by Tami Hoag
“He's a loser.”
“Did you ever have any kind of run-in with him?”
She lifted a shoulder as thin as a bird's wing. “Maybe I told him to fuck off once or twice.”
“Why?”
“Because he was staring at us. Like maybe he was picturing us naked together. Fat bastard.”
“And what did Jillian say about it?”
Another shrug. “She said once if that was the biggest thrill of his life, let him stare.”
“She never said anything to you about him bothering her.”
“No.”
“She ever mention anything to you about feeling like she was being watched or followed, anything like that?”
“No. Even though she was.”
Liska looked at her sharply. “How's that?”
“Her father and that Nazi shrink of hers watched her like hawks. Her father had a key to her apartment. Sometimes we'd get to her place and he'd be waiting for her inside. Talk about invasion of privacy.”
“Did it bother Jillian when he did that?”
Michele Fine's mouth twisted in a strange little bitter smile, and she looked at the ashtray as she stubbed out her cigarette. “No. She was Daddy's girl, after all.”
“What's that mean?”
“Nothing. She just let him pull her strings, that's all.”
“She told you about her relationship with her stepfather. Did she ever say anything to you about her relationship with her father?”
“We didn't talk about him. She knew what I thought about him trying to control her. The subject was out of bounds. Why?” she asked matter-of-factly. “Do you think he was trying to fuck her too?”
“I don't know,” Quinn said. “What do you think?”
“I think I never met a man who wouldn't take a piece of ass if he got the chance,” she said, deliberately brazen, her gaze sliding down Quinn's body to his groin. He let her look, waited her out. Finally her eyes returned to his. “If he was, she never said it in so many words.”
Quinn helped himself to the chair at the end of the small table, sitting down and settling in as if he meant to stay for supper. He looked again around the apartment, noting that there was very little in the way of ornamentation, nothing homey, nothing personal. No photos. The only thing that appeared to be well taken care of was the small stack of stereo and recording equipment in the far corner of the living room. A guitar was propped nearby.
“I understand you and Jillian wrote music together,” he said. “What was Jillian's part of that?”
Fine lit another cigarette and blew smoke at the cheap chandelier. Quinn's gaze caught again on the snake tattooed around her wrist, twisting around the scars that had been seared into the flesh there long ago. The serpent from the Garden of Eden, a small red apple in its mouth.
“Sometimes lyrics,” she said, smoke drifting through the gap between her front teeth. “Sometimes music. Whatever she felt like. Whatever I felt like.”
“Have you published anything?”
“Not yet.”
“What did she like to write about?”
“Life. People. Relationships.”
“Bad relationships?”
“Is there another kind?”
“Did she keep copies of the stuff you'd written?”
“Sure.”
“Where?” Liska asked.
“In her apartment. In the piano bench and the bookcase.”
“I didn't find anything there the other day.”
“Well, that's where it was,” Fine said defensively, blowing another stream of smoke.
“Do you have any copies I could look at?” Quinn asked. “I'd like to read her lyrics, see what they have to say about her.”
“Poetry is a window to the soul,” Fine said in an odd, dreamy tone. Her gaze drifted away again, and Quinn wondered just what she was on and why. Had the alleged murder of Jillian Bondurant pushed her over some mental edge? It seemed she had been Jillian's only friend. Perhaps Jillian had been hers. And now there was no one—no friend, no writing partner, nothing but this crappy apartment and a dead-end job.
“That's what I'm counting on,” he said.
She looked right at him then, homely and slightly exotic, greasy dark hair scraped back from her face, vaguely familiar—as every face in the world seemed to be to him after so many cases. Her small eyes seemed suddenly very clear as she said, “But does it reflect who we are or what we want?”
She got up and went across the room to a set of shelves made from cinder blocks and wood planks, and came back sorting through a file folder. Quinn rose and reached out for it, and Fine twisted away, giving him a look from beneath her lashes that was almost coquettish.
“It's the window to my soul too, Mr. Fed. Maybe I don't want you peeking.”
She held out half a dozen pieces of sheet music. Her fingernails had been bitten to the quick. Then she hugged the folder to her belly, an action that emphasized her small breasts beneath the tight T-shirt. She wasn't wearing a bra.
Liska put her briefcase on the table, popped it open, and produced a fingerprint kit. “We still need your prints, Michele. So we can eliminate them from all the prints taken in Jillian's town house. I knew you hadn't made it in to do that, busy as you are and all.”
Fine stared at the ink pad and print card, wary and unhappy.
“It'll take only a minute,” Liska said. “Have a seat.”
Fine fell down on her chair and offered her hand reluctantly.
“When was the last time you heard from Jillian?” Quinn asked.
“I saw her Friday before her session with the mind fucker,” Michele said as Liska rolled her thumb across the ink pad and pressed it to a card.
“She didn't call you Friday night?”
“No.”
“She didn't come to see you?”
“No.”
“Where were you around midnight, one o'clock?”
“In bed. Naked and alone.” She looked up at him from under her lashes. Sultry.
“Seems odd, don't you think?” Quinn asked. “She'd had a fight with her father. She was upset enough to run out of his house. But she didn't try to contact her best friend.”
“Well, Agent Quinn,” she said, the voice of sad experience. “I learned a long time ago, you can never really know what's in another person's heart. And sometimes that's just as well.”
KOVAC JAMMED THE Caprice into a Police Vehicles Only slot on the Fifth Street side of City Hall and abandoned it. Swearing a blue streak, he tried to run through the plow-made snowdrift covering the curb, sinking to his knee in one spot. Stumbling, staggering, he got over the hump and hurried up the steps and into the building. Breathing like a bellows. Heart working too hard to pump blood and adrenaline through arteries that probably looked like the inside of bad plumbing pipes.
Christ, he was going to have to get himself in shape if he wanted to survive another case like this one. Then again, his career wasn't likely to survive this one.
The hall was full of angry women who turned on him in a tide as he tried to negotiate his way to the criminal investigative division. It wasn't until he was swamped in the middle of them that he saw the protest signs bobbing above their heads: OUR LIVES MATTER TOO! JUSTICE: A PHOENIX RISING.
Their voices came at him in a barrage, like two dozen shotguns going off at once.
“Police harassment!”
“Only the Urskines want true justice!”
“Why don't you find the real killer!”
“That's what I'm trying to do, sister,” Kovac snapped at the woman blocking his path with a bitter scowl and a belly the size of a beer keg. “So why don't you move the wide load and let me get on with it?”
That was when he noticed the media. Flashes went off left and right. Shit.
Kovac kept moving. The only rule of survival in a situation like this: Shut your mouth and keep moving.
“Sergeant Kovac, is it true you ordered Gregg Urskine's arrest?”
&nb
sp; “No one is under arrest!” he shouted, forging through the mob.
“Kovac, has he confessed?”
“Was Melanie Hessler your mystery witness?”
Leak in the ME's office, he thought, shaking his head. That was what was wrong with this country—people would sell their mothers for the right money, and never think twice about the consequences to anyone else.
“No comment,” he barked, and pushed his way past the last of them.
He negotiated the clutter of boxes and file cabinets into homicide, hanging a right at Lieutenant Fowler's makeshift office. Toni Urskine's voice raked over his nerve endings like a serrated knife on raw meat.
“. . . And you can rest assured every station, every paper, every reporter who will listen to me, will hear about it! This is an absolute outrage! We have been victimized by these crimes. We have lost friends. We have suffered. And this is how we're treated by the Minneapolis Police Department after we've bent over backward to cooperate!”
Kovac ducked through the door into the offices. Yurek jumped up from his desk, telephone receiver stuck to the side of his face, and made wild eye contact with Kovac, holding up a hand to keep him in the general vicinity. Kovac held up for five seconds, motor running, the excitement he had brought with him into the building like currents of energy humming through his arms, his legs, his veins and arteries. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet like a boy who had to pee.
“I've got places to go and people to rake over the coals, Charm.”
Yurek nodded and said into the phone, “I'm sorry, ma'am. I have to go now. I have an emergency situation here. I'm sorry. Yes, someone will get back to you. I'm sorry, ma'am.”
He came around his desk, shaking his head. “These people are driving me batshit. There's a woman insisting her neighbor is the Cremator, and not only has he brutally murdered four women, she thinks he killed and ate her dog.”
“I got time for this shit like I got time for root canal,” Kovac snapped. “Is Quinn here?”
“He just got back. He's watching Urskine's interview,” Yurek said, falling in step beside Kovac, heading for the interview rooms. “I just got a call from upstairs—”
“And the woman with the dead poodle is the mayor? That's how frigging weird this case is.”
“No, before the dog lady. You're wanted in the mayor's office. They tried to get you on your cell phone.”
“Dead battery. And you didn't see me. The battle-ax can wait. I've got a big damn fish to fry. I've got Jonah's goddamn whale.”
Worry creased Yurek's perfect brow. “What do you mean, ‘big fish'? Where've you been?”
Kovac didn't answer, his mind already on the confrontation ahead. Quinn stood near the one-way glass, looking dead on his feet as he stared through to the next room, where Gregg Urskine sat across the table from Elwood.
“We paid cash. I couldn't find the receipt,” Urskine said, exasperated, fighting to keep that pleasant yuppie smile hanging on his face. “Do you keep all your receipts, Sergeant? Could you find a receipt for something you did months ago?”
“Yes, I could. I keep a simple but efficient home filing system,” Elwood said conversationally. “You never know when you might need a record of something. For tax purposes, for an alibi—”
“I don't need an alibi.”
“I know someone who does,” Kovac said, snagging Quinn's attention. “You want to take another ride?”
“What's up?”
“I just talked to Mrs. Donald Thorton, Peter Bondurant's ex-partner. You want to know how the emotionally unstable Sophie Bondurant got custody of Jillian in the divorce? You'll love this,” he promised sarcastically.
“I'm almost afraid to ask.”
“She threatened to expose him to the court and to the media. For molesting Jillian.”
29
CHAPTER
“OH, GOD,” YUREK groaned with dread.
Kovac wheeled on him. “What now? You want me to pretend I don't know Bondurant was molesting his daughter?”
“Allegedly molesting—”
“You think I don't know I've just stepped in it up to my ass?”
“I think you'd better hear what the mayor wants.”
“I could give a rat's—”
“She wants you in her office to give Mr. Bondurant a personal briefing on the status of the case. They're up there waiting for you now.”
The room fell silent for a heartbeat, then Elwood's calm voice came over the speaker again from the interview room next door. “Have you ever paid for sex, Mr. Urskine?”
“No!”
“No offense intended. It's just that working around all those women who've sold their bodies professionally might give rise to a certain curiosity. So to speak.”
Urskine shoved his chair back from the table. “That's it. I'm leaving. If you want to speak to me again, you can do it through my attorney.”
“All right,” Kovac said to Quinn, nerves and anticipation knotting in his stomach. “Let's go give the mayor and Mr. Bondurant the big update. I'll fill you in on the way.”
“I'M SURE YOU can understand Peter's need for closure in this matter,” Edwyn Noble said to Chief Greer. “Do we have any kind of time frame as to when the body may be released?”
“Not specifically.” Greer stood near the head of the mayor's conference table, feet slightly spread, hands clasped before him, like a soldier at ease, or a bouncer with an attitude. “I have a call in to Sergeant Kovac. I understand he's waiting to hear from the FBI lab on some tests. Possibly after those are completed, which could be any day—”
“I want to bury my daughter, Chief Greer.” Bondurant's voice was tight. He didn't look at the chief, but seemed to be staring into a dimension only he could see. He had ignored the offer of a seat, and moved restlessly around the conference room. “The thought of her body sitting in some refrigerated locker like so much meat . . . I want her back.”
“Peter darling, we understand,” Grace Noble said. “We feel your pain. And I can assure you, the task force is doing everything possible to solve this—”
“Really? Your lead detective has spent more time harassing me than he's spent pursuing any suspects.”
“Sergeant Kovac can be a bit gruff,” Greer said. “But his record in homicide speaks for itself.”
“At the risk of sounding glib, Chief Greer,” Edwyn Noble said, “Sergeant Kovac's record notwithstanding, what has he done for us lately? We have another victim. The killer seems to be thumbing his nose, not only at the task force, but at the city. Does Sergeant Kovac even have a viable suspect at this point?”
“Lieutenant Fowler tells me someone was questioned earlier today.”
“Who? A legitimate suspect?”
Greer frowned. “I'm not at liberty—”
“She was my daughter!” Peter shouted, the rage in his voice reverberating off the walls. He turned away from the stares of the others and put his hands over his face.
The mayor pressed a hand to her ample bosom, as if the sight was causing her chest pains.
“If someone has been brought in,” Noble said, the voice of reason, “then it will be only a matter of hours before the press reveals that information. That isn't a comment on the security of your force, per se, Chief. It's simply impossible to eliminate all leaks in a case of this magnitude.”
Greer looked from Bondurant's lawyer to Bondurant's lawyer's wife—his boss. Unhappy and unable to see any escape routes, he sighed heavily. “The caretaker from Ms. Bondurant's town house complex.”
The intercom buzzed, and Grace Noble answered it from the phone on the side table. “Mayor Noble, Sergeant Kovac and Special Agent Quinn are here to see you.”
“Send them in, Cynthia.”
Kovac was through the door almost before the mayor finished her sentence, his eyes finding Peter Bondurant like a pair of heat-seeking missiles. Bondurant looked thinner than he had the day before, his color worse. He met Kovac's gaze with an expression of stony d
islike.
“Sergeant Kovac, Agent Quinn, thank you for joining us,” the mayor said. “Let's all have seats and talk.”
“I'm not going into particulars of the case,” Kovac stated stubbornly. Neither would he sit down and be a still target for Bondurant or Edwyn Noble.
No one sat.
“We understand you have a suspect,” Edwyn Noble said.
Kovac gave him the eagle eye, then turned it on Dick Greer and thought cocksucker.
“No arrests have been made,” Kovac said. “We're still pursuing all avenues. I've just been down an interesting one myself.”
“Does Mr. Vanlees have an alibi for the night my daughter went missing?” Bondurant asked sharply. He looked at Kovac as he paced back and forth along the table, passing within a foot of him.
“Do you have an alibi for the night your daughter went missing, Mr. Bondurant?”
“Kovac!” the chief barked.
“With all due respect, Chief, I'm not in the habit of giving up my cases to anybody.”
“Mr. Bondurant is the father of a victim. There are extenuating circumstances.”
“Yeah, a few billion of them,” Kovac muttered.
“Sergeant!”
“Sergeant Kovac believes I should be punished for my wealth, Chief,” Bondurant said, still pacing, staring at the floor now. “He perhaps believes I deserved to lose my daughter so I could know what real suffering is.”
“After what I heard today, I believe you never deserved to have a daughter at all,” Kovac said, eliciting a gasp from the mayor. “You sure as hell deserved to lose her, but not in the way she's lost now. That is to say if she's dead at all—and we're nowhere near ready to say that she is.”
“Sergeant Kovac, I hope you have a very good explanation for this behavior.” Greer moved toward him aggressively, drawing his weight lifter's shoulders up.
Kovac stepped away from him. His full attention was on Peter Bondurant. And Peter Bondurant's attention was on him. He stopped his pacing, an instinctive wariness in the narrowed eyes, like an animal sensing danger.
“I had a long talk today with Cheryl Thorton,” Kovac said, and watched what color Peter Bondurant had leech away. “She had some very interesting things to say about your divorce from Jillian's mother.”