Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 26

She crossed her arms and arched a brow. "Oh, really? As I remember it,you didn't want much to do with me after your little run-in with theOffice of Professional Responsibility."

"That had nothing to do with it," he said angrily. "The OPR never scaredme. Steven and his petty little bureaucratic bulls.h.i.+t games didn't scareme. I was tied up. I was juggling maybe seventy-five cases including theCleveland Cannibal-"

"Oh, I know all about it, John," she said caustically.

"The Mighty Quinn, bearing the weight of the criminal world on yourshoulders."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded. "I've got a job and I doit."

And to h.e.l.l with the rest of the world, thought Kate, including me. Butshe didn't say it. What good would it do now? It wouldn't change historyas she remembered it. And it wouldn't help to argue that he surely didgive a d.a.m.n what the OPR put in his file. There was no sense arguingthat to Quinn the job was everything.

Long story short: She'd had an affair that had delivered the death blowsto a marriage already battered beyond recognition. Her husband'sretaliation had forced her out of her career. And Quinn had walked awayfrom the wreck and lost himself in his first love-his work. When pushhad come to shove, he stepped back and let her fall.

When she turned to go, he hadn't asked her not to.

In five years he hadn't called her once.

Not that she'd wanted him to.

The argument had drawn them closer together one step at a time.

He was near enough now that she could smell the faint hint of a subtleaftershave. She could sense the tension in his body. And fragments of athousand memories she'd locked away came rus.h.i.+ng to the surface.

The strength of his arms, the warmth of his body, the comfort he hadoffered that she had soaked up like a dry sponge.

Her mistake had been in needing. She didn't need him now.

She turned away from him and sat back on the desk, trying to convinceherself that it wasn't a sign of anything that they'd fallen so readilyinto this argument.

"I've got a job to do too," she said, looking pointedly at her watch.

"I suppose that's why you showed up. Sabin called you?"

Quinn let out the air he'd held in his lungs. His shoulders dropped

three inches. He hadn't expected the emotions to erupt so easily. Itwasn't like him to let that happen. Nor was it like him to abandon afight until he won. The relief he felt in doing so was strong enough toinduce embarra.s.sment.

He retreated a step. "He wants me to sit in with you and your witness when she comes back to work on the sketch."

"I don't care what he wants," Kate said stubbornly. "I won't have you there. This girl is hanging with me by a thread. Somebody whispers the letters FBI and she'll bolt."

"Then we won't mention those letters."

"She can smell a lie a mile off."

"She'll never have to know I'm there. I'll be a mouse in the corner."

Kate almost laughed. Yeah, who would notice Quinn?

Six feet of dark, handsome masculinity in an Italian suit. Now, a girl

like Angie wouldn't notice him at all.

"I'd like to get a sense of this girl," he said. "What's your take on her? Is she a credible witness?"

"She's a foul-mouthed, lying, scheming little b.i.t.c.h," Kate said bluntly.

"She's probably a runaway. She's maybe sixteen going on forty-two.

She's had some hard knocks, she's alone, and she's scared spitless."

"The well-rounded American child," Quinn said dryly. "So, did she see

Smokey Joe?"

Kate considered for a moment, weighing a that Angie was and was not.

Whatever the girl hoped to gain in terms of a reward, whatever lies she

may have told, seeing the face of evil was for real. Kate could feel thetruth in that. The tension in the girl every time she had to retell thestory was something virtually impossible to fake convincingly. "Yes. Ibelieve she did."

Quinn nodded. "But she's holding back?"

"She's afraid of retaliation by the killer-and maybe by the cops too.

She won't tell us what she was doing in that park at midnight."

"Guesses?"

"Maybe scoring drugs. Or she might have turned a trick somewhere nearby

and was cutting across the park to get back to whatever alley she'd beensleeping in."

"But she doesn't have a record?"

"None that anyone's been able to find. We're flas.h.i.+ng her picture arounds.e.x crimes, narcotics, and the juvie division. No bites yet."

"A woman of mystery."

"Pollyanna she ain't."

"Too bad you can't get her prints."

Kate made a face. "We'd have them now if I'd let Sabin get his way.

He wanted Kovac to arrest her Monday and let her sit in jail overnightto put the fear of G.o.d in her."

"Might have worked."

"Over my dead body."

Quinn couldn't help but smile at the steel in her voice, the fire in hereyes. Clearly, she felt protective of her client, lying, scheming littleb.i.t.c.h or not. Kovac had commented to him that while Kate was the consummate professional, she protected her victims and witnesses as ifthey were family. An interesting choice of words.

In five years she hadn't remarried. There was no snapshot of a boyfriendon the shelves above her desk. But inside a delicate silver filigreeframe was a tiny photo of the daughter she had lost. Tucked back in thecorner, away from the paperwork, away from the casual glance ofvisitors, almost hidden even from her own gaze, the cherubic face of thechild whose death she carried on her conscience like a stone.

The pain of Emily's death had nearly crushed her. No-nonsense,unflappable Kate Conlan. Grief and guilt had struck her with the forceof a Mack truck, shattering her, stunning her. She'd had no idea how to cope.

Turning to her husband hadn't been an option because Steven Waterstonhad readily shoveled his own sense of guilt and blame onto Kate. And soshe had turned to a friend.. ..

"And if you tell Sabin it might have worked," she continued, "the deadbody in question will be yours. I told him you'd back me up on this,John, and you'd d.a.m.n well better. You owe me one."

"Yeah," he said softly, the old memories still too close to the surface.

"At least."

D'Cup was LOCATED in the Lowry Hill area, just south of the tangle ofinterstate highways that corralled downtown Minneapolis, D'Cup was thekind of coffeehouse funky enough for the artsy crowd and just cleanenough for the patrons of the nearby Guthrie Theater and Walker ArtCenter.

Liska walked in and breathed deep the rich aroma of exotic importedbeans.

She and Moss-had split the duties for the day, needing to cover as much ground as they could. Mother Mary, with her twenty-some years ofmaternal experience, had taken the unenviable task of talking with thefamilies of the first two victims. She would open the old wounds asgently as possible. Liska had gladly taken the job of meeting with oneof Jillian Bondurant's only known friends: Michele Fine.

Fine worked at D'Cup as a waitress and sometimes sang and played guitaron the small stage wedged into a corner near the front window.

The three customers in the place sat at small tables near the window,absorbing the weak sunlight filtering in after three days of Novembergloom. Two older men--one tall and slender with a silver goatee, oneshorter and wider with a black beret-sipped their espressos and arguedthe merits of the National Endowment for the Arts. A younger blond manwith bug-eye gargoyle sungla.s.ses and a black turtleneck nursed a grandesomething-or-other and worked a newspaper crossword puzzle. A cigarettesmoldered in the ashtray beside his drink. He had the thin, vaguelyseedy look of a struggling actor.

Liska went to the counter, where a hunky Italian-looking guy with a wavyblack ponytail was pressing grounds into the fine cone-shaped basket ofan espresso machine. He glanced up at her with eyes the color of darkG.o.diva chocolate. She resisted the urge to swoon.

Barely. She wasn't as successful in resisting the automatic counting ofthe weeks since she'd had s.e.x. Moss would have told her mothers of nine and eleven-year-old boys weren't supposed to have s.e.x.

"I'm looking for Michele."

He nodded, shoved the basket into place on the machine, and cranked thehandle around. "Ch.e.l.l!"

Fine came through the archway that led into a back room carrying a trayof clean Fiestaware coffee cups the size of soup bowls. She was tall andthin with a narrow, bony face bearing several old scars that made Liskathink she must have been in a car accident a long time ago. One curleddown at one corner of her wide mouth. Another rode the crest of a highcheekbone like a short, flat worm. Her dark hair had an unnatural maroonsheen, and she had slicked it back against her head and bound it at thenape of her neck. The length of it bushed out in a kinky ma.s.s fatterthan a fox tail.

Liska flashed her ID discreetly. "Thanks for agreeing to meet with me,Michele. Can we sit down?"

Fine set the tray aside and pulled her purse out from under the counter.

"You mind if I smoke?"

"No. "I can't seem to stop," she said, her voice as rusty as an old gatehinge. She led the way to a table in the smoking section, as far awayfrom the blond man as possible. "This whole business with Jillie mynerves are raw."

Her hand was trembling slightly as she extracted a long, thin cigarettefrom a cheap green vinyl case. Puckered, discolored flesh warped theback of her right hand. Tattooed around the scar, an elegant,intricately drawn snake coiled around Fine's wrist, its head resting onthe back of her hand, a small red apple in its mouth.

"Looks like that was a nasty burn," Liska said, pointing to the scar

with her pen as she flipped open her pocket notebook.

Fine held her hand out, as if to admire it. "Grease fire," she said dispa.s.sionately. "When I was a kid."

She flicked her lighter and stared at the flame, frowning for a second.

"It hurt like h.e.l.l."

"I'll bet."

"So," she said, snapping out of the old memories. "What's the deal? No

one will say for sure that Jillie's dead, but she is, isn't she?

All the news reports talk about 'speculation' and 'likelihood,' but

Peter Bondurant is involved and giving a reward. Why would he do that if it wasn't Jillie? Why won't anyone just say it's her?"

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to comment. How long have you known

Jillian?"

"About a year. She comes in here every Friday, either before or after her session with her shrink. We got to know each other."

She took a deep pull on her cigarette and exhaled through teeth set wide