Ashes to Ashes (41 page)

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.

“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 are. 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.”

“Uh-huh. Was she? All right?”

“No. She thinks that body was her witness, that those screams were the screams of her witness being tortured. She blames herself.”

“Well, it’s probably a good thing you saw her home, then. What’d you do? Catch a cab downtown?”

“Yeah,” he lied, the morning scene playing through his mind.

Waking up and looking at Kate across the pillow in the faint light, touching her, watching those incredible clear gray eyes open, seeing the uncertainty there. He would rather have been able to say making love had solved all their problems, but that wasn’t true. It had given them some solace, reconnected their souls, and complicated everything. But, God, it had been like returning to heaven after years in purgatory.