you in, Kate. We're assigning you a witness.”

“Why all the fanfare?”

Most of her client assignments were automatic. She worked with six prosecuting attorneys and caught everything they charged—the exception being homicides. Rob assigned all homicides, but an assignment never warranted anything more than a phone call or a visit to her office. Sabin certainly never involved himself with the process.

“Are you familiar with the two prostitute murders we've had this fall?” Sabin asked. “The ones where the bodies were burned?”

“Yes, of course.”

“There's been another one. Last night.”

Kate looked from one grim face to the other. Behind Sabin she had a panoramic view of downtown Minneapolis from twenty-two stories up.

“This one wasn't a prostitute,” she said.

“How did you know that?”

Because you'd never take time out of your day if it was.

“Lucky guess.”

“You didn't hear it on the street?”

“On the street?” Like he was in a gangster movie. “No. I wasn't aware there'd been a murder.”

Sabin walked around behind his desk, suddenly restless. “There's a chance this victim was Jillian Bondurant. Her father is Peter Bondurant.”

“Oh,” Kate said with significance. Oh, no, this wasn't just another dead hooker. Never mind that the first two victims had fathers somewhere too. This one's father was important.

Rob shifted uncomfortably in his chair, though whether it was the case or the fact that he insisted on wearing his pants too small around the waist was unclear. “Her driver's license was left near the body.”

“And it's been confirmed that she's missing?”

“She had dinner with her father at his home Friday night. She hasn't been seen since.”

“That doesn't mean it's her.”

“No, but that's the way it worked with the first two,” Sabin said. “The ID left with each hooker's body matched up.”

A hundred questions shot through Kate's mind, questions about the crime scene, about what information the police had released about the first two murders and what had been held back. This was the first she'd heard about the IDs being left at the scene. What did that mean? Why burn the bodies beyond recognition, yet leave the victim's identity right there?

“I assume they're checking dental records,” she said.

The men exchanged looks.

“I'm afraid that's not an option,” Rob said carefully. “We have a body only.”

“Jesus,” Kate breathed as a chill ran through her. “He didn't decapitate the others. I never heard that.”

“No, he didn't,” Rob said. He squinted again and tipped his head a little to one side. “What do you make of it, Kate? You've had experience with this kind of thing.”

“Obviously, his level of violence is escalating. It could mean he's gearing up for something big. There was some sexual mutilation with the others, right?”

“The cause of death on the other two was ruled strangulation by ligature,” Sabin said. “I'm sure I don't need to tell you, Kate, that while strangulation is certainly a violent enough method of murder, a decapitation will throw this city into a panic. Particularly if the victim was a decent, law-abiding young woman. My God, the daughter of one of the most prominent men in the state. We need to find this killer fast. And we can make that happen. We've got a witness.”

“And this is where I come in,” Kate said. “What's the story?”

“Her name is Angie DiMarco,” Rob said. “She came running out of the park just as the first radio car arrived.”

“Who called it in?”

“Anonymous caller on a cell phone, I'm told,” Sabin said. His mouth tightened and twisted as if he were sucking at a sore tooth. “Peter Bondurant is a friend of the mayor's. I know him as well. He's beside himself with grief at the idea that this victim is Jillian, and he wants this case solved ASAP. A task force is being put together even as we speak. Your old friends at the Bureau have been called. They're sending someone from the Investigative Support Unit. We clearly have a serial killer on our hands.”

And a prominent businessman up your butts.

“Rumors are already flying,” Sabin muttered darkly. “The police department has a leak big enough to drain the Mississippi.”

The phone on his desk was lighting up like the switchboard on a disease telethon, though it never audibly rang.

“I've spoken with Chief Greer and with the mayor,” he continued. “We're grabbing this thing by the short hairs right now.”

“That's why we've called you in, Kate,” Rob said, shifting in his chair again. “We can't wait until there's been an arrest to assign someone to this witness. She's the only link we have to the killer. We want someone from the unit attached to her right away. Someone to sit with her during police interviews. Someone to let her know not to talk to the press. Someone to maintain the thread of contact between her and the county attorney's office. Someone to keep tabs on her.”

“It sounds like what you want is a baby-sitter. I've got cases ongoing.”

“We'll shift some of your caseload.”

“Not Willis,” she said, then grimaced. “As much as I'd like to dump him. And absolutely not Melanie Hessler.”

“I could take Hessler, Kate,” Rob insisted. “I sat in on the initial meeting. I'm familiar with the case.”

“No.”

“I've worked with plenty of rape victims.”

“No,” she said as if she were the boss and the decision was hers to make.

Sabin looked annoyed. “What case is this?”

“Melanie Hessler. She was raped by two men in the alley behind the adult bookstore she works in downtown,” Kate explained. “She's very fragile, and she's terrified about the trial. She couldn't take me abandoning her—especially not to a man. She needs me. I won't let her go.”

Rob huffed a sigh.

“Fine,” Sabin declared impatiently. “But this case is priority one. I don't care what it takes. I want this lunatic out of business. Now.”

Now that the victim would garner more than a minute and a half on the six o'clock news. Kate had to wonder how many dead prostitutes it would have taken to get Ted Sabin to feel that same level of urgency. But she kept the question to herself and nodded, and tried to ignore the sense of dread that settled in her stomach like a lead weight.

Just another witness, she told herself. Just another case. Back to the usual, familiar entanglements of her job.

Like hell.

A dead billionaire's daughter, a case full of politicos, a serial killer, and someone winging in from Quantico. Someone from ISU. Someone who hadn't been there five years ago, she had to hope—but knew that hope was a flimsy shield.

Suddenly, Las Vegas didn't seem so bad after all.