Ashes to Ashes (55 page)

“Poor choice of words, Kate,” she muttered, heading upstairs to change clothes.

Twenty minutes later, she was out the back door. It had snowed another inch during the night, giving the landscape a clean dusting of fresh white powder, coating the back steps … where a pair of boots had left tracks.

Quinn had gone out the front this morning, to a waiting cab. The tracks were too small to be his, at any rate. They were more the size of Kate’s feet, though that didn’t necessarily establish gender.

Carefully staying to one side of them, Kate followed the tracks down the stairs to the yard. The trail led past the end of her garage and down the far side, down the narrow corridor between the building and the neighbor’s weathered-gray privacy fence, to the side entrance of the garage. All the doors were closed.

A chill ran through her. She thought back to last night and someone defecating in the garage. She thought of the suddenly burned-out light, the feeling Wednesday night that someone had been watching her as she’d made her way from the garage to the house.

She looked around, down the deserted alley. Most of the neighbors had fences that hid the first stories of their homes from view. Second-story windows looked black and empty. The neighborhood was full of white-collar professionals, most of whom left for work by seven-thirty.

Kate backed away from the garage, heart pumping, hand digging in her bag for her cell phone. Moving toward the house, she pulled the phone out, flipped it open, and punched the power button. Nothing happened. The battery had died in the night. The inconvenience of modern convenience.

She kept her eyes on the garage, thought she saw a movement through the side window. Car thief? Burglar? Rapist? Disgruntled client? Cremator?

She stuffed the phone back in her bag and pulled out her house keys. She let herself in, locked herself in, and breathed again.

“I need this like I need the plague,” she muttered, going into the kitchen. She put her tote and her purse on the table and started to slip out of her coat, when the sound registered in her brain. The low, feral growl of a cat. Thor was under the table, snarling, ears flat.

The fine hair rose up on the back of Kate’s neck, and with it the itchy feeling of being watched.

Options raced through her mind. She had no idea how close the person might be behind her, or how close they might be to the door. The phone was on the wall on the other end of the room—too far away.

Casually opening the tote, she looked inside with an eye for a weapon. She didn’t carry a gun. The canister of pepper spray she had carried for a while had expired and she’d thrown it out. She had a plastic bottle of Aleve, a packet of Kleenex, the heel from the shoe she’d ruined Monday. She dug a little deeper and found a metal nail file, palmed that, and slipped it into her coat pocket. She knew her escape routes. She would turn, confront, break right or left. Plan set, she counted to five and turned around.

The kitchen was empty. But framed by the doorway to the dining room, sitting on one of Kate’s straight-backed oak chairs, was Angie DiMarco.

“HE CONFESSES TO having Jillian Bondurant’s underpants, and you don’t think he’s the guy?” Kovac said, incredulous.

His temper had a direct effect on his driving, Quinn noticed. The Caprice roared down 94, rocking like a clown car. Quinn braced his feet in the floor well, knowing his legs would snap like toothpicks in the crash. Of course, it probably wouldn’t matter, because he would be dead. This piece-of-crap car would crumple like an empty beer can.

“I’m just saying there are some things I don’t like,” he said. “Vanlees doesn’t strike me as a team player. He lacks the arrogance to be the top dog, and the sadistic male is virtually always the dominant partner in a couple that kills. The woman is subservient to him, a victim who counts herself lucky not to be the one he’s murdering.”

“So this time it’s reversed,” Kovac insisted. “The woman runs the show. Why not? Moss and Liska say his wife had him pussy-whipped.”

“His mother probably did too. And yes, it’s often a domineering or manipulative or otherwise influential woman in his past or present a sexual sadist is killing symbolically when he kills his victims. That all fits, but there are holes too. I wish I caould say I just look at him and like him for these murders, but I’m not feeling that bolt of lightning.”

But then, that feeling had more or less deserted him in recent years, he reminded himself. Doubt had become more the rule than the exception, so what the hell did he know anymore? Why should he trust his instincts now?

Kovac swerved the car across three lanes to the exit he wanted. “Well, I can tell you, the powers that be like this guy fine. You talk about lightning. They’re all getting a goddamn thunderstorm in their pants over Vanlees. He’s got a history, he fits the profile, he has a connection to Jillian, access to hookers, and he’s not Peter Bondurant. If they can find a way to charge him, they will. If they can, they’ll do it in time for the press conference today.”

And if Vanlees wasn’t the guy, they ran the risk of pushing the real killer into proving himself again. The thought made Quinn ill.

“Vanlees says Peter was in Jillian’s place predawn Sunday morning, and sent Noble on Monday to pay him to keep his mouth shut,” he said, drawing a frighteningly long stare from Kovac. The Caprice began to drift toward a rusted-out Escort in the next lane.

“Jesus, will you watch the road!” Quinn snapped. “How do they give out driver’s licenses in this state? You save up bottle caps or something?”

“Beer-can tabs,” Kovac replied, returning his attention to the traffic. “So Bondurant was the one who cleaned up Jillian’s house and erased the messages on the answering machine.”

“I’d say so—if Vanlees is telling the truth. And I think it’s a safe bet then that Peter is the reason you didn’t find any of Jillian’s own musical compositions. He might have taken them because they revealed something about his relationship with Jillian.”

“The sexual abuse.”

“Possibly.”

“Son of a bitch,” Kovac muttered. “Sunday morning. Smokey Joe didn’t light up the body until midnight. Why would Bondurant go to her place Sunday morning, wipe the place down, take the music, if he didn’t already know she was dead?”

“Why would he wipe the place down at all?” Quinn asked. “He owns the town house. His daughter lived there. His fingerprints wouldn’t be out of place.”

Kovac cut him a glance. “Unless they were bloody.”

Quinn braced a hand against the dash as a tow truck cut in front of them and Kovac hit the brakes. “Just drive, Kojak. Or we won’t live long enough to find out.”

WITH RUMORS OF a suspect in custody, the media circus had begun anew on the street in front of Peter Bondurant’s house. Videographers roamed the boulevard, taking exterior shots of the mansion while on-air talent did their sound checks. Quinn wondered if anyone had even bothered to call the families of Lila White or Fawn Pierce.

Two Paragon security officers stood at the gate with walkie-talkies. Quinn flashed his ID and they were waved through to the house. Edwyn Noble’s black Lincoln was parked in the drive with a steel-blue Mercedes sedan beside it. Kovac pulled in behind the Lincoln, so close the cars were nearly kissing bumpers.

Quinn gave him a look. “Promise you’ll behave yourself.”

Kovac played it innocent. He had been relegated to the role of driver and wasn’t to leave the car. He wasn’t to cross Peter Bondurant’s field of vision. Quinn had kept Gil Vanlees’s revelation to himself, as an added precaution. The last thing he needed was Kovac bulling his way into this.

“Take your time, GQ. I’ll just be sitting here reading the paper.” He picked up a copy of the
Star-Tribune
from the pile of junk on the seat. Gil Vanlees took up half the front page—headline story, sidebar, and a bad photograph that made him look like Popeye’s archnemesis, Bluto. Kovac’s eyes were on the house, scanning the windows.

Noble met Quinn at the door, frowning, looking past him to the Caprice. In the car, Kovac had his newspaper open. He held it in such a way as to give Edwyn Noble the finger.

“Don’t worry,” Quinn said. “You managed to get the best cop on the case busted to chauffeur.”

“We understand Vanlees has been taken into custody,” the attorney said as they went into the house, ignoring Kovac as an unworthy topic.

“He was arrested on a DUI. The police will hold him as long as they can, but at the moment they don’t have any evidence he’s the Cremator.”

“But he had … something of Jillian’s,” Noble said with the awkwardness of a prude.

“Which he says Jillian gave to him.”

“That’s preposterous.”

“He tells a very interesting story. One that includes you and a payoff, by the way.”

Fear flashed cold in the lawyer’s eyes. Just for an instant. “That’s absurd. He’s a liar.”

“He hasn’t exactly cornered the market there,” Quinn said. “I want to speak with Peter. I have some questions for him regarding Jillian’s state of mind that night and in general.”

The lawyer cast a nervous glance at the stairs. “Peter isn’t seeing anyone this morning. He isn’t feeling well.”

“He’ll see me.” Quinn started up the stairs on his own, as if he knew where he was going. Noble hurried after him.

“I don’t think you understand, Agent Quinn. This business has taken a terrible toll on his nerves.”

“Are you trying to tell me he’s what? Drunk? Sedated? Catatonic?”

Noble’s long face had a mulish look when Quinn glanced over his shoulder. “Lucas Brandt is with him.”

“That’s even better. I’ll kill two birds.”

He stepped aside at the top of the stairs and motioned for Noble to lead the way.

THE ANTECHAMBER OF Peter Bondurant’s bedroom suite was the showcase of a decorator who likely knew more about the house than about Peter. It was a room fit for an eighteenth-century English lord, all mahogany and brocade with dark oil hunting scenes in gilt frames on the walls. The gold damask wing chairs looked as if no one had ever sat in them.

Noble knocked softly on the bedroom door and let himself in, leaving Quinn to wait. A moment later, Noble and Brandt came out together. Brandt had his game face on—even, carefully neutral. Probably the face he wore in the courtroom when he testified for whoever was paying him the most money that day.

“Agent Quinn,” he said in the hushed tones of a hospital ward. “I understand you have a suspect.”

“Possibly. I have a couple of questions for Peter.”

“Peter isn’t himself this morning.”

Quinn lifted his brows. “Really? Who is he?”

Noble frowned at him. “I think Sergeant Kovac has been a bad influence on you. This is hardly the time to be glib.”

“Nor is it the time for you to play games with me, Mr. Noble,” Quinn said. He turned to Brandt. “I need to speak with him about Jillian. If you want to be in the room, that’s fine by me. Even better if you want to offer your opinion as to her mental and emotional state.”

“We’ve been over that issue.”

Quinn ducked his head, using a sheepish look to cover the anger. “Fine, then don’t say anything.”

He started toward the door as if he would just knock Brandt on his ass and walk over him.

“He’s sedated,” Brandt said, standing his ground. “I’ll answer what I can.”

Quinn studied him with narrowed eyes, then cut a glance to the lawyer.

“Just curious,” he said. “Are you protecting him for his own good, or for yours?”

Neither batted an eye.

Quinn shook his head. “It doesn’t matter—not to me anyway. All I’m interested in is getting the whole truth.”

He told the story Vanlees had given him about the window-peeping incident.

Edwyn Noble rejected the tale with every part of him—intellectually, emotionally, physically—reiterating his opinion of Vanlees as a liar. He paced and clucked and shook his head, denying every bit of it except the idea that Vanlees had been looking in Jillian’s window. Brandt, on the other hand, stood with his back to the bedroom door, eyes downcast, hands clasped in front of him, listening carefully.

“What I want to know, Dr. Brandt, is whether or not Jillian was capable of that kind of behavior.”

“And you would have told Peter this story and asked Peter this question? About his child?” Brandt said with affront.

“No. I would have asked Peter something else entirely.” He cut a look at Noble. “Like what he was doing at Jillian’s apartment before dawn on Sunday that was worth paying off a witness.”

Noble drew his head back, offended, and started to open his mouth.

“Save it, Edwyn,” Quinn advised, turning back to Brandt.

“I told you before, Jillian had a lot of conflicted emotions and confusion regarding her sexuality because of her relationship with her stepfather.”

“So the answer is yes.”

Brandt held his silence. Quinn waited.

“She sometimes behaved inappropriately.”

“Promiscuously.”

“I wouldn’t call it that, no. She would … provoke reactions. Deliberately.”

“Manipulative.”

“Yes.”

“Cruel?”

That one brought his head up. Brandt stared at him. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because if Jillian isn’t dead, Dr. Brandt, then there’s only one logical thing she can be: a suspect.”

THE KID LOOKED like hell, Kate thought—pale as death, her eyes glassy and bloodshot, her hair greasy. But she was alive, and the relief Kate felt at that was enormous. She didn’t have to bear the weight of Angie’s death. The girl was alive, if not well.

And sitting in my kitchen.

“Angie, God, you scared the hell out of me!” Kate said. “How did you get in? The door was locked. How’d you even know where I live?”

The girl said nothing. Kate edged a little closer, trying to assess her condition. Bruises marred her face. Her full lower lip was split and crusted with blood.

“Hey, kiddo, where’ve you been?” she asked. “People were worried about you.”

“I saw your address on an envelope in your office,” the girl said, still staring, her voice a flat hoarse rasp.