Ashes to Ashes

by Tami Hoag

  Surreal, he thought. His brain wanted to believe he was looking at a discarded mannequin, something that had been dragged too late out of the incinerator at Macy's. But he knew what he was looking at had been flesh and bone, not plastic, and she had been alive and walking around three days earlier. She had eaten meals, listened to music, talked with friends, attended to the boring minutiae of the average life, never imagining that hers was nearly over.

  The body had been positioned with the feet pointing toward downtown, which Quinn thought might have been more significant if the head had also been posed or buried nearby. One of the more infamous cases he had studied years before had included the decapitation of two victims. The killer, Ed Kemper, had buried the heads in the backyard of his family home, beneath his mother's bedroom window. A sick private joke, Kemper had later admitted. His mother, who had emotionally abused him from boyhood, had “always wanted people to look up to her,” he'd said.

  The head of this victim had not been found and the ground was too hard for the killer to have buried it here.

  “There're a lot of theories on why he's burning them,” Walsh said. He bounced a little on the balls of his feet, trying unsuccessfully to keep the cold from knifing into his bones. “Some people think he's just a copycat of the Wirth Park murders. Some people think it's symbolism: Whores of the world burn in hell—that kind of thing. Some think he's trying to obscure the forensic evidence and the victim's identity at the same time.”

  “Why leave the DL if he doesn't want them identified?” Quinn said. “Now he takes this one's head. That makes her pretty damn hard to recognize—he didn't have to burn her up. And still he leaves the driver's license.”

  “So you think he's trying to get rid of trace evidence?”

  “Maybe. What's he use for an accelerant?”

  “Alcohol. Some kind of high-test vodka or something.”

  “Then the fire is more likely part of his signature than it is part of his MO,” Quinn said. “He might be getting rid of trace evidence, but if that's all he wanted, why wouldn't he just use gasoline? It's cheap. It's easily had with little or no interaction with another person. He chooses alcohol for an emotional reason rather than a practical one. That makes it part of the ritual, part of the fantasy.”

  “Or maybe he's a big drinker.”

  “No. A drinker doesn't waste good booze. And that's exactly what he'd call this: a waste of good liquor. He may be drinking prior to the hunt. He may drink during the torture and murder phase. But he's no drunk. A drunk would make mistakes. Sounds like this guy hasn't made any so far.”

  None that anyone had noticed, at any rate. He thought again of the two hookers whose death had preceded this woman's and wondered who had caught their cases: a good cop or a bad cop. Every department had its share of both. He'd seen cops shrug and sleepwalk through an investigation if they didn't feel the victim was worth their time. And he'd seen veteran cops break down and cry over the violent death of someone most taxpaying citizens wouldn't sit next to on the bus.

  He closed the file. Rain ran down his forehead and dripped off the end of his nose.

  “This isn't where he left the others, is it?”

  “No. One was found in Minnehaha Park and one in Powderhorn Park. Different parts of the city.”

  He would need to see maps, to see where each dumping site was in relation to the others, where each abduction had taken place—to try to establish both a hunting territory and a killing and/or dumping territory. The task force would have maps in their command center, posted and flagged with little redheaded pins. Standard op. There was no need to ask. His mind was already full of maps bristling with pins. Manhunts that ran together like tag-team events, and command centers and war rooms that all looked alike and smelled alike, and cops who tended to look alike and sound alike, and smell like cigarettes and cheap cologne. He couldn't separate the cities anymore, but he could remember every single one of the victims.

  The exhaustion poured through him again, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down right there on the ground.

  He glanced over at Walsh as the agent fell into another spasm of deep, phlegm-rattling coughing.

  “Let's go,” Quinn said. “I've seen enough here for now.”

  He'd seen enough, period. And yet it took him another moment to move his feet and follow Vince Walsh back to the car.

  5

  CHAPTER

  THE TENSION IN the mayor's conference room was high and electric. Grim excitement, anticipation, anxiety, latent power. There were always those who saw murder as tragedy and those who sensed career opportunity. The next hour would sort out one type from the other, and establish the power order of the personalities involved. In that time Quinn would have to read them, work them, decide how to play them, and slot them into place in his own scheme of things.

  He straightened his back, squared his aching shoulders, lifted his chin, and made his entrance. Show time. The heads turned immediately as he walked in the door. On the plane he had memorized the names of some of the principal players here, scouring the faxes that had come into the office before he'd left Virginia. He tried to recall them now, tried to sort them from the hundreds of others he'd known in hundreds of conference rooms across the country.

  The mayor of Minneapolis detached herself from the crowd when she spotted him, and came toward him with purpose, trailing lesser politicians in her wake. Grace Noble resembled nothing so much as an operatic Valkyrie. She was fifty-something and large, built like a tree trunk, with a helmet of starched blond hair. She had no upper lip to speak of, but had carefully drawn herself one and filled it in with red lipstick that matched her suit.

  “Special Agent Quinn,” she declared, holding out a broad, wrinkled hand tipped with red nails. “I've been reading all about you. As soon as we heard from the director, I sent Cynthia to the library for every article she could find.”

  He flashed what had been called his Top Gun smile—confident, winning, charming, but with the unmistakable glint of steel beneath it. “Mayor Noble. I should tell you not to believe everything you read, but I find there is an advantage to having people think I can see into their minds.”

  “I'm sure you don't have to be able to read minds to know how grateful we are to have you here.”

  “I'll do what I can to help. Did you say you'd spoken with the director?”

  Grace Noble patted his arm. Maternal. “No, dear. Peter spoke with him. Peter Bondurant. They're old friends, as it happens.”

  “Is Mr. Bondurant here?”

  “No, he couldn't bring himself to face the press. Not yet. Not knowing . . .” Her shoulders slumped briefly beneath the weight of it all. “My God, what this will do to him if it is Jillie. . . .”

  A short African American man with a weightlifter build and a tailored gray suit stepped up beside her, his eyes on Quinn. “Dick Greer, chief of police,” he said crisply, thrusting out his hand. “Glad to have you on board, John. We're ready to nail this creep.”

  As if he would have anything to do with it. In a metropolitan police department the chief was an administrator and a politician, a spokesman, an idea man. The men in the trenches likely said Chief Greer couldn't find his own dick in a dark room.

  Quinn listened to the list of names and titles as the introductions were made. A deputy chief, a deputy mayor, an assistant county attorney, the state director of public safety, a city attorney, and a pair of press secretaries—too damn many politicians. Also present were the Hennepin County sheriff, a detective from the same office, a special agent in charge from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension with one of his agents, the homicide lieutenant from the PD—representatives from three of the agencies that would comprise the task force.

  He met each with a firm handshake and played it low key. Midwesterners tended to be reserved and didn't quite trust people who weren't. In the Northeast he would have given more of the steel. On the West Coast he would have turned up the charm, would have been Mr. Affable,
Mr. Spirit of Cooperation. Different horses for different courses, his old man used to say. And which one was the real John Quinn—even he didn't know anymore.

  “. . . and my husband, Edwyn Noble,” the mayor finished the introductions.

  “Here in a professional capacity, Agent Quinn,” Edwyn Noble said. “Peter Bondurant is a client as well as a friend.”

  Quinn's attention focused sharply on the man before him. Six five or six six, Noble was all joints and sinew, an exaggerated skeleton of a man with a smile that was perfectly square and too wide for his face. He looked slightly younger than his wife. The gray in his hair was contained to flags at the temples.

  “Mr. Bondurant sent his attorney?” Quinn said.

  “I'm Peter's personal counsel, yes. I'm here on his behalf.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The shock has been terrific.”

  “I'm sure it has been. Has Mr. Bondurant already given the police his statement?”

  Noble leaned back, the question physically putting him off. “A statement regarding what?”

  Quinn shrugged, nonchalant. “The usual. When he last saw his daughter. Her frame of mind at the time. The quality of their relationship.”

  Color blushed the attorney's prominent cheekbones. “Are you suggesting Mr. Bondurant is a suspect in his own daughter's death?” he said in a harsh, hushed tone, his gaze slicing across the room to check for eavesdroppers.

  “Not at all,” Quinn said with blank innocence. “I'm sorry if you misunderstood me. We need all the pieces of the puzzle we can get in order to form a clear picture of things, that's all. You understand.”

  Noble looked unhappy.

  In Quinn's experience, the parents of murder victims tended to camp out at the police department, demanding answers, constantly underfoot of the detectives. After the description Walsh had given of Bondurant, Quinn had expected to see the man throwing his weight around city hall like a mad bull. But Peter Bondurant had reached out and touched the director of the FBI, called out his personal attorney, and stayed home.

  “Peter Bondurant is one of the finest men I know,” Noble declared.

  “I'm sure Agent Quinn didn't mean to imply otherwise, Edwyn,” the mayor said, patting her husband's arm.

  The lawyer's attention remained on Quinn. “Peter was assured you're the best man for this job.”

  “I'm very good at what I do, Mr. Noble,” Quinn said. “One of the reasons I'm good at my job is that I'm not afraid to do my job. I'm sure Mr. Bondurant will be glad to hear it.”

  He left it at that. He didn't want to make enemies of Bondurant's people. Offend a man like Bondurant and he'd find himself called on the carpet before the Bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility—at the very least. On the other hand, after having Peter Bondurant jerk him out here like a dog on a leash, he wanted it made clear he wouldn't be manipulated.

  “We're running short on time, people. Let's take our seats and get started,” the mayor announced, herding the men toward the conference table like a first-grade teacher with a pack of little boys.

  She stood at the political end of the table as everyone fell into rank, and drew breath to speak just as the door opened again and four more people walked in.

  “Ted, we were about to start without you.” The mayor's doughy face creased with disapproval at his lack of punctuality.

  “We've had some complications.” He strode across the room directly toward Quinn. “Special Agent Quinn. Ted Sabin, Hennepin County attorney. I'm glad to meet you.”

  Quinn rose unsteadily to his feet. His gaze glanced off the man's shoulder to the woman trailing reluctantly behind him. He mumbled an adequate reply to Sabin, shaking the county attorney's hand. A mustached cop stepped up and introduced himself. Kovac. The name registered dimly. The pudgy guy with them introduced himself and said something about having once heard Quinn speak somewhere.

  “. . . And this is Kate Conlan with our victim/witness program,” Sabin said. “You may—”

  “We've met,” they said in unison.

  Kate looked Quinn in the eye for just a moment because it seemed important to do so, to recognize him, acknowledge him, but not react. Then she glanced away, stifling the urge to sigh or swear or walk out of the room.

  She couldn't say she was surprised to see him. There were only eighteen agents assigned to Investigative Support's Child Abduction/Serial Killer Unit. Quinn was the current poster boy for CASKU, and sexual homicide was his specialty. The odds had not been in her favor, and her luck today was for shit. Hell, she should have expected to see him standing in the mayor's conference room. But she hadn't.

  “You've worked together?” Sabin said, not quite certain whether he should be pleased or disappointed.

  An awkward silence hung for a second or three. Kate sank into a chair.

  “Uh—yes,” she said. “It's been a long time.”

  Quinn stared at her. No one took him by surprise. Ever. He'd spent a lifetime building that level of control. That Kate Conlan could walk in the door and tilt the earth beneath his feet after all this time did not sit well. He ducked his head and cleared his throat. “Yeah. You're missed, Kate.”

  By whom? she wanted to ask, but instead she said, “I doubt it. The Bureau is like the Chinese Army: The personnel could march into the sea for a year and there'd still be plenty of warm bodies to fill the posts.”

  Oblivious of the discomfort at the other end of the table, the mayor brought the meeting to order. The press conference was less than an hour away. The politicians needed to get their ducks in a row. Who would speak first. Who would stand where. Who would say what. The cops combed their mustaches and drummed their fingers on the table, impatient with the formalities.

  “We need to make a strong statement,” Chief Greer said, warming up his orator's voice. “Let this creep know we won't rest until we get him. Let him know right up front we've got the FBI's leading profiler here, we've got the combined resources of four agencies working on this thing day and night.”

  Edwyn Noble nodded. “Mr. Bondurant is establishing a reward of one hundred fifty thousand for information leading to an arrest.”

  Quinn pulled his attention away from Kate and rose. “Actually, Chief, I wouldn't advise any of that just yet.”

  Greer's face pinched. Edwyn Noble glared at him. The collective expression from the political end of the table was a frown.

  “I haven't had the opportunity to thoroughly go over the case,” Quinn began, “which is reason enough to hold off. We need to get a handle on just who this killer might be, how his mind works. Making a blind show of strength at this point could be a move in the wrong direction.”

  “And that would be based on what?” Greer asked, his bulky shoulders tensing beneath the weight of the chip he was carrying. “You've said yourself, you haven't reviewed the case.”

  “We've got a killer who's putting on a show. I've seen the photos from this last crime scene. He brought the body to a public place, intending to shock. He drew attention to the scene with a fire. This probably means he wants an audience, and if that's what he wants, we have to be careful of just how we give it to him.

  “My advice is to hold off today. Minimize this press conference. Assure the public you're doing everything you can to identify and arrest the killer, but don't go into details. Keep the number of people behind the podium down—Chief Greer, Mayor Noble, Mr. Sabin, that's it. Don't get into the specifics of the task force. Don't talk about Mr. Bondurant. Don't bring up the FBI. Don't mention my name at all. And don't take any questions.”

  Predictably, eyebrows went up all around the table. He knew from experience some of them had been expecting him to try to take the limelight: the FBI bully jumping in to grab the headlines. And undoubtedly, some of them wanted to show him off at the press conference like a trophy—Look who we've got on our side. It's Super Agent! No one ever expected him to downplay his role.

  “At this stage of the game we don't want to set up an advers
arial situation where he may see me as a direct challenge to him,” he said, resting his hands at his waist, settling in for the inevitable arguments. “I'm in the background as much as I can be. I'll maintain a low profile with the media for as long as I can or until I deem it advantageous to do otherwise.”

  The politicians looked crestfallen. They loved nothing so much as a public forum and the undivided attention of the media and thereby the masses. Greer obviously resented having his thunder stolen. The muscles in his jaw pulsed subtly.

  “The people of this city are ready to panic,” the chief said. “We've got three women dead, one of them beheaded. The phones in my office are ringing off the hook. A statement needs to be made. People want to know we're going after this animal with everything we've got.”

  The mayor nodded. “I'm inclined to agree with Dick. We've got business conferences in town, tourists coming in for plays, for concerts, for holiday shopping—”

  “To say nothing of the anxiety of the general population over the growing crime rate in the city,” said the deputy mayor.

  “It was bad enough with the two prostitute killings making the news,” a press secretary added. “Now we've got the daughter of a very prominent citizen dead. People start thinking if it could happen to her, it could happen to anyone. News like this creates an environment of fear.”

  “Give this guy a sense of importance and power and this city may well have a reason to panic,” Quinn said bluntly.

  “Isn't it just as likely that minimizing the case in the media could enrage him? Drive him to commit more crimes in order to draw more attention to himself?” Greer questioned. “How do you know coming out with a strong and public offensive won't scare him and flush him out?”

  “I don't. I don't know what this guy might do—and neither do you. We need to take the time to try to figure that out. He's murdered three women that you know of, getting progressively bolder and more flamboyant. He won't scare easily, I can tell you that. We may eventually be able to draw him into the investigation—he's sure as hell watching—but we need to maintain tight control and keep our options open.” He turned toward Edwyn Noble. “And the reward is too large. I'd advise you to cut it back to no more than fifty thousand to start.”