Ashes to Ashes

by Tami Hoag

  Elwood sat in a chair with his back against the wall. Both hands were bandaged. His face was seared red. Without eyebrows his expression seemed one of perpetual unpleasant surprise.

  “I hear you had a little accident, Gil,” Kovac said, falling into a chair at the table.

  Vanlees pointed a finger at him. “I'm gonna sue. You people harassed me, you let the press harass me—”

  “You got behind the wheel of a truck with a snootful,” Kovac said, lighting a cigarette. “Did I buy it for you? Did I pour it down your throat?”

  “Your people let me get behind that wheel,” Vanlees began with all the sanctimonious indignation of a master at rationalization. He shot a quick, nervous glance at Elwood.

  Kovac made a face. “Next thing you're gonna tell me it's my fault you killed Jillian Bondurant and those other women.”

  Vanlees reddened, his eyes teared. He made a sound like a man straining on the toilet. “I didn't.” He turned on Liska then. “You told me this was about the accident. You're such a lying little cunt!”

  “Hey!” Kovac barked. “Sergeant Liska's doing you a favor. You killed someone last night, you fucking drunk.”

  “That wasn't my fault! That son of a bitch shot a flash off in my face! I couldn't see!”

  “That's what Sergeant Liska says. She was there. She's your witness. You want to call her a cunt again? I was her, I'd feed you your dick for dinner, you sorry sack of shit.”

  Vanlees looked at Liska, contrite.

  “Liska says you're innocent as a vestal virgin,” Kovac went on, “and that you don't want a lawyer. Is that right?”

  “I haven't done anything wrong,” he said, sulking.

  Kovac shook his head. “Wow. You've got a broad definition of reality there, Gil. We've got you dead to rights on the DUI—which is wrong by law. I know you were looking in Jillian Bondurant's windows. That would be considered wrong.”

  Vanlees sat down, chair turned sideways to the table, presenting his back to Kovac and to the people on the other side of the one-way glass. He rested his forearms on his thighs and looked at the floor. He looked prepared to sit there all night without saying another word.

  Quinn studied him. In his experience it wasn't the innocent man who refused counsel, it was the man with something on his conscience he wanted to unload.

  “So, were those Jillian's panties we pulled out from under your driver's seat, Gil?” Kovac asked bluntly.

  Vanlees kept his head down. “No.”

  “Lila White's? Fawn Pierce's? Melanie Hessler's?”

  “No. No. No.”

  “You know, I wouldn't have guessed it looking at you, but you're a complex individual, Gil,” Kovac said. “Multilayered—like an onion. And every layer I peel away smells worse than the last. You look like an average Joe. Peel one layer back and—oh!—your wife's leaving you! Well, that's not so unusual. I'm a two-time loser myself. Peel another layer back and—jeez!—she's leaving you because you're a window peeper! No, wait, you're not just a window peeper. You're a weenie wagger! You're just one big, bad progressive joke. You're a drunk. You're a drunk who drives. You're a drunk who drives and gets somebody killed.”

  Vanlees hung his head lower. Quinn could see the man's swollen mouth quivering.

  “I didn't mean to. I couldn't see,” Vanlees said in a thick voice. “They won't leave me alone. That's your fault. I didn't do anything.”

  “They want to know what happened to Jillian,” Kovac said. “I want to know what happened to her too. I think there was something more going on between you than what you're telling us, Gil. I think you had the hots for her. I think you were watching her. I think you stole those panties out of her dresser so you could whack off with them and fantasize about her, and I'm gonna prove it. We already know the panties are her size, her brand,” he bluffed. “It's just a matter of time before we get the DNA match. A few weeks. You'd better get used to those reporters, 'cause they're gonna be on you like flies on roadkill.”

  Vanlees was crying now. Silently. Tears dripping onto the backs of his hands. He was trembling with the effort to hold them back.

  Quinn looked to Kovac. “Sergeant, I'd like to have a few moments alone with Mr. Vanlees.”

  “Oh, sure, like I got nothing better to do,” Kovac complained, getting up. “I know where this is going, Quinn. You G-men want it all to yourself. Fuck that. His ass is mine.”

  “I just want a few words with Mr. Vanlees.”

  “Uh-huh. You don't like the way I talk to this piece of cheese. You're sitting there thinking I should go easy on him on account of his prostitute mother used to beat his bare ass with a wire hanger or some such psychobabble bullshit. Fine. I'll see you in the headlines, I'm sure.”

  Quinn said nothing until the cops had gone out, and then he said nothing for a long time. He took a Tagamet and washed it down with water from the plastic pitcher on the table. Casually, he turned his chair perpendicular to Vanlees's, leaned ahead, rested his forearms on his thighs, and sat there some more, until Vanlees glanced up at him.

  “More of that good cop-bad cop shit,” Vanlees said, pouting. “You think I'm a dumb shit.”

  “I think you watch too much TV,” Quinn said. “This is the real world, Gil. Sergeant Kovac and I don't have identical agendas here.

  “I'm not interested in headlines, Gil. I've had plenty. You know that. I get them automatically. You know all I'm interested in, right? You know about me. You've read about me.”

  Vanlees said nothing.

  “The truth and justice. That's it. And I don't care what the truth turns out to be. It's not personal with me. With Kovac, everything is personal. He's got you in his crosshairs. All I want to know is the truth, Gil. I want to know your truth. I get the feeling you've got something heavy on your chest, and maybe you want to get it off, but you don't trust Kovac.”

  “I don't trust you either.”

  “Sure you do. You know about me. I've been nothing but up front with you, Gil, and I think you appreciate that on some level.”

  “You think I killed Jillian.”

  “I think you fit the profile in a lot of respects. I admit that. Moreover, if you look at the situation objectively, you'll agree with me. You've studied this stuff. You know what we look for. You know some of your pieces fit the puzzle. But that doesn't mean I believe you killed her. I don't necessarily believe Jillian is dead.”

  “What?” Vanlees looked at him as if he thought Quinn might have lost his mind.

  “I think there's a lot more to Jillian than first meets the eye. And I think you may have something to say about that. Do you, Gil?”

  Vanlees looked at the floor again. Quinn could feel the pressure building in him as he weighed the pros and cons of answering truthfully.

  “If you were watching her, Gil,” Quinn said very softly, “you're not going to get in trouble for that. That's not the focus here. The police will gladly let that go in trade for something they can use.”

  Vanlees seemed to consider that, never thinking, Quinn was sure, that the “something” they were looking for could in turn be used against him. He was thinking of Jillian, of how he might cast some odd light on her and away from himself, because that was what people tended to do when they found themselves in big trouble—blame the other guy. Criminals regularly blamed their victims for the crimes committed against them.

  “You were attracted to her, right?” Quinn said. “That's not a crime. She was a pretty girl. Why shouldn't you look?”

  “I'm married,” he mumbled.

  “You're married, you're not dead. Looking is free. So you looked. I don't have a problem with that.”

  “She was . . . different,” Vanlees said, still staring at the floor but seeing Jillian Bondurant, Quinn thought. “Kind of . . . exotic.”

  “You told Kovac she didn't come on to you, but that's not exactly true, is it?” Quinn ventured, still speaking softly, an intimate chat between acquaintances. “She was aware of you, wasn't she, Gil?”
/>
  “She never said anything, but she'd look at me in a certain way,” he admitted.

  “Like she wanted you.” A statement, not a question, as if it came as no surprise.

  Vanlees shied away from that. “I don't know. Like she wanted me to know she was looking, that's all.”

  “Kind of mixed signals.”

  “Yeah. Mixed signals.”

  “Did anything come of it?”

  Vanlees hesitated, struggled. Quinn waited, held his breath.

  “I just want the truth, Gil. If you're innocent, it won't hurt you. It's just between us. Man to man.”

  The silence stretched.

  “I—I know it was wrong,” Vanlees murmured at last. “I didn't really mean to do it. But I was checking the yards one night, making the rounds—”

  “When was this?”

  “This summer. And . . . I was there . . .”

  “At Jillian's house.”

  He nodded. “She was playing the piano, wearing a silky robe that wanted to fall off her shoulder. I could see her bra strap.”

  “So you watched her for a while,” Quinn said, as if it was only natural, any man would do it, no harm.

  “Then she slipped the robe off and stood up and stretched.”

  Vanlees was seeing it all in his mind. His respiration rate had picked up, and a fine sheen of sweat misted his face. “She started moving her body, like a dance. Slow and very . . . erotic.”

  “Did she know you were there?”

  “I didn't think so. But then she came to the window and pulled the cups of her bra down so I could see her tits, and she pressed them right to the glass and rubbed against it,” he said in a near whisper, ashamed, thrilled. “She—she licked the window with her tongue.”

  “Jesus, that must have been very arousing for you.”

  Vanlees blinked, embarrassed, looked away. This would be where parts of the story would go missing. He wouldn't tell about getting an erection or taking his penis out and masturbating while he watched her. Then again, he didn't have to. Quinn knew his history, knew the patterns of behavior, had seen it over and over in the years of studying criminal sexual behavior. He wasn't learning anything new here about Gil Vanlees. But if the story was true, he was learning something very significant about Jillian Bondurant.

  “What'd she do then?” he asked softly.

  Vanlees shifted on his chair, physically uncomfortable. “She—she pulled her panties down and she . . . touched herself between her legs.”

  “She masturbated in front of you?”

  His face flushed. “Then she opened the window and I got scared and ran. But later I went back, and she had dropped her panties out the window.”

  “And those are the panties the police found in your truck. They are Jillian's.”

  He nodded, bringing one hand up to his forehead as if to try to hide his face. Quinn watched him, trying to gauge him. Truth or a tale to cover his ass for having the underwear of a possible murder victim in his possession?

  “When was this?” he asked again.

  “Back this summer. July.”

  “Did anything like that ever happen again?”

  “No.”

  “Did she ever say anything about it to you?”

  “No. She almost never talked to me at all.”

  “Mixed signals,” Quinn said again. “Did that make you mad, Gil? That she would strip in front of you, masturbate in front of you, then pretend like nothing happened. Pretend like she hardly knew you, like you weren't good enough for her. Did that piss you off?”

  “I didn't do anything to her,” he whispered.

  “She was a tease. If a woman did that to me—got me hard and hot for her, then turned it off—I'd be pissed. I'd want to fuck her good, make her pay attention. Didn't you want to do that, Gil?”

  “But I never did.”

  “But you wanted to have sex with her, didn't you? Didn't some part of you want to teach her a lesson? That dark side we all have, where we hold grudges and plan revenge. Don't you have a dark side, Gil? I do.”

  He waited again, the tension coiled tight inside him.

  Vanlees looked bleak, defeated, as if the full import of all that had happened tonight had finally sunk in.

  “Kovac is going to try to hang that murder on me,” he said. “Because those panties are Jillian's. Because of what I just told you. Even when she was the bad one, not me. That's what's going to happen, isn't it?”

  “You make a good suspect, Gil. You see that, don't you?”

  He nodded slowly, thinking.

  “Her father was there, at the town house,” he mumbled. “Sunday morning. Early. Before dawn. I saw him coming out. Monday his lawyer gave me five hundred dollars not to say anything.”

  Quinn absorbed the information in silence, weighing it, gauging it. Gil Vanlees was ass deep in alligators. He might say anything. He might say he'd seen a stranger, a vagrant, a one-armed man near Jillian's apartment. He chose to say he'd seen Peter Bondurant, and that Peter Bondurant had paid him to shut up.

  “Early Sunday morning,” Quinn said.

  Vanlees nodded. No eye contact.

  “Before dawn.”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you doing around there at that hour, Gil? Where were you that you saw him—and that he saw you?”

  Vanlees shook his head this time—at the question or at something playing through his own mind. He seemed to have aged ten years in the last ten minutes. There was something pathetic about him sitting there in his security guard's uniform, the wanna-be cop playing pretend. The best he could do.

  He spoke in a small, soft voice. “I want to call a lawyer now.”

  32

  CHAPTER

  KATE SAT ON the old leather couch in her study, curled into one corner, warding off the old house's morning chill with black leggings, thick wool socks, and a baggy old sweatshirt she hadn't worn in years. Quinn had given it to her back when. The name of the gym he frequented was stitched across the front. That she'd kept it all this time should have told her something, but then, she'd always been selectively deaf.

  She had pulled it out of her closet after Quinn had gone to meet with the task force, freshening it in the clothes drier for a few minutes, and putting it on while it was still warm, pretending it was his warmth. A poor substitute for the feel of his arms around her. Still, it made her feel closer to him somehow. And after a night in his arms, the need for that was strong.

  God, what an inconvenient time to rediscover love. But given their professions and their lives, what choice did they have? They were both too aware that life held no guarantees. Too aware that they had already given up too much time they could never get back because of fear and pride and pain.

  Kate imagined she could look down from the height of another dimension and see the two of them as that time had passed. Her time spent focusing myopically on the minutiae of building a “normal” life for herself with a job and hobbies and people she saw socially at the requisite functions and holidays. Nothing deeper. Going through the motions, pretending not to mind the numbness in her soul. Figuring it was preferable to the alternative. Quinn's time poured into the job, the job, the job. Taking on more responsibility to fill the void, until the weight of it threatened to crush him. Crowding his brain with cases and facts until he couldn't keep them straight. Giving away pieces of himself and masking others until he couldn't remember what was genuine. Exhausting the well of strength that had once seemed almost bottomless. Wearing his confidence in his abilities and his judgment as threadbare as the lining of his stomach.

  Both of them denying themselves the one thing they had needed most to heal after all that had happened: each other.

  Sad, what people could do to themselves, and to each other, Kate thought, her gaze skimming across the pages of the victimologies she had spread out on the coffee table. Four more lives fucked up and ruined before they had ever met the Cremator. Five with Angie. Ruined because they needed love and couldn'
t find anything but a twisted, cheap replica. Because they wanted things out of their reach. Because it seemed easier to settle for less than work for more. Because they believed they didn't deserve anything better. Because the people around them who should have, didn't believe they deserved better either. Because they were women, and women are automatic targets in American society.

  All of those reasons made a victim.

  Everyone was a victim of something. The difference in people was what they did about it—succumb or rise above and move beyond. The women whose pictures lay before her would not be given that choice again.

  Kate leaned over the coffee table, skimming her gaze across the reports. She had called the office to say she was taking some personal time. She'd been told Rob was out as well, and that office speculation was that they had beaten each other up and didn't want anyone to see the bruises. Kate said it was more likely Rob was still working on his written complaint to put in her personnel file.

  At least she was free of him for the day. Which would have been a sweet deal if not for the photographs she had to look at of burned and mutilated women, and if not for all the emotions and depressing realities that those photographs evoked.

  Everyone was a victim of something.

  This group presented a depressing laundry list. Prostitution, drugs, alcohol, assault, rape, incest—if what Kovac had been told about Jillian Bondurant was true. Victims of crime, victims of their upbringing.

  From a distance, Jillian Bondurant would have seemed to have been the anomaly because she wasn't a prostitute or in any sex-associated profession, but from the standpoint of her psychological profile, she wasn't all that far removed from Lila White or Fawn Pierce. Confused and conflicted feelings about sex and about men. Low self-esteem. Emotionally needy. Outwardly, she would seem not to have had as hard a life as a streetwalking prostitute because she wasn't as vulnerable to the same kind of crime and open violence. But there was nothing easy about suffering in silence, covering up pain and damage to save face for the family.

  Quinn said there was considerable doubt that Jillian was dead at all, but that didn't mean she wasn't a victim. If she was Smokey Joe's accomplice, she was just a victim of another sort. The Cremator himself had been a victim once. Victimization as a child was one of many components that went into making a serial killer.