Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 56

What had gone on in the lives of Jillian and her mother and father inthat pivotal time of the divorce? he wondered in his windowless room atthe FBI offices. From the start, Bondurant had struck him as a man withsecrets. Secrets about the present. Secrets about the past.

Secrets as dark as incest?

How else would Sophie Bondurant have gotten custody of Jillian?

Unstable as she was. Powerful as Peter was.

He flipped through the casebook to the crime scene photos of the thirdmurder. Certain aspects of the murder gave the impression the killer andvictim may have known each other. The decapitation when none of theother victims had been decapitated, the extreme depersonalization. Bothsuggested a kind of rage that was personal. But what of the latesttheory that the killer worked with a partner, a woman? That didn't fitPeter Bondurant. And what of the thought that perhaps the woman involvedwas Jillian Bondurant herselp.

A history of s.e.xual abuse would fit the profile of a woman involved inthis type of crime. She would have a skewed view of male-femalerelationships, of s.e.xual relationships. Her partner was likely older,some twisted suggestion of a father figure, the dominant partner.

Quinn thought of Jillian, of the photograph in Bondurant's office.

Emotionally troubled, with low self-esteem, a girl unhappily pretendingto be something she wasn't in order to please. To what lengths might shego to find the approval she craved?

He thought of her involvement with her stepfather-supposedly consensual,but these things never really are. Children need love and can be easilymanipulated by that need. And if Jillian had escaped an abusiverelationship with her father, only to be coerced into another by herstepfather, that would have reinforced every warped idea she had ofrelationships with men.

If Peter had abused her.

If Jillian wasn't a dead victim, but a willing victim.

If Gil Vanlees was her partner in this sickness.

If Gil Vanlees was a killer at all.

if if if if .. .

Vanlees seemed a perfect fit-except he didn't strike Quinn as having the brainpower to outsmart the cops for this long, or the b.a.l.l.s to play thekind of taunting game this killer played. Not the Gil Vanlees he'd seenin that interview room today. But he knew from experience people couldhave more than one side, and that a dark side that was capable ofkilling the way the Cremator killed was capable of anything, includingdisguising itself very, very well.

He pictured Gil Vanlees in his mind and waited for that twist in his gutthat told him this was the guy. But the feeling didn't come. He couldn'tremember the last time it had. Not even after the fact, after a killerhad been caught and fit his profile point by point. That sense ofknowing didn't come anymore. The arrogance of certainty had abandonedhim. Dread had taken its place.

He flipped farther into the murder book, to the fresh photographs fromMelanie Hessler's autopsy. As with the third victim, the woundsinflicted both before and after death had been brutal, unspeakablycruel, worse than with the first two victims. As he looked at thephotographs he could hear the echo of the tape recording in his head.

Scream after scream after scream.

The screams ran into one another and into the cacophony that filled hisnightmares, growing louder and louder. The sound swelled and expanded inhis brain until he felt as if his head would burst and the contents run out in a sickly gray ooze. And all the while he stared at the autopsyphotographs, at the charred, mutilated thing that had once been a woman,and he thought of the kind of rage it took to do that to another person.

The kind of poisonous, black emotions kept under tight control until thepressure became too much. And he thought of Peter Bondurant and GilVanlees and a thousand nameless faces walking the streets of thesecities just waiting for that main line of hate to blow and push themover the edge.

Any of them could have been this killer. The necessary componentsresided in a great many people, and needed only the proper catalyst toset them off. The task force was putting its money on Vanlees, based oncirc.u.mstance and the profile. But all they had was logic and a hunch. Nophysical evidence. Could Gil Vanlees have been that careful, thatclever?

They had no witness to put him with any of the victims. Their witnesswas gone. They had no obvious connection between all four victims oranything tying Vanlees to any victim other than Jillian-if Jillian was avictim.

If this. If that.

Quinn dug a Tagamet out of his pants pocket and washed it down with dietc.o.ke. The case was crowding in on him; he couldn't get perspective. Theplayers were too close around him, their ideas, their emotions, bleedinginto the cold facts that were all he needed for his a.n.a.lysis.

The professional in him still wished for the distance of his office inQuantico. But if he had stayed in Quantico, then he and Kate would haveremained in the past tense.

On impulse, he grabbed up the telephone receiver and dialed her officenumber. On the fourth ring her machine picked up. He left his number again, hung up, picked up again, and dialed her home line with the sameresult. It was seven now. Where the h.e.l.l was she?

Instantly he flashed on the decrepit garage in the dark alley behind herhouse and muttered a curse. Then he reminded himself-as Kate herself would surely do-that she had gotten along just fine without him for thepast five years.

He could have used her expertise tonight, to say nothing of a long, slowkiss and a warm embrace. He turned back to the casebook and flipped tothe victimologies, looking for the one thing he felt he'd missed thatwould tie it all together and point the finger.

The notes on Melanie Hessler were in his own hand, sketchy, too briefKovac had set Moss to the task of gathering the information on thelatest of the Cremator's victims, but she had yet to bring him anything.He knew she'd worked in an adult bookstore-which, in the killer's mind,likely put her into the same category as the two hookers.

She'd been attacked in the alley behind the store just months before,but the two men who had raped her had solid alibis and were notconsidered suspects in her death.

It was sad to think how each of these women had been victimized repeatedly in their brief lives. Lila White and Fawn Pierce in aprofession and a lifestyle that specialized in abuse and degradation.

White had been a.s.saulted by her drug dealer just last summer. Pierce hadbeen hospitalized three times in two years, the victim of her pimp once,once a mugging victim, and once a rape victim.

Jillian Bondurant's victimization had taken place behind the closeddoors of her home. If Jillian was a victim.

He turned back to the photographs of victim number three once again andstared at the stab wounds to her chest. The signature. Long wound, shortwound, long wound, short wound, like the arms of a star or the petals ofa gruesome flower. I love you, I love you not. Cross my heart, hope todie.

He thought of the faint voices on the tape.

Turn .. . do it .. ." Want to .. . of me .

Too easily he could picture the killers standing on either side of theirvictim's warm, lifeless body, each with a knife, taking turns punchingtheir signature into the woman's chest, sealing the pact of theirpartnership.

It should have horrified him to think it, but it wasn't the worst thinghe'd ever seen. Not by a long way. Mostly it left him numb.

That made him shudder.

A man and a woman. He scrolled through the possibilities, consideringpeople known to be attached to the victims in some way. Gil Vanlees,Bondurant, Lucas Brandt. The Urskines-possibijities there.

The hooker who had been at the Phoenix last night when the Dimarco girlhad disappeared-and claimed not to have seen or heard a thing, who had also known the second victim. Michele Fine, Jillian's only friend.Strange and shaky. Scarred-physically and emotionally. A woman with along, dark story behind her, no doubt-and no good alibi for the nightJillian went missing.

He reached for the sheet music Fine had handed over to him and wondered about Jillian's compositions she'd kept to herself.

Outsider Outside On the dark side Alone Looking in On a whim Want a homeOutsider In my blood In my bones Can't have What I want Doomed to roamAll alone On the outside Let me in Want a friend Need a lover Be with me Be my boy Be my father Outsider In my blood In my bones Can't have "at Iwant Doomed to roam All alone On the outside Knuckles cracked againstthe door, and Kovae stuck his head in without waiting for an invitation.

"Can you smell it?" he asked, letting himself in. He leaned back againstQuinn's wall of notes, suit rumpled, lip swollen where Peter Bonduranthad popped him, tie askew. "Cooked goose, burned a.s.s, toast."

"You're out," Quinn said.

"Give the man a cigar. I'm off the task force. They'll name my successorat a press conference sometime tomorrow."

"At least Bondurant didn't get you thrown off the force altogether,"Quinn said. "You played bad cop a little too hard this time, Sam."

"Bad cop," Kovac said with disgust. "That was me, and I meant every wordof it. I'm fed up to my back teeth with Peter Bondurant, and his moneyand his power and his people. What Cheryl Thorton told me pushed me overthe edge. I just kept thinking about the dead women n.o.body cared about,and Bondurant playing with the case like it was his own personal livegame of Clue. I kept thinking about his daughter and how she should havehad such a great life, but insteaddead or alive-she's f.u.c.ked up forever,thanks to him."

"If he molested her. We don't know what Cheryl Thorton said is true."

"Bondurant pays her husband's medical bills. Why would she say somethingthat rotten against the man if it wasn't true?"

"Did she give any indication she thinks Peter killed Jillian?"

"She wouldn't go that far."

Quinn held out the sheet of music. "Make what you want of that. It couldsay you're on a hot trail."

Kovac scowled as he read the lyrics of the song. "Jesus."

Quinn spread his hands. "Could be s.e.xual or not. Might refer to herfather or her stepfather or not mean anything at all. I want to talkmore with her friend Michele. See if she has an interpretation-if she'llgive it to me."

Kovac turned and looked at the photographs Quinn had taped up.

The victims when they were alive and smiling. "There's nothing I hatemore than a child-molester. That's why I don't work s.e.x crimes-even ifthey do get better hours. If I ever worked s.e.x crimes, I'd be in the tank so fast, I'd get whiplash. I'd get my hands on some son of a b.i.t.c.hwho raped his own kid, and I'd just f.u.c.king kill him. Get 'em out of thegene pool, you know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, I do."

"I don't know how a man can look at his own daughter and think, "Hey, Igotta have me some of that.' " He shook his head and dug a cigarette outof the pack in the breast pocket of his limp white shirt. The FBIoffices were nonsmoking, but Quinn said nothing.

"I've got a daughter, you know," Kovac said, exhaling his first lungful.

"Well, you don't know. Hardly anyone knows. From my first marriage,which lasted about a minute and a half after I joined the force. Gina.

She's sixteen now. I never see her. Her mother remarried with embarra.s.sing haste and moved to Seattle. Some other guy got to be herdad."

He moved his shoulders and looked at the pictures again. "Not sodifferent from Bondurant, huh?" he said, his mouth twisting. Theshoulders sagged on a long sigh. "Christ, I hate irony."

Quinn could see the regret in his eyes. He'd seen it many times in manyfaces across the country. The job took a toll, and the people who werewilling to pay it didn't get nearly enough in return.

"What're you going to do about the case?" he asked.

Kovac looked surprised by the question. "Work the d.a.m.n task force,that's what. I don't care what Little d.i.c.k says. It's my case, I'm lead.

They can name whoever they want."

"Your lieutenant won't rea.s.sign you?"

"Fowler's on my side. He put me on the support team on the QT.

I'm supposed to keep my head down and my mouth shut."

"How long has he known you?"

"Long enough to know better."

Quinn found a weary laugh. "Sam, you're something."

"Yeah, I am. Just don't ask too many people what." Kovac grinned, thenit faded away. He dropped the last of his cigarette into an empty dietc.o.ke can. "It's no ego trip, you know. I don't need my name in the paper.

I don't care what goes in my jacket. I've never looked for a promotion,and I sure as h.e.l.l don't expect to ever see another.

"I want this sc.u.mbag," he said with steel in his voice. "I should'vewanted him this bad when Lila White was killed, but I didn't. Not that Ididn't care about her, but you were right: I went through the motions. Ididn't hang in, didn't dig hard enough. When it didn't wrap up fast, Ilet it slide 'cause the bra.s.s was on my case and she was a hooker and hookers get whacked every once in a while. Hazard of the profession. Nowwe're up to four. I want Smokey Joe's a.s.s on a platter before the bodycount goes up again." Quinn listened as Kovac said his piece, and noddedat the end of it.

This was a good cop standing in front of him. A good man. And this casewould break his career more easily than it would make it-even if hesolved the mystery. But especially if the answer to the question turnedout to be Peter Bondurant.

"What's the latest on Vanlees?" he asked.

"Tippen's riding his tail like a cat on a mouse. They pulled him over onHennepin to ask about his buddy, the electronics dealer. Tip says theguy about s.h.i.t his pants."

"What about the electronics?"

"Adler checked out the guy's Web page. He specializes in computers andrelated g gizmos, but if it plugs into a wall, he can get it for you. Sothere's nothing to say that he isn't up to his ears in recordingequipment.

I wish we could get a search warrant for his house, but there isn't ajudge in the state who'd give us one based on what we've got on this.m.u.tt-which is nothing."

-"That bothers me," Quinn admitted, tapping a pen against the file onVanlees. "I don't think Gil's the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

He's a good fit to the profile on a lot of points, but Smokey Joe issmart and he's bold, and Vanlees seems to be neither-which also makeshim a perfect fall guy."

Kovac fell into a chair as if the weight of this latest concern made theburden all suddenly too much for him. "Vanlees is connected to Jillian,and to Peter. I don't like that. I keep having this nightmare thatBondurant is Smokey Joe, and that no one will listen to me and no oneelse will look at him, and the son of a b.i.t.c.h will get away with it.

"I try to dig on him a little and he d.a.m.n near gets me fired. I don'tlike it." He pulled out another cigarette and just ran his fingers overit, as if he hoped that alone might calm him. "And then I think, "Sam,you're an idiot. Bondurant brought in Quinn.' Why would he do that if hewas the killer?"

"For the challenge," Quinn said without hesitation. "Or to get himselfcaught. I'd go with the first in this case. He'd get off on knowing I'mhere and unable to spot him. Outsmarting the cops is big with thiskiller.

But if Bondurant is Smokey Joe, then who's his accomplice?"

"Jillian," Kovac offered. "And this whole thing with her murder is asham."

Quinn shook his head. "I don't think so. Bondurant believes his daughteris dead. Believes it more strongly than we do. That's no act."

"So we're back to Vanlees."

"Or the Urskines. Or someone we haven't even considered."

Kovac scowled at him. "Some help you are."

"That's why they pay me the big bucks."

"My tax dollars at work," he said with disgust. He hung the cigarette onhis lip for a second, then took it away. "The Urskines. How twistedwould that be? They whack two of their hookers, then do a couple ofcitizens in order to make a political point."

"And to push suspicion away from themselves," Quinn said. "No oneconsiders the person trying to draw attention."

"But to s.n.a.t.c.h the witness staying in their house? That's t.i.taniumb.a.l.l.s." Kovac tipped his head, considering. "I bet Toni Urskine can growhair on hers."

Quinn went to his wall of notes and scanned them, not really reading thewords, just seeing a jumble of letters and facts that tangled in hismind with the theories and the faces and the names.

"Any word on Angie Dimarco?" he asked.