Ashes to Ashes (50 page)

“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 on his lip for a second, then took it away. “The Urskines. How twisted would that be? They whack two of their hookers, then do a couple of citizens in order to make a political point.”

“And to push suspicion away from themselves,” Quinn said. “No one considers the person trying to draw attention.”

“But to snatch the witness staying in their house? That’s titanium balls.” Kovac tipped his head, considering. “I bet Toni Urskine can grow hair on hers.”

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

“Any word on Angie DiMarco?” he asked.

Kovac shook his head. “No one’s seen her. No one’s heard from her. We’re flashing her picture on television, asking people to call the hotline if they’ve seen her. Personally, I’m afraid finding someone else in that car last night was just postponing the inevitable. But, hey,” he said, dragging himself up out of his chair, “I am, as my second wife used to call me, the infernal pessimist.”

He yawned hugely and consulted his watch.

“Well, GQ, I’m calling it. I can’t remember the last time I slept in a bed. That’s my goal for the night—if I don’t pass out in the shower. How about you? I can give you a ride back to your hotel.”

“What for? Sleep? I gave that up. It was cutting into my anxiety attacks,” Quinn said, ducking his gaze. “Thanks anyway, Sam, but I think I’ll stick to it awhile yet. There’s something here I’m just not seeing.” He gestured to the open casebook. “Maybe if I stare at it all a little longer …”

Kovac watched him for a few moments without saying anything, then nodded. “Suit yourself. See you in the morning. You want me to pick you up?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Uh-huh. Well, good night.” He started through the door, then looked back in. “Say hello to Kate for me. If you happen to talk to her.”

Quinn said nothing. He did nothing for a full five minutes after Kovac left, just stood there thinking Kovac had a hell of an eye. Then he went to the phone and dialed Kate’s number.

“KATE, IT’S ME. Uh—John. Um, I’m at the office. Give me a call if you get the chance. I’d like to go over some points in these victimologies with you. Get your take. Thanks.”

Kate stared at the phone as the line went dead and the message light began to flash. A part of her felt guilty for not picking up. A part of her felt relieved. At the core she ached at the lost opportunity to touch him in some way. A bad sign, but there it was.

She was exhausted, stressed out, overwhelmed, feeling as low as she had in years … and she wanted John Quinn’s arms around her. She hadn’t taken his call precisely for that reason. She was afraid.

What a rotten, unwelcome feeling it was.

The office was silent. She and Rob were the only ones left in their section. Rob sequestered in his office down the hall, no doubt writing a long and virulent report to file in her personnel jacket. On the other side of the reception area, in the county attorney’s offices, there were any number of assistant prosecutors at work preparing for court, strategizing and researching and writing briefs and motions. But for the most part the building was empty. For all intents and purposes, she was alone.

Her nerves were raw from spending hours listening to the voice of her dead client confessing her fears of being hurt, her fears of being raped, of being killed, of dying alone, and Kate’s own voice reassuring her, promising to look out for her, to get her help, fostering a false security that had ultimately failed Melanie Hessler in the worst possible way.

Rob had insisted on playing the tapes over and over, stopping and rewinding in sections, asking Kate the same questions over and over. As if any of it would make any difference at all. The cops didn’t want to hear about the subtle nuances of Melanie’s speech. All they wanted to know was if Melanie had expressed a fear of anyone in particular in the last few weeks of her life.

He’d been punishing her, Kate knew.

Finally, he’d hit the nerve one time too many. Kate stood, leaned across the table, and pressed stop.

“You’ve made your point. You’ve had your revenge. Enough is enough,” she said quietly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said it almost as a taunt, without a speck of sincerity. He wouldn’t look directly at her.

“I like this office, Rob. I like most of the people I work with. But I’m damn good at what I do, and I can get another job in a heartbeat. I won’t take you trying to manipulate me and punish me.

“Now you’ll excuse me,” she went on. “Because I’ve just had the third worst twenty-four hours of my life and I feel like I’m on the verge of a psychotic break. I’m going home. Call if you don’t want me to come back.”

He hadn’t said a word as she walked out. At least she hadn’t heard him for the pulse roaring in her ears. God knew she probably deserved to have him fire her, but there simply wasn’t any tact left in her. All pretense of manners and social bullshit had been scraped away, leaving nothing but raw emotion.

She felt it flooding through her still, as if some vital artery had ruptured inside her. She felt as if she might choke on it, drown in it.

And all she wanted was to find Quinn and fall into his arms.

She’d worked so hard to put her life back together, piece by piece on a new foundation, and now that foundation was shifting. No. Worse—she’d discovered it was built directly over the fault line of her past, just covering up. Not new, not stronger, just a lie she’d told herself every day for the last five years: that she didn’t need John Quinn to feel complete.

Tears welled in her eyes, and despair yawned through her, leaving her aching and empty and alone and afraid. And God, she was so tired. But she choked the tears back and put one foot in front of the other. Go home, regroup, have a drink, try to sleep. Tomorrow was another day.

She pulled her coat on, scooped up her file on Angie, grabbed her mail and her messages and the faxes that had piled up in the tray during the day, and dumped it all into her briefcase. She reached to turn the desk lamp off, but her hand strayed to the shelves, and she plucked out the little framed photo of Emily.

Sweet, smiling little cherub in a sunny yellow dress. The future bright before her. Or so anyone with ordinary human arrogance would have thought. Kate wondered if tucked away somewhere in someone’s old shoe box there might be a similar photograph of Angie DiMarco … or Melanie Hessler … Lila White, Fawn Pierce, Jillian Bondurant.

Life didn’t come with any guarantee. There’d never been a promise made that couldn’t be broken. She knew that firsthand. She’d made too many with the best of intentions, then watched them crack and come apart.

“I’m sorry, Em,” she whispered. She pressed the picture to her lips for a good-night kiss, then tucked the frame back into its hiding place, where the cleaning woman would find it and dig it back out.

She let herself out of the office and locked the door behind her. A vacuum cleaner was running in the office across from hers. Down the hall, Rob Marshall’s door was closed. He might still have been there, plotting how to screw her out of her severance pay. Or he might have gone home to—to what? She didn’t even know if he had a girlfriend—or a boyfriend, for that matter. Thursday could have been his bowling league night for all she knew about him. He didn’t have any close personal friends within the department. Kate had never socialized with him outside the obligatory office Christmas party. She wondered now if he had someone to go home to and complain to about that bitch from the office.

The snow had finally stopped, she noticed as she took the skyway to the Fourth Street ramp. Six inches total, she’d heard someone say. The street below was a mess that city crews would clear away overnight, though this time of year they might decide to leave it and hope for a couple of warm days to save the city some money for the storms that were sure to come in the next few months.

She pulled her keys out and folded them into her fist, the longest, sharpest one protruding between her index and middle fingers—a habit she’d developed living in the D.C. suburbs. The ramp was well lit, but not busy this time of night, and it always made her edgy walking around in it alone. More so tonight, after all that had gone on. Between the murders and the lack of sleep, her paranoia was running high. A shadow falling between cars, the scrape of a footstep, the sudden thump of a door—her nerves twisted tight every time. The 4Runner seemed a mile away.

Then she was in it, doors locked, motor running, heading home, one layer of tension peeling away. She tried to focus on letting the knots out of her shoulders. Pajamas, a drink, and bed. She’d drag her briefcase there with her and sit propped up by pillows on the sheets still rumpled from lovemaking.

Maybe she would change the sheets.

The enterprising guy from down the block kept a blade on the front of his pickup five months a year and supplemented his income plowing driveways. He had plowed the alley. Kate would write him a check and leave it in his mailbox tomorrow.

She drove into the garage, remembering too late the burned-out light. Swearing under her breath, she dug the big flashlight out of her glove compartment, then climbed down from the truck, juggling too much stuff.

The smell hit her nose just a second before her foot hit the soft, squishy pile.

“Oh, shit!” Literally. “Shit!”

“Kate?”

The voice came from toward the house. Quinn’s voice.

“I’m in here!” she called back, fumbling with the briefcase and the flashlight and her purse.

“What’s wrong? I heard you swearing,” he said, coming in.

“I just stepped in a pile of shit.”

“What—Jesus, I smell it. That must have been some dog.”

The flashlight clicked on and she shined it down at the mess. “It couldn’t have been a dog. The door was shut. Gross!”

“That looks human,” Quinn said. “Where’s your shovel?”

Kate flashed the beam of light at the wall. “Right there. My God, you think someone came into my garage and did this?”

“You have a more viable theory?” he asked.

“I just can’t imagine why anyone would do that.”

“It’s a sign of disrespect.”

“I know that. I mean, why to me? Who do I know who would do something that strange, that primitive?”

“Who’ve you pissed off lately?”

“My boss. But somehow I can’t envision him squatting in my garage. Nor would I want to.” She limped outside with him, stepping only with the toe of her soiled boot, trying not to smear more feces on her garage floor.

“Do your clients know where you live?”

“If any of them do, it’s not because I gave them the information. They have my office number—which forwards to my house machine after hours—and they have my cell phone number for emergencies. That’s it. My home number is unlisted, not that that would necessarily stop anyone from finding me. It isn’t that hard to do if you know how.”

Quinn dumped the mess between the garage and the neighbor’s privacy fence. He cleaned the shovel off in a snowbank while Kate tried to do the same with her boot.

“This is just the exclamation point at the end of my day,” she grumbled as they went back into the garage to put the shovel away. She shone the light around to see if anything was missing. Nothing seemed to be.

“Have you had any odd things happen lately?”

She laughed without humor. “What about my life lately
isn’t
odd?”

“I mean vandalism, hang-up calls, strange mail, anything like that?”

“No,” she said, then automatically thought of the three hang-up calls last night. God, was it just last night? She’d attributed them to Angie. That made the most sense to her. The idea of a stalker had never occurred. It still didn’t seem a possibility.

“I think you should park on the street,” Quinn said. “This might have been some transient going through the neighborhood, or it might have been some kid playing a joke, but you can’t be too careful, Kate.”

“I know. I will—starting tomorrow. How long have you been here?” Kate asked as they started for the house.

“Not long enough to have to do
that
.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I just got here. I tried calling you at the office. I tried calling here. I went to the office—you were gone. So I took a cab. Did you get my messages?”

“Yes, but it was late and I was tired. It’s been a rotten, rotten day, and I just wanted out of there.”

She let them in the back door and Thor greeted them with an indignant meow. Kate left her boots in the entry, dropped her briefcase on a kitchen chair, and went directly to the fridge to pull out the cat food.

“You weren’t avoiding me?” Quinn said, shrugging out of his coat.

“Maybe. A little.”

“I was worried about you, Kate.”

She set the dish down on the floor, stroked a hand over the cat, and straightened with her back to Quinn. Just that one little sentence brought the volatile emotions swirling once more to the surface, brought tears to her eyes. She wouldn’t let him see them if she could help it. She would choke them back down if she could. He was inviting her to need him. She wanted to so badly.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not used to anyone caring—”

Christ, what a poor choice of words. She wasn’t used to anyone caring about her anymore. The truth, but it made her sound pathetic and wretched. It made her think of Melanie Hessler—missing for a week without anyone caring enough to find out why.

“She was my client,” she said. “Melanie Hessler. Victim number four. I managed to lose two in one night. How’s that for a record?”

“Oh, Kate.” He came up behind her and slipped his arms around her, folding his warmth and his strength around her. “Why didn’t you call me?”