by Tami Hoag
Rob's face reddened. “Quit talking to her!”
“Afraid she might turn on you, Rob?” Kate asked with not nearly the attitude she'd had five minutes earlier.
“Shut up. She's mine. And you're mine too, bitch!”
He lunged at her, grabbed hold of the neck of her sweater and tore at it with his hands, trying without success to rip it. Swearing, sputtering, flustered, embarrassed, he fumbled for another knife among the array of tools he had so carefully laid out on the table.
“You don't own her any more than you own me,” Kate said, glaring at him, straining against the bonds. “And you will never, ever own me, you toad.”
“Shut up!” he screamed again. He turned and slapped her across the mouth with the back of his hand. “Shut up! Shut up! You fucking bitch!”
The knives clattered together and he came away with a big one. Kate sucked in what she imagined might be her last breath and held it. Rob grabbed the neck of her sweater again and cut through it with the knife, violently rending the fabric with big, jagged tears. The tip of the knife bit into her breast, skipped along her belly, nicked the point of her hip.
“I'll show you! I'll show you! Angie!” he barked, swinging toward the girl. “Come here! Come here, now!”
He didn't wait. He rushed around the end of the table, grabbed the girl by the arm, and dragged her back to Kate.
“Do it!” he said in her ear. “For Michele. You want to do this for Michele. You want Michele to love you, don't you, Angie?”
Michele? Wild card, Kate thought, a fresh wave of terror flashing through her. Who the hell was Michele, and what did she mean to Angie? How could she fight an enemy she'd never seen?
Tears ran down Angie's face. Her lower lip was quivering. She clutched the butcher knife with both trembling hands.
“Don't do it, Angie,” Kate said, her voice vibrating with fear. “Don't let him use you this way.”
She couldn't know if the girl even heard her. She thought of what Angie had told her about the Zone, and wondered if she was going into that place now, to escape this nightmare. And what then? Would she act on autopilot? Was the Zone a dissociative state? Had it allowed her to participate in Rob's kills before?
She jerked again at the restraints, stretching the plastic another fraction of an inch.
“Do it!” Rob shouted against the side of Angie's face. “Do it, you stupid cunt! Do it for your sister. Do it for Michele. You want Michele to love you.”
Sister. The headline went through Kate's mind like a comet: Sisters Exonerated in Burning Death of Parents.
Pig eyes popping from his ugly round head, Rob screamed with frustration and raised the knife he held. “Do it!!”
Light hit a blinding starburst off the blade as it plunged through the air and into the hollow of Kate's shoulder just as she managed to twist her body a crucial few inches. The tip of the blade hit bone and glanced off, and the pain was like lightning striking her.
“Do it!” Rob screamed at Angie, striking her in the back of the head with the handle of the bloody knife. “You worthless whore!”
“No!” the girl cried.
“Do it!!”
Sobbing, Angie brought the knife up.
“WE GOT A hit on Fine's prints in Wisconsin,” Yurek said, stepping into the bedroom doorway.
The crime scene unit was removing the tattoo fetishes from the window, carefully folding tissue paper around each and sliding each into its own small paper sack.
“Her real name is Michele Finlow. She's got a handful of misdemeanors and a sealed juvenile record.”
Kovac arched a brow. “Is skinning people a misdemeanor in Wisconsin?”
“The state that brought us Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer,” Tippen remarked.
“Hey, aren't you from Wisconsin, Tip?” one of the crime scene guys asked.
“Yeah. Menomonie. Wanna come to my house for Thanksgiving?”
Quinn stuck a finger in his free ear and listened to Kate's home number ring unanswered for the third time in twenty minutes. Her machine should have picked up. He disconnected and tried her cell phone. It rang four times, then passed him on to her message service. Her clients called her on the cell phone. Angie DiMarco had the number. Kate wouldn't let it go unanswered. Not as responsible as she felt for Angie.
He rubbed a hand against the fire in his belly.
Mary Moss joined the group. “One of the neighbors down the hall says she sometimes saw Michele with a stubby, balding guy with glasses. She didn't get a name, but she says he drives a black SUV that once rear-ended the car of the guy in 3F.”
“Yes!” Kovac said, pumping one arm. “Smokey Joe, you're toast.”
“Hamill is talking right now with Mr. 3F to get the insurance info.”
“We can bust the Cremator in time for the six o'clock news and still make Patrick's for happy hour,” Kovac said, grinning. “This is turning into my kind of day.”
Hamill hustled into the apartment, dodging crime scene people. “You won't believe this,” he said to the task force at large. “Michele Fine's boyfriend was Rob Marshall.”
“Holy shit.”
Quinn grabbed Kovac by the shoulder and shoved him toward the door. “I have to get to Kate. Give me the keys. I'm driving.”
“DO IT! DO IT!”
Angie let out a long, distorted scream that sounded very far away in her own ears, like a wail coming down a long, long tunnel. The Zone loomed up beside her, a yawning black mouth. And on the other side, the Voice had come to life.
You stupid little slut! Do what I tell you!
“I can't!” she cried.
“DO IT!”
The fear was like a softball in her throat, closing off her air, gagging her, choking her.
No one loves you, crazy little bitch.
“You love me, Michele,” she mewed, not sure if she had spoken the words aloud or if they existed only in her head.
“DO IT!”
DO IT!
She stared down at Kate.
The Zone moved over her. She could feel the hot breath of it. She could fall into it and never come out. She would be safe.
She would be alone. Forever.
“DO IT!”
You know what to do, Angel. Do what you're told, Angel.
Her whole body was shaking.
Coward.
“You can save Michele, Angie. Do this for Michele.”
She looked down at Kate, at the place on her chest where she was supposed to stick the knife. Just as Michele had. She'd seen her sister do it. He had made her watch as they stood on either side of the dead woman, one stabbing and then the other, making their pact, sealing their bond, pledging their love. It had frightened her and made her sick. Michele had laughed at her, then given her to him for sex.
He hurt her. She hated him. Michele loved him. She loved Michele.
Nobody loves you, crazy little bitch.
That was all she'd ever wanted, someone to care about her, someone to keep her from being alone. All she'd ever gotten was use and abuse. Even from Michele, who had kept her from being alone. But Michele loved her. Love and hate. Love and hate. Lovehate, lovehate, lovehate. There was no line between them for her. She loved Michele, wanted to save her. Michele was all she had.
“DO IT! KILL HER! KILL HER!”
She looked down at Kate, straining against the ties, terror in her face.
“Why do you care what happens to me?”
“Because no one else does.”
“I'm sorry,” she whimpered.
“Angie, don't!”
“Stab her. Now!”
The pressure inside her was tremendous. The pressure from outside was more. She felt as if her bones would collapse and the weight of it would crush her, and the Zone would suck up the mess and she would be gone forever.
Maybe that would be just as well. At least then she wouldn't hurt anymore.
“Do it or I let your fucking cunt sister die!” he shouted. “Do it or I'll finis
h Michele in front of you! DO IT!”
She loved her sister. She could save her sister. She raised the knife.
“NO!”
Kate sucked in a breath and braced herself, never taking her eyes off Angie.
The girl let out an unearthly shriek as she raised the butcher knife with both hands above her head, then twisted her body and plunged the knife into Rob Marshall's neck.
Blood sprayed in a geyser as she jerked the blade out. Blood on the wall, on the bed, on Kate, spraying like a loose fire hose. Rob jerked back, astonished, grabbing at the wound, blood gushing through his fingers.
Angie went on screaming, plunging the knife again, stabbing his hand, stabbing his chest. She followed him as he staggered backward, trying to escape. He tried to call out for help or for mercy and choked on his own blood, the sound gurgling in his throat. His knees buckled, and he fell against the clothes drier, knocking the candelabrum to the floor.
Angie stepped back then and stared at him for a moment, as if she had no idea who he was or how he had come to fall to the floor with the last of his life's blood pumping out of him as he gurgled and gagged. Then she looked at the knife, dripping blood, her hands covered and sticky with it, and slowly she turned toward Kate.
QUINN DROVE WITH no regard for the laws of the road or of physics, driven himself by a growing sense of panic in his gut. Kovac hung on, braced himself, screamed more than once as Quinn swept the Caprice around and between cars.
“If he's smart, he's already blown town,” Kovac said.
“Smart's got nothing to do with it,” Quinn said above the roar of the engine. “He brought Kate on the case as part of his game. He killed Melanie Hessler because she was Kate's client. He left a calling card in Kate's garage the other night. He won't leave town without finishing the thing between them.”
He could see the hall light on as the car skidded to a stop in front of Kate's house. The light glowed through the sheers at the goddamn sidelights she should have known better than to have. Quinn slammed the Caprice into park before it fully stopped, and the transmission made an ominous sound. He was out of the car before it could stop rocking, running for the house as a pair of radio cars screamed up the street. He thundered onto the porch and pounded on the door, tried the handle. Locked.
“Kate! Kate!”
He pressed his face to the glass of one sidelight. The hall table sat askew. Things had tumbled over on it and off it. The rug was cockeyed.
“Kate!”
The shout that came from somewhere in the house went through him like steel. “No!”
Quinn grabbed the mailbox, ripped it off the wall, and smashed out the sidelight just as Kovac ran up onto the porch. Another few seconds and they were in. His eyes went to a smear of blood on the wall near the den.
“Kate!”
Her cry came from somewhere deep in the house. “Angie! NO!”
ANGIE TURNED THE knife in her bloody hands, staring at the blade. She let the tip of it kiss the fragile skin of her wrist.
“Angie, no!” Kate shouted, straining against the ties. “Don't do it! Please don't do it! Come cut me loose. Then we'll get you some help.”
She couldn't see Rob, but knew he lay crumpled on the floor near the drier. She could hear gurgling sounds coming from his throat. He had knocked the candelabrum over as he crashed, and the flames had found some of the lighter fluid he must have poured around while Kate had been unconscious. It ignited with a whoosh.
The flames would follow the trail of fuel in search of more fuel. The basement was crammed with posibilities—boxes of junk her parents had saved and abandoned, stuff she'd been meaning to throw out but hadn't gotten to, the obligatory half-empty cans of paint and other hazardous chemicals.
“Angie. Angie!” Kate said, trying to pull the girl's focus to her. Angie, who stood looking into the face of her own death.
“Michele won't love me,” the girl murmured, looking at the man she had just killed. She sounded disappointed in herself, like a small child who had written on the wall in crayon, then realized there would be a bad consequence.
“Kate!” Quinn's bellow sounded above.
Angie seemed not to hear the shouts or the thunder of big male feet. She pressed the blade of the knife lengthwise against the shadow of a vein in her wrist.
“Kate!”
She tried to shout “In the basement!” but her voice seized up so she barely heard herself. The flames caught hold of a box of clothes destined, oddly enough, for the Phoenix, and leapt with enthusiasm—far too near the table. Kate jerked at her bindings, succeeding only in pulling them even tighter around her wrists and ankles. She was losing the feeling in her hands.
She tried to clear her throat to speak. Smoke rolled thick and black from the boxes.
“Angie, help me. Help me and I'll help you. How's that for a deal?”
The girl stared at the knife.
The smoke detector at the top of the stairs finally blew, and the thunder of feet homed in on it.
Angie pressed the blade a little harder against her wrist. Tiny beads of blood surfaced like little jewels in a bracelet.
“No, Angie, please,” Kate whispered, knowing the girl couldn't have heard her if she'd shouted.
Angie looked at her square in the face, and for the first time since Kate had met her she looked like exactly what she was: a child. A child no one had ever wanted, had ever loved.
“I hurt,” she said.
“Call the fire department!” Quinn shouted at the head of the stairs. “Kate!”
“Joh—” Her voice cracked and she began to cough. The smoke rolled along the ceiling toward the stairwell and the new source of fresh air.
“Kate!”
Quinn led the way down the stairs with a .38 Kovac had lent him, his fear obliterating all known rules of procedure. As he dropped below the cloud of smoke, his focus was instantly on Kate, bound hand and foot on a table, her sweater cut open, blood pooling on her skin. And then his attention went to the girl beside the table: Angie DiMarco with a butcher knife in her hands.
“Angie, drop the knife!” he shouted.
The girl looked up at him, the light in her eyes fading away. “Nobody loves me,” she said, and in one quick, violent motion slashed her wrist to the bone.
“NO!” Kate screamed.
“Jesus!” Quinn charged across the room, leading with the gun.
Angie dropped to her knees as the blood gushed from her arm. The knife fell to the floor. Quinn kicked it aside and dropped to his knees, grabbing the girl's arm with a grip like a C-clamp. Blood pumped between his fingers. Angie sagged against him.
Kate watched with horror, not even acknowledging Kovac as he cut her loose. She rolled off the table onto feet she could no longer feel, and fell in a heap. She had to scramble to Angie on her knees. Her hands were as useless as clubs, swollen and purple, and she couldn't make her fingers move. Still, she wrapped her arms around the girl.
“We have to get out of here!” Quinn shouted.
The fire had begun licking its way up the steps. A uniformed officer fought it down with an extinguisher. But even as he cleared the stairs, the flames were working their way across the basement, following the trail of lighter fluid, pouncing on everything edible in its path.
Quinn and a uniform took Angie up the basement steps and out the back door. Sirens were screaming out on the street, a couple of blocks away yet. He passed the girl off to the uniform and ran back to the house as Kovac came with Kate leaning heavily against him, both of them coughing as thick black smoke rolled up behind them, acrid with the smell of chemicals.
“Kate!”
She fell against him and he scooped her up in his arms.
“I'm going back for Marshall!” Kovac shouted above the roar. The fire had come up through the floor and found the river of gasoline Rob had poured through the house.
“He's dead!” Kate yelled, but Kovac was gone. “Sam!”
One of the uniforms charged in af
ter him.
The sirens blasted out front, fire trucks bulling their way down the narrow street. Quinn negotiated the back steps with Kate in his arms and hustled down the side of the house to the front yard and the boulevard. He lowered her into the backseat of Kovac's car just as an explosion sounded from the bowels of the house and windows on the first floor shattered. Kovac and the uniform staggered away from the back corner of the house and fell to their hands and knees in the snow. Firemen and paramedics rushed toward them and toward the house.
“Are you all right?” Quinn asked, staring into Kate's eyes, his fingers digging into her shoulders.
Kate looked up at her house, flames visible now through the windows of the first floor. Behind Kovac's car, Angie was being loaded into an ambulance. The fear, the panic she had fought to keep at bay during the ordeal, hit her belatedly in a pounding wave.
She turned back to Quinn, shaking. “No,” she whispered as the flood of tears came. And he folded her into his arms and held her.
39
CHAPTER
“I NEVER LIKED him,” Yvonne Vetter said to the uniformed officer who stood guard outside Rob Marshall's garage door. She was huddled into a lumpy wool coat that made her look misshapen. Her round, sour face squinted up at him from beneath an incongruously jaunty red beret. “I called your hotline several times. I believe he cannibalized my Bitsy.”
“Your what, ma'am?”
“My Bitsy. My sweet little dog!”
“Wouldn't that be animalized?” Tippen speculated.
Liska cuffed him one on the arm.
The task force would get the first look around Rob's chamber of horrors before the collection of evidence began. The videographer followed right behind them. Even as they entered the house, the news crews were pulling up to the curbs on both sides of the street.
It was a nice house on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood. An extra-large tree-studded lot near one of the most popular lakes in the Cities. A beautifully finished basement. Realtors would have been drooling over the opportunity to sell it if not for the fact Rob Marshall had tortured and murdered at least four women there.
