by Tami Hoag
The housekeeper looked worried that she'd screwed up. Quinn watched Bondurant as the woman started back toward the kitchen. The stress of the last few days was telling on him. He looked as if he hadn't eaten or slept. All dark circles and sunken cheeks and a pallor that was unique to people under tremendous pressure.
“I don't have anything useful to say to you,” he declared, impatient. “My daughter is dead. I can't do anything to change that. I can't even bury her. I can't even make funeral arrangements. The medical examiner's office won't release the body.”
“They can't release the body without a positive ID, Mr. Bondurant,” Quinn said. “You don't want to bury a stranger by mistake, do you?”
“My daughter was a stranger to me,” he said enigmatically, wearily.
“Really?” Kovac said, moving slowly around the foyer, like a shark circling. “Here I thought she might have been telling you all about who she really was when she called you that night—after she left here. After you said you never heard from her again.”
Bondurant stared at him. No denial. No apology.
“What'd you think?” Kovac demanded. “Did you think I wouldn't find that out? Do you think I'm a moron? Do you think I've gotta have a fucking FBI shield in order to have a brain?”
“I didn't think it was relevant.”
Kovac looked astounded. “Not relevant? Maybe she gave a clue where she was when she made the call. That would give us an area to canvass for witnesses. Maybe there was a voice in the background, or a distinguishing sound. Maybe the call was interrupted.”
“No on all counts.”
“Why did she call?”
“To say good night.”
“And is that the same reason she'd call her shrink in the middle of the night?”
No reaction. No surprise, no anger. “I wouldn't know why she called Lucas. Their relationship as doctor and patient was none of my business.”
“She was your daughter,” Kovac said, pacing fast, the frustration building. “Did you think it wasn't any of your business when her stepfather was fucking her?”
Direct hit. At last, Quinn thought, watching anger fill Peter Bondurant's thin face. “I've had all I want of you, Sergeant.”
“Yeah? Do you suppose that's what LeBlanc said to Jillian that drove her to try to kill herself back in France?” Kovac taunted, reckless, skating on a thin edge.
“You bastard.” Bondurant made no move toward him, but held himself rigid. Quinn could see him trembling.
“I'm a bastard?” Kovac laughed. “Your daughter's maybe dead and you don't bother to tell us jack shit about her, and I'm the bastard? That's rich. John, do you fucking believe this guy?”
Quinn gave the big sigh of disappointment. “We don't ask these questions lightly, Mr. Bondurant. We don't ask them to hurt you or your daughter's memory. We ask because we need the whole picture.”
“I've told you,” Bondurant said in a low, tight voice, the fury cold and hard in his eyes. “Jillian's past has nothing to do with this.”
“I'm afraid it does. One way or another. Your daughter's past was a part of who she was—or who she is.”
“Lucas told me you'd insist on that. It's ludicrous to think Jillian somehow brought this on herself. She was doing so well—”
“It's not your job to try to dissect this, Peter,” Quinn said, shifting to the personal. I'm your friend. You can tell me. Giving him permission to let go of the control slowly and voluntarily. Quinn could see the logical part of Bondurant's mind arguing with the emotions he kept so firmly boxed. He was wound so tight that if Kovac pushed him hard enough and he snapped, it would be like suddenly loosing a high-tension wire—no control at all. Bondurant was smart enough to realize that and anal enough to dread the possibility.
“We're not saying it was Jillian's fault, Peter. She didn't ask for this to happen. She didn't deserve to have this happen.”
A sheen of tears glazed Bondurant's eyes.
“I realize this is difficult for you,” Quinn said softly. “When your wife left, she took your daughter to a man who abused her. I can imagine the kind of anger you must have felt when you found out.”
“No, you can't.” Bondurant turned away, looking for some kind of escape but not willing to leave the hall.
“Jillian was an ocean away, in trouble, in pain. But everything was over by the time you found out, so what could you do? Nothing. I can imagine the frustration, the anger, the feeling of impotence. The guilt.”
“I couldn't do anything,” he murmured. He stood beside a marble-topped table, staring at a sculpture of ragged bronze lilies, seeing a past he would rather have kept locked away. “I didn't know. She didn't tell me until after she'd moved back here. I didn't know until it was too late.”
With a trembling hand he touched one of the lilies and closed his eyes.
Quinn stood beside him, just encroaching on Bondurant's personal space. Near enough to invite confidence, to suggest support rather than intimidation. “It's not too late, Peter. You can still help. We have the same goal—finding and stopping Jillian's killer. What happened that night?”
He shook his head. Denying what? There was a sense of something—guilt? shame?—emanating from him almost like an odor. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”
“You had dinner. She stayed till midnight. What happened that made her call Brandt? She must have been upset about something.”
Still shaking his head. Denying what? Her emotional state, or just refusing to answer? Shaking off the questions as unacceptable because the answers would open a door he didn't want to go through? The daughter who had come back to him after all those years had not come back the innocent child she had been. She had come back different, damaged. How would a father feel? Hurt, disappointed, ashamed. Guilty because he hadn't been there to prevent what had driven his daughter to try to end her own life. Guilty because of the shame he felt when he thought of her as damaged, as less than perfect. Emotions tangled and dark, tied in a knot that would take the skill of a surgeon to unravel. He thought of the photograph in Bondurant's office: Jillian, so unhappy in a dress meant for another kind of girl.
Kovac came up on Bondurant's right. “We're not out to hurt Jillian. Or you, Mr. Bondurant. We just want the truth.”
Quinn held his breath, never taking his eyes off Bondurant. A moment passed. A decision was made. The scales tipped away from them. He could see it in Peter Bondurant's face as his hand slipped from the ragged bronze lily and he pulled everything inside him tight, and closed that inner door that had slipped ajar.
“No,” Bondurant said, his face a vacant, bony mask as he reached for the receiver of the sleek black telephone that sat beside the sculpture. “You won't get the chance. I won't have my daughter's memory dragged through the mud. If I see one word in one paper about what happened to Jillian in France, I'll ruin you both.”
Kovac blew out a breath and moved away from the table. “I'm just trying to solve these murders, Mr. Bondurant. That's my only agenda here. I'm a simple guy with simple needs—like the truth. You could ruin me in a heartbeat. Hell, anything I ever had that was worth anything at all went to one ex-wife or the other. You can squash me like a bug. And you know what? I'll still want that truth, 'cause that's the way I am. It'll be easier on all of us if you give it to me sooner rather than later.”
Bondurant just stared at him, stone-faced, and Kovac just shook his head and walked away.
Quinn didn't move for a moment, watching Bondurant, trying to measure, trying to read. They had been so close to drawing him out. . . . “You brought me here for a reason,” he said softly, one-on-one, man-to-man. He pulled a business card from his pocket and laid it on the table. “Call me when you're ready.”
Bondurant hit a direct dial button on the phone and waited.
“One last question,” Quinn said. “Jillian liked to write music. Did you ever hear her perform? Ever see any of her stuff?”
“No. She didn't share that with me.”
&n
bsp; He looked away as someone answered on the other end of the line.
“This is Peter Bondurant. Put me through to Edwyn Noble.”
HE STOOD IN the hall and waited for a long time after the rude rumble of Kovac's car had died away. Just stood there in the silence, in the gloom. Time passed. He didn't know how much. And then he was walking down the hall to his office, his body and mind seemingly working independent of each other.
One floor lamp burned low in a corner of the room. He didn't turn on more. Night had crept up into the late afternoon and stolen the clear light that had fallen in through the French doors earlier in the day. The room had a gloomy cast to it that suited his mood.
He unlocked his desk, took a sheet of music from it, and went to stand by the window to read, as if the farther the words were away from the light, the less harsh their reality.
Love Child
I'm your love child
Little girl
Want you more than all the world
Take me to that place I know
Take me where you want to go
Got to make you love me
Only one way how
Daddy, won't you love me
Love me now
Daddy, I'm your love child
Take me now
—JB
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 i
ts 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.