Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 4

Sabin dismissed her by turning to Kovac. "You said the girl wasapprehended fleeing the scene?"

"Not exactly- "She ran out of the park as the first unit arrived," hesaid impatiently. "She was running away from a burning body. That makesher a suspect. Shake her down. Rattle her. Threaten her. Scare the truthout of her. I don't care how you do it. I've got a meeting in twominutes with the chief and the mayor. The press conference is set forfive. I want a description of a killer by then."

He walked away from them, straightening his jacket, moving his shoulderslike a boxer who'd just gone five rounds. Kate looked to Kovac, who madea sour face.

"See the kind of s.h.i.t I have to put up with?" he said.

"You?" Kate sniffed. "He could fire my a.s.s. And still I don't care ifhe's on his way to a tryst with Janet Reno. Power doesn't give himlicense to hara.s.s a witness-or for you to do it for him. If you run overthis kid with hobnail boots, I'll make your life a misery, Sam."

Kovac grimaced. "Jesus, Kate, the big dog says toss her in the can.

What am I gonna do? Thumb my nose at him? He'll have my cojones in hisnutcracker for Christmas.'; "I'll use 'em for tennis."

"Sorry, Kate. You're overruled. Sabin can castrate me and my pension.

Look on the bright side: The tank'll be like Club Med to this chick."

Kate turned to her boss for support. Rob shifted his weight from onefoot to the other. "These circ.u.mstances are extraordinary, Kate."

"I realize that. I also realize that if this kid had watched our psycholight up one of those hookers, there wouldn't be a press conferencepending and Ted Sabin wouldn't even know her name. But that doesn'tchange what she saw, Rob. It doesn't change who she is or how she needs...o...b.. handled.

She expects to be treated badly. It gives her an excuse to beuncooperative."

His expression was a cross between wry and wrenched. "I thought youdidn't want this case."

"I don't," Kate said flatly. "I have no personal desire to be a.s.s-deepin alligators, but if I'm in this thing, then I'm in it all the way. Letme do my job with her or a.s.sign me elsewhere. I won't be a puppet and Iwon't have my hands tied. Not even by his high and mightiness."

It was a bluff of sorts. She may not have wanted the job, but she wasthe best advocate for the job-or so Ted Sabin thought. Sabin with hishard-on for the idea of her as an FBI agent. As much as the obsession disgusted her, Kate knew it gave her a certain amount of leverage withhim and therefore with Rob.

The real question was: What would it cost her? And why should she careenough to pay the price? She could smell the stench of this case a blockaway, could feel the potential entanglements touching her like thetentacles of an octopus. She should have cut and run. If she'd had anysense. If she hadn't looked past Angie Dimarco's defenses and glimpsedthe fear.

"What's Sabin gonna do, Rob?" she questioned. "Cut off our heads and setus on fire?"

"That's not even remotely funny."

"I didn't mean for it to be. Have some backbone and stand up to him, forChrist's sake."

Rob sighed and discreetly pried a thumb inside the waistband of hisslacks. "I'll talk to him and see what I can do. Maybe the girl willcome up with an ID from the mug books by five," he said without hope.

"You must still have connections in Wisconsin," Kate said. "Maybe youcan get a line on her, find out who she really is."

"I'll make some calls. Is that all?" he asked pointedly.

Kate pretended innocence. She was well aware of her tendency to lead thedance, and perfectly unapologetic about it where her boss was concerned.

He never inspired her to follow.

Rob walked away looking defeated.

"Ever the man of action, your boss," Kovac said dryly.

"I think Sabin keeps his cojones in a jar in his medicine cabinet."

"Yeah, well, I don't want mine added to the collection. See if you canget something out of this kid besides lies and sarcasm before five."

He clamped a hand on Kate's shoulder in congratulations and consolation.

"Way to go, Red. The job's all yours."

Kate frowned as she watched him retreat to the men's room. "And I ask yet again: Why do I always have to be the one in the wrong place at thewrong time?"

SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT John Quinn walked out of the jetway and intothe Minneapolis St. Paul airport. It looked like nearly every otherairport he'd ever seen: gray and cheerless, the only sign of emotionrising above the grim and travel-weary being the celebration of a familywelcoming home a boy with a buzz cut and a blue air force uniform.

He felt a flicker of envy, a feeling that seemed as old as hewas forty-four. His own family had been geared for contention, notcelebration. He hadn't seen them in years. Too busy, too distant, toodetached. Too ashamed of them, his old man would have said .. . and hewould have been right.

He spotted the field agent standing at the edge of the gate area.

Vince Walsh. According to the file, he was fifty-two with a solidrecord. He would retire in June. He looked an unhealthy sixty-two. Hiscomplexion was the color of modeling clay, and gravity had pulled theflesh of his face down, leaving deep crevices in his cheeks and acrosshis forehead. He had the look of a man with too much stress in his life and no way out but a heart attack. He had the look of a man who wouldrather have been doing something other than picking up some hotshot mindhunter from Quantico.

Quinn forced his energy level up along with the corners of his mouth.

React accordingly: look apologetic, nonaggressive, nonthreatening; justa touch of friendliness, but not overly familiar. His shoulders weredrooping naturally with fatigue; he didn't bother to square them up.

"You're Walsh?"

"You're Quinn," Walsh declared flatly as Quinn started to pull his IDfrom the interior pocket of his suit coat. "Got luggage?"

"Just what you see." A bulging garment bag that exceeded regulationcarry-on dimensions and a briefcase weighed down with a laptop computerand a ream of paperwork. Walsh made no offer to take either.

"I appreciate the ride," Quinn said as they started down the concourse.

"It's the quickest way for me to get right in the game. Eliminates medriving around lost for an hour."

"Fine."

Fine. Not a great start, but there it was. He'd work the guy around asthey went. The important thing here was to hit the ground running.

The case was the priority. Always the case. One after another, on top ofanother, with another and another around the bend .. . The fatigueshuddered down through him, giving his stomach a kick as it went.

They walked in silence to the main terminal, took the elevator up onefloor, and crossed over the street to the parking ramp where Walsh hadleft his Taurus parked illegally in a handicapped slot. Quinn dumped hisstuff in the trunk and sat back for the ride out to the highway.Cigarette smoke had permeated the car's interior and gave the beigeupholstery the same gray cast as the car's driver.

Walsh reached for a pack of Chesterfields as they hit state highwayfive.

He hooked his lip over the cigarette and pulled it out of the pack.

"You mind?"

He flicked a lighter without waiting for a reply.

Quinn cracked the window a slit. "It's your car."

"For seven more months." He lit up, sucked in a lungful of tar and nicotine, and stifled a cough. "Christ, I can't shake this d.a.m.n cold."

"Filthy weather," Quinn offered. Or lung cancer.

The sky seemed to press down over Minneapolis like an anvil. Rain andforty-three degrees. All vegetation had gone dormant or had died andwould stay that way until spring-which he suspected was a depressinglylong way off in this place. At least in Virginia there were signs oflife by March.

"Could be worse," Walsh said. "Could be a G.o.dd.a.m.n blizzard. Had one hereon Halloween a few years back. What a mess. Must have been ten feet ofsnow that winter and it wasn't gone till May. I hate this place."

Quinn didn't ask why he stayed. He didn't want to hear the common litanyagainst the Bureau or the common complaints of the unhappily married manwith in-laws in the vicinity, or any other reason a man like Walsh hatedhis life. He had his own problems-which Vince Walsh would not want tohear about either. "There's no such place as Utopia, Vince."

"Yeah, well, Scottsdale comes close enough. I never want to be coldagain as long as I live. Come June, I'm out of here. Out of this place.Out of this thankless job."

He glanced at Quinn with suspicion, as if he figured him for some Bureaustoolie who would be on the phone to the special agent in charge thesecond he was left alone.

"The job can wear on a man," Quinn commiserated. "The politics is whatgets to me," he said, picking the hot nerve with unerring accuracy.

"Working in the field, you get it from both ends-the locals and theBureau."

"That's a fact. I wish to h.e.l.l I could have blown out of here for goodyesterday. This case is gonna be nothing but one kick in the a.s.s afteranother."

"Has that started already?"

"You're here, aren't you?"

Walsh picked up a file folder from the seat between them and handed itover. "The crime scene photos. Knock yourself out."

Quinn took the file without taking his dark eyes off Walsh. "You have aproblem with me being here, Vince?" he asked bluntly, softening thequestion with an expression that was part I'm-your-buddy smile, partconfusion that he didn't feel. He'd been in this situation so manytimes, he knew every possible reaction to his arrival on the scene:genuine welcome, hypocritical welcome, cloaked annoyance, openhostility. Walsh was a number three who would have claimed he saidexactly what he thought.

"h.e.l.l no," he said at last. "If we don't nail this sc.u.mbag ASAP, we'reall gonna be running around with targets on our backs. I got no problemwith you having a bigger one than me."

"It's still your case. I'm here as support."

"Funny. I said the same thing to the homicide lieutenant." Quinn saidnothing, already starting to lay out a team strategy in his mind. Itlooked like he might have to work around Walsh, although it seemedunlikely that the ASAC (a.s.sistant special agent in charge) here wouldhave a.s.signed a less than stellar agent to this case. If Peter Bondurantcould make top dogs in Washington bark, the locals weren't apt toantagonize the man. According to the faxes, Walsh had a solid rep thatspanned a lot of years. Maybe a few too many years, a few too manycases, a few too many political games.

Quinn already had a picture of the political situation here. The bodycount was three-just meeting the official standard to be consideredserial murders. Ordinarily he would have been consulted by phone at thisstage-if he was consulted at all. In his experience, locals usuallytried to handle this kind of thing themselves until they were slightlydeeper in dead bodies. And with a caseload of eighty-five, he had toprioritize worst to least. A three-murder case rarely made his travelschedule. His physical presence here seemed unnecessary-which aggravatedhis frustration and his exhaustion. He closed his eyes for two seconds,reining the feelings back into their corral.

"Your Mr. Bondurant has friends in very high places," he said.

"What's the story with him?"

"He's your basic nine-hundred-pound gorilla. Owns a computer outfit thathas a lot of defense contracts-Paragon. He's been making noises aboutmoving it out of state, which has the governor and every otherpolitician in the state lining up to kiss his a.s.s. They say he's worth abillion dollars or more."

"Have you met him?"

"No. He didn't bother to go through our office to get to you. I hear hewent straight to the top."

And in a matter of hours the FBI had Quinn on a plane to Minneapolis. Noconsideration to the normal a.s.signment of cases by region.

No consideration to the cases he had ongoing. None of the usualbureaucratic bulls.h.i.t entanglements over travel authorizations.

He wondered sourly if Bondurant had asked for him by name. He'd been inthe spotlight a h.e.l.l of a lot in the last year. Not by his own choosing.

The press liked his image. He fit their profile of what a special agentfrom the Investigative Support Unit should look like: athletic,square-jawed, dark, intense. He took a good picture, looked good ontelevision, George Clooney would play him in the movies.

Some days the image was useful. Some days he found it amusing.

More and more it was just a pain in the a.s.s.

"He didn't waste any time," Walsh went on. "The girl's not even coldyet. They don't even know for a fact it's his kid-what with the headgone and all. But you know, people with money don't screw around. Theydon't have to."

"Where are we at with the ID on the victim?"

"They've got her DL. They're going to try to get her fingerprints, b.u.t.the hands were pretty badly burned, I'm told. The ME has requestedJillian Bondurant's medical history regarding any distinguishing marksor broken bones to see if anything matches up. We know the body is theright size and build. We know Jillian Bondurant had dinner with herfather Friday night. She left his house around midnight and hasn't beenseen since."

"What about her car?"

"No one's found it yet. Autopsy's scheduled for tonight. Maybe they'llget lucky and be able to match the body's stomach contents with the mealBondurant and her father had that night, but I doubt it.

She'd have had to have been killed almost right away. That's not howthis sicko operates.

"The press conference is at five-not that the press is waiting for it,"he went on. "They've been all over the air with the story. They'vealready given this sc.u.mbag a nickname. They're calling him the Cremator.

Catchy, huh?"

"I'm told they're drawing correlations to some murders from a couple ofyears ago. Is there any connection?"

"The Wirth Park murders. No connection, but a couple of similarities.

Those victims were black women-and one Asian transvest.i.te he got bymistake. Prost.i.tutes or supposed prost.i.tutes-and this guy's first twovies were prost.i.tutes. But there's always someone killing prost.i.tutes.They're easy targets. Those vies were mostly black and these are white.That right there points to a different killer-right?"

"s.e.xual serial killers generally stay within their own ethnic group,yes."

"Anyway, they got a conviction on one of those Wirth Park murders andclosed the books on the others. They got their killer, there just wasn'tenough physical evidence to go to trial on all the cases. Besides, howmany life sentences can a guy serve?

"I talked to one of the homicide d.i.c.ks this morning," Walsh said,crushing out the stub of his cigarette in the filthy ashtray. "He saysthere's no doubt about it, this is definitely a different sc.u.mbag. b.u.t.to tell you the truth, I don't know much more about these murders than you.

Until this morning all they had were two dead hookers. I read about themin the paper just like everyone else. I sure as h.e.l.l know the other guynever cut anybody's head off. That's a new twist for this neck of thewoods."

The dark play on words struck him belatedly, and he made a littlehuffing sound and shook his head at the bad joke.

Quinn looked out the window at the gray and the rain, the winterdeadtrees as black and bleak as if they'd been charred, and observed amoment of sympathy for the nameless, faceless victims not important enough to warrant anything but a label. In their lives they had knownjoy and sorrow. On the way to their deaths they had likely known terrorand pain.

They had families and friends who would mourn them and miss them. b.u.t.the press and society at large whittled their lives and their deathsdown to the lowest, lowliest common denominator: two dead hookers. Quinnhad seen a hundred .. . and he remembered every one.

Sighing, he rubbed at the dull headache that had taken up semipermanentresidence in his frontal lobes. He was too tired for the kind of diplomacy needed at the start of a case. This was the kind of tired thatwent to the marrow of his bones and weighed him down like lead.

There had been too many bodies in the last few years. Their namesscrolled through his mind at night when he tried to sleep. Countingcorpses, he called it. Not the kind of thing that inspired sweet dreams.