Ashes to Ashes

by Tami Hoag

  He had always seen her femininity, her vulnerability. He doubted many people looked at Kate and thought she might need protecting. Her strength and tenacity were what others noted. But just behind that wall was a woman not always so certain as she seemed.

  “How are you, Kate?”

  “Hmm? What?” She turned toward him from the microwave, her brow knit in confusion. “I'm tired. I'm upset. I've lost a witness—”

  Stepping close, Quinn put a finger to her lips. “I don't mean with the case. It's been five years. How are you, really?”

  Kate's heart thumped hard against her sternum. Answers log-jammed in her throat. Five years. The first was remembered as a pain so sharp, it stole her breath. The second had been like trying to relearn how to walk and talk after a stroke. Then came the third and the fourth and another after that. In that time she'd built a career, made a home for herself, done some traveling, settled into a nice, safe rut. But the answers that rushed to mind were other words.

  How are you? Empty. Alone. Walled off.

  “Let's not play that game,” she said softly. “If you'd really wanted to know, it wouldn't have taken you five years to ask.”

  She heard the regret in those words and wished them back. What was the point now, when all they would have was a few days. Better to pretend there'd been no fire at all than to poke at the ash and stir up the dust of memories. The timer went off on the microwave, and she turned her back to him and busied herself making a cup of tea.

  “You told me that was what you wanted,” he said. “You wanted out. You wanted a clean break. You wanted to leave, to start over. What was I supposed to do, Kate?”

  Ask me not to go. Go with me. The answers were right there, as fresh as yesterday and just as futile. By the time she'd left Virginia, the anger and the pain had taken them past the point of his asking her not to go. And she knew without having to ask that he would never have left Investigative Support to go with her. The job was who John Quinn was. He was bound to it in a way he would never be bound to a woman. And, God, how it still hurt to think that.

  “What were you supposed to do? Nothing,” she whispered. “You did it well.”

  Quinn moved in close behind her, wanting to touch her, as if that might magically erase the time and the trouble that had passed between them. He wanted to tell her the phone worked both ways, but he knew she would never have backed away from her pride or the insecurity it covered. A part of him had been relieved that she had never called, because he would then have had to face himself in life's big mirror and finally answer the question of whether or not there was enough left in him to build a lasting relationship. His fear of the answer had kept him running from that question for a long, long time.

  And now he stood here, an inch away from the better part of his past, knowing he should let it lie. If he hadn't had enough to give a relationship five years ago, he sure as hell didn't have any more now.

  He raised a hand to touch her hair, his memory of its texture meeting the silk of reality. He let his hand rest on her shoulder, his thumb finding the familiar knot of tension there.

  “Do you regret it, Kate? Not the way it ended, but us.”

  Kate squeezed her eyes shut. She had a truckload of regret she had to move out of her way every day in order to get on with her life. But she had never been able to find it in her to regret turning to him. She regretted she had wished for more. She regretted he hadn't had more to give. But she couldn't think of a single touch, a single kiss, a single night in his arms, and regret a second of it. He had given her love and understanding, passion and compassion, tenderness and comfort when she had needed so badly, when she had hurt so much, when she had felt so alone. How could she regret that?

  “No,” she said, turning and holding the steaming mug of tea between them. “Here. It's good for what ails you.”

  He took the cup and set it aside.

  “I don't regret us,” he said. “There were times when I thought I should, but I didn't, and I don't.”

  His fingertips touched her cheek and slid back into her hair, and he leaned down and touched his mouth to hers. Need, sharp and bitter and sweet, instantly sprang up inside her. Her lips moved against his out of memory and longing. A perfect fit. The perfect balance of pressure and passion. Their tongues tangled, seeking, searching, tasting, touching, deepening the kiss and the emotions it evoked. Her heart beat hard against the wall of her chest and his. She was instantly aware of a tenderness in her breasts, a longing for the touch of his hand, his mouth, a need for a connection beyond this simple act. His arms tightened around her. She could feel him hard against her belly as he pressed against her.

  He would be here a matter of days, her fading logic reminded her. He had come for a case, not because he needed her or missed her or wanted to resolve what they had walked away from. All of that was incidental.

  “No,” she said softly as he raised his head. “I don't regret it. But that doesn't mean I'll go through it again, John. I'm not here for your convenience.”

  “You think that's what I expect?” he asked, hurt. “You think I expect you to go to bed with me because you're handy and you know what I like? I thought you knew me better than that, Kate.” His voice dropped low and rough, and skimmed across her heart like a callused hand. “My God, you're the only person who ever knew me.”

  “Well, at least I thought I did,” Kate murmured. “It seemed at the end there we didn't know each other very well at all.”

  He sighed and stepped back.

  “Let's just call ourselves old friends and leave it at that, huh?” she said around the knot in her throat. “You didn't come here for me, John. You would have done that years ago if it was what you wanted. I'll go call you that cab.”

  21

  CHAPTER

  THE HOUSE WAS DARK. The neighborhood was dark. People living on Lake of the Isles kept civilized hours. In Kovac's neighborhood there was always a light on somewhere—people coming in late, going to work early, watching infomercials.

  Kovac parked on the street at the edge of Bondurant's property and made a complete circuit of the place on foot through the fresh snow. Fresh, wet snow. Heavy and sticky, it clung to his pant legs and worked down into his shoes, but he ignored it, his attention on the mansion that seemed to loom even larger in the dark than in the light. Security lights marked entrances on the back side. There were no lights visible in the house. If Peter Bondurant was watching TV, learning how to get buns of steel, he was in some windowless room in the heart of his home.

  Some home. It looked like something out of medieval England, like someplace that would have a torture chamber in the basement. For all he knew, it did have.

  Christ, wouldn't that be just his luck? He'd have to be the one to tell the world billionaire Peter Big Deal Bondurant was a homicidal lunatic. The mayor would have his throat cut and dispose of his body in the footings of the new jail. The bigwigs wanted a killer caught, all right. And this killer would preferably be a bug-eyed, drooling ex-con from Wisconsin.

  Circling back around to his car, he kicked the snow off his legs and feet, slid in behind the wheel, and started the engine, setting the anemic heater to full blast. The bones in his feet and ankles and shins had absorbed the cold into their marrow, and it was now making its way up his legs like mercury in a thermometer.

  He dug his cell phone out from under a pile of junk on the seat and dialed Bondurant's home number. Quinn had called to tell him Kate had spotted Bondurant in the back at the meeting, hiding out among the common folk. The guy was a twitch. He was holding out on them about that last night with Jillian, and God knew what else.

  The phone rang.

  It burned his ass that Bondurant got special treatment, was privy to information, didn't have to come downtown to make a statement. It was wrong. They should have been able to rattle his cage same as anyone else's.

  On the fifth ring the answering machine picked up and an emotionless voice gave instructions. Kovac left his name and num
ber, and a request for a return call.

  He put the car in gear, rolled up to the intercom panel at the security gate, and hit the buzzer. No one responded. He sat there for another five minutes, leaning on the buzzer again and again, well schooled in how to be an asshole to get someone's attention. No one ever responded.

  A prowl car from a private security company came by and a weightlifter in a spiffy uniform asked to see his ID. Then he was alone again, left to stare up at Peter Bondurant's house and wonder what secrets hid inside.

  Some people didn't answer their phones when they rang after midnight. Not the parents of missing children. Maybe Peter Bondurant never answered his gate buzzer, and was, even at that moment, cowering in his bed, waiting for a mob of the desperate poor to burst in and loot his house. But he hadn't been the one to call in the security car. Routine driveby, the weightlifter had said.

  Kovac stared at the house and let seventeen years of experience tell him there was no one in. Peter Bondurant was not at home in the dead of this night when their witness had gone missing. Peter Bondurant, who demanded answers but refused to give any. Peter Bondurant, who had fought with his daughter the night she disappeared, then lied about it. Peter Bondurant, who had the power to crush a cop's career like an empty beer can.

  I'm probably a moron for sitting here, he thought. Vanlees was their hot ticket. Vanlees looked to fit Quinn's profile. He had a history. He'd known Jillian, had access to her town house. He even drove the right kind of vehicle.

  But there was still something off about Peter Bondurant. He could feel it like hives just under his skin, and come hell or high water, he was going to find out what.

  He sighed, shifted his weight to a new uncomfortable position, and settled in, lighting a cigarette. What the hell did he need with a pension anyway?

  THE CORPSES FLOATED above him like logs. Naked, rotting bodies. Torn, hacked apart, riddled with holes. Decomposing flesh shredded away from the wounds. Fish food. Eels swam in and out of the bodies through the gaping holes.

  Quinn looked up at the bodies from below, trying to identify each one by name in the dim blue watery light. He was out of oxygen. His lungs were burning. But he couldn't go to the surface until he had identified every body and named the killer that went with each.

  The bodies bobbed and shifted position. Decaying limbs fell away from torsos and sank toward him. Below him, a bed of lush green weeds caught at his feet like the tentacles of a squid.

  He needed to think hard. Names. Dates. Facts. But he couldn't remember all the names. He didn't know all the killers. Random facts raced through his head. The bodies seemed to be multiplying, kept drifting and bobbing. He was running out of air.

  He couldn't breathe, couldn't think.

  He struck out with his arms, trying to grab hold of anything that might help pull him up. But the hands he caught hold of were cold and dead, and held him under. The bodies and his responsibility to them held him under. He had to think hard. He could solve the puzzles if only the pieces would stop moving, if only his thoughts would stop racing, if only he could breathe.

  The bodies shifted again above him, and he could see Kate's face on the other side of the surface, looking down at him. Then the bodies shifted again and she was gone.

  Just as it felt as if his lungs were starting to bleed, he gave one last hard kick and broke the surface of the water and the dream, gasping for air, coming up off the bed. Sweat drenched his body, ran off the end of his nose and down the valley of his spine.

  He staggered away from the bed, his legs weak beneath him, and fell into the chair by the writing desk, shaking now as the air chilled him. Naked, shaking, sweating, sick, the taste of bile and blood bitter in his mouth.

  He sat doubled over the wastebasket, his focus not entirely on the writhing fire in his belly. As ever, there was the sound of that inner voice that always found him wanting, and never hesitated to kick him when he was down. It told him he didn't have time for this shit. He had cases to work, people depending on him; if he lost his focus and fucked up, people could die. If he fucked up bad enough, if anyone found out what a mess his head was, that he'd lost his nerve and his edge, he'd be out of a job. And if he didn't have the job, he didn't have anything, because it wasn't just what he did, it was all he was, all he had.

  The dream was nothing new, nothing to shake over, nothing to waste his energy on. He had any number of variations on that one. They were all stupidly simple to interpret, and he always felt vaguely embarrassed for having them at all. He didn't have time for it.

  He could hear exactly what Kate would have to say about that. She would give him the sharp side of her tongue and another lecture on Superman, then try to make him drink herbal tea. She would try to mask her concern and her maternal instincts with the wise-ass sarcasm that seemed so much safer and more familiar and more in character with the image others had of her. She would pretend he didn't know her better.

  And then she'd call him a cab and shove him out of her house.

  “Let's just call ourselves old friends and leave it at that, huh? You didn't come here for me, John. You would have done that years ago if it was what you wanted.”

  That was what she thought, that he hadn't come because he didn't want her. Maybe that was what she wanted to think. She was the one who had walked away. It justified her action to believe there'd been no reason to stay.

  Still feeling weak, he went to the window that looked out on a wedge of downtown Minneapolis and an empty street filling with snow.

  What he wanted. He wasn't sure what that even was anymore. He didn't allow himself to want outside the scope of the job. A lead, a piece of evidence, a fresh insight to help pry open a killer's head. He could want those things. But what was the point in wanting what couldn't be had?

  The point was whether or not to allow himself hope.

  “The only thing that can save you from disappointment is hopelessness. But if you don't have hope, then there's no point in living.”

  His own words. His own voice. His own wisdom. Coming right back around to bite him in the ass.

  He didn't ask the point of his life. He lived to work and he worked to live. He was as simple and pathetic as that. That was the Quinn machine of perpetual function. The trouble was he could feel the wheels coming loose. What would happen when one came off altogether?

  Closing his eyes, he saw the corpses again, and felt the panic wash down through him, a cold, internal acid rain. He could hear his unit chief demanding answers, explanations, prodding for results. “The director chewed my tail for half an hour. Bondurant isn't the guy to piss off, John. What the hell's wrong with you?”

  Tears burned his eyes as the answer called up from the hollow in the center of his chest: I've lost it. His edge, his nerve, his instincts. He felt it all torn asunder and scattered to too many parts of the country. He didn't have the time to go hunting for the pieces. He could only pretend he was intact and hope not too many people caught on.

  “Are you getting anywhere with this? Have they developed a suspect? You know what they're looking for, don't you? It's pretty straightforward, isn't it?”

  Sure it was. If you looked at the murders of two prostitutes and ignored the fact that Peter Bondurant's daughter may or may not have been the third victim. If you pretended Peter Bondurant's behavior was normal. If you didn't have a hundred unanswered questions about the enigma that was Jillian Bondurant. If this was simply about the murder of prostitutes, he could have pulled a profile out of a textbook and never left Quantico.

  But if this were simply about the murders of two prostitutes, no one would ever have called his office.

  Giving up on the notion of sleep, he brushed his teeth, took a shower, pulled on sweat pants and his academy sweatshirt. He sat down at the desk with the murder book and a bottle of antacid, drinking straight out of the bottle as he browsed through the reports.

  Wedged in between pages was the packet of photographs Mary Moss had gotten from Lila White's parents.
Pictures of Lila White alive and happy, and laughing at her little girl's birthday party. Her lifestyle had aged her beyond her years, but he could easily see the pretty girl she had once been before the drugs and the disillusioned dreams. Her daughter was a doll with blond pigtails and a pixie's face. One shot captured mother and daughter in bathing suits in a plastic wading pool, Lila on her knees with the little girl hugged close in front of her, both of them smiling the same crooked smile.

  It had to break her parents' hearts to look at this, Quinn thought. In the baby's face they would see their daughter as she had been when her world was simple and sunny and full of wonderful possibility. And in Lila's face they would see the lines of hard lessons learned, disappointment, and failure. And the hope for something better. Hope that had been rewarded with a brutal death not long after these photographs had been taken.

  Quinn sighed as he held the picture under the lamplight, committing Lila White's image to memory: the style of her hair, the crooked smile, the slight bump in the bridge of her nose, the curve where her shoulder met her neck. She would join the others who haunted his sleep.

  As he went to set the picture aside, something caught his eye and he pulled it back. Half obscured by the strap of her swimming suit was a small tattoo on her upper right chest. Quinn found his magnifying glass and held the snapshot under the light again for closer scrutiny.

  A flower. A lily, he thought.

  With one hand he flipped through the murder book to the White autopsy photos. There were about a third of the photos of the victim believed to be Jillian Bondurant. Still, he found what he was looking for: a shot showing a section of flesh missing from Lila White's upper right chest—and no tattoo in sight.

  KATE SAT CURLED into the corner of the old green leather sofa in her study, another glass of Sapphire on the table beside her. She'd lost count of its number. Didn't care. It took the sharp corners off the pain that assaulted her on several different fronts. That was all that mattered tonight.