Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 14

It's nonaggressive, nonthreatening. He can come into that scenariofeeling anonymous and safe.

"It won't be easy to trick him unless his arrogance gets out of hand.

He's organized. He's of above-average intelligence. He's got a job, but.i.t may be beneath his capabilities. He knows the city parks system, soif you haven't done so already, you'll want to get a parks serviceemployee roster, see if anyone has a criminal record."

"Already happening," Kovac said.

"How do you know he has a job at all?" Tippen challenged. "How do youknow he's not some drifter, familiar with the parks because that's wherehe hangs out?"

"He's no drifter," Quinn said with certainty. "He's got a house. Thecrime scenes are not the death scenes. The women were abducted, takensomeplace, and held there. He needs privacy, a place where he cantorture his victims without having to worry about anyone hearing.

"Also, he may have more than one vehicle. He probably has access to a Suburban-type truck or a pickup. A basic package, older, dark in color, fairly well kept. Something to transport the bodies in, a vehicle that wouldn't seem out of place pulling into the service lot of a city park.

But this may not be what he's picking them up in, because a big vehicle would be conspicuous and memorable to witnesses."

"How do you know he's an underachiever?" Frank Hamill asked.

"Because that's the norm for this type of killer. He has a job because it's necessary. But his energies, his talents, are applied to his hobby.

He spends a lot of his time fantasizing. He lives for the next kill. A corporate CEO wouldn't have that kind of free time."

"Even though they're mostly psychopaths," someone joked.

Quinn flashed a shark smile. "Be glad some of them like their day jobs."

"What else?" Liska asked. "Any guesses on appearance?"

"I've got mixed feelings on this because of the conflicting victimology."

"Hookers go for cash, not flash," Elwood said.

"And if all three victims were hookers, I'd say we're looking for a guy

who's unattractive, maybe has some kind of problem like a stutter or a scar, something that would make it difficult for him to approach women.

But if our third vicis the daughter of a billionaire?" Quinn arched a

brow.

"Who knows what she might have been into."

"Is there any reason to think she was involved in prost.i.tution?" Quinn

asked. "On the surface she wouldn't seem to have much in common with the

first two victims."

"She doesn't have a record," Liska said. "But then, her father is Peter Bondurant."

"I need more extensive victimology on all three women," Quinn said. "If there's any kind of common link between them, that's a prime spot for you to start developing a suspect."

"Two hookers and a billionaire's daughter-what could they possibly have in common?" Yurek asked.

"Drugs," Liska said.

"A man," Mary Moss offered.

Kovac nodded. "You two want to work that angle?"

The women nodded.

"But maybe the guy just nabbed these women from behind," Tippen

suggested. "Maybe he didn't need to finesse them. Maybe he picked thembecause they were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"It's possible. It just doesn't feel that way to me," Quinn said. "He'stoo smooth. These women just vanished. No one saw a struggle. No oneheard a scream. Logic tells me they went with him willingly."

"So where's Bondurant's car?" Adler asked. Jillian's red Saab had yet tobe located.

"Maybe she picked him up," Liska said. "It's the nineties. Maybe he'sstill got her car,"

"So we're looking for a killer with a three-car garage?" Adler said.

"h.e.l.l, I am in the wrong line of work."

"You want to start whacking ex-wives for a living, you could fill thed.a.m.n garage with Porsches," Kovac joked.

Liska punched him in the arm. "Hey! I'm an ex-wife."

"Present company excluded."

Quinn took a long drink of his coffee while the jokes ran through thegroup. Humor was a safety valve for cops, releasing measured bursts ofpressure the job built up inside them. The members of this team werestanding at the start of what would undoubtedly be a long, unpleasantgauntlet. They would need to squeeze a joke in wherever they could. Thebetter their rapport as a unit, the better for the investigation. Heusually tossed in a few jokes himself to bend the image of thestraitlaced G-man.

"Sizewise," he went on, "he'll probably be medium height, mediumbuild-strong enough to tote a dead body around but not so big as to seema physical threat when he's approaching his victims. That's about asmuch as I can give you for now."

"What? Can't you just close your eyes and conjure up a psychicphotograph or something?" Adler said, only half joking.

"Sorry, Detective," Quinn said with a grin and a shrug. "If I werepsychic, I'd be making my living at the racetrack. Not a psychic cell inmy body."

"You would have if you was on TV."

"If we were on TV, we'd have solved these crimes in an hour," Elwoodsaid. "TV is why the public gets impatient with an investigation thatlasts more than two days. The whole d.a.m.n country lives on TV time."

"Speaking of TV," Hamill said, holding up a videoca.s.sette. "I've got thetape from the press conference."

A television with a built-in VCR sat atop a wheeled metal cart near thehead of the table. Hamill loaded the ca.s.sette and they all sat back towatch. At Quinn's request, a videographer from the BCA specialoperations unit had been stationed discreetly among the cameramen fromthe local stations with instructions to capture not the event, but thepeople gathered to take it in.

The voices of the mayor, Chief Greer, and the county attorney droned inthe background as the camera scanned the faces of reporters and cops andnews photographers. Quinn stared at the screen, tuned to pick up theslightest nuances of expression, the glint of something knowing in apair of eyes, the hint of something smug playing at the corners of amouth. His attention was on the people at the periphery of the crowd,people who seemed to be there by accident or coincidence.

He looked for that intangible, almost imperceptible something that set adetective's instincts on point. The knowledge that their killer mighthave been standing there among the unsuspecting, that he could have beenlooking at the face of a murderer without knowing, stirred a deep senseof frustration within. This killer wouldn't stand out. He wouldn't appear to be nervous. He wouldn't have the wild-eyed edginess that wouldgive him away as disorganized offenders often did.

He'd killed at least three women and gotten away with it. The police hadno viable leads. He had nothing to worry about. And he knew it.

"Well," Tippen said dryly. "I don't see anyone carrying an extra headwith them."

"We could be looking right at him and not know it," Kovac said, hittingthe power b.u.t.ton on the remote control. "But if we come up with apossible suspect, we can go back and look again."

"We gonna get that composite from the wit today, Sam?" Adler asked.

Kovac's mouth twisted a little. "I sure as h.e.l.l hope so. I've alreadyhad calls from the chief and Sabin about it." And they would ride hisa.s.s until they got it. He was the primary. He ran the investigation andtook the heat. "In the meantime, let's make a.s.signments and hit thebricks before Smokey Joe decides to light up another one."

PETER BONDURANTIS HOME was a sprawling old Tudor with an expensive viewof Lake of the Isles beyond its tall iron bar fence.

Tall bare-branched trees studded the lawn. One broad wall of the stucco home was crazed with a network of vines, dry and brown this time of year.

Just a few miles from the heart of Minneapolis, it discreetly displayedsigns of city life paranoia along the fence and on the closed drivewaygate in the form of blue-and-white security company signs.

Quinn tried to take it all in visually and still pay attention to thecall on his cell phone. A suspect had been apprehended in the childabduction in Blacksburg, Virginia. The CASKU agent on site wanted toconfirm a strategy for the interrogation. Quinn was sounding board andguru. He listened, agreed, made a suggestion, and signed off as quicklyas he could, wanting his focus on the matter at hand.

"The man in demand," Kovac remarked as he swung the car into the drivetoo fast and hit the brakes, rocking to a stop beside the intercompanel.

His gaze moved past Quinn to the news vans parked on either side of thestreet. The occupants of the vans stared back.

"Lousy vultures."

A voice crackled from the intercom speaker. "Yes?"

"John Quinn, FBI," Kovac said with drama, flashing a comic look atQuinn, The gate rolled open, then closed behind them. The reporters madeno move to rush in. Midwestern manners, Quinn thought, knowing full wellthere were places in this country where the press would have stormed theplace and demanded answers as if they had a right to tear apart thegrief that belonged to the victim's family. He'd seen it happen. He'dseen promotion-hungry reporters dig through people's garbage for sc.r.a.psof information that could be turned into speculative headlines. He'dseen them crash funerals.

A black Lincoln Continental polished to a hard shine sat in the drivewaynear the house. Kovac pulled his dirt-brown Caprice alongside the luxurycar and turned the key. The engine rattled on pathetically for half aminute.

"Cheap piece of c.r.a.p," he muttered. "TWENTY-two years on the job and Iget the worst f.u.c.king car in the fleet. You know why?"

"Because you won't kiss the right a.s.s?" Quinn ventured.

Kovac huffed a laugh. "I'm not kissing anything that's got a d.i.c.k on theflip side." He chuckled to himself as he dug through a pile of junk onthe seat, finally coming up with a mini-ca.s.sette recorder, which heoffered to Quinn.

"In case he still won't talk to me .. . By Minnesota law, only one partyto a conversation needs to grant permission to tape that conversation."

"h.e.l.l of a law for a state full of Democrats."

"We're practical. We've got a killer to catch. Maybe Bondurant knowssomething he doesn't realize. Or maybe he'll say something that won'tring a bell with you because you're not from here."

Quinn slipped the recorder into the inside breast pocket of his suitcoat. "The end justifies the means."

"You know it."

"Better than most."

"Does it ever get to you?" Kovac asked as they got out of the car.

"Working serial murders and child abductions twenty-four/seven. I gottathink that'd get to me. At least some of the stiffs I get deserved toget whacked. How do you cope?"

I don't. The response was automatic-and just as automatically unspoken.

He didn't cope. He never had. He just shoveled it all into the big darkpit inside him and hoped to h.e.l.l the pit didn't overflow.

"Focus on the win column," he said.

The wind cut across the lake, kicking up whitecaps on water that lookedlike mercury, and chasing dead leaves across the dead lawn. It flirted with the tails of Quinn's and Kovac's trench coats. The sky looked likedirty cotton batting sinking down on the city.

"I drink," Kovac confessed amiably. "I smoke and I drink."

A grin tugged at Quinn's mouth. "And chase women?"

"Now, I gave that up. It's a bad habit."

Edwyn n.o.ble answered the door. Lurch with a law degree. His expressionfroze at the sight of Kovac.

"Special Agent Quinn," he began as they moved past him into an entryhall of carved mahogany paneling. A ma.s.sive wrought iron chandelier hungfrom the second-story ceiling. "I don't remember you mentioning SergeantKovac when you called."

Quinn flashed him innocence. "Didn't I? Well, Sam offered to drive me,and I don't know my way around the city, so .. ."

"I've been wanting to talk to Mr. Bondurant myself anyway," Kovac saidcasually, browsing the artwork on display in the hall, his hands stuffedinto his pockets as if he were afraid of breaking something.