Ashes to Ashes

by Tami Hoag

  “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 meeti
ng,” 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.

  What came from the tiny speaker ran through Kate like a spike. A woman's screams, thick with desperation, interspersed with breathless, broken pleas for mercy that would never be delivered. The cries of someone enduring torture and begging for death.

  Not proof there was a God, Kate thought. Proof there wasn't.

  23

  CHAPTER

  ELATION. ECSTASY. AROUSAL. These are the things he feels in his triumph, stirred into the darker emotions of anger and hatred and frustration that burn constantly inside him.

  Manipulation. Domination. Control. His power extends beyond his victims, he reminds himself. He exercises the same forces over the police and over Quinn.

  Elation. Ecstasy. Arousal.

  Never mind the rest. Focus on the win.

  The intensity is overwhelming. He is shaking, sweating, flushed with excitement as he drives toward the house. He can smell himself. The odor is peculiar to this kind of excitement—strong, musky, almost sexual. He wants to wipe his armpits with his hands and rub the sweat and the scent all over his face, into his nostrils, lick it from his fingers.

  He wants to strip and have the woman in his fantasies lick it all from his body. From his chest and his belly and his back. In his fantasy she ends up on her knees before him, licking his balls. His erection is huge and straining and he shoves it into her mouth and fucks her mouth, slapping her every time she gags on him. He comes in her face, then forces her down on her hands and knees and penetrates her anally. His hands around her throat, he rapes her viciously, choking her between screams.

  The images excite him, arouse him. His penis is stiff and throbbing. He needs release. He needs to hear the sounds that are as sharp and beautiful as finely honed blades. He needs to hear the screams, that raw, pure quality of sound that is terror, and to pretend the screams come from the woman in his mind. He needs to hear the building crescendo as a life reaches its limit. The fading energy absorbed greedily by death.

  He digs a hand into his coat pocket for the tape and finds nothing.

  A wave of panic sweeps over him. He pulls to the curb and searches all pockets, checks the seat beside him, checks the floor, checks the cassette player. The tape is gone.

  Anger burns through him. Huge and violent. A wall of rage. Cursing, he slams the car into gear and pulls back onto the street. He's made a mistake. Unacceptable. He knows it won't be fatal. Even if the police find the tape, even if they are able to lift a fingerprint from it, they won't find him. His prints are in no criminal database. He hasn't been arrested since his juvenile days. But the very idea of a mistake infuriates him because he knows it will give the task force and John Quinn encouragement, when he wants only to crush them.

  His triumph is now diminished. His celebration ruined. His erection has gone soft, his cock shriveling to a pathetic nub. In the back of his mind he can hear the sneering voice, the disdain as the fantasy woman gets up and walks away from him, bored and disinterested.

  He pulls into the driveway, hitting the remote control for the garage door. The anger is a snake writhing inside him, oozing poison. The sound of toy-dog barking follows him into the garage. That goddamn mutt from next door. His night ruined, now this.

  He gets out of the car and goes to the trash bin. The garage door is descending. The bichon makes eye contact with him, yapping incessantly, bouncing backward toward the lowering door. He pulls a dropcloth out of the garbage and turns toward the dog, already imagining scooping the dog up, then swinging the makeshift bag hard against the concrete wall again and again and again.

  “Come on, Bitsy, you rotten little shit,” he murmurs in a sweet tone. “Why don't you like me? What have I ever done to you?”

  The dog growls, a sound as ferocious as an electric pencil sharpener, and holds her ground, glancing back toward the door now less than a foot from sealing her fate.

  “Do you know I've killed little rat dogs like you before?” he asks, smiling, stepping closer, bending down. “Do you think I smell like evil?”

  He reaches a hand toward the dog. “That's because I am,” he murmurs as the dog lunges toward him, teeth bared.

  The grinding of the garage door mechanism stops.

  The dropcloth falls, muffling the yip of surprise.

  24

  CHAPTER

  KATE WAS STILL shaking when they reached her house. Quinn had insisted on seeing her home for the second time that night, and she hadn't argued. The memory of the screams echoed in her head. She heard them, faint but constant, as she slipped wordlessly from the truck and left the garage, as she fumbled with the keys for the back door, as she passed through the kitchen to the hall and turned the thermostat up.

  Quinn was behind her like a shadow the whole time. She expected him to say something about the burnt-out light in the garage, but if he did, she didn't hear him. She could hear only the whoosh of her pulse in her ears, the magnified rattle of keys, Thor meowing, the refrigerator humming . . . and beneath all that, the screams.

  “I'm so cold,” she said, going into the study, where the desk lamp still burned and a chenille throw lay in a heap on the old sofa. She glanced at the answering machine—no blinking light—and thought of the hang-up calls that had come to her cell phone at 10:05, 10:08, 10:10.

  A half-empty glass of Sapphire and tonic sat on the blotter, the ice long melted. Kate picked it up with a shaking hand and took a swallow. The tonic had gone flat, but she didn't notice, didn't taste anything at all. Quinn took the glass from her hand and set it aside, then turned her gently by the shoulders to face him.

  “Aren't you cold?” she prattled on. “It takes forever for the furnace to heat this place. I should probably have it replaced—it's old as Moses—but I never think of it until the weather turns.

  “Maybe I should start a fire,” she suggested, and immediately felt the blood drain from her face. “Oh, God, I can't believe I said that. All I can smell is smoke and that horrible—Jesus, what an awful—”

  She swallowed hard and looked at the glass that was now out of easy reach.

  Quinn laid a hand against her cheek and turned her face toward him. “Hush,” he said softly.

  “But—”

  “Hush.”

  As carefully as if she were made of spun glass, he folded his arms around her and drew her close against him. Another invitation to lean on him, to let go. She knew she shouldn't. If she let go for even a second now, she would be lost. She needed to keep moving, keep talking, do something. If she let go, if she went still, if she didn't occupy herself with some mindless, meaningless task, the tide of despair would sweep over her, and then where would she be?

  Without defense in the arms of a man she still loved but couldn't have.

  The full import of that answer was heavy enough to strain what little strength she had left, ironically tempting her further to take the support Quinn offered for now.

  She had never stopped loving him. She had just put it away in a lockbox in her secret heart, never to be taken out again. Maybe hoping it would wither and die, but it had only gone dormant.

  Another chill washed over her, and she let her head find the hollow of his shoulder. With her ear pressed against his chest, she could hear his heart beat, and she remembered all the other times, long ago, when he had held her and comforted her, and she had pretended what they had in a stolen moment might last forever.

  God, she wanted to pretend that now. She wanted to pretend they hadn't just come from a crime scene, and her witness wasn't missi
ng, and that Quinn had come here for her instead of the job he had always put first.

  How unfair that she felt so safe with him, that contentment seemed so close, that looking at her life from the vantage point of his arms, she could suddenly see all the holes, the missing pieces, the faded colors, the dulled senses. How unfair to realize all that, when she had decided it was better not to need anyone, and certainly best not to need him.

  She felt his lips brush her temple, her cheek. Against the weaker part of her will, she turned her face up and let his lips find hers. Warm, firm, a perfect match, a perfect fit. The feeling that flooded her was equal parts pain and pleasure, bitter and sweet. The kiss was tender, careful, gentle—asking, not taking. And when Quinn raised his head an inch, the question and the caution were in his eyes, as if her every want and misgiving had passed to him through the kiss.

  “I need to sit down,” Kate murmured, stepping back. His arms fell away from her and the chill swept back around her like an invisible stole. She grabbed the glass off the desk as she went to the couch and wedged herself into a corner, pulling the chenille throw into her lap.

  “I can't do this,” she said softly, more to herself than to him. “It's too hard. It's too cruel. I don't want that kind of mess to clean up when you go back to Quantico.” She sipped at the gin and shook her head. “I wish you hadn't come, John.”

  Quinn sat down beside her, forearms on his thighs. “Is that what you really wish, Kate?”

  Tears clung to her lashes. “No. But what does it matter now? What I wish has never had any bearing on reality.”

  She finished the drink, set the glass aside, and rubbed her hands over her face.

  “I wished Emily would live, and she didn't. I wished Steven wouldn't blame me, but he did. I wished—”

  She held short on that. What was she supposed to say? That she'd wished Quinn had loved her more? That they had married and had children and lived in Montana, raising horses and making love every night? Fantasies that should have belonged to someone more naive. Christ, she felt like a fool for even having such thoughts and stowing them away in a dusty corner of her mind. She sure as hell wasn't going to share them and risk looking more pathetic.