Ashes to Ashes

by Tami Hoag

  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.

  18

  CHAPTER

  KATE PILOTED THE 4Runner carefully into the narrow, ancient garage that sat just off the alley behind her house. During the winter months she regularly dreamed of an attached garage, but then spring would come and the backyard perennial beds would bloom and she would forget about the hassle of tromping through the snow, and the danger of walking in a dark alley in a city with a disturbing number of sex crimes.

  The wind scrambled and scattered the dead leaves that lay in a drift along the side of the neighbor's garage. A little shiver snaked down Kate's back, and she paused to turn and stare back into the darkness behind her—just in case. But it was only her natural paranoia compounded by the knowledge that the meeting she had just attended had been staged for the sole purpose of baiting a serial killer.

  Old feelings from her days in the BSU came rushing back. Memories of unspe
akable crimes that were the topics of casual conversation around the water cooler. Serial murder had been such an ingrained part of her world, that kind of idle talk hadn't seemed strange to her until toward the end of her career—after Emily died. Death had then suddenly taken on a more personal quality, and she had lost the veneer of detachment that was necessary for people in law enforcement. Finally, she hadn't been able to stand it anymore.

  She wondered how John still did . . . if he did. He'd looked pale tonight, gaunt and gray in the harsh lights. Back in the old days, his coping strategy had been overwork. He didn't have to deal with feelings if he was too busy to face them. That probably hadn't changed. And what did she care if it had or not?

  She slid the key into the back-door dead bolt and paused again before turning it, the hair rising up on the back of her neck. Slowly, she turned, straining to see past the reach of the motion-detector light into the shadowed corners of the yard. It struck her then that she'd left her cell phone in the truck. In the truck, across the yard in the creepy garage.

  Screw it. She could pick up any messages from the house phone. If there was a God, none of her clients would have a crisis tonight. And she could settle into a hot tub with a glass of her favorite coping method. This case might kill her, but at least she'd die clean and pleasantly numb.

  No maniac rushed to push his way in the door behind her, and no maniac waited in the kitchen with a butcher knife. Thor ran in to complain loudly at the late dinner hour. Kate tossed her purse on the counter and clicked on the small television to catch the news. With one hand she unbuttoned her coat, with the other she reached into the fridge for the cat food and then the bottle of Sapphire.

  The lead story on the ten o'clock news was the meeting. There was a clip of the crowd—Toni Urskine and her Phoenix women prominent in the shot—Chief Greer thumping the podium, and John looking grave as he spoke about the Bureau's role in the investigation.