Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 73

"Kate!

The shout that came from somewhere in the house went through him likesteel. "No!"

Quinn grabbed the mailbox, ripped it off the wall, and smashed out thesidelight just as Kovac ran up onto the porch. Another few seconds andthey were in. His eyes went to a smear of blood on the wall near theden.

"Kate!"

Her cry came from somewhere deep in the house. "Angie! NO!"

ANGIE TURNED THE knife in her b.l.o.o.d.y hands, staring at the blade. Shelet the tip of it kiss the fragile skin of her wrist.

"Angie, no!" Kate shouted, straining against the ties. "Don't do it!

Please don't do it! Come cut me loose. Then we'll get you some help."

She couldn't see Rob, but knew he lay crumpled on the floor near thedrier. She could hear gurgling sounds coming from his throat. He hadknocked the candelabrum over as he crashed, and the flames had foundsome of the gasoline he must have poured around while Kate had beenunconscious.

It ignited with a whoosh.

The flames would follow the trail of fuel in search of more fuel.

The bas.e.m.e.nt was crammed with possibilities-boxes of junk her parentshad saved and abandoned, stuff she'd been meaning to throw out buthadn't gotten to, the obligatory half-empty cans of paint and otherhazardous chemicals.

"Angie. Angie!" Kate said, trying to pull the girl's focus to her.

Angie, who stood looking into the face of her own death.

"Michele won't love me," the girl murmured, looking at the man she hadjust killed. She sounded disappointed in herself, like a small child whohad written on the wall in crayon, then realized there would be a bad consequence.

"Kate!" Quinn's bellow sounded above.

Angie seemed not to hear the shouts or the thunder of big male feet. Shepressed the blade of the knife lengthwise against the shadow of a veinin her wrist.

"Kate!"

She tried to shout "In the bas.e.m.e.nt!" but her voice seized up so shebarely heard herself. The flames caught hold of a box of clothesdestined, oddly enough, for the Phoenix, and leapt with enthusiasmfartoo near the table. Kate jerked at her bindings, succeeding only inpulling them even tighter around her wrists and ankles. She was losingthe feeling in her hands.

She tried to clear her throat to speak. Smoke rolled thick and blackfrom the boxes.

"Angie, help me. Help me and I'll help you. How's that for a deal?"

The girl stared at the knife.

The smoke detector at the top of the stairs finally blew, and thethunder of feet homed in on it.

Angie pressed the blade a little harder against her wrist. Tiny beads...o...b..ood surfaced like little jewels in a bracelet.

"No, Angie, please," Kate whispered, knowing the girl couldn't haveheard her if she'd shouted.

Angie looked at her square in the face, and for the first time sinceKate had met her she looked like exactly what she was: a child. A childno one had ever wanted, had ever loved.

"I hurt," she said.

"Call the fire department!" Quinn shouted at the head of the stairs.

"Kate!"

"Job-" Her voice cracked and she began to cough. The smoke rolled alongthe ceiling toward the stairwell and the new source of fresh air.

"Kate!"

Quinn led the way down the -stairs with a .38 Kovac had lent him, hisfear obliterating all known rules of procedure. As he dropped below thecloud of smoke, his focus was instantly on Kate, bound hand and foot ona table, her sweater cut open, blood pooling on her skin.

And then his attention went to the girl beside the table: Angie Dimarcowith a butcher knife in her hands.

"Angie, drop the knife!" he shouted.

The girl looked up at him, the light in her eyes fading away. "n.o.bodyloves me," she said, and in one quick, violent motion slashed her wristto the bone.

"NO!" Kate screamed.

"Jesus!" Quinn charged across the room, leading with the gun.

Angie dropped to her knees as the blood gushed from her arm. The knifefell to the floor. Quinn kicked it aside and dropped to his knees,grabbing the girl's arm with a grip like a C-clamp. Blood pumped betweenhis fingers. Angie sagged against him.

Kate watched with horror, not even acknowledging Kovac as he cut herloose. She rolled off the table onto feet she could no longer feel, andfell in a heap. She had to scramble to Angie on her knees. Her handswere as useless as clubs, swollen and purple, and she couldn't make herfingers move. Still, she wrapped her arms around the girl.

"We have to get out of here!" Quinn shouted.

The fire had begun licking its way up the steps. A uniformed officerfought it down with an extinguisher. But even as he cleared the stairs,the flames were working their way across the bas.e.m.e.nt, following the trail of gasoline, pouncing on everything edible in its path.

Quinn and a uniform took Angie up the bas.e.m.e.nt steps and out the backdoor. Sirens were screaming out on the street, a couple of blocks awayyet. He pa.s.sed the girl off to the uniform and ran back to the house asKovac came with Kate leaning heavily against him, both of them coughingas thick black smoke rolled up behind them, acrid with the smell ofchemicals.

"Kate!"

She fell against him and he scooped her up in his arms.

"I'm going back for Marshall!" Kovac shouted above the roar. The firehad come up through the floor and found the river of gasoline Rob hadpoured through the house.

"He's dead!" Kate yelled, but Kovac was gone. "Sam!"

One of the uniforms charged in after him.

The sirens blasted out front, fire trucks hulling their way down thenarrow street. Quinn negotiated the back steps with Kate in his arms andhustled down the side of the house to the front yard and the boulevard.He lowered her into the backseat of Kovac's car just as an explosionsounded from the bowels of the house and windows on the first floor shattered.

Kovac and the uniform staggered away from the back corner of the houseand fell to their hands and knees in the snow. Firemen and paramedicsrushed toward them and toward the house.

"Are you all right?" Quinn asked, staring into Kate's eyes, his fingersdigging into her shoulders.

Kate looked up at her house, flames visible now through the windows ofthe first floor. Behind Kovac's car, Angie was being loaded into anambulance. The fear, the panic she had fought to keep at bay during theordeal, hit her belatedly in a pounding wave.

She turned back to Quinn, shaking. "No," she whispered as the flood oftears came. And he folded her into his arms and held her.

CHAPTER 37.

"I NEVER LIKED him," Yvonne Vetter said to the uniformed officer whostood guard outside Rob Marshall's garage door. She was huddled into alumpy wool coat that made her look misshapen. Her round, sour facesquinted up at him from beneath an incongruously jaunty red beret. "Icalled your hotline several times. I believe he cannibalized my Bitsy."

"Your what, ma'am?"

"My Bitsy. My sweet little dog!"

"Wouldn't that be animalized?" Tippen speculated.

Liska cuffed him one on the arm.

The task force would get the first look around Rob's chamber of horrors before the collection of evidence began. The videographer followed rightbehind them. Even as they entered the house, the news crews were pullingup to the curbs on both sides of the street.

It was a nice house on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood. Anextra-large tree-studded lot near one of the most popular lakes in theCities. A beautifully finished bas.e.m.e.nt. Realtors would have beendrooling over the opportunity to sell it if not for the fact RobMarshall had tortured and murdered at least four women there.

They started in the bas.e.m.e.nt, wandering through a media room equippedwith several televisions, VCRS, stereo equipment, a bookcase lined withvideo- and audiotapes.

Tippen turned to the videographer. "Don't shoot the stereo equipmentyet. I really need a new tuner and tape deck."

The videographer immediately turned the camera on the recordingequipment.

Tippen rolled his eyes. "It was a joke. You techno-geeks have no senseof humor."

The camera guy turned his lens on Tippen's a.s.s as he walked away.

A headless mannequin stood in one corner of the room decked out in askimpy see-through black lace bra and a purple spandex miniskirt.

"Hey, Tinks, you could pick up some new outfits," Tippen called,eyeballing a sticky-looking residue on the shoulders of the mannequin.

Possibly blood mixed with some other, clearer fluid.

Liska continued down the hall, checking out a utility room, moving on.

Her boys would have loved this house. They talked endlessly aboutgetting a house like their friend Mark had, with a cool rec room in thebas.e.m.e.nt-where they could escape Mom's scrutiny-with a pool table and abig-screen TV.

There was a pool table here in the room at the end of the hall. It wasdraped with bloodstained white plastic, and there was a body on it. Thesmell of blood, urine, and excrement hung thick in the air. The stenchof violent death.

"Tippen!" Liska hollered, bolting for the table.

Michele Fine lay twisted at an odd angle on her back, staring up at thelight glaring in her face. She didn't blink. Her eyes had the flat lookof a corpse's. Her mouth hung open, drool crusted white in a trail downher chin. Her lips moved ever so slightly.

Liska bent close, laying two fingers on the side of Fine's neck to feelfor a pulse, unable to detect one.

".. . elp .. . me .. . elp .. . me Fragments of words on the thinnest ofbreaths.

Tippen jogged in and stopped cold. "s.h.i.t."

"Get an ambulance," Liska ordered. "She may just live to tell the tale."

CHAPTER 38.

"I'D I'D I WANT to help," Angie said softly.

It didn't sound like her voice. The thought drifted through herdrug-fogged brain on a cloud. It sounded like the voice of the littlegirl inside her, the one she always tried to hide, to protect. Shestared at the bandage on her left arm, the desire to pull it off andmake the wound bleed lurking at the dark edge of her mind.

"I didn't want to do what he said."

She waited for the Voice to sneer at her, but it was strangely silent.

She waited for the Zone to zoom up on her, but the drugs held it off.

She sat at a table in a room that wasn't supposed to look like part of ahospital. The blue print gown she wore had short sleeves and exposed herthin, scarred arms for all to see. She looked at the scars, one besideanother and another, like bars in a prison cell door. Marks she hadcarved into her own flesh. Marks life had carved into her soul.

A constant reminder so she could never forget exactly who and what she was.

"Was Rob Marshall the one who took you to the park that night, Angie?"Kate asked quietly. She sat at the table too, beside Angie with herchair turned so that she was facing the girl. "Was he the john you toldme about?"

Angie nodded, still looking down at the scars. "His Great Plan," shemurmured.

She wished the drugs would fog the memories, but the pictures were clearin her head, like watching them on television. Sitting in the truck,knowing the dead woman's body was in the back, knowing that the man atthe wheel had killed her, knowing Michele had been a part of that too.She could see them stabbing her over and over, could see the s.e.xualexcitement in them growing with every thrust of the knives.

Michele had given her to him afterward, and he had taken her again thatnight in the park, excited because of the dead woman in the back andbecause of his Great Plan.

"I was supposed to describe someone else."

"As the killer?" Kate asked.

"Someone he made up. All these details. He made me repeat them over andover and over."

Angie picked at a loose thread on the edge of her bandage, wishing bloodwould seep up through the layers of white gauze. The sight would comforther, make her feel less terrible about sitting beside Kate. She couldn'tlook her in the face after all that had happened.

"I hate him."