Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 2

NOVEMBER 27.

PATRICK'S 1600HRS Sabin gave the receptionist a dismissive wave and tooka right into the homicide offices. The room was a maze of ugly steeldesks the color of dirty putty. Some desks were occupied, most were not.Some were neat, most were awash in paperwork. Notes and photographs andcartoons were tacked and taped to walls and cabinets. A notice on oneside of the door ordered: HOMICIDE-LOCK UP YOUR GUNS!

Telephone receiver pressed to his ear, Sam Kovac spotted them, scowled,and waved them over. A twenty-two-year veteran, Kovac had that universalcop look about him with the requisite mustache and cheap haircut, bothsandy brown and liberally threaded with silver.

"Yeah, I realize you're dating my second wife's sister, Sid." He pulleda fresh pack of Salems from a carton on his desk and fumbled with thecellophane wrapper. He had shed the jacket of his rumpled brown suit andjerked his tie loose. "That doesn't ent.i.tle you to inside information onthis murder. All that'll get you is my sympathy. Yeah?

Yeah? She said that? Well, why do you think I left her? Uh-huh.

Uhhuh. Is that right?"

He bit at the tab on the cigarette wrapper and ripped the pack open withhis teeth. "You hear that, Sid? That's the sound of me tearing you a newone if you print a word of that. You understand me?

You want information? Come to the press conference with everybody else.

Yeah? Well, same to you."

He slammed the receiver down and turned his scowl on the countyattorney.

His eyes were the green-brown of damp bark, bloodshot, and hard andbright with intelligence. "d.a.m.n newsies. This is gonna get uglier thanmy aunt Selma, and she has a face that could make a bulldog puke."

"Do they have Bondurant's name?" Sabin asked.

"Of course they do." He pulled a cigarette from the pack and let itdangle from his lip as he rummaged through the junk on his desk.

"They're all over this like flies on dog c.r.a.p," he said, glancing backat them over his shoulder. "Hi, Kate- Jesus, what happened to you?"

"Long story. I'm sure you'll hear it at Patrick's tonight. Where's our witness?"

"Down the hall."

"Is she working with the sketch artist yet?" Sabin asked.

Kovac blew air between his lips and made a sound like a disgusted horse.

"She's not even working with us yet. Our citizen isn't exactly overjoyedto be the center of attention here."

Rob Marshall looked alarmed. "She's not a problem, is she?" He flashedthe bootlicker's smile at Sabin. "I suppose she's just shaken up, Mr.Sabin. Kate will settle her down."

"What's your take on the witness, Detective?" Sabin asked.

Kovac s.n.a.t.c.hed up a Bic lighter and a messy file and started for thedoor. World-weary and nicked up, his build was at once solid and rangy,utilitarian rather than ornamental. His brown pants were a little baggyand a little too long, the cuffs puddling over the tops of his heelwornoxfords.

"Oh, she's a daisy," he said with sarcasm. "She gives us what's gotta bea stolen out-of-state driver's license. Tells us she's living at anapartment in the Phillips neighborhood but she's got no keys for it andcan't tell us who has. If she hasn't got a sheet, I'll shave my a.s.s andpaint it blue."

"So, you ran her and what?" Kate asked, forcing herself to keep pacewith him, so that Sabin and Rob had to fall in behind. She had learnedlong ago to cultivate friendships with the cops who worked her cases. Itwas to her advantage to have them as allies rather than adversaries.

Besides, she liked the good ones, like Kovac. They did a hard job forlittle credit and not enough pay for the plain old-fashioned reason thatthey believed in the necessity of it. She and Kovac had built a nicerapport in five years.

"I tried to run the name she's using today," he qualified. "The f.u.c.kingcomputer's down. Swell day this is gonna be. I'm on nights thisrotation, you know. I oughta be home in bed. My team is on nights. Ihate this team-concept c.r.a.p. Give me a partner and leave me the h.e.l.lalone. You know what I mean? I got half a mind to transfer out to s.e.xcrimes."

"And turn your back on all this fame and glamour?" Kate teased, b.u.mpinghim with a subtle elbow.

He gave her a look, tilting his head down in conspiracy. A spark of wryhumor lit his eyes. "s.h.i.t, Red. I like my stiffs uncomplicated, youknow."

"I've heard that about you, Sam," she joked, knowing he was the bestinvestigator in the PD, a straight-up good guy who lived the job andhated the politics of it.

He huffed a laugh and pulled open the door to a small room that lookedinto another through the murky gla.s.s of a one-way mirror. On the otherside of the gla.s.s, Nikki Liska, another detective, stood leaning against one wall, eyes locked in a staredown with the girl who sat on the farside of the fake-woodgrain table. A bad sign. The situation had alreadybecome adversarial. The table was littered with soda cans and papercoffee cups and doughnut chunks and fragments.

The sense of dread in Kate's belly gained a pound as she stared throughthe gla.s.s. She put the girl at maybe fifteen or sixteen. Pale and thin,she had a b.u.t.ton nose and the lush, ripe mouth of a high-priced callgirl.

Her face was a narrow oval, the chin a little too long, so that shewould probably look defiant without trying. Her eyes tilted at an exoticSlavic angle, and looked twenty years too old.

"She's a kid," Kate declared flatly, looking to Rob with confusion andaccusation. "I don't do kids. You know that."

"We need you to do this one, Kate."

"Why?" she demanded. "You've got a whole juvenile division at yourdisposal. G.o.d knows they deal with murder on a regular basis."

"This is different. This isn't some gang shoot-'em-up we're dealingwith," Rob said, seemingly relegating some of the most violent crime inthe city to the same category as shoplifting and traffic mishaps.

"We're dealing with a serial killer."

Even in a profession that dealt with murder as a matter of routine, thewords serial killer struck a chord. Kate wondered if their bad guy wasaware of that, if he reveled in the idea, or if he was too completelybound up in his own small world of hunting and killing. She had seenboth types.

All their victims ended up equally dead.

She turned from her director and looked again at the girl who hadcrossed paths with this latest predator. Angie Dimarco, glared at themirror, resentment pulsing from her in invisible waves. She picked up afat black pen from the table and very deliberately drew the cap endslowly back and forth along her full lower lip in a gesture that wasboth impatient and sensuous.

Sabin gave Kate his profile as if he were posing for a currency engraver.

"You've dealt with this kind of case before, Kate. With the Bureau. Youhave a frame of reference. You know what to expect with theinvestigation and with the media. You may well know the agent they sendfrom the Investigative Support Unit. That could be helpful.

We need every edge we can get."

"I studied victims. I dealt with dead people." She didn't like theanxiety coming to life inside her. Didn't like having it, didn't want toexamine its source. "There's a big difference between working with adead person and working with a kid. Last I heard, dead people were morecooperative than teenagers."

"You're a witness advocate," Rob said, his voice taking on a slight whine. "She's a witness."

Kovac, who had propped himself up against the wall to watch theexchange, gave her a wan smile. "Can't pick your relatives or yourwitnesses, Red.

I would have liked Mother Teresa to come running out of that park lastnight."

"No, you wouldn't," Kate returned. "The defense would claim she hadcataracts and Alzheimer's, and say anyone who believes a man can risefrom the dead three days after the fact is a less than crediblewitness."

Kovac's mustache twitched. "Sc.u.m lawyers."

Rob looked bemused. "Mother Teresa's dead."

Kate and Kovac rolled their eyes in unison.

Sabin cleared his throat and looked pointedly at his watch. "We need toget going with this. I want to hear what she has to say."

Kate arched a brow. "And you think she'll just tell you? You don't getout of the office enough, Ted."

"She'd d.a.m.n well better tell us," he said ominously, and started for thedoor.

Kate stared through the gla.s.s for one last moment, her eyes meetingthose of her witness, even though she knew the girl couldn't see her. Ateenager. Christ, they could just as well have a.s.signed her a Martian.She was n.o.body's mother. And there was a reminder she didn't need orwant.

She looked into the girl's pale face and saw anger and defiance andexperience no kid that age should have. And she saw fear. Buried beneatheverything else, held as tight inside her as a secret, there was fear.

Kate didn't let herself acknowledge what it was inside her own soul thatlet her recognize that fear.

In the interview room, Angie Dimarco flicked a glance at Liska, who waslooking at her watch. She turned her eyes back to the oneway gla.s.s andslipped the pilfered pen inside the neckline of her sweater.

"A kid," Kate muttered as Sabin and Rob Marshall stepped out ,into thehall ahead of her. "I wasn't even good at being one."

"That's perfect," Kovac said, holding the door open for her. "Neither isshe."

LISKA, SHORT, BLOND, and athletic with a boy's haircut, rolled away fromthe wall and gave them all a weary smile as they entered the interviewroom. She looked like Tinker Bell on steroidsor so Kovac had declared when he christened her with the nickname Tinks.

"Welcome to the fun house," she said. "Coffee, anybody?"

"Decal for me and one for our friend at the table, please, Nikki," Kate said softly, never taking her eyes off the girl, trying to formulate astrategy.

Kovac spilled himself into a chair and leaned against the table with onearm, his blunt-tipped fingers scratching at chocolate sprinkles that layscattered like mouse t.u.r.ds on the tabletop.

"Kate, this is Angie Dimarco," he said casually. "Angie, this is KateConlan from the victim/witness program. She's being a.s.signed to yourcase."

"I'm not a case," the girl snapped. "Who are they?"

"County Attorney Ted Sabin and Rob Marshall from victim/witness." Kovacpointed to one and then the other as the men took seats across the tablefrom their prized witness.

Sabin gave her his best Ward Cleaver expression. "We're very interestedin what you have to say, Angie. This killer we're after is a dangerousman."

"No s.h.i.t." The girl turned back to Kovac. Her glare homed in on hismouth. "Can I have a smoke?"

He pulled the cigarette from his lips and looked at it. "h.e.l.l, I can'teven have one," he confessed. "It's a smoke-free building. I was goingoutside with this."

"That sucks. I'm stuck in this f.u.c.king room half the f.u.c.king night and Ican't even have a f.u.c.king cigarette!"

She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. Her brown hair was oily and parted down the middle, falling loose around her shoulders. Shewore too much mascara, which had smudged beneath her eyes, and a fadedCalvin Klein denim jacket that had once belonged to someone named Rick.

The name was printed in indelible ink above the left breast pocket. Shekept the jacket on despite the fact that the room was warm. Security orhiding needle tracks, Kate figured.

"Oh, for G.o.dsake, Sam, give her a cigarette," Kate said, shoving up thesleeves of her sweater. She took the vacant chair on the girl's side ofthe table. "And give me one too, while you're at it. If the PC n.a.z.iscatch us, we'll all go down together. What're they gonna do? Ask us toleave this rat hole?"

She watched the girl out of the corner of her eye as Kovac shook twomore cigarettes out of the pack. Angie's fingernails were bitten to thequick and painted metallic ice blue. Her hand trembled as she took thegift.

She wore an a.s.sortment of cheap silver rings, and two small, crudeballpoint tattoos marred her pale skin-a cross near her thumb, and theletter A with a horizontal line across the top. A professional jobcircled her wrist, a delicate blue ink bracelet of thorns.

"You've been here all night, Angie?" Kate asked, drawing on thecigarette. It tasted like dried s.h.i.t. She couldn't imagine why she hadever taken up the habit in her college days. The price of cool, shesupposed.

And now it was the price of bonding.

"Yes." Angie fired a stream of smoke up at the ceiling. "And they wouldn't get me a lawyer either."

"You don't need a lawyer, Angie," Kovac said congenially. "You're not

being charged with anything."

"Then why can't I blow this s.h.i.thole?"

"We got a lot of complications to sort out. For instance, the matter of

your identification."

"I gave you my ID."

He pulled it from the file and handed it to Kate with a meaningful lift

of his eyebrows.

"You're twenty-one," Kate read deadpan, flicking ashes into an abandoned cup of oily coffee.

"That's what it says."

"It says you're from Milwaukee-"

"Was. I left."

"Any family there?"

"They're dead."

t'i'm sorry."

"I doubt it."