Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 11

Kovac rolled his eyes. "I oughta change my name to Murphy. Murphy's Law:Nothing's ever easy. Turns out, most of her medical records are inFrance," he said as if France were an obscure planet in another galaxy.

"Her mom divorced Peter Bondurant eleven years ago and married a guywith an international construction firm. They lived in France. Themother's dead, stepfather still lives there. Jillian came back here acouple of years ago. She was enrolled at the U-University of Minnesota."

"The Bureau can help get the records via our legal attache offices inParis."

"I know. Walsh is already on it. Meantime, we'll try to talk to anyonewho was close to Jillian. Find out if she had any moles, scars,birthmarks, tattoos. We'll get pictures. We haven't turned up any closefriends yet. No boyfriend anyone knows of I gather she wasn't exactly asocial b.u.t.terfly."

"What about her father?"

"He's too distraught to talk to us." Kovac's mouth twisted." "Toodistraught'-that's what his lawyer says. If I thought somebody whackedmy kid, I'd be f.u.c.king distraught, all right. I'd be climbing all overthe cops. I'd be living in their back pockets, doing anything I could tonail the son of a b.i.t.c.h." He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at Quinn.

"Wouldn't you?"

"I'd turn the world upside down and shake it by its heels."

"d.a.m.n right. I go over to Bondurant's house to break the news this mightbe Jillian. He gets a look like I'd hit him in the head with a ball bat.

"Oh, my G.o.d. Oh, my G.o.d,' he says, and I think he's gonna puke.

So I don't think much of it when he excuses himself. The son of a b.i.t.c.h goes and calls his lawyer and he never comes out of his study again. Ispend the next hour talking to Bondurant via Edwyn n.o.ble."

"And what did he tell you?"

"That Jillian had been to the house Friday night for dinner and hehadn't seen her since. She left around midnight. A neighborcorroborates. The couple across the street were just getting home from aparty. Jillian's Saab pulled onto the street just as they turned ontothe block at eleven-fifty.

"Peter Filthy f.u.c.king Rich Bondurant," he grumbled. "My luck. I'll bewriting parking tickets by the time this thing is through."

pped it on the tarmac, and ground out theb.u.t.t with the toe of his shoe.

"Too bad DNA tests take so d.a.m.n long," he said, jumping back to thematter of identification. "Six weeks, eight weeks. Too d.a.m.n long."

"You're checking missing persons reports?"

"Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, the Dakotas. We've even called Canada.

Nothing fits yet. Maybe the head'll turn up," he said with optimism, theway he might hope for the return of a pair of eyegla.s.ses or a wallet.

"Maybe."

"Well, enough of this s.h.i.+t for tonight. I'm starving," he said abruptly,pulling his suit coat shut as if he had confused hunger for cold. "Iknow a place with great Mexican takeout. So hot it burns the corpsetaste out of your mouth. We'll swing by on the way to your hotel."

They walked away from the delivery bay as an ambulance pulled up. Nolights, no siren. Another customer. Kovac fished his keys out of hispocket, looking at Quinn from the corner of his eye. "So, you knew ourKate?"

"Yeah." Quinn stared into the fog, wondering where she was tonight.

Wondering if she was thinking about him. "In another lifetime."

CHAPTER 7.

KATE EASED her aching body down into the old claw-foot tub and tried toexhale the tension she had stored up during the day. It worked its wayfrom the core of her through her muscles in the form of pain.

She envisioned it rising from the water with steam and the scent oflavender. The bra.s.s wire tray that spanned the tub before her held a BadMonday-size gla.s.s of Bombay Sapphire and tonic. She took a deep drink,lay back, and closed her eyes.

The stress management people frowned on alcohol as an answer to tensionand preached that it would set a person on the road to alcoholism and doom.

Kate had been up and down the road to doom. She figured if she was everto become an alcoholic, it would have happened years before. Five yearsbefore. It hadn't, and so tonight she drank gin and waited for thepleasant numbness it would bring.

For just the briefest of moments the montage of faces from that bleakperiod of her life flashed through her mind's eye: Steven's changingface over the pa.s.sing of that terrible year-distant, cold, angry,bitter; the doctor's regret, worn tired and bland by too many tragedies;her daughter's sweet face, there and gone in a single painful heartbeat.Quinn's face-intense, compa.s.sionate, pa.s.sionate angry, dispa.s.sionate,indifferent, a memory.

It never failed to amaze her, the sudden sharpness of that pain as itstabbed through the cotton batting of time. A part of her wishedfervently it would dull, and another part of her hoped that it neverwould. The endless cycle of guilt: the need to escape it and the equallydesperate need to cling to it.

She opened her eyes and stared at the window beyond the foot of the tub.

A rectangle of night peered in above the half-curtain, blackness beyondthe steamed gla.s.s.

She had at least healed over the surface of the old wounds and moved on with her life, which was as much as anyone could ever honestly hope todo.

But how easily torn, that old scar tissue. How humbling the reality thatshe hadn't really grown past that pain attached to the memory of JohnQuinn. She felt like a fool and a child, and blamed the element ofsurprise.

She would do better tomorrow. She would have a clear head and keep herfocus. She would allow no surprises. There was no sense in dredging upthe past when the present demanded all her attention.

And Kate Conlan had never been anything if not sensible .. . with theexception of a few brief months during the worst year of her life.

She and Steven had grown apart. A tolerable situation, had all thingsremained equal. Then Emily had contracted a virulent strain ofinfluenza, and in a matter of days their sweet, sunny child was gone.

Steven had blamed Kate, feeling she should have recognized theseriousness of the illness sooner. Kate had blamed herself despite thedoctors' a.s.surances that it wasn't her fault, that she couldn't haveknown.

She had been so in need of someone to hold her, someone to offer comfortand support and absolution.. ..

Pulling the end of the towel over her shoulder from the towel bar behindher, she dabbed at her eyes, wiped her nose, then took another drink.The past was out of her control. She could at least delude herself intobelieving she had some control of the present.

She steered her thoughts to her client. Idiotic word--client. It implied the person had chosen her, hired her. Angie Dimarco would have doneneither. What a piece of work that kid was. And Kate was far tooexperienced in the ways of the real world to believe there was a heartof gold under all that. There was more likely something warped andmutated by a life less kind than that of the average stray cat. Howpeople could bring a child into the world and let her come to this ' , *The notion brought indignation and an unwelcome stab of jealousy.

It wasn't her job, really, finding out who Angie Dimarco was or why shewas that sadly screwed-up person. But the more she knew about a client,the better able she was to understand that client, to act and reactaccordingly. To manipulate. To get what Sabin wanted out of the witness.

Draining the tub, she dried off, wrapped herself in a fat terry robe,and took the last of her drink to the small antique writing desk in herbedroom. Her feminine sanctuary. Peach tones and rich deep green gavethe room a sense of warmth and welcome. Nanci Griffith's quirky sweetvoice drifted from the speakers of the small stereo system on thebookshelf.

Thor, the Norwegian forest cat who held dominion over the house, hadclaimed Kate's bed as his rightful throne and lay in all his regal,hairy splendor dead center on the down comforter. He gazed at her withthe bored supremacy of a crown prince.

Kate curled a leg beneath her on the chair, pulled a sheet of paper froma cubbyhole in the desk, and began to write.

Angie Dimarco Name? Probably phony. Belongs to some woman in Wisconsin.

Get someone to run it through Wisconsin DMV.

Family dead-figuratively or literally?

Abuse? Likely. s.e.xual? Strong probability.

Tattoos: multiple-professional and amateur.

Significance?

Significance of individual designs?

Body piercing: fas.h.i.+on or something more?

Compulsive behaviors: Nail biting. Smokes.

Drinks: How much? How often?

Drugs? Possibly. Thin, pale, unkempt. But seems too focused in behavior.

She could make only a thumbnail sketch of Angie's personality. Theirtime together had been too brief and too strongly influenced by thestress of the situation. Kate hated to think what conclusions some stranger would draw of her if she were thrust in a similar position.

Stress triggered those old fight-or-flight instincts in everyone. Butunderstanding didn't make the kid any more pleasant to deal with.

Luckily, the woman who ran the Phoenix House was accustomed to a widerange of bad att.i.tudes. Residents at the house were women who had chosen or been forced down some of life's rougher roads and now wanted out.

Angie had been less than appreciative for the roof over her head.

She had lashed out at Kate in a way that struck Kate as being way out of

proportion.

"So what if I don't want to stay here?"

"Angie, you've got no place else to go."

"You don't know that."

"Don't make me go through this again," Kate said with an impatient sigh.

Toni Urskine, director of the Phoenix, lingered in the doorway for that

much of the exchange, watching with a frown. Then she left them to haveit out in the otherwise deserted den, a small room with cheap panelingand cast-off furnis.h.i.+ngs. Mismatched rummage sale "art" on the wallsgave the place the ambiance of a fleabag hotel.

"You have no permanent address," Kate said. "You tell me your family isdead. You haven't managed to come up with a single real-live person whowould take you in. You need a place to stay. This is a place to stay.

Three squares, bed, and bath. What's the problem?"

Angie swatted at a stained throw pillow on a worn plaid love seat.

"It's a f.u.c.king sty, that's the problem."

"Oh, excuse me, you've been living at the Hilton? Your fake address

wasn't in this good a house?"

"You like it so much, then you stay here."

"I don't have to stay here. I'm not the homeless witness to a murder."

"Well, I don't f.u.c.king want to be!" the girl cried, her eyes s.h.i.+ning

like crystal, sudden tears poised to spill down her cheeks. She turned away from Kate and jammed the heels of her hands against her eyes.

Her thin body curled in on itself like a comma.

"No, no, no," she mewed softly to herself. "Not now The swift break in emotions caught Kate flatfooted. This was what she had wanted, wasn't it?

To have the hard sh.e.l.l crack. Now that it had, she wasn't quite sure what to do about it. She hadn't been expecting the break to come now, over this.

Hesitantly, she stepped toward the girl, feeling awkward and guilty.

"Angie .. ."

"No," the girl whispered more to herself than to Kate. "Not now.

Please, please .. ."

"You don't have to be embarra.s.sed, Angie," Kate said softly, standingclose, though she made no attempt to touch the girl. "You've had a h.e.l.lof a day. I'd cry too. I'll cry later. I'm no good at it-my nose runs,it's gross."

"Why c-c-can't I j+just stay with you?"

The question came from way out in left field, hit Kate square in thetemple, and stunned her to her toes. As if this girl had never been awayfrom home. As if she had never stayed among strangers. She'd likely beenliving on the street for G.o.d only knew how long, doing G.o.d only knewwhat to survive, and suddenly this dependence. It didn't make sense.