Ashes to Ashes (57 page)

Trying to catch a killer.

She heaved a sigh. “All right. We try, but if she gets serious with that knife, I’m calling.”

Rob squinted at her. The toothache smile. “I know it pains you, Kate, but sometimes I
am
right. You’ll see this is one of those times. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“WHAT’S HE DOING here?” Angie blurted out the words as if they gave her a bad taste in her mouth.

Rob gave her the toothache smile too. “I’m just here to help, Angie,” he said, sitting back against the desk.

She gave him a long, hard stare. “I doubt it.”

“It looks like you’ve had a little trouble since we saw you last. Can you tell us about that?”

“You want to hear about it?” she asked, eyes narrowed, her hoarse voice sounding almost seductive. She raised her hand and slowly licked the blood from her palm again, her gaze locked on his. “You want to know who did this to me? Or do you just want to hear about the sex?”

“Whatever you want to tell us about, Angie,” he said evenly. “It’s important for you to talk about it. We’re here to listen.”

“I’m sure you are. You like to hear about other people’s pain and suffering. You’re a sick little fuck, aren’t you?”

A muscle ticked in Rob’s cheek. He held on to his excuse for a smile, but it looked more like he was biting a bullet.

“You’re trying my patience, Angie,” he said tightly. “I’m sure that’s not what you really want to do. Is it?”

The girl looked away toward the fire for so long that Kate thought she would never speak again. Maybe she’d gone to the Zone she’d talked about. She held the utility knife in her right hand, pressing the fingertips against the blade.

“Angie,” Kate said, moving behind the couch, casually picking up the chenille throw from the back of it as she went. “We’re trying to help you.”

She sat on the arm of the unoccupied end, holding the blanket loosely in her lap.

Tears gleamed in Angie’s eyes and she shook her head. “No, you’re not. I wanted you to, but you’re not. You just want what I can tell you.” Her swollen mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “The funny thing is, you think you’re getting what you want, but you are
so
wrong.”

“Tell us what happened that night at the Phoenix,” Rob prompted, trying to draw her attention back to him. “Kate dropped you off. You went upstairs to take a shower … Did someone interrupt you?”

Angie stared at him, slowly scratching the tip of the blade along her thigh over and over.

“Who came to take you, Angie?” Rob pressed.

“No,” she said.

“Who came to take you?” he asked again, enunciating with emphasis.

“No,” she said, glaring at him. “I won’t do it.”

The blade of the knife bit deeper. Sweat glistened on her pale face in the firelight. The denim shredded. Blood bloomed bright red in the tears.

Kate felt ill at the sight. “Rob, stop it.”

“She needs to do this, Kate,” he said. “Angie, who came to take you?”

“No.” Tears streaked down Angie’s battered face. “You can’t make me.”

“Let her alone.” Kate moved off her perch. Christ, she had to do something before the girl cut herself to ribbons.

Rob’s stare was locked on Angie. “Tell us, Angie. No more games.”

Angie glared at him, shaking visibly now.

“Where did he take you? What did he do to you?”

“Fuck you!” she spat out. “I’m not playing your game.”

“Yes, you are, Angie,” he said, his voice growing darker. “You will. You don’t have a choice.”

“Fuck you! I hate you!”

Shrieking, she came up off the couch, arm raised, knife blade flashing.

Kate moved fast, flinging the chenille throw to cover the knife and diving into Angie from the side almost simultaneously. The girl howled as they crashed to the floor, knocking into the coffee table and scattering the victimology reports.

Kate held her down as she struggled, the first wave of relief washing through her. Rob picked up the knife, closed the blade, and put it in his pocket.

Angie was sobbing. Kate moved onto her knees and pulled the girl into her arms to hold her.

“It’s all right, Angie,” she whispered. “You’re safe now.”

Angie pushed free, staring at her, incredulous and furious. “You stupid bitch,” she rasped. “Now you’re dead.”

“THE SHARKS SMELL blood in the water,” Quinn commented as they watched the mob gather for the press conference.

Kovac scowled. “Yeah, and some of it is mine.”

“Sam, I can guarantee you, with Vanlees on the block, they could give a shit about you.”

The idea seemed to further depress Kovac. It did nothing for Quinn either. Having Bondurant’s people leak information about Vanlees to the press was bad enough, but to have the police talk openly to the press about Gil Vanlees at this point was dangerously premature. He’d said so to the mayor, Greer, and Sabin. That they were choosing to ignore his advice was beyond his control. And yet he could feel the anxiety singeing another hole in the wall of his stomach.

He was the one who had come up with the initial profile, which Vanlees fit, nearly to a T. In retrospect he thought he shouldn’t have been so quick to offer an opinion. The possibility of tandem killers changed everything. But the press and the powers running the show had Vanlees now, and were all too happy to sink their teeth into him.

The mayor had chosen the grand Fourth Street entrance for the setting of the press conference. A cathedral of polished marble with an impressive double staircase and stained glass panels. The kind of place where politicians could stand on the stairs above the common folk and look important, where the glow of the marble seemed to reflect off their skin and make them seem more radiant than the average citizen.

Quinn and Kovac watched from a shadowed alcove as the television people set up and the newspaper people jockeyed for status spots. On the stairs, the mayor and Sabin conferred as the mayor’s assistant brushed lint from her suit. Gary Yurek was deep in conversation with Chief Greer, Fowler, and a pair of captains who seemed to have come out of the woodwork for the photo op. Quinn would join the circus in a moment and give his two cents’ worth to the throng, trying to give the announcement of a suspect in custody a cautionary spin, which almost no one would listen to. They would rather listen to Edwyn Noble spin lies for Peter Bondurant, which was almost certainly what he was doing standing with a reporter for MSNBC.

There was no sign of Peter. Not that Quinn had expected him—not after this morning, and not with the possibility of incest allegations seeping out into the news pool. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder at Bondurant’s mental state, and what exactly had brought Lucas Brandt running with his little black bag. Jillian’s supposed demise, or the revelation of what might have happened all those years ago?

“Charm,” Kovac said with derision, staring at Yurek. “Destined for a corner office. They love him upstairs. A million-dollar smile on lips he won’t hesitate to use to kiss ass.”

“Jealous?” Quinn asked.

He made one of his faces. “I was made for chewing ass, not kissing it. What do I need with a corner office, when I can have a crappy little desk in a crappy little cubicle with no decent file cabinets?”

“At least you’re not bitter.”

“I was born bitter.”

Vince Walsh heralded his arrival with a phlegm-rattling coughing fit. Kovac turned and looked at him.

“Jesus, Vince, hack up a lung, why don’t you?”

“Goddamn cold,” Walsh complained. His color had the odd yellow cast of an embalmed body. He offered Kovac a manila envelope. “Jillian Bondurant’s medical records—or what of them LeBlanc would release. There are some X rays. You want to take them or you want me to drop them off with the ME?”

“I’m out, you know,” Kovac said even as he took the envelope. “Yurek’s boss now.”

Walsh sucked half the contents of his sinuses down the back of his throat and made a sour face.

Kovac nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

PETER WAITED UNTIL the press conference was under way to enter the building. A simple matter of calling Edwyn on his cell phone from the car. Noble had no way of knowing he wasn’t still at home. Peter had dismissed from the house the employees Edwyn had posted to keep an eye on him. They had gone without argument. He was the one who paid their wages, after all.

He came into the hall, holding the duffel bag in his arms, his gaze scanning the backs of five dozen heads. Greer was at the podium, going on in his overly dramatic way about the qualifications of the man he had chosen to succeed Kovac as head of the task force. Peter didn’t care to hear it. The task force was no longer of any interest to him. He knew who had killed Jillian.

The press shouted questions. Flashes went off like so many star bursts. Peter worked his way along one side of the crowd, moving toward the stairs, feeling as if he were invisible. Maybe he was. Maybe he was already a ghost. All his life he had felt a certain emptiness in his soul, a hole nothing had ever been able to fill. Maybe he had been eroding away from the inside out for so long that the essence of what made him human had all leeched away, making him invisible.

QUINN SAW BONDURANT coming. Oddly, no one else seemed to. No one looked closely enough, he supposed. Their focus was on the podium and the latest batch of bullshit they wanted to spread on the news and in the papers. And there was the fact that he looked vaguely seedy—unshaven, unkempt—not the Peter Bondurant of finely tailored suits, every hair in place.

His skin looked so pale, it was nearly translucent. His face was gaunt, as if his body were devouring itself from within. His eyes met Quinn’s, and he stopped behind the camera people and stood there, a black duffel bag in his arms.

Quinn’s instincts went on point—just as Greer invited him to step to the podium.

The glare of the lights blocked his view of Bondurant. He wondered if Kovac had spotted him.

“I want to stress,” he began, “that the interview of a possible suspect does not end the investigation.”

“Do you believe Vanlees is the Cremator?” a reporter called out.

“It wouldn’t be prudent for me to comment on that one way or the other.”

He tried to shift to an angle where he could see Bondurant again, but Bondurant was gone from the spot where he had last been. His nerves tightened.

“But Vanlees fits the profile. He knew Jillian Bondurant—”

“Isn’t it true he had articles of her clothing in his possession when he was arrested?” another asked.

Damn leaks, Quinn thought, his attention focused more on getting Bondurant back in his sights than on the reporters. What was he doing here on his own, and looking like a vagrant?

“Special Agent Quinn … ?”

“No comment.”

“Do you have
anything
to say about the Bondurant case?”

“I killed her.”

Peter stepped out from behind a cameraman at the foot of the stairs and turned to face the crowd. For a moment no one but Quinn realized the admission had come from him. Then he raised a nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun to his head, and awareness ran back through the crowd in a wave.

“I killed her!” Peter cried louder.

He looked stunned by his own confession—bug-eyed, stark white, openmouthed. He looked at the gun with terror, as if someone else were holding it. He went up the stairs sideways, eyes darting to the crowd, to the people near the podium: Mayor Noble, Chief Greer, Ted Sabin—all of whom backed away, staring at him as if they’d never seen him before.

Quinn held his spot at the podium.

“Peter, put the gun down,” he said firmly, the microphone picking up his voice and broadcasting it to the hall.

Bondurant shook his head. His face was quivering, twitching, contorting. He clutched the duffel bag to him with his left arm. Behind him Quinn could see two uniformed officers moving into place with guns drawn and held low.

“Peter, you don’t want to do this,” he said quietly, calmly, shifting subtly away from the podium.

“I ruined her life. I killed her. It’s my turn.”

“Why here? Why now?”

“So everyone will know,” he said, his voice choked. “Everyone will know what I am.”

Edwyn Noble moved from the front of the crowd toward the stairs. “Peter, don’t do this.”

“What?” Bondurant asked. “Damage my reputation? Or yours?”

“You’re talking nonsense!” the lawyer demanded. “Put down the gun.”

Peter didn’t listen. His anguish was an almost palpable thing. It was in the sweat that ran down his face. It was in the smell of him. It was in the air he exhaled too quickly from his lungs.

“This is my fault,” he said, the tears coming harder. “I did this. I have to pay. Here. Now. I can’t stand it anymore.”

“Come with me, Peter,” Quinn said, stepping a little closer, offering his left hand. “We’ll sit down and you can tell me the whole story. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

He was aware of the whir of motor drives as photographers shot frame after frame. The video cameras were running as well, some likely running live feeds to their stations. All of them recording this man’s agony for their audiences.

“You can trust me, Peter. I’ve been asking you for the truth from day one. That’s all I want: the truth. You can give it to me.”

“I killed her. I killed her,” he mumbled over and over, tears streaming down his cheeks.

His gun hand was trembling badly. Another few minutes and his own burning muscles would make him lower it. If he didn’t blow his head off first.

“You sent for me, Peter,” Quinn said. “You sent for me for a reason. You want to give me the truth.”

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” Bondurant sobbed, the struggle within himself enormous, powerful, tearing him apart. His whole right arm was shaking now. He cocked the hammer back.

“Peter, no!” Quinn ordered, going for him.

The gun exploded. Shouts and screams echoed with the shot. A fraction of a second too late, Quinn grabbed hold of Bondurant’s wrist and forced it up. Another shot boomed. Kovac rushed up behind Peter, the uniforms right behind him, and pulled the gun out of his hand.