Ashes to Ashes

6

CHAPTER

THE CROWD IS large. The Twin Cities are overrun with reporters. Two major daily newspapers, half a dozen television stations, radio stations too numerous to keep track of. And the story has brought in still more reporters from other places.

He has captured their attention. He relishes the sense of power that brings. The sounds in particular excite him—the urgent voices, the angry voices, the scuffle of feet, the whirl of camera motor drives.

He wishes he hadn't waited so long to go public. His first murders were private, hidden, far between in both time and space, the bodies left buried in shallow graves. This is so much better.

The reporters jockey for position. Videographers and photographers set the perimeter of the gathering. Blinding artificial lights give the setting an other-worldly white glow. He stands just outside the media pack with the other spectators, caught on the fringe of a headline.

The mayor takes the podium. The spokeswoman for the community expressing the collective moral outrage against senseless acts of violence. The county attorney parrots the mayor's remarks and promises punishment. The chief of police makes a statement regarding the formation of a task force.

They take no questions, even though the reporters are clamoring for confirmation of the victim's identity and for the gruesome details of the crime, like scavengers drooling for the chance to pick the carcass after the predator's feast. They bark out questions, shout the word decapitation. There are rumors of a witness.

The idea of someone watching the intimacy of his acts excites him. He believes any witness to his acts would be aroused by those acts, as he was. Aroused in a way just beyond understanding, as he had been as a child locked in the closet, listening to his mother having sex with men he didn't know. Arousal instinctively known as forbidden, irrepressible just the same.

Questions and more questions from the media.

No answers. No comment.

He sees John Quinn standing off to one side among a group of cops, and feels a rush of pride. He is familiar with Quinn's reputation, his theories. He has seen him on television, read articles about him. The FBI has sent their best for the Cremator.

He wants the agent to take the podium, wants to hear his voice and his thoughts, but Quinn doesn't move. The reporters seem not to recognize him standing out of reach of the spotlight. Then the principals walk away from the podium, surrounded by uniformed police officers. The press conference is over.

Disappointment weighs down on him. He had expected more, wanted more. Needs more. He had predicted they would need more.

With a jolt he realizes he has been waiting to react, that for a moment he allowed his feelings to hinge on the decisions of others. Unacceptable behavior. He is proactive, not reactive.

The reporters give up and hurry for the doors. Stories to write, sources to pump. The small crowd in which he stands begins to break up and move. He moves with them, just another face.

“LET'S GO, KIDDO. We're out of here.”

Angie looked up from the mug books on the table, wary, her stringy hair hiding half her face. Her gaze darted from Kate to Liska as she rose from her chair, as if she were expecting the detective to pull a gun and prevent her escape. Liska's attention was on Kate.

“You got the okay to go? Where's Kovac?”

Kate looked her in the eye. “Yeah . . . uh, Kovac's tied up with the lieutenant at the press conference. They're talking task force.”

“I want in on that,” Liska said with determination.

“You should. A case like this makes careers.” And breaks them, Kate thought, wondering just how much trouble she was making for herself springing Angie DiMarco—and how much trouble she would be making for Liska.

The end justifies the means. She thought of Quinn. At least her goal was noble rather than self-serving manipulation.

Rationalization: the key to a clear conscience.

“Are the cameras rolling?” Liska asked.

“Even as we speak.” Kate watched out of the corner of her eye as her client palmed a Bic lighter someone had left on the table and slipped it into her coat pocket. Christ. A kid and a kleptomaniac. “Seems like a good time to split.”

“Run for it while you can,” Liska advised. “You're a double bonus today. I hear your name attached to a certain act of heroic lunacy at the government center this morning. If the newsies don't nail you for one thing, they'll nail you for another.”

“My life is much too exciting.”

“Where are you taking me?” Angie demanded as she came to the door, slinging her backpack over one shoulder.

“Dinner. I'm starving, and you look like you've been starving for a while.”

“But your boss said—”

“Screw him. I want to see somebody lock Ted Sabin in a room for a day or two. Maybe he'd develop a little empathy. Let's go.”

Angie shot one last glance at Liska and scooted out the door, hiking her backpack up as she hurried after Kate.

“Will you get in trouble?”

“Do you care?”

“It's not my problem if you get fired.”

“That's the spirit. Listen, we've got to go up to my office. If anyone stops me on the way, do us both a favor and pretend we're not together. I don't want the media putting two and two together, and you don't want them knowing who you are. Trust me on that one.”

Angie gave her a sly look. “Could I get on Hard Copy? I hear they pay.”

“You fuck this up for Sabin and he'll get you on America's Most Wanted. That is if our friendly neighborhood serial killer doesn't put you on Unsolved Mysteries first. If you don't hear anything else I tell you, kiddo, hear this. You do not want to be on television, you do not want your picture in a newspaper.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“I'm just telling you how it is,” she said as they entered the concourse to the government center.

Kate put on her don't-fuck-with-me face and walked as quickly as she could, considering the aches and stiffness from her morning wrestling match were beginning to sink in deep. Time was a-wasting. If the politicians took John's advice and somehow managed to contain themselves, the press conference would break up fast. Some of the reporters would dog Chief Greer, but most would split between the mayor and Ted Sabin, liking their odds better with elected officials than with a cop. Any minute now the concourse could be swarming with them.

If they followed Sabin into the concourse and caught sight of her, if someone called her name or pointed her out within earshot of the ravenous pack, she was bound to get cornered about the government center gunman. Eventually someone might make the mental leap and connect her to rumors of a witness in the latest homicide, and then the last few hours would truly deserve listing in the annals of all-time shitty days. Somewhere on the lower third of the list, she figured, leaving plenty of room above for the string of rotten days to come.

But luck was with her for once today. Only three people tried to intercept her on their way to the twenty-second floor. All making clever comments on Kate's morning heroics. She brushed them off with a wry look and a smart remark, and never broke stride.

“What's that about?” Angie asked as they got off the elevator, her curiosity overcoming her show of indifference.

“Nothing.”

“He called you the Terminator. What'd you do? Kill somebody?” The question came with a look that mixed disbelief with wariness with a small, grudging flicker of admiration.

“Nothing that dramatic. Not that I haven't been tempted today.” Kate keyed the access code into the security panel beside the door to the legal services department. She unlocked the door to her own office and motioned Angie inside.

“You know, you don't have to take me anywhere,” the girl said, flopping into the spare chair. “I can take care of myself. It's a free country and I'm not a criminal . . . or a kid,” she added belatedly.

“Let's not even touch on that subject for the moment,” Kate suggested, glancing through her unopened mail. “You know what the situation is here, Angie. You need a safe place to stay.”

“I can stay with my friend Michele—”

“I thought her name was Molly.”

Angie pressed her mouth into a line and narrowed her eyes.

“Don't even try to bullshit me,” Kate advised—for all the good it would do. “There is no friend, and you don't have a place to crash in the Phillips neighborhood. That was a nice touch, though, picking a rotten neighborhood. Who would claim they lived there if they didn't?”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“I think you've got your own agenda,” Kate said calmly, her attention on a memo that read: Talked w/Sabin. Wit to Phoenix House—RM. Permission. Odd Rob hadn't mentioned this in the mayor's office. The note was in a receptionist's hand. No time notation. The decision had probably come just before the press conference. All that subterfuge on her part for nothing. Oh, well.

“An agenda that probably centers on staying out of jail or a juvenile facility,” she went on.

“I'm not a—”

“Save it.”

She hit the message button on her phone and listened to the voices of the impatient and the forlorn who had tried to reach her during the afternoon. Reporters hot on the trail of the government center shootout heroine. She hit fast forward through each of them. Mixed in with the news hounds was the usual assortment. David Willis, her current pain-in-the-butt client. A coordinator of a victims' rights group. The husband of a woman who had allegedly been assaulted, though Kate had the gut feeling it was a scam, that the couple was looking to score reparation money. The husband had a string of petty drug arrests on his record.

“Kate.” The gruff male voice coming from the machine made her flinch. “It's Quinn—um—John. I, ah, I'm staying at the Radisson.”

As if he expected her to call. Just like that.

“Who's that?” Angie asked. “Boyfriend?”

“No, um, no,” Kate said, scrambling to pull her composure together. “Let's get out of here. I'm starving.”

She drew in a long breath and released it as she pushed to her feet, feeling caught off guard, something she had always worked studiously to avoid. Another offense to add to the list against Quinn. She couldn't let him get to her. He'd be here and gone. A couple of days at most, she figured. The Bureau had sent him because Peter Bondurant had friends in high places. It was a show of good faith or ass kissing, depending on your point of view.

He didn't need to be here. He wouldn't be here long. She didn't have to have any contact with him while he was here. She wasn't with the Bureau anymore. She wasn't a part of this task force. He had no power over her.

God, Kate, you sound like you're afraid of him, she thought with disgust as she turned her Toyota 4Runner out of the parking ramp onto Fourth Avenue. Quinn was past history and she was a grown-up, not some adolescent girl who'd broken up with the class cool guy and couldn't bear to face him in homeroom.

“Where are we going?” Angie asked, dialing the radio to an alternative rock station. Alanis Morissette whining at an ex-boyfriend with bongos in the background.

“Uptown. What do you want to eat? You look like you could use some fat and cholesterol. Ribs? Pizza? Burgers? Pasta?”

The girl made the snotty shrug that had driven parents of teenagers from the time of Adam to consider the pros and cons of killing their young. “Whatever. Just as long as there's a bar. I need a drink.”

“Don't push it, kid.”

“What? I have a valid driver's license.” She flopped back against the seat and put her feet up against the dash. “Can I bum a smoke?”

“I don't have any. I quit.”

“Since when?”

“Since 1981. I fall off the wagon every once in a while. Get your feet off my dashboard.”

The big sigh as she rearranged herself sideways in the bucket seat. “Why are you taking me to dinner? You don't like me. Wouldn't you rather go home to your husband?”

“I'm divorced.”

“From the guy on the answering machine? Quinn?”

“No. Not that it's any of your business.”

“Got kids?”

A beat of silence before answering. Kate wondered if she would ever get over that hesitation or the guilt that inspired it. “I have a cat.”

“So do you live in Uptown?”

Kate cut her a sideways look, taking her eyes briefly off the heavy rush hour traffic. “Let's talk about you. Who's Rick?”

“Who?”

“Rick—the name on your jacket.”

“It came that way.”

Translation: name of the guy she stole it from.

“How long have you been in Minneapolis?”

“A while.”

“How old were you when your folks died?”

“Thirteen.”

“So you've been on your own how long?”

The girl glared at her for a beat. “Eight years. That was lame.”

Kate shrugged. “Worth a shot. So what happened to them? Accident?”

“Yeah,” Angie said softly, staring straight ahead. “An accident.”

There was a story in there somewhere, Kate thought as she negotiated the twisted transition from 94 to get to Hennepin Avenue. She could probably guess at some of the key plot ingredients—alcohol, abuse, a cycle of unhappy circumstances, and dysfunction. Virtually every kid on the street had lived a variation of that story. So had every man in prison. Family was a fertile breeding ground for the kind of psychological bacteria that warped minds and devoured hope. Conversely, she knew plenty of people in law enforcement and social work who came from that same set of circumstances, people who had come to that same fork in the road and turned one way instead of the other.

She thought again of Quinn, even though she didn't want to.

The rain had thickened to a misty, miserable fog. The sidewalks were deserted. Uptown, contrary to its name, was some distance south of downtown Minneapolis. A gentrified area of shops, restaurants, coffee bars, art house movie theaters, it centered on the intersection of Lake Street and Hennepin. Just a stone's throw—and a world—west of the tough Whittier neighborhood, which in recent years had become the territory of black gangs, driveby shootings, and drug raids.

Uptown was edged to the west by Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles, and was currently inhabited by yuppies and the terribly hip. The house Kate had grown up in and now owned was just two blocks off Lake Calhoun, her parents having purchased the solid prairie-style home decades before the area became trendy.

Kate chose La Loon as their destination, a pub away from the lively Calhoun Square area, parking in the nearly empty side lot. She wasn't in the mood for noise or a crowd, and knew both could be used as a shield by her dinner companion. Just being a teenager was enough of a barrier to overcome.

Inside, La Loon was dark and warm, all wood and brass with a long, old-fashioned bar and few patrons. Kate shunned a booth in favor of a corner table, where she took the corner chair, which gave her a view of the entire dining room. The paranoid seat. A habit Angie DiMarco had already picked up for herself. She didn't sit across from Kate with her back to the room; she took a side seat with her back to a wall so she could see anyone approaching the table.

The waitress brought menus and took drink orders. Kate longed for a stout glass of gin, but settled for chardonnay. Angie ordered rum and Coke.

The waitress looked at Kate, who shrugged. “She's got ID.”

A look of sly triumph stole across Angie's face as the waitress walked away. “I thought you didn't want me to drink.”

“Oh, what the hell,” Kate said, digging a bottle of Tylenol out of her purse. “It's not like it's going to corrupt you.”

The girl had clearly expected a confrontation. She sat back, a little bemused, slightly disappointed. “You're not like any social worker I ever knew.”

“How many have you known?”

“A few. They were either bitches or so goody-goody, I wanted to puke.”

“Yeah, well, plenty of people will tell you I qualify on one count.”

“But you're different. I don't know,” she said, struggling for the definition she wanted. “It's like you've been around or something.”

“Let's just say I didn't come into this job via the usual route.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means I don't sweat the small stuff and I don't take any shit.”

“If you don't take any shit, then who beat you up?”

“Above and beyond the call of duty.” Kate tossed the Tylenol back and washed it down with water. “You should see the other guy. So, any familiar faces in those mug books today?”

Angie's mood shifted with the subject, her pouty mouth turning down at the corners, her gaze dropping to the tabletop. “No. I would have said.”

“Would you?” Kate muttered, earning a sullen glance. “They'll want you to work with the sketch artist in the morning. How do you think that'll go? Did you see him well enough to describe him?”

“I saw him in the fire,” Angie murmured.

“How far away were you?”

Angie traced a gouge mark in the tabletop with one bitten fingernail. “I don't know. Not far. I was cutting through the park and I had to pee, so I ducked behind some bushes. And then he came down the hill . . . and he was carrying that—”

Her face tightened and she bit her lip, hanging her head lower, obviously in the hope that her hair would hide the emotion that had rushed to the surface. Kate waited patiently, keenly aware of the girl's rising tension. Even to a streetwise kid like Angie, seeing what she had seen had to be an unimaginable shock. The stress of that and the stress of what she had been through at the police station, compounded by exhaustion, would all have to eventually take a toll.

And I want to be there when the poor kid breaks down, she thought, never pleased with that aspect of her job. The system was supposed to champion the victim, but it often victimized them again in the process. And the advocate was caught in the middle—an employee of the system, there supposedly to protect the citizen who was being dragged into the teeth of the justice machine.

The waitress returned with their drinks. Kate ordered cheeseburgers and fries for both of them and handed the menus back.

“I—I didn't know what he was carrying,” Angie whispered when the waitress was out of earshot. “I just knew someone was coming and I needed to hide.”

Like an animal that knew too well the night was stalked by predators of one kind or another.

“A park's a scary place late at night, I suppose,” Kate said softly, turning her wineglass by the stem. “Everybody loves to go in daylight. We think it's so pretty, so nice to get away from the city. Then night comes, and suddenly it's like the evil forest out of The Wizard of Oz. Nobody wants to be there in the dead of night. So what were you doing there, Angie?”

“I told you, I was just cutting through.”

“Cutting from where to where at that hour?” She kept her tone casual.

Angie hunkered over her rum and Coke and took a long pull on the straw. Tense. Forcing the anger back up to replace the fear.

“Angie, I've been around. I've seen things even you wouldn't believe,” Kate said. “Nothing you tell me could shock me.”

The girl gave a humorless half-laugh and looked toward the television that hung above one end of the bar. Local news anchor Paul Magers was looking grave and handsome as he related the story of a madman run amok in the county government center. They flashed a mug shot and told about the recent breakup of the man's marriage, his wife having taken their children and gone into hiding in a shelter a week before.

Precipitating stressors, Kate thought, not surprised.

“Nobody cares if you were breaking the law, Angie. Murder overrules everything—burglary, prostitution, poaching squirrels—which I personally consider a service to the community,” she said. “I had a squirrel in my attic last month. Vermin menace. They're nothing but rats with furry tails.”

No reaction. No smile. No overblown teenage outrage at her callous disregard for animal life.

“I'm not trying to lean on you here, Angie. I'm telling you as your advocate: The sooner you come clean about everything that went down last night, the better for all concerned—yourself included. The county attorney has his shorts in a knot over this case. He tried to tell Sergeant Kovac he should treat you as a suspect.”

Alarm rounded the girl's eyes. “Fuck him! I didn't do anything!”

“Kovac believes you, which is why you're not sitting in a cell right now. That and the fact that I wouldn't allow it. But this is serious shit, Angie. This killer is public enemy number one, and you're the only person who's seen him and lived to tell the tale. You're in the hot seat.”

Elbows on the table, the girl dropped her face into her hands and mumbled between her fingers, “God, this sucks!”

“You've got that right, sweetie,” Kate said softly. “But here's the deal, plain and simple. This nut job is going to go on killing until somebody stops him. Maybe you can help stop him.”

She waited. Held her breath. Willed the poor kid over the edge. She could see through the bars of Angie's fingers: the girl's face going red with the pressure of holding the emotions in. She could see the tension in the thin shoulders, feel the anticipation that thickened the air around her.

But nothing in this situation was going to be plain or simple, Kate thought as her pager began to shrill inside her purse. The moment, the opportunity, was gone. She swore silently as she dug through the bag, cursing the inconvenience of modern conveniences.

“Think about it, Angie,” she said as she rose from her chair. “You're it, and I'm here to help you.”

That makes me IT by association, she thought as she headed to the pay phone in the alcove by the bathrooms.

No. Nothing about this would be plain or simple.