Ashes to Ashes (8 page)

“Yes.”

Good. She had a witness to spring while everyone else was looking the other way. Where to take the girl was the next problem. She belonged in a juvenile facility, but they had as yet been unable to prove she was a juvenile.

“So you worked with Quinn?” Rob said, still with the voice of secrecy, following her toward the door. “I heard him speak at a conference once. He’s very impressive. I think his focus on victimology is dead on.”

“That’s John, all right.
Impressive
is his middle name.”

Across the room, Quinn turned away from his conversation with the homicide lieutenant and locked on her, as if he’d picked up her comment on his radar. At the same instant, Rob Marshall’s pager beeped and he excused himself to use the phone, looking disappointed at the lost opportunity to speak with Quinn again.

Kate wanted no such opportunity. She turned away and started again for the door as Quinn came toward her.

“Kate.”

She glared at him and jerked her arm away as he moved to take hold of her.

“Thanks for your help,” he said softly, ducking his head in that way he had that made him seem boyish and contrite when he was neither.

“Yeah, right. Can I have the cervical collar concession tomorrow when you march in here and tell them to challenge this son of a bitch in order to trap him?”

He blinked innocently. “I don’t know what you mean, Kate. You know as well as I do how important it is to be proactive in a situation like this—when the time is right.”

She wanted to ask him if he was talking about the killer or the politicians, but she stopped herself. Quinn’s proactive theories extended to all aspects of his life.

“Don’t play your little mind games with me, John,” she whispered bitterly. “I didn’t mean to help you. I didn’t offer you anything. You took, and I don’t appreciate it. You think you can just manipulate people like pawns on a chessboard.”

“The end justified the means.”

“It always does, doesn’t it?”

“You know I was right.”

“Funny, but that doesn’t make you seem any less of a jerk to me.” She took a step back toward the door. “Excuse me. I’ve got a job to do. You want to make power plays, you leave me out of the game plan, thank you very much.”

“Good to see you too, Kate,” he murmured as she walked away, thick red-gold hair swinging softly across her back.

It struck Quinn only belatedly that she had a nasty bruise on her cheek and a split lip. He’d seen her as he remembered her: as an ex-friend’s wife … as the only woman he’d ever truly loved.

THE CROWD IS large. The Twin Cities are overrun with reporters. Two major daily newspapers, half a dozen television stations, radio stations too numerous to keep track of. And the story has brought in still more reporters from other places.

He has captured their attention. He relishes the sense of power that brings. The
sounds
in particular excite him—the urgent voices, the angry voices, the scuffle of feet, the whirl of camera motor drives.

He wishes he hadn’t waited so long to go public. His first murders were private, hidden, far between in both time and space, the bodies left buried in shallow graves. This is so much better.

The reporters jockey for position. Videographers and photographers set the perimeter of the gathering. Blinding artificial lights give the setting an other-worldly white glow. He stands just outside the media pack with the other spectators, caught on the fringe of a headline.

The mayor takes the podium. The spokeswoman for the community expressing the collective moral outrage against senseless acts of violence. The county attorney parrots the mayor’s remarks and promises punishment. The chief of police makes a statement regarding the formation of a task force.

They take no questions, even though the reporters are clamoring for confirmation of the victim’s identity and for the gruesome details of the crime, like scavengers drooling for the chance to pick the carcass after the predator’s feast. They bark out questions, shout the word
decapitation
. There are rumors of a witness.

The idea of someone watching the intimacy of his acts excites him. He believes any witness to his acts would be aroused by those acts, as he was. Aroused in a way just beyond understanding, as he had been as a child locked in the closet, listening to his mother having sex with men he didn’t know. Arousal instinctively known as forbidden, irrepressible just the same.

Questions and more questions from the media.

No answers. No comment.

He sees John Quinn standing off to one side among a group of cops, and feels a rush of pride. He is familiar with Quinn’s reputation, his theories. He has seen him on television, read articles about him. The FBI has sent their best for the Cremator.

He wants the agent to take the podium, wants to hear his voice and his thoughts, but Quinn doesn’t move. The reporters seem not to recognize him standing out of reach of the spotlight. Then the principals walk away from the podium, surrounded by uniformed police officers. The press conference is over.

Disappointment weighs down on him. He had expected more, wanted more. Needs more. He had predicted
they
would need more.

With a jolt he realizes he has been waiting to react, that for a moment he allowed his feelings to hinge on the decisions of others. Unacceptable behavior. He is
pro
active, not
re
active.

The reporters give up and hurry for the doors. Stories to write, sources to pump. The small crowd in which he stands begins to break up and move. He moves with them, just another face.

“LET’S GO, KIDDO. We’re out of here.”

Angie looked up from the mug books on the table, wary, her stringy hair hiding half her face. Her gaze darted from Kate to Liska as she rose from her chair, as if she were expecting the detective to pull a gun and prevent her escape. Liska’s attention was on Kate.

“You got the okay to go? Where’s Kovac?”

Kate looked her in the eye. “Yeah … uh, Kovac’s tied up with the lieutenant at the press conference. They’re talking task force.”

“I want in on that,” Liska said with determination.

“You should. A case like this makes careers.” And breaks them, Kate thought, wondering just how much trouble she was making for herself springing Angie DiMarco—and how much trouble she would be making for Liska.

The end justifies the means
. She thought of Quinn. At least her goal was noble rather than self-serving manipulation.

Rationalization: the key to a clear conscience.

“Are the cameras rolling?” Liska asked.

“Even as we speak.” Kate watched out of the corner of her eye as her client palmed a Bic lighter someone had left on the table and slipped it into her coat pocket. Christ. A kid
and
a kleptomaniac. “Seems like a good time to split.”

“Run for it while you can,” Liska advised. “You’re a double bonus today. I hear your name attached to a certain act of heroic lunacy at the government center this morning. If the newsies don’t nail you for one thing, they’ll nail you for another.”

“My life is much too exciting.”

“Where are you taking me?” Angie demanded as she came to the door, slinging her backpack over one shoulder.

“Dinner. I’m starving, and you look like you’ve been starving for a while.”

“But your boss said—”

“Screw him. I want to see somebody lock Ted Sabin in a room for a day or two. Maybe he’d develop a little empathy. Let’s go.”

Angie shot one last glance at Liska and scooted out the door, hiking her backpack up as she hurried after Kate.

“Will you get in trouble?”

“Do you care?”

“It’s not my problem if you get fired.”

“That’s the spirit. Listen, we’ve got to go up to my office. If anyone stops me on the way, do us both a favor and pretend we’re not together. I don’t want the media putting two and two together, and you don’t want them knowing who you are. Trust me on that one.”

Angie gave her a sly look. “Could I get on
Hard Copy?
I hear they pay.”

“You fuck this up for Sabin and he’ll get you on
America’s Most Wanted
. That is if our friendly neighborhood serial killer doesn’t put you on
Unsolved Mysteries
first. If you don’t hear anything else I tell you, kiddo, hear this. You do
not
want to be on television, you do
not
want your picture in a newspaper.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“I’m just telling you how it is,” she said as they entered the concourse to the government center.

Kate put on her don’t-fuck-with-me face and walked as quickly as she could, considering the aches and stiffness from her morning wrestling match were beginning to sink in deep. Time was a-wasting. If the politicians took John’s advice and somehow managed to contain themselves, the press conference would break up fast. Some of the reporters would dog Chief Greer, but most would split between the mayor and Ted Sabin, liking their odds better with elected officials than with a cop. Any minute now the concourse could be swarming with them.

If they followed Sabin into the concourse and caught sight of her, if someone called her name or pointed her out within earshot of the ravenous pack, she was bound to get cornered about the government center gunman. Eventually someone might make the mental leap and connect her to rumors of a witness in the latest homicide, and then the last few hours would truly deserve listing in the annals of all-time shitty days. Somewhere on the lower third of the list, she figured, leaving plenty of room above for the string of rotten days to come.

But luck was with her for once today. Only three people tried to intercept her on their way to the twenty-second floor. All making clever comments on Kate’s morning heroics. She brushed them off with a wry look and a smart remark, and never broke stride.

“What’s that about?” Angie asked as they got off the elevator, her curiosity overcoming her show of indifference.

“Nothing.”

“He called you the Terminator. What’d you do? Kill somebody?” The question came with a look that mixed disbelief with wariness with a small, grudging flicker of admiration.

“Nothing that dramatic. Not that I haven’t been tempted today.” Kate keyed the access code into the security panel beside the door to the legal services department. She unlocked the door to her own office and motioned Angie inside.

“You know, you don’t
have
to take me anywhere,” the girl said, flopping into the spare chair. “I can take care of myself. It’s a free country and I’m not a criminal … or a kid,” she added belatedly.

“Let’s not even touch on that subject for the moment,” Kate suggested, glancing through her unopened mail. “You know what the situation is here, Angie. You need a safe place to stay.”

“I can stay with my friend Michele—”

“I thought her name was Molly.”

Angie pressed her mouth into a line and narrowed her eyes.

“Don’t even try to bullshit me,” Kate advised—for all the good it would do. “There is no friend, and you don’t have a place to crash in the Phillips neighborhood. That was a nice touch, though, picking a rotten neighborhood. Who would claim they lived there if they didn’t?”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“I think you’ve got your own agenda,” Kate said calmly, her attention on a memo that read:
Talked w/Sabin. Wit to Phoenix House
—
RM
. Permission. Odd Rob hadn’t mentioned this in the mayor’s office. The note was in a receptionist’s hand. No time notation. The decision had probably come just before the press conference. All that subterfuge on her part for nothing. Oh, well.

“An agenda that probably centers on staying out of jail or a juvenile facility,” she went on.

“I’m not a—”

“Save it.”

She hit the message button on her phone and listened to the voices of the impatient and the forlorn who had tried to reach her during the afternoon. Reporters hot on the trail of the government center shootout heroine. She hit fast forward through each of them. Mixed in with the news hounds was the usual assortment. David Willis, her current pain-in-the-butt client. A coordinator of a victims’ rights group. The husband of a woman who had allegedly been assaulted, though Kate had the gut feeling it was a scam, that the couple was looking to score reparation money. The husband had a string of petty drug arrests on his record.

“Kate.” The gruff male voice coming from the machine made her flinch. “It’s Quinn—um—John. I, ah, I’m staying at the Radisson.”

As if he expected her to call. Just like that.

“Who’s that?” Angie asked. “Boyfriend?”

“No, um, no,” Kate said, scrambling to pull her composure together. “Let’s get out of here. I’m starving.”

She drew in a long breath and released it as she pushed to her feet, feeling caught off guard, something she had always worked studiously to avoid. Another offense to add to the list against Quinn. She couldn’t let him get to her. He’d be here and gone. A couple of days at most, she figured. The Bureau had sent him because Peter Bondurant had friends in high places. It was a show of good faith or ass kissing, depending on your point of view.

He didn’t need to be here. He wouldn’t be here long. She didn’t have to have any contact with him while he was here. She wasn’t with the Bureau anymore. She wasn’t a part of this task force. He had no power over her.

God, Kate, you sound like you’re afraid of him
, she thought with disgust as she turned her Toyota 4Runner out of the parking ramp onto Fourth Avenue. Quinn was past history and she was a grown-up, not some adolescent girl who’d broken up with the class cool guy and couldn’t bear to face him in homeroom.

“Where are we going?” Angie asked, dialing the radio to an alternative rock station. Alanis Morissette whining at an ex-boyfriend with bongos in the background.

“Uptown. What do you want to eat? You look like you could use some fat and cholesterol. Ribs? Pizza? Burgers? Pasta?”

The girl made the snotty shrug that had driven parents of teenagers from the time of Adam to consider the pros and cons of killing their young. “Whatever. Just as long as there’s a bar. I need a drink.”