Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 35

People preferred to believe the worst because it seemed less apt totouch their own lives.

And so Kate had kept her secret to herself-and the guilt and regret andheartache that were part and parcel of the deal. And she'd built thatnew life a block at a time, careful to give it a good foundation andbalance.

The job was eight-to-five most days. Clients came and went. She got tohelp them in specific ways, and then their lives moved on and out ofhers.

Her involvement was finite and manageable.

Even as she thought that, she saw Angie in her mind's eye, and took along pull on the Sapphire. She remembered the girl's tears, the toughkid, the street kid, curled in on herself and crying like the child shewould never admit she was. Scared and embarra.s.sed and ashamed -and she would never admit that either.

Kate had kneeled at Angie's feet, maintaining contact with onehand-touching the girl's hand or her knee or stroking her head as shedoubled over and tried to hide her face. And the whole time, the sameloop of emotions, the same chain of thoughts, played through Kate'smind-that she was n.o.body's mother, that this connection she was makingto this girl was more than Kate wanted and less than Angie needed.

But the stark truth was that Kate was all she had. The ball was in her court and there was no one else to dump it to. There wasn't anotheradvocate in the office who would stand up to Ted Sabin.

There weren't that many who would stand up to Angie.

The story the girl told was short and sad and sordid. She had got pickedup on Lake Street and dumped out in the park, a disposable s.e.x toy for aman who never even asked her name. He paid her twenty when the goingrate was thirty-five, told her to call a cop when she complained, shovedher out of his vehicle, and drove away. He left her there in the middleof the night like an unwanted kitten.

The image of her standing there alone, disheveled, smelling of s.e.x, witha crumpled twenty in her pocket stuck in Kate's mind. Abandoned. Alone.

Her life stretching out in front of her like forty miles of bad road.

She couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen. Not that much older than Emily would have been if she had lived.

The tears rose up in a sneak attack. Kate took another sip of the ginand tried to swallow the knot down with it. There was no time for cryingand no point in it. Emily was gone and Angie was no subst.i.tute.

She didn't even want a subst.i.tute. The sudden sense of emptiness couldbe dodged or numbed. She was an old hand at it. Put the pain back in itsbox. Keep those walls up high. G.o.d forbid anyone see over them .. .

herself included.

The fatigue and the alcohol pulled at her as she got up and headed forthe den. She had to check her messages. And she wanted to call thePhoenix to make one last connection with Angie for the night-tostrengthen the connection that had been made that afternoon.

She refused to let herself think of the girl sitting alone in her roomat the Phoenix, feeling vulnerable and afraid and disappointed inherself for reaching out. She refused to think that she should havetried harder to make that connection go deeper.

The entry hall was lit by a streetlight half a block away, theillumination coming soft and silver through a pair of sidelights Katekept meaning to get rid of. It was a simple matter to break a sidelightand get into a house. That reminder unfailingly came at night justbefore she went upstairs to bed.

A lamp burned low in the library-c.u.m-office, a room she had left muchthe way she remembered it from childhood, when her father had been amidlevel executive for Honeywell. Cluttered and masculine with a st.u.r.dyoak desk and a couple of hundred books lining the walls, it smelled ofleather upholstery and the faintest memory of good cigars. The messagelight on the answering machine flickered like a flame, but the phonerang before she could hit the playback b.u.t.ton.

"Kate Conlan."

"Kovac. Get your f.a.n.n.y to the Phoenix, Red. Our witness is missing.

We'll meet you there."

"SHOULD HAVE stayed," Kate said, pacing the ratty den of the Phoenixwith her hands on her hips. "G.o.dd.a.m.nit, I should have stayed."

"You can't be with 'em twenty-four/seven, Red," Kovac said, lighting acigarette.

"No," she muttered, turning a furious glare on the narcotics d.i.c.k Kovachad borrowed to keep an eye on Angie while she was at the Phoenix-agrubby-looking skinny guy in an army jacket with the name Iversonstenciled over the pocket. "That was your job."

"Hey." He held up his hands to ward her off. "I was here, but I was toldyou didn't want me too close. She must have slipped out the back."

"Well, dub. Where did you think she would 'slip out'? By definition,that sorta rules out the front door, doesn't it?"

The narc tipped his head back and swaggered toward Kate, c.o.c.ky and mean,an att.i.tude that played well with dealers and hypes. "I didn't ask forthis lame f.u.c.king job, and I don't have to take a bunch of s.h.i.t from af.u.c.king social worker."

"Hey!" Quinn barked.

Kate stopped Iverson in his tracks with a look and closed the distancebetween them herself. "You lost the only witness we had, a.s.shole. Youdon't want to answer to me? Fine. How about the chief?

How about the county attorney? Why don't you tell the mayor how you lostthe only witness to the burning of Peter Bondurant's daughter's bodybecause you're a hot-s.h.i.t narc and you think baby-sitting is beneathyou?"

Iverson's face went purple to the rims of his ears. "f.u.c.k this," hesaid, backing off. "I'm out of here."

Kovac let him walk out. The front door squeaked open and slammed shut,the sound reverberating in the cavernous hall.

"Every superior in the chain is gonna ream his a.s.s," he said with asigh.

"He won't be able to sit down on the street sweeper they a.s.sign him totomorrow."

Kate began to pace again. "Did she leave or was she taken?"

"Iverson said her stuff is gone from her room and there's no sign offorced entry at the back. There was another resident here the wholetime.

She told him she didn't see or hear anything. Quinn and I got here justahead of you. We haven't looked for ourselves yet."

Kate shook her head at her own stupidity. "I'd actually made someprogress with her. I should have stayed."

"What time did you drop her off?"

"I don't know. It must have been after eight. She told me about the johnin the park late this afternoon, but then she was embarra.s.sed and upset,and I didn't want to push it. I took her to City Center for something toeat, and let her do a little shopping."

"Lieutenant Fowler came up with some dough for her?"

Kate made a face and waved the question off. The money had come out ofher own pocket, but it didn't matter. "Then I brought her back here."

Angie growing quieter and quieter the closer they got to the Phoenix.

Slipping back inside the tough sh.e.l.l. And I let her, Kate thought.

"I dropped her off and went on to the meeting to tell you-oh, s.h.i.t.

I should have stayed."

"Who else was here when you let her off?"

"Gregg Urskine-but he was going to the meeting-and one other woman. Idon't know who. I didn't see her. Gregg told me she was here. I didn'twant Angie alone."

It was too easy to imagine Angie in this big old house, all but alone.

If Smokey Joe had any way of knowing where she was .. . Histhree victimshad vanished with no sign of a struggle. There and gone, simply, easily.And Angie Dimarco claimed she could identify him.

That fast, that easily, the girl was gone. One careless decision .. .

"I blew it, and now we've lost her."

Kate knew the emotions suddenly threatening to swamp her were out ofproportion, but she didn't seem able to pull them back. She felt vaguelyill, slightly dizzy. The aftertaste of gin was like metal in her mouth.

She felt Quinn come up behind her, knew it was he without looking. Herbody was still attuned to his. There was a disconcerting thought: thatthe physical magnetism hadn't faded in all this time.

"It isn't your fault, Kate," he said softly.

He put a hand on her shoulder, his thumb unerringly finding the knot oftension in her trapezius and rubbing at it in an old, familiar way. Toofamiliar. Too comforting.

"It doesn't matter now," she said, turning away stiffly. "What mattersis finding her. So let's start looking."

They went upstairs to the room Angie had been sharing with anotherPhoenix resident. The walls of the room were a nasty shade of yellow,the old woodwork dark with age and varnish. As it was all through thehouse, the furniture was mismatched and ill proportioned.

Angie's bed was a wad of unmade sheets. The shopping bag from theirexcursion to City Center lay in the midst of the mess, tissue tumblingout of it, the jeans and sweater she'd bought nowhere in sight. Thedirty backpack was conspicuously absent, suggesting the girl had flownthe coop of her own accord.

Sitting on the nightstand beside the cheap gla.s.s lamp was a tiny statueof an angel.

Kate picked it up and looked at it: an inch-high piece of pottery she'dbought for five bucks from a Navajo woman on the plaza in Santa Fe. Shehad slipped the old woman's five-year-old granddaughter an extra dollarfor carefully wrapping the doll in tissue, her little brow furrowed a.s.she concentrated on the importance of her task.

Watching the little girl, she'd thought of Emily and, to her extremeembarra.s.sment, had nearly started to cry.

"You know something about that?" Quinn asked softly, standing too close again.

"Sure. She stole it off my desk today." She touched the goldpainted haloon the angel's dark head. "I have a collection of guardian angels. Ironic, huh? I don't really believe in them. If there were such things as guardian angels, then you and I wouldn't have jobs, and I wouldn'thave lost my daughter, and we wouldn't have kids living lives likeAngie's.

"Stupid," she said, rubbing the angel's wings gently between herfingers.

"I wish she'd taken this with her."

The statue slipped from her grasp and fell to the old rug beside the bed.

Kate knelt down to get it, putting her left hand down on the floor forbalance. Her heart thumped hard in her chest, and she sat back againsther heels as she raised the same hand, turning it palm up.

"Oh, Jesus," she breathed, staring at the smear of blood.

Quinn swore, grabbing her hand, pulling it closer to the light.

Kate pulled away from him, twisting around, crouching low and straining

to see against the dark wood of the old floor. The angle had to beperfect. The light had to hit it just right .. . Iverson hadn't seen itbecause he hadn't been looking hard enough.

"No," she muttered, finding another droplet, then a smear where someone had tried to hastily clean up. I should have stayed with her.

The trail led to the hall. The hall led to the bathroom.

Panic fell like stone in Kate's stomach. "Oh, G.o.d, no."

I should have stayed with her.

She stumbled to her feet and down the hall, all senses magnified, the pounding of her heart like a jackhammer in her ears.

"Don't touch anything!" Kovac yelled, coming behind her.

Kate pulled up short of the bathroom door, which stood ajar, and allowed

Kovac to b.u.mp it open with his shoulder. He pulled a ballpoint pen from his coat pocket and flipped on the light.

The room was awash in brain-bending hot pink, orange, and silver foil

wallpaper from the seventies. The fixtures were older, the two-inch floor tiles long past being white. Dotted with blood. A fleck here.

A smeared stain there.

Why didn't I stay with her?

"Come out in the hall, honey," Quinn said, setting his hands on Kate's shoulders as Kovac moved to pull back the shower curtain.

"No."

She held her ground, trembling, the breath held tight in her lungs.

Quinn slipped an arm around her, ready to pull her out as Kovac drew theshower curtain back.

There was no body. Angie wasn't lying dead in the tub. Still Kate'sstomach turned and a wave of cold washed over her. Quinn's arm tightenedaround her and she sagged back against him.

Blood streaked the tiled wall in pale smudges, like a fadedfingerpainting. A thin line of water tinted rusty with diluted blood ledfrom the center of the tub to the drain.

Kate pressed a hand across her mouth, smearing the blood on her palmacross her chin.