Ashes to Ashes

by Tami Hoag

  “Yes. Here, listen.”

  The tech punched a button and adjusted a knob. A scream filled the small room, all four people tensing against it as if it were a physical assault.

  Quinn fought to focus not on the emotions within the scream, but on the individual components of sound, trying to eliminate the human factor and his own human reaction to it. Reliving their crimes was a crucial component of a serial killer's life cycle—fantasy, violent fantasy, facilitators to murder, murder, fantasy, violent fantasy, and on and on, around and around.

  Cheap technology made it as easy as the flick of a switch and the focus of a lens for them to play back something more perfect than a memory. Cheap technology combined with the killer's egotistic need had also made for a lot of damning evidence in recent years. The trick for cops and prosecutors was to stomach hearing and seeing it. Bad enough to see the aftermath of crimes like these. Having to watch or listen to them in progress could take a horrible toll.

  Quinn had watched or listened to one after another, after another, after another. . . .

  Ears turned one knob down and pushed two small levers up. “Coming up here. I've isolated and muted the victim's voice and pulled out the others. Listen close.”

  No one so much as took a breath. The screams faded into the background and a man's voice, soft and indistinct, said, “. . . Turn . . . do it . . .” followed by white noise, followed by an even less distinct voice that said, “. . . Want to . . . of me . . .”

  “That's as good as it gets,” Ears said, punching buttons, running the tape back. “I can make it louder, but the voices won't be any more distinguishable. They were too far away from the mike. But by the readings I'm seeing, I'd say the first one is a man and the second one is a woman.”

  Quinn thought of the stab wounds to each victim's chest, the distinct pattern: long wound, short wound, long wound, short wound . . . Cross my heart, hope to die . . . A pact, a pledge, a covenant. Two knives—the light flashing off one and then the other as they descended in a macabre rhythm.

  Those wounds made sense now. He should have thought of it himself: two knives, two killers. It wasn't as if he hadn't seen it happen before. But he sure as hell didn't want to have to see it again, he realized as resistance rose like panic up through his chest.

  Murder didn't get any darker or more twisted than when the killers were a couple. The dynamics of that kind of relationship epitomized the sickest extremes of human behavior. The obsessions and compulsions, the fears and sadistic fantasies of two equally disturbed people tangled like a pair of vipers trying to devour each other.

  “Will you play with the tape some more, Ears?” Kovac asked. “See if you can't pull out a few more words from one or both of them? I'd like to know what they're talking about.”

  The tech shrugged. “I'll try, but I'm not making any promises.”

  “Do what you can. The career you save could be mine.”

  “Then you'll owe me two cases of beer I'll never see in this lifetime.”

  “Crack this for me, I'll send you a lifetime supply of Pig's Eye.”

  Quinn led the way back into the hall, already trying to sort through the tangle in his head in order to take his attention away from the tight feeling in his throat. Concentrate on the problem at hand, not the problem inside. Try not to think that just when he was beginning to feel they were making some progress, the number of killers multiplied, like something in a nightmare.

  Kovac brought up the rear, shutting the door behind him.

  “There's a wrinkle we didn't need,” he complained. “Bad enough looking for one psycho. Now I get to tell the bosses we're looking for two of them.”

  “Don't tell them,” Quinn said. “Not right away. I need to think about this.”

  He put his back to the wall as if he intended to stand right there until the answer came to him.

  “What's it do to the profile if he's got a partner?” Liska asked.

  “What's it do to the profile if he's got a partner and his partner is a woman?” Quinn asked back.

  “Complicates the hell out of my life,” Kovac said.

  The hall was dark with a low ceiling and not much traffic this time of day. Two women in lab coats walked past, engrossed in a conversation about office politics. Quinn waited until they were out of earshot.

  “Are they equal partners, or is the woman what we call a ‘willing victim'? Is she participating because she likes it, or because she feels she has to for one reason or another—she's afraid of him, he controls her, whatever.” He turned to Liska. “Does Gil Vanlees have a girlfriend?”

  “Not that I've heard about. I asked his wife, his boss, coworkers. Nothing.”

  “Did you ask the wife about Jillian Bondurant? Whether she knew Jillian, whether she thought her husband knew her a little too well?”

  “She said he liked to look at anything with tits. She didn't single out Jillian.”

  “What are you thinking?” Kovac asked.

  “I'm thinking it's bothered me all along that we've never gotten a positive ID on the third victim. Why the decapitation? The extra mutilation of the feet? Now using Jillian's car to burn the fourth victim. Why so much emphasis on Jillian?” Quinn asked. “We know she was an unhappy, troubled girl. What more permanent escape from an unhappy life than death—real or symbolic.”

  “You think that could be Jillian's voice on the tape,” Liska said. “You think she could be Vanlees's partner?”

  “I've said all along the key to this thing is Jillian Bondurant. She's the piece that doesn't fit. It just never hit me until now that maybe she isn't just the key. Maybe she's a killer.”

  “Jesus,” Kovac said. “Well, it was a decent career while it lasted. Maybe I can take over Vanlees's job, chasing groupies away from the stage door at the Target Center.”

  He glanced at his watch and tapped its face. “I gotta go. I've got a date with the wife of Peter Bondurant's ex-partner. Maybe I'll find out something about Jillian there.”

  “I want to talk to this friend of hers—Michele Fine. See if she has copies of the music she wrote with Jillian. We could get some insights to her state of mind, maybe even to her fantasy life through her lyrics. I also want to find out what Fine's take on Vanlees is.”

  “She doesn't have one,” Liska said. “I asked her the day we were at the apartment and we saw him. She said, ‘Who ever notices the losers?'”

  “But predators recognize their own kind,” Quinn said. He turned to Kovac. “Who's on Vanlees?”

  “Tippen and Hamill.”

  “Perfect. Have them go ask him if this friend whose house he's staying at imports recording equipment, video cameras, stuff like that.”

  Kovac nodded. “Will do.”

  “There are a couple of possibilities to consider other than Vanlees,” Quinn pointed out. “If the relationship between Smokey Joe and his partner is about control, domination, power, then we have to look at Jillian's life and ask ourselves what men have held that kind of sway over her. I can name two that we know of.”

  “Lucas Brandt and Daddy Dearest,” Kovac said with a grim look. “Great. We may finally be on to something, and it's that the daughter of the most powerful man in the state is a sicko freak murderer—and maybe she gets it from Dad. I just get all the luck.”

  Liska patted his arm as they started down the hall. “You know what they say, Sam: You can't pick your relatives or your serial killers.”

  “I've got a better one,” Quinn said as the myriad ugly possibilities for the close of this case flashed through his head. “It ain't over till it's over.”

  28

  CHAPTER

  D'CUP WAS MOSTLY empty, with the same pair of old geezers in beret and goatee arguing about pornography today, and a different struggling artist contemplating his mediocrity by the window with a three-dollar latte at hand.

  Michele Fine had called in sick. Liska gleaned this information from the Italian stallion behind the bar and made a mental note to start a daily c
appuccino habit. Never mind D'Cup was miles out of the way to anything in her life. That was actually part of the allure.

  “Did you know her friend at all?” Quinn asked. “Jillian Bondurant?”

  The Roman god pursed his full lips and shook his head. “Not really. I mean, she came in here a lot, but she wasn't very sociable. Very internal, if you know what I mean. She and Chell were tight. That's about all I know besides what I've read in the papers.”

  “Did you ever see her in here with anyone else?” Quinn tried.

  “Michele or Jillian Bondurant?”

  “Jillian.”

  “Can't say that I did.”

  “What about Michele? She have a boyfriend?”

  He didn't seem to like that question, like maybe they were getting too personal and he was thinking he should take a stand for the Fourth Amendment. Liska pulled out the Polaroid of Vanlees and held it out.

  “You ever see either one of them with this guy? Or the guy in here alone?”

  Studly squinted at the photo the way people do in an effort to improve both their memory and their vision. “Nah. He doesn't look familiar.”

  “What about their music?” Quinn asked. “Michele said they performed here sometimes.”

  “Chell sings and plays the guitar on open-mike nights. I know they wrote some stuff together, but I couldn't tell you who contributed what. Jillian never performed. She was a spectator. She liked to watch other people.”

  “What kind of music?” Quinn asked.

  “The edgy feminist folk thing. Lots of anger, lots of angst, kind of dark.”

  “Dark in what way?”

  “Bad relationships, twisted relationships, lots of emotional pain.”

  He said it as if he were saying “the usual,” with a certain air of boredom. A commentary on modern life.

  Quinn thanked him. Liska ordered a mocha to go and tipped him a buck. Quinn smiled a little as he held the door.

  “Hey,” Liska said. “It never hurts to be kind.”

  “I didn't say anything.”

  “You didn't have to.”

  The snow was still coming down. The street in front of the coffeehouse was a mess. Lanes invisible, drivers had adopted a survival-of-the-fittest mentality. As they watched, a purple Neon nearly lost its life to an MTC bus.

  “You're pretty good at this cop stuff,” Liska said, digging the car keys out of her coat pocket. “You should consider giving up the glamour of CASKU and the FBI for the relative ignominy of the Minneapolis homicide unit. You get to be hassled by the brass, abused by the press, and ride around in a piece-of-shit car like this one.”

  “All that and I'd get to live in this weather too?” Quinn turned up his collar against the wind and snow. “How can I resist an offer like that?”

  “Oh, all right,” Liska said with resignation as she climbed behind the wheel. “I'll throw in all the sex you want. But you have to promise to want a lot.”

  Quinn chuckled and looked out the back window at the traffic. “Tinks, you're something.”

  Michele Fine's apartment was less than a mile away, in a slightly seedy neighborhood full of sagging old duplexes and square, ugly apartment buildings that housed an inordinate number of parolees and petty criminals on probation, according to Liska.

  “Vanlees's apartment on Lyndale is just a few blocks south of here,” she said as they picked their way up the sidewalk, stepping in the rut others had stomped into the wet snow. “Don't you just love a coincidence like that?”

  “But they seemed not to know each other when you were at the apartment?”

  She thought back to the scene, furrowing her brow. “Not more than in passing. They didn't speak. Do you really think she might have caught him looking in Jillian's windows?”

  “That was a shot in the dark, but it sure got a rise out of your boy. The thing I'm wondering is, if she caught him doing something like that, why wouldn't she have told you about it?”

  “Good question.” Liska tried the building's security door, finding it unlocked. “Let's go get an answer.”

  The elevator smelled of bad Chinese takeout. They rode up to the fourth floor with an emaciated hype who huddled into one corner, trying to look inconspicuous and eye Quinn's expensive trench coat at the same time. Quinn gave him a flat stare and watched the sweat instantly bead on the man's pasty forehead. When the doors opened, the hype hung back in the elevator and rode it back down.

  “You must be something at a poker table,” Liska said.

  “No time for it.”

  She arched a brow, blue eyes shining invitingly. “Better watch out. All work and no play makes John a dull boy.”

  Quinn ducked her gaze, mustering a sheepish smile. “I'd put you to sleep, Tinks.”

  “Well, I doubt that, but if you need to prove it scientifically . . .”

  She stopped in front of Fine's door and looked at him. “I'm just giving you a hard time, you know. The sad truth is, you strike me as a man who has someone on his mind.”

  Quinn rang the bell and stared at the door. “Yeah. A killer.” Though for the first time in a very long time, his thoughts were not entirely on his work.

  As if Liska had given him permission, he flashed on Kate. Wondered how she was doing, what she was thinking. He wondered if she had yet gotten his message that the victim in the car had not been her witness. He hated the idea of her blaming herself for what had happened, and he hated even more the idea of her boss blaming her. It made his protective instincts rise up, made him want to do something more violent to Rob Marshall than knock him on his ass. He wondered if Kate would be amused or annoyed to know that.

  He rang the bell again.

  “Who is it?” a voice demanded from inside the apartment.

  Liska stood in view of the peephole. “Sergeant Liska, Michele. I need to ask you a couple more questions about Jillian.”

  “I'm sick.”

  “It'll only take a minute. It's very important. There's been another murder, you know.”

  The door opened a crack, and Fine peered out at them from the other side of the safety chain. The wedge of space framed the scarred portion of her narrow, angular face. “That's got nothing to do with me. I can't help you.”

  She saw Quinn then, and her gaze hardened with suspicion. “Who's he?”

  “John Quinn, FBI,” Quinn said. “I'd like to talk with you a little about Jillian, Ms. Fine. I'm trying to get a better idea of who she was. I understand you and she were close friends.”

  The seconds ticked past as she stared at him, sizing him up in a way that seemed odd for a waitress in a trendy coffee bar. It was more the look of someone who had seen too much of the streets. As she raised her hand to undo the safety chain, he caught a glimpse of the snake tattooed around her wrist.

  She opened the door and stepped back reluctantly.

  “You haven't heard from her since Friday?” Quinn asked.

  Fine gave him a look of suspicion and dislike. “How could I hear from her?” she asked bitterly, her eyes filling. “She's dead. Why would you ask me something like that?”

  “Because I'm not as certain about it as you seem to be.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, looking frustrated and confused. “It's all over the news. Her father is offering a reward. What kind of game are you trying to play?”

  Quinn let her hang as he looked around the room. The apartment was vintage seventies—original, not retro—and he figured nothing had been changed or dusted since. The woven drapes looked ready to rot off their hooks. The couch and matching chair in the small living room were square, brown and orange plaid, and worn nubby. Dog-eared travel magazines lay on the cheap coffee table like abandoned dreams beside an ashtray brimming with butts. Everything had been permeated by the smell of cigarette and pot smoke.

  “I don't need you trying to fuck with my mind,” Fine said. “I'm sick. I'm sick about Jillian. She was my friend—” Her voice broke and she looked away, her mouth tightenin
g in a way that emphasized the scar hooking down from the one corner. “I'm—I'm just sick. So, whatever you want, ask for it and get the hell out of my life.”

  She plucked up her smoke and sidestepped away, hugging her free arm across her middle. She was an unhealthy kind of thin, Quinn thought, pale and bony. Maybe she really was sick. She wore a huge, ratty black cardigan sweater, and beneath it a grimy white T-shirt, so small it looked as if it had been intended for a child. Her legs looked as skinny as pegs in worn black leggings. Her feet were bare on the filthy carpet.

  “So, what have you got?” Liska asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You said you were sick. What have you got?”

  “Uhhh . . . the flu,” she said absently, looking at the television, where a grotesquely obese woman appeared to be telling Jerry Springer all about her relationships with the pockmarked dwarf and the black transsexual sitting on either side of her. Fine picked a fleck of tobacco off her tongue and flicked it in the direction of the screen. “Stomach flu.”

  “You know what I hear is good for nausea?” Liska said, deadpan. “Marijuana. They're using it for chemotherapy patients. Of course, it's otherwise illegal . . .”

  The threat was subtle. Maybe just enough to weigh in their favor if Fine found herself struggling with the idea of cooperation.

  Fine stared at her with flat eyes.

  “The other day—when we ran into the caretaker at Jillian's place,” Liska said. “You didn't have much to say about him.”

  “What's to say?”

  “How well did Jillian know him? Were they friends?”

  “No. She knew him enough to call him by name.” She went to the postage-stamp-sized dining table, sat down, and propped herself against it as if she didn't have enough strength to sit up on her own. “He had his eye on her.”

  “In what way?”

  Fine looked at Quinn. “In the way men do.”

  “Did Jillian ever say he was hitting on her, watching her, anything like that?” Liska asked.

  “You think he killed her.”

  “What do you think, Michele?” Quinn asked. “What's your take on the guy?”