Ashes to Ashes

by Tami Hoag

  “I've wished a lot of things. And wishing never made them so,” she said. “And now I'll wish to close my eyes and not see blood, to close my ears and not hear screams, to close out this nightmare and go to sleep. And I might as well wish for the moon.”

  Quinn laid a hand on her shoulder, his thumb finding the knot of tension in the muscle and rubbing at it. “I'd give you the moon, Kate,” he said. An old, familiar line they had passed back and forth between them like a secret keepsake. “And unhook the stars and take them down, and give them to you for a necklace.”

  Emotions stung her eyes, burning away the last of her resolve to hold strong. She was too tired and it hurt too much—all of it: the case, the memories, the dreams that had died. She buried her face in her hands.

  Quinn put his arms around her, guided her head to his shoulder once more.

  “It's all right,” he whispered.

  “No, it isn't.”

  “Let me hold you, Kate.”

  She couldn't bring herself to say no. She couldn't bear the idea of pulling away, of being alone. She'd been alone too long. She wanted his comfort. She wanted his strength, the warmth of his body. Being in his arms, she felt a sense of being where she belonged for the first time in a long time.

  “I never stopped loving you,” he whispered.

  Kate tightened her arms around him, but didn't trust herself to look at him.

  “Then why did you let me go?” she asked, the pain just beneath the surface of her voice. “And why did you stay away?”

  “I thought it was what you wanted, what you needed. I thought it was best for you. You didn't exactly beg for my attention at the end.”

  “You were tied up with the OPR because of me—”

  “Because of Steven, not because of you.”

  “Semantics. Steven wanted to punish you because of me, because of us.”

  “And you wanted to hide because of us.”

  She didn't try to deny it. What they'd had in their secret love had been so special: the kind of magic most people wished for and never found, the kind of magic neither of them had ever known before. But when the secrecy had finally been broken, no one had seen that magic. Under the harsh light of public scrutiny, their love had become an affair, something tawdry and cheap. No one had understood; no one had tried; no one had wanted to. No one had seen her pain, her need. She wasn't a woman drowning in grief, shut out by a husband who had turned distant and bitter. She was a slut who had cheated on her grieving husband while their daughter was barely cold in the ground.

  She couldn't say her own sense of guilt hadn't reflected back some of those same feelings, even though she knew better. It had never been in her to lie, to cheat. She'd been raised on a combination of Catholic guilt and Swedish self-reproof. And the wave of self-condemnation from Emily's death and her own sense of breached morality had come up over her head, and she hadn't been able to surface—especially not when the one person she would have reached to for help had backed away, wrestling with anger and pain of his own.

  The memory of that turmoil pushed her now to her feet again, restless, not liking the emotions that came with the memories.

  “You might have come after me,” she said. “But between the OPR and the job, suddenly you were never there.

  “I thought you loved the job more than me,” she admitted in a whisper, then offered Quinn a twisted half-smile. “I thought maybe you finally figured out I was more trouble than I was worth.”

  “Oh, Kate . . .” He stepped close, tipped her head back, and looked in her eyes. His were as dark as the night, shining and intense.

  Hers brimmed with the uncertainty that had always touched him most deeply—the uncertainty that lay buried beneath layers of polish and stubborn strength. An uncertainty he recognized perhaps as being akin to his own, the thing he hid and feared in himself.

  “I let you go because I thought that was what you wanted. And I buried myself in work because it was the only thing that dulled the hurt.

  “I've given everything I ever was to this job,” he said. “I don't know if there's anything left of me worth having. But I know I've never loved it—or anything, or anyone—the way I loved you, Kate.”

  Kate said nothing. Quinn was aware of time slipping by, of a tear sliding down her cheek. He thought of how they'd come apart, and all the time they'd lost, and knew it was more complicated than a simple lack of communication. The feelings, the fears, the pride, and the pain that had wedged between them had all been genuine. So sharp and true that neither of them had ever found the nerve to face them down. It had been easier to just let go—and that had been the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life.

  “We're a pair,” he whispered, echoing what she'd said in Kovac's car. “What did you feel, Kate? Did you stop needing me? Did you stop loving me? Did you—”

  She pressed trembling fingers to his lips, shaking her head. “Never,” she said, so softly the word was little more than a thought. “Never.”

  She had hated him. She had resented him. She had blamed him and tried to forget him. But she had never stopped loving him. And what a terrifying truth that was—that in five years the need had never died, that she'd never felt anything close to it. Now it rose within her like an awakening flame burning through the exhaustion and the fear and everything else.

  She leaned up to meet his lips with hers. She tasted his mouth and the salt of her own tears. His arms went around her and crushed her to him, bending her backward, fitting her body against his.

  “Oh, God, Kate, I've needed you,” he confessed, his mouth brushing the shell of her ear. “I've missed you so.”

  Kate kissed his cheek, ran a hand over the short-cropped hair. “I've never needed anyone the way I needed you . . . need you. . . .”

  He caught the distinction, and stood back to look at her for a moment. He didn't ask if she was sure. Afraid she might answer, Kate supposed. And so was she. There was no certainty in her. There was no logic, no thought of anything beyond the moment, and the tangle of raw feelings, and the need to lose herself with Quinn . . . only with him.

  She led him upstairs by the hand. He stopped her three times to kiss her, touch her, bury his face in her hair. In her bedroom they helped each other undress. Tangled hands, impatient fingers. His shirt on the back of a chair, her skirt in a puddle on the floor. Never losing contact with each other. A caress. A kiss. An anxious embrace.

  For Kate, Quinn's touch was a memory overlapping real time. The feel of his hand on her skin was imprinted on her mind and in her heart. It drew to the surface the desire she had known only with him. Instantly, in a warm rush and a sweet ache. As if they'd been apart five days instead of five years.

  Her breath caught at the feel of his mouth on her breast, and shuddered from her as his hand slipped between her legs, and his fingers found her wet and hot. Her hips arched automatically to the angle they'd found so many times before, so very long ago.

  Her hands traveled over his body. Familiar territory. Ridges and planes of muscle and bone. Smooth, hot skin. The valley of his spine. His erection straining against her, as hard as marble, as soft as velvet. His thick, muscular thigh urging her legs farther apart.

  She guided him into her, felt the absolute thrill of him filling her perfectly, the same as she had felt every single time they'd ever made love. The sensation, the wonder of it, had never dulled, only sharpened. For him as well as for her. She could see it in his eyes as he looked down at her in the lamplight: the intense pleasure, the heat, the surprise, the hint of desperation that came from knowing this magic happened only with each other.

  The last made her want to cry. He was the one, the only one. The man she'd married, whose child she'd borne, had never come close to making her feel what John Quinn made her feel with his mere presence in the room.

  She held him tighter, moved against him stronger, dug her fingernails into his back. He kissed her deeply, possessively, with his tongue, with his teeth. He moved into her with building
force, then pulled himself back, gentled, eased them both away from the edge.

  Time lost all meaning. There were no seconds, only breaths and murmured words; no minutes, just the ebb and flow of pleasure. And when the end finally came, it was with an explosion of emotion running head-on from each extreme of the spectrum. And then came an odd mix of peace and tension, contentment and completion and wariness, until exhaustion overrode all else, and they fell asleep in each other's arms.

  25

  CHAPTER

  “LISTEN UP!”

  Kovac leaned heavily on the end of the table in the Loving Touch of Death war room. He had been home long enough to fall asleep on a kitchen chair while waiting for the coffee to brew. He hadn't showered or shaved, and imagined he looked like a bum in the same limp, wrinkled suit he'd worn the day before. He hadn't had time to even change his shirt.

  Everyone on the team was showing similar signs of wear. Dark circles under bloodshot eyes. Deep frown lines etched into pale faces.

  The room stank of cigarettes, sweat, and bitter coffee over the original aromas of mice and mildew. A portable radio on the counter tuned to WCCO competed with a ten-inch television tuned to KSTP, both on to catch the latest reports the media had to offer. Photos from the car fire and of victim number four had been hastily pinned to one of the boards, so fresh from the developing trays, they were curling in on themselves.

  “The media is going nuts with the stuff from last night,” Kovac said. “Smokey Joe lights up a vic practically under our noses, and we look like we've been sitting around picking our toenails. I've already had the chief and Lieutenant Fowler on me like a couple of trick riders this morning. Long story short: If we can't make something happen fast, we'll all be on jail duty doing body cavity searches.”

  “That'd be the closest thing to sex Tip's had in years,” Adler said.

  Tippen fired a paper clip at him from a rubber-band slingshot. “Very funny. Let me start with you, Chunk. Mind if I use a crowbar?”

  Kovac ignored them. “We managed to keep word of that cassette tape away from them.”

  “Thank God none of them found it,” Walsh said, contemplating the state of his handkerchief. “They'd be playing it on every station in town.”

  Kovac hadn't been able to get the sound of those screams out of his head. The idea of that tape playing into every house in the Twin Cities was enough to make his stomach roll.

  “The tape is at the BCA lab,” he said. “Some techno-geek is going over it, trying to pick up background noise and the like. We'll see what he has to say later. Tinks, did you find Vanlees?”

  Liska shook her head. “No go. It seems the only close friend he's got is whoever he's house-sitting for. And he sure won't be making any new ones soon. Mary and I managed to piss off everyone he knows, calling up in the middle of the night. One guy said Vanlees was bragging on this house though. He thought it sounded like it might be Uptown or thereabouts. Near a lake.”

  “I've got a car sitting on his Lyndale apartment,” Kovac said. “Another one at the Target Center, and one at the Edgewater town houses. And every cop in town is looking for his truck.”

  “We've got no probable cause to arrest him,” Yurek pointed out.

  “You won't need it,” Quinn said, walking into the middle of the conversation. Flecks of snow melted in his hair. He shrugged out of his trench coat and tossed it on the counter. “It's not an arrest. We're asking for his assistance. If this guy is Smokey Joe, then he's feeling cocky and smug. He made us look like idiots last night. The idea of the cops asking him for help will have enormous appeal to his ego.”

  “We don't want to lose the guy on a technicality, that's all,” Yurek pointed out.

  “The first person to screw up that way, I will personally shoot in the kneecaps,” Kovac promised.

  “So, G,” Tippen said, eyes narrowed. “You think this guy is it?”

  “He fits the picture pretty well. We'll get him in here and have a chat, then I'd recommend a bumper-lock surveillance. Make him sweat, see what we can get him to do. If we can rattle him, get him to spook, doors will open. If things fall right, we'll end up with cause for a search warrant.”

  “I'll head over to the Edgewater,” Liska said. “I'd like to be on hand, try to put him at ease, get his guard down.”

  “How did he seem at the meeting last night?” Quinn asked.

  “Fascinated, a little excited, full of theories.”

  “Do we know where he was Sunday night?”

  “The ever-popular home alone.”

  “I want to be there when you get him in the box,” Quinn said. “Not in the room, but watching.”

  “You don't want to question him?”

  “Not right off the bat. We'll have you in there, and someone he's never seen before. Probably Sam. I'll come in later.”

  “Beep me as soon as you've got him,” Kovac said as a phone rang in the background. Elwood got up to answer it. “Tip, Charm, did you find anybody who saw the DiMarco girl get in a truck Sunday night?”

  “No,” Tippen said. “And the going rate for that answer is ten bucks. Unless you're Charm. In which case, you can get that answer and a blow job for a smile.”

  Yurek gave him a dirty look. “Like it's some kind of treat to get the clap for free.”

  “It is for Tip,” Liska pointed out.

  “Charm! Telephone!” Elwood called.

  “Stay on it,” Kovac ordered. “Get some fliers printed off with the girl's picture and a picture of a GMC Jimmy. Ask Lieutenant Fowler about a reward. Chances are someone just hanging out in that area at that time of night will be willing to turn in his mother for a couple hundred bucks.”

  “Will do.”

  “Someone diplomatic has to go to the Phoenix and talk again to this hooker that knew the second vic,” Kovac went on.

  “I'll do it,” Moss offered.

  “Ask her if Fawn Pierce had a tattoo,” Quinn said, forcing himself to sit ahead. He rubbed at a knot in the back of his neck. “Lila White had a tattoo exactly where that chunk of flesh was missing from her chest. Smokey Joe may be an art lover. Or an artist.”

  “Where'd you get that?” Tippen asked, skeptical, as if maybe Quinn had just pulled it down out of the sky.

  “I did something no one else bothered to do: I looked,” he said bluntly. “I looked at the photographs Lila White's parents gave Agent Moss. They were taken days before her death. If it turns out Fawn Pierce had a tattoo removed by the killer, you'll need to find where both women got them done and check out the parlors and everyone associated with them.”

  “Do we know if Jillian Bondurant had any tattoos?” Hamill asked.

  “Her father says none he knew of.”

  “Her friend, Michele Fine, claims not to know of any either,” Liska said. “And I think she'd know. She's a walking scratch pad herself.”

  “Did she ever come in to get printed?” Kovac asked, digging through a messy stack of notes.

  “I haven't had time to check.”

  A cell phone rang, and Quinn swore and got up from the table, digging in the pocket of his suit coat.

  Adler pointed at the television, where scenes from the car fire filled the screen. “Hey, there's Kojak!”

  The sun guns washed Kovac's skin out to the color of parchment. He frowned heavily at the cameras and shut down the questions with a stiff rendition of “The investigation is sensitive and ongoing. We have no comment at this time.”

  “You need to lose that mustache, Sam,” Liska said. “You look like Mr. Peabody from Rocky and Bullwinkle.”

  “Any mutilation on the latest vic?” Tippen called from the coffeepot.

  “Autopsy's scheduled for eight,” Kovac said, check-ing his watch. Seven-forty. He turned to Moss. “Rob Marshall from legal services will meet you at the Phoenix. That's the brass making public nice-nice with the Urskines after the Bitch Queen of the North kicked up that stink last night.

  “Personally, I don't care how offended they ar
e. I want someone to have a heart-to-heart with Vampira's mate at the station later today. Mary, ask him to come in, and be vague when they demand to know why. Routine procedure, like that. And ask if they have a credit card receipt or canceled check from the cabin they were in the weekend Lila White was killed.

  “Gregg Urskine was one of the last people to see our witness last night. The first vic was a guest of theirs. The second was a friend of one of their current hookers. That's too many close calls for me,” Kovac declared.

  “Toni Urskine will be on the phone to every news outlet in the metro,” Yurek cautioned.

  “If we're polite, that only makes her look bad,” Kovac said. “We're being thorough, leaving no stone unturned. That's what Toni Urskine wanted.”

  “Did we get anything from the meeting last night?” Hamill asked.

  “Nothing of use to us from the cars,” Elwood said. “Just the videotape.”

  Kovac checked his watch again. “I'll look at it later. Doc'll be sharpening her knives. You with me, GQ?”

  Quinn held up a hand in acknowledgment and signed off on his call. They grabbed their coats and went out the back way.

  The snow had covered the filth of the alley—including Kovac's car—camouflaging tire hazards like broken Thunderbird and Colt 45 malt liquor bottles, which covered the ground in these downtown alleys like dead leaves. Kovac pulled a brush out from under a pile of junk in the backseat and swept off the windshields, the hood, and the taillights.

  “You got back to your hotel all right last night?” he asked as they slid into their seats and he turned the engine over. “'Cause I sure could've taken you. It's not that much out of my way.”

  “No. I was fine. It was fine,” Quinn said, not looking at him. He could feel Kovac's gaze on him. “Kate was so upset over that tape, I wanted to make sure she was all right.”