Ashes to Ashes (39 page)

“If it’s her, you didn’t put her there, Kate,” he said firmly.

“Rotten kid,” she muttered, fighting tears. “This is why I don’t do kids. Nothing but trouble.”

He watched her fight, knowing she wasn’t half as tough as she pretended to be, knowing she had no one in her life to turn to and lean against. Knowing she probably wouldn’t have chosen him for the job now. Knowing all those things, he whispered, “Hey, come here,” and drew her close.

She offered no resistance—strong, independent Kate. Her head found his shoulder and she fitted against him like his missing half. Familiar, comfortable, perfect. The noise and commotion of the crime scene seemed to recede into the distant background. He stroked a hand over her hair and kissed her temple, and felt complete for the first time in five years.

“I’m here for you, sweetheart,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”

“Is it her?” Rob Marshall scuttled toward them on his too-short legs. He was bundled into a fat down parka that appeared to be creeping up around his ears; a stocking cap sat tight on his round head.

At the sound of his voice, Kate stiffened, straightened, moved a step away from Quinn. He could almost see her reining in the emotions and hastily reconstructing the wall around them.

“We don’t know,” she said, her voice husky. She cleared her throat and swiped a gloved finger beneath one eye. “The body is unrecognizable. No one’s found an ID yet that we know of.”

Rob looked past her to the paramedics. “I can’t believe this is happening. You think this is her, don’t you? You think this is your witness.”

Your
witness, Kate noted. He was already distancing himself from the disaster, the same way he’d distanced himself from the decision to take Angie to the Phoenix in the first place. The miserable toad.

“How did this happen?” he demanded. “I thought you were watching out for her, Kate.”

“I’m sorry. I told you on the phone I was sorry. I should have stayed with her.” The admission grated now because it was a concession to her boss, and she automatically wanted to disagree with him.

“We chose you for this case for a reason.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“Your background, the strength of your personality. For once I thought your stubbornness would actually work to my benefit—”

“You know, I’m blaming myself enough for both of us, Rob,” she said. “So you can just get off my back, thank you very much.”

“Sabin is furious. I don’t know how I’ll placate him.”

The witness was hers to lose, the peace was his to make. Kate could already hear him whining and wheedling to Sabin, taking her name in vain every chance he got.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she snapped, too angry for prudence. “Just get down on your knees and pucker up like you always do.”

Rob’s whole being quaked in a spasm from his feet up, the fury erupting from his mouth. “How dare you speak that way to me! How dare you! You’ve lost the witness. Maybe gotten her killed—”

“We don’t know that,” Quinn intervened.

“—and still you have the gall to talk to me that way! You’ve never shown me an ounce of respect. Even now. Even after
this
. I can’t believe you! You fucking bitch!”

“Back off,” Quinn ordered. He stepped between them and knocked Rob in the sternum hard with the heel of his hand. Rob stumbled backward, lost his footing in the snow, and landed on his butt.

“Why don’t you go take a look at what Kate’s just seen,” Quinn said, not bothering to offer a hand up. “Get a fresh perspective as to what’s important here right now.”

Rob scrambled to his feet, muttering, jerked around and stomped toward the ambulance, dusting the snow off his jacket with quick, angry movements.

“Dammit, John,
I
wanted to knock him on his ass,” Kate said.

“Then I probably just saved your job for you.”

The sudden possibility that her career might indeed be in danger struck Kate belatedly. God, why
wouldn’t
Rob fire her? He was right: She’d never given him more than the barest requirement of respect. Never mind that he hadn’t earned it. He was her boss.

She watched him as he stood near the ambulance with a mittened hand over his mouth. The crew was preparing to put the body in a bag. When he came back, his face looked both waxy and flushed.

“That’s—that’s—horrific,” he said, breathing heavily through his mouth. He pulled off his glasses and wiped his face with a mitten. “Incredible.” He swallowed a couple of times and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “That smell …”

“Maybe you should sit down,” Kate suggested.

Rob partially unzipped his coat and tugged down on the bottom. His gaze was still on the ambulance. “Incredible … horrible …”

The search helicopter swept near, blades pounding the air like the wings of a giant hummingbird.

“He’s challenging us, isn’t he? The Cremator,” he said, looking to Quinn. “Taking the girl. Doing this here, where the meeting was held.”

“Yes. He wants to make us look like fools while he makes himself look invincible.”

“I’d say he’s doing a damn good job of it,” Rob said, staring across the way as the paramedics loaded the corpse into the ambulance.

“Anybody can look like a genius if they have all the answers ahead of time,” Quinn said. “He’ll screw up eventually. They all do. The trick is to get it to happen sooner rather than later. And to get him by the balls the instant he stumbles.”

“I’d like to be around to see that happen.” Rob wiped his face again and adjusted the parka. “I’ll go call Sabin,” he said to Kate. “While we still work for him.”

Kate said nothing. Her silence had nothing to do with the county attorney or the suddenly precarious disposition of her job.

“Let’s go find Kovac,” she said to Quinn. “See if they’ve found the driver’s license yet.”

KOVAC STOOD ARGUING jurisdiction with an African American woman in a dark parka with ARSON printed across the back. The car, smallish and red, was the centerpiece in a ring of portable lights. The fire had gutted it and blown out the windshield. The driver’s door hung open, twisted by the tools the rescue squad had used to wrench it free. The interior was a mess of ash, melted plastic, and dripping foam fire retardant. The driver’s seat had been eaten away, the flames leaving nothing but a carcass of distorted springs.

“It’s an arson, Sergeant,” the woman insisted. “It’s up to
my
office to determine the cause.”

“It’s a homicide, and I could give a shit about the cause of the fire,” Kovac returned. “I want B of I in that car to get whatever evidence your people haven’t already fucked up.”

“On behalf of the Minneapolis Fire Department, I apologize for trying to put out a fire and save a life. Maybe we’ll get that straight before someone sets
your
car on fire.”

“Marcell, I should be so lucky someone sets that piece of crap on fire.”

As crime scenes went, this one was a disaster, Kate knew. Called to a fire, the firefighters didn’t worry about trampling the scene. Their job was saving lives, not finding out who might have taken one. And so they ruined car doors and sprayed foam over any trace evidence that might have survived inside.

“The thing’s already burned to a crisp,” Kovac said to the arson investigator. “What’s
your
hurry? Me, I got a flame-throwing fruitloop running around killing women.”

“Maybe this was an accident,” Marcell shot back. “Maybe this has nothing to do with your killer and you’re standing here arguing with me and wasting our time for nothing.”

“Sam, we got the plates back.” Elwood waded toward him through the snow. He waited until he was near enough for confidentiality, even though there was no hope of keeping this news under wraps for long. “It’s a ’ninety-eight Saab registered to Jillian Bondurant.”

The arson investigator saluted Kovac and stepped out of his way. “As pissing contests go, Sergeant, you just wrote your name in the snow.”

THE B OF I Team swarmed over the burned-out Saab like vultures cleaning an elephant carcass. Kate sat behind the wheel of Kovac’s car and watched, feeling numb and exhausted. The body—whoever she was—had been transported to HCMC. Someone else’s corpse had just been knocked to number two on Maggie Stone’s itinerary for the day that would soon be dawning.

Quinn opened the passenger door and climbed in on a cold breath of air. Snow clung to his dark head like dandruff. He rubbed a gloved hand over it.

“It’s pretty clear the fire was set on the driver’s side,” he said. “It burned hottest and longest there. The dashboard and steering wheel are melted. Our two best bets for fingerprints gone.”

“He’s escalating,” Kate said.

“Yes.”

“Changing his MO.”

“To make a point.”

“He’s building toward something.”

“Yes. And I’d give everything I have to know what and when.”

“And why.”

Quinn shook his head. “I don’t care why anymore. There are no valid reasons. There are only excuses. You know all the contributing factors as well as I do, but you also know not all kids with abusive parents grow up to abuse, and not all kids with emotionally distant mothers grow up to kill. At some point in time a choice is made, and once it’s made, I don’t care why, I just want the bastards off the planet.”

“And you’ve appointed yourself responsible for catching them all.”

“It’s a shit job, but what else have I got going for me?” He flashed the famous Quinn smile, worn around the edges now, running on too little sleep and too much stress.

“You don’t need to be here now,” Kate said, feeling the fatigue and the pressure in every muscle of her body. “They’ll fill you in at the morning briefing. You look like you could use a couple hours’ sleep.”

“Sleep? I gave that up. It was taking the edge off my paranoia.”

“Careful with that, John. They’ll pull you out of CASKU and stick you in
The X-Files
.”

“I am better-looking than David Duchovny.”

“Far and away.”

Funny, she thought, how they fell back into the old patterns of teasing, even now, even after all that had gone on tonight. But then, it was familiar and comforting.

“You don’t need to be here either, Kate,” he said, going serious.

“Yes, I do. I’m the closest thing Angie DiMarco has to someone who cares about her. If that body turns out to be hers, the least I can do is miss a little sleep to hear the news.”

She expected another lecture from Quinn on her lack of culpability, but he didn’t say anything.

“Do you think there’s any chance that body is Jillian Bondurant?” she asked. “That she wasn’t victim number three, and she did this to herself?”

“No. Self-immolation is rare, and when it does happen, the person usually wants an audience. Why would Jillian come here in the dead of night? What’s her connection to this place? Nothing. We’ll know for certain if it’s Jillian after the autopsy, seeing as we can compare dental records this time, but I’d say the chances this is her and the fire was self-inflicted are nil.”

Kate turned up the corners of her mouth in a pseudo-smile. “Yeah, I know all that. I was just hoping that corpse might be someone I wasn’t responsible for.”

“I’m the one who called the meeting, Kate. Smokey Joe did this to say ‘Fuck you, Quinn.’ Now I get to wonder what set him off. Should I have been harder on him? Should I have tried to pretend I feel sympathy for him? Should I have stroked his ego and made him out as a genius? What did I do? What
didn’t
I do? Why didn’t I know better? If he was at the meeting, if he was sitting right there in front of me, why didn’t I see him?”

“Guess your super X-ray vision that allows you to see what evil lurks in the hearts of men is on the fritz.”

“Along with your ability to foresee the future.”

This time the smile was genuine, if sad. “We’re a pair.”

“Used to be.”

Kate stared at him, seeing the man she’d known and loved, and the man the intervening years had turned him into. He looked tired, haunted. She wondered if he saw the same in her. It was humbling to admit that he ought to. She’d fooled herself into believing she was fine. But that was all it had been: an act, a ruse. She had fully realized that truth an hour ago as she stood in the warm shelter of his arms. It had been like suddenly having back a crucial part of herself she had spent years refusing to acknowledge was missing.

“I loved you, Kate,” he said softly, his dark gaze holding hers. “Whatever else you think of me, and of the way things came apart, I loved you. You can doubt everything else about me. God knows, I do. But don’t doubt that.”

Something fluttered inside Kate. She refused to name it. It couldn’t be hope. She didn’t want to hope for anything with regard to John Quinn. She preferred annoyance, indignation, a dash of anger. But none of that was what she really felt, and she knew it, and he would know it as well. He’d always been able to read the slightest shadow that crossed her mind.

“Damn you, John,” she muttered.

Whatever else she might have said was lost as Kovac’s face appeared suddenly at Quinn’s window. Kate started and swore, then lowered the window from the control panel on the driver’s door.

“Hey, kids, no making out,” he quipped. “It’s after curfew.”

“We’re trying to save ourselves from hypothermia,” Quinn said. “I have a toaster that gives off more warmth than this heater.”

“Did you find the DL?” Kate asked.

“No, but we found this.” He held up a microcasette tape inside a clear plastic case. “It was on the ground about fifteen feet from the car. It’s a pure damn miracle one of the firemen didn’t squash it.

“It’s probably some reporter’s notes from the meeting,” he said. “But you never know. Every once in a blue moon we find evidence there is a God. I’ve got a player somewhere on the seat there.”

“Yeah, that and the Holy Grail,” Kate muttered as she dug through the junk on the seat: reports, magazines, burger wrappers. “Are you living in this car, Sam? There are shelters for people like you, you know.”

She came up with the player and handed it to Quinn. He popped the cassette out and carefully inserted the one Kovac handed him on the end of a ballpoint pen.