Ashes to Ashes (35 page)

Shaking her head, she started past him for the front steps.

“Where are you going?” He reached for her as if he still had some right to touch her. She stepped aside, giving him a look that could have frozen water at fifty paces.

“I’m going to do something. I’m not sitting here biting my fingernails all night. On the slim chance Angie left here under her own power, the least I can do is help look for her.”

Hands in her coat pockets, digging for her keys, she trotted down the steps and headed for her truck. Quinn glanced at the front door of the Phoenix. He was of no use here. And the sight of Kate walking away triggered his panic. Foolish thought. She didn’t want him there, didn’t want him, period. She was sure as hell better off without him. If he’d been a stronger man, he would have let it go at that.

But he wasn’t feeling strong, and he wouldn’t be here more than a few days, a week. Where was the harm in stealing a little time with her? Just to be near her. A fresh memory to put away with the old ones, to take out when the solace of his life threatened to swallow him whole.

“Kate!” he called, jogging after her. “Wait. I’m going with you.”

She arched a brow imperiously. “Did I invite you?”

“Two pairs of eyes looking are better than one,” he argued.

Kate told herself to say no. She didn’t need him poking at old wounds. She did a mean enough job of that herself. Then she thought of the way he’d put his arms around her upstairs, ready to pull her away from the horror they hadn’t found on the other side of that shower curtain, ready to hold her up if she needed it, giving her his own strength to lean against. She thought of how easily she’d let him do that, and knew she should say no.

He watched her, the dark eyes intent, the lines of his face serious, then he dredged up half a charming smile from somewhere, and she felt something clutch in her chest exactly as it had all those years before. “I promise not to be a jerk. And I’ll let you drive.”

She sighed and turned toward the 4Runner, punching the button on the keyless remote. “Well, I believe half of that.”

THEY MADE THE rounds of the places on Lake Street where the nocturnal creatures passed the hours between dusk and dawn. Pool halls, bars, and all-night diners. A homeless shelter full of women with children. A Laundromat where a wino with a thick halo of filthy gray hair sat in one of the plastic bucket chairs and stared out the windows until the slightly more fortunate night clerk chased him back onto the street.

No one had seen Angie. Half of them barely glanced at the photograph. Kate refused to think about the lack of results. She hadn’t expected results, she had expected to pass time. She couldn’t decide which had to be more like penance: spending the night pounding the pavement in this rotten part of town or sitting home drinking gin until she couldn’t see the bloodstains in her head anymore.

“I need a drink,” she said as they walked into a place called Eight Ball’s. The interior was obscured by a fog bank of cigarette smoke. The sharp clack of billiard balls colliding was underscored by Jonny Lang’s blues wailing from the juke—“Lie to Me.”

“You missed last call a while ago, gorgeous,” the bartender said. He was the size of a minivan with a shaved head and a woolly Fu-Manchu mustache. “Name’s Tiny Marvin. How ’bout something strong and black like me?”

Quinn flashed his ID and a no-nonsense G-man look.

“Damnation. It’s Scully and Mulder,” Tiny Marvin said, unimpressed, as he pulled a coffeepot off its warmer.

Kate planted her butt on a barstool. “Coffee’s fine, thanks.”

There were maybe a dozen serious players at the pool tables. A pair of hookers served as ornamentation, looking bored and impatient at the downtime. One caught an eyeful of Quinn and nudged the other, but neither made a move to get closer.

Tiny Marvin squinted at Quinn. “Hey, man, didn’t I see you on TV? For real?”

“We’re looking for a girl,” Quinn said.

Kate slid the Polaroid across the bar, expecting Marvin to give it as little attention as every other bartender had. He picked it up with fingers as short and thick as Vienna sausages and squinted harder.

“Yeah, she been in here.”

Kate sat up straighter. “Tonight?”

“Naw, Sunday night, around ten-thirty, eleven. Came in to warm up, she said. Jailbait. I chased her skinny white ass outta here. I mean, consenting adults is one thing, man—you know what I mean? That child’s trouble. I don’t want no part of that shit.”

“Did she leave with anybody?” Quinn asked.

“Not from here she didn’t. She went back on the street and walked up and down for a while. Then I start feeling bad—like, what if she was my niece or something, and I found out some hard-ass threw her out on the street? Man, I’d bust his hard ass. So I go to tell her she can have a cup of coffee if she wants, but she’s got a ride and they’re going down the road.”

“What kind of car?” Kate asked.

“Some kind of truck.”

Her heart started to beat a little harder, and she looked to Quinn, but his attention was still on Tiny Marvin.

“Don’t suppose you got the plates?”

“Hey, man, I ain’t no neighborhood watch commander.”

“It didn’t bother you the guy was breaking the law,” Kate said.

Tiny Marvin frowned at her. “Look, I take care of what goes on in here, Scully. Rest of the world ain’t my problem. The girl was doing what hookers do. Wasn’t none of my business.”

“And if she’d been your niece?”

Quinn gave her a warning look and spoke again to the bartender. “Did you see the driver?”

“Didn’t look. I just thought, man, what about his sorry ass, picking up a kid like that. The world’s a cold, sick place—you know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah,” Kate muttered, picking up the snapshot of Angie from the bar, looking at the pretty, exotic face, the frowning mouth, the angry eyes that had seen too much. “I know exactly what you’re saying.”

She put the photo back in her purse, tossed a buck on the bar for the coffee she hadn’t touched, and walked out. The snow had started in flurries, the clouds sending down a handful at a time on gusts of cold wind. The street was deserted, the sidewalks empty, the dingy storefronts dark except for the bail-bonds place across the street.

She leaned back against the building and wished the wind would blow away the feelings that were stacking up inside her. They’d about reached the back of her throat and she couldn’t even begin to swallow them down.

She knew too much about the world to let its injustices and cruelties get to her too easily. Of course a bartender in a pool hall on Lake Street wouldn’t be overly concerned about the life of a hooker, young or not. He saw it every day and never looked too closely. He had his own life to worry about.

It hit Kate hard only because she knew the next chapter to the story. The ride that had taken Angie DiMarco away from Eight Ball’s had taken her to a crime scene, and the driver of that nondescript truck might have been a killer. Even if he’d been just another pathetic loser willing to pay for sex, he’d delivered her to a rendezvous with a fate that may just have gotten her killed.

Quinn came out of the pool hall, eyes narrowed against the cold and wind as he flipped up the collar of his trench coat.

“Kovac says: ‘Good police work, Red.’ If you ever want to give up the soft life, he’ll put a word in for you.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ve always wanted to work nights, weekends, and holidays up to my ass in dead bodies. Now’s my big chance.”

“He’s sending a team out to talk to the bartender and whoever else they can find. If they can come up with somebody who remembers more about the vehicle, or saw the driver that night, they’ve got something to run with.”

Kate pulled her coat closed up around her throat and stared across the empty street at the bail-bonds place. A red neon light glowed through the barred window: CHECK$ CA$HED HERE.

“Timing is everything,” she said. “If Angie hadn’t been standing on this street at the exact moment that truck pulled up, I’d be home in bed, and you’d be digging in someone else’s boneyard.”

She laughed at herself and shook her head, the wind catching a rope of hair and whipping it across her face. “As long as I’ve been around, I still shake my fist at chance. How stupid is that?”

“You always took the prize for stubborn.” Quinn reached out automatically to brush her hair back, his fingertips grazing her cheek. “A cynic is a disappointed idealist, you know.”

“Is that what happened to you?” she tossed back.

“I never saw life as ideal.”

She knew that, of course. She knew about his life, about the abusive alcoholic father, and the grim years growing up in working-class Cincinnati. She was one of the few people he had allowed to see in that window.

“But that never saved you from disappointment,” she said quietly.

“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.”

“And what’s the difference between hope and desperation?” she asked, thinking of Angie, wondering if she dared hope.

“Time.”

Which might have already run out for Angie DiMarco, and which had run out for the two of them years earlier. Kate felt disappointment sink down through her. She wanted to lay her head against Quinn’s shoulder and feel his arms slip around her. Instead, she pushed away from the wall and started for the 4Runner parked down by the Laundromat. The homeless guy was looking in her back window as if considering it for his night’s accommodations.

“I’ll drop you off at your hotel,” she said to Quinn.

“No. I’ll ride home with you and call a cab. Tough as you are, I don’t want you going home alone, Kate. It’s not smart. Not tonight.”

If she’d been feeling stronger, she might have argued just on principle, but she wasn’t feeling strong, and the memory of phantom eyes watching her as she’d let herself in her back door just hours before was still too fresh.

“All right.” She hit the remote lock. The alarm system on the truck beeped loudly, sending the homeless guy scuttling back into the doorwell of the Suds-O-Rama. “But don’t try anything funny, or I’ll sic my cat on you.”

“ANYTHING ON THE house-to-house yet?” Kovac asked, lighting a cigarette.

Tippen hunched his bony shoulders. “A lot of people pissed off about having cops pounding on their doors in the middle of the night.”

They stood on the front porch of the Phoenix, huddled under a jaundice-yellow bug light. The B of I van was still on the yard. The yard had been cordoned off to create a media-free zone.

The press had swooped in like a flock of vultures, suspiciously in sync. Kovac squinted through the smoke and the falling snow, staring out at the end of the sidewalk, where Toni Urskine was being interviewed in the eerie glow of portable lights.

“How much you wanna bet I pull the phone records for this dump tonight I find calls to WCCO, KSTP, and KARE?” he muttered.

“Raking publicity off crime and tragedy,” Elwood said, pushing his goofy-looking felt hat down on his head. “It’s the American way. All this media exposure, you can bet the donations will come rolling in.”

“She even hints what’s going on here is connected to our witness, I can just bend over and grab my ankles,” Kovac groused. “The brass pricks will be lining up behind me.”

“Better make nice with her, Sam,” Liska suggested, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet to keep warm. “Or I could loan you a tube of K-Y Jelly.”

“Jeez, Tinks.” Distaste rippled across Kovac’s face. He turned to Elwood. “What’ve we got in the basement? What’s the story with that cellar door?”

“Door’s locked from the inside. We’ve got what looks like some bloodstains on the floor. Not a lot. Urskine says it’s nothing, that he cut himself working on the furnace a few nights ago.”

Kovac made a growling sound low in his throat and looked to Liska again. “What about your mutt, Vanlees?”

“Can’t find him. I wanted to follow him from the meeting, but between the crowd and the traffic getting out there, I lost him.”

“He’s not working tonight? He came to the meeting in his uniform.”

“I’ll bet he sleeps in that uniform,” she said. “Ever ready to save the public from ticket scalpers and unruly basketball fans. He’s got a cheap apartment over on Lyndale, but he’s not in it. I finally talked to his soon-to-be ex-wife. She tells me he’s house-sitting for someone. She doesn’t know who and couldn’t give a shit.”

“Hey, he wants to be a cop, he might as well start out with one divorce under his belt,” Tippen said.

“She give any indication he’s into anything kinky?” Kovac asked.

“Oh, you’ll love this,” she said, eyes brightening. “I asked her about that misdemeanor trespass conviction eighteen months ago. Quinn was right. Ol’ Gil had the hots for some woman his wife works with. He got caught trying to sneak a peek at her in her panties.”

“And he’s still working security?” Kovac said.

“He kept it quiet, pleaded down, no one paid attention. He claimed it was all a big misunderstanding anyway.”

“Yeah,” Tippen sneered. “‘It was all a big mistake, your honor. I was just driving along, minding my own business, when I was struck by an uncontrollable urge to play spank the monkey.’”

“I like this guy, Sam,” Liska said. “His wife had nothing but disdain for him. She hinted their sex life was nonexistent when they were together. If that’s true, he could be an even better fit to Quinn’s profile. A lot of these guys are sexually inadequate with their partners.”

“Is that the voice of experience?” Tippen dug.

“Well, I haven’t been sleeping with you, so I guess not.”

“Fuck you, Tinker Bell.”

“What part of no don’t you understand?”

“I’ll put a car outside his apartment,” Kovac said. “I want him downtown ASAP. See if you can’t track down this house he’s sitting. Somebody’s gotta know where he is. Call his boss, call the wife again. Tonight. Get the names of his friends. Call them.”

“I’ll help with that,” Moss said.

“Annoy everybody who knows him,” Kovac said. “That’ll get back to him and rattle him. Did you find out what he’s driving?”