Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 28

"No."

"Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt Jillian?"

She shook her head.

"She have a boyfriend? Ex-boyfriend? A guy who was interested in her?"

"No."

"How about yourself? Got a boyfriend?"

"No," she answered, looking down at the smoldering b.u.t.t in the ashtray.

"Why would I want one?"

"Jillian ever say anything about a man bothering her? Watching her,

maybe? Hitting on her?"

Her laugh this time was bitter. "You know how men are. They all look.

They all think they have a shot. Who pays any attention to the losers?"

She sniffed and pulled in a deep breath, then let it go slowly and

reached for another cigarette. Her nails were bitten to the quick.

"What about her relations.h.i.+p with her father? They get along?"

Fine's mouth twisted. "She adores him. I don't know why."

"You don't like him?"

"Never met him. But he controls her, doesn't he? He owns the town house, pays for school, picks the therapist, pays for the therapist.

Dinner every Friday. A car."

It sounded like a sweet deal to Liska. Maybe she could get Bondurant to adopt her. She let the subject drop. It was beginning to sound like if it had a p.e.n.i.s, Michele didn't like it.

"Michele, do you know if Jillian had any distinguis.h.i.+ng marks on her body: moles, scars, tattoos?"

Fine gave her a cross look. "How would I know that? We weren't lovers."

"Nothing obvious, then. No scar on her arm. No snake tattooed around her wrist."

"Not that I ever noticed."

"If you were to look around Jillian's apartment, would you know if

things were missing? Like if she'd packed some clothes and gone somewhere?"

She shrugged. "I guess."

"Good. Let's see if we can take a ride."

WHILE MICHELE FINE squared an hour's absence with her boss, the Italian

stallion, Liska stepped out of the coffeehouse, pulled her cell phoneout of her pocket, and dialed Kovac.

The air was crisp, a stiff breeze blowing, as was common for November. Not a bad day. A paler imitation of the glorious weather of lateSeptember and early October that made Minnesota rival any state in theunion for perfection. Her boys would be out on their bikes after school,trying to squeeze in every last wheelie they could before the snow flewand the sleds came out of storage. They were lucky that hadn't happenedalready.

"Moose Lodge," the gruff voice barked in her ear.

"Can I speak to Bullwinkle? I hear he's got a d.i.c.k as long as my arm."

"Christ, Liska. Is that all you ever think about?"

"That and my bank balance. I can't get enough either way."

"You're preaching to the choir. What have you got for me?"

"Besides the hots? A question. When you went through Jillian's town

house Monday, did you take a tape out of the answering machine?"

"It was digital. No messages."

"This friend of hers says she called Sat.u.r.day and left a message. So who

erased it?"

"Ooo, a mystery. I hate a mystery. Get anything else?"

"Oh, yeah." She looked through the window back into the coffee shop. "Atale to rival Shakespeare."

"SHE WAS PUTTING her life back together," Lila White's mother insisted.Her expression had the hard look of someone grown stubborn in thetelling and retelling of a lie. A lie she wanted too badly to believe inand couldn't deep down in her heart.

Mary Moss felt a deep sadness for the woman.

The White family lived in the small farming community of Glencoe, thekind of place where gossip was a common hobby and rumors cut like brokengla.s.s. Mr. White was a mechanic at a farm implement dealers.h.i.+p. Theylived on the edge of town in a neat rambler with a family of concretedeer in the front yard and a swingset out back. The swingset was for thegrandchild they were raising: Lila's daughter, Kylie, a towheadedfour-year-old blessedly immune to the facts of her mother's death. For now.

"She called us that Thursday night. She'd kicked the drugs, you know.

It was the drugs that dragged her down." The features of Mrs. White'slumpy face puckered, as if the bitterness of her feelings left a tastein her mouth. "It's all the fault of that Ostertag boy. He's the one gother started on the drugs."

"Now, Jeannie," Mr. White said with the weariness of pointlessrepet.i.tion. He was a tall, rawboned man with eyes the color ofwashed-out denim. He had farmer's creases in his face from too manyyears of squinting under a bright sun.

"Don't Jeannie me," his wife snapped. "Everyone in town knows he peddlesdrugs, and his parents walk around pretending their s.h.i.+t don't stink. Itmakes me sick."

"Allan Ostertag?" Moss said, referring to her notes. "Your daughter wentto high school with him?"

Mr. White sighed and nodded, enduring the process, waiting for it to beover so they could start the healing again and hope this was the lasttime the wounds would have to be reopened. His wife went on about theOstertags. Moss waited patiently, knowing that Allan Ostertag was notand had never been a viable suspect in Lila White's murder, and was,therefore, irrelevant to her. He was not irrelevant to the Whites.

"Had she mentioned seeing anyone in particular last summer?" she askedwhen the rant ended. "A steady boyfriend? Someone who might have been aproblem to her?"

"We've answered all these questions before," Jeannie White saidimpatiently. "It's like you people don't bother to write anything down.

"Course it didn't matter when it was just our girl dead," she said, thesarcasm as pointed as a needle. "We didn't see no task force on the newswhen it was just our Lila murdered. The police never cared-"

"That's not true, Mrs. White."

"They never cared when that drug dealer beat her up last fall neither.

They never even bothered to have a trial. It's like our girl didn'tcount." The woman's eyes and throat filled with tears. "She wasn'timportant enough to anyone but us."

Moss offered apologies, knowing they wouldn't be accepted. Noexplanation could penetrate the hurt, the imagined insult, the anger,the pain. It didn't matter to the Whites that an individual murder was,by necessity, handled differently from a string of related murders. Itmattered to them that the child they had loved had fallen down one oflife's darker paths. It mattered to them she had died a prost.i.tute. Thatwas how she would be remembered by the world, when she was remembered atall. Victim number one, convicted prost.i.tute and drug addict.

The Whites probably saw the headlines in their sleep. The hopes they hadheld for their daughter to turn her life around had died unfulfilled,and no-one else in the world cared that Lila had wanted to become a counselor or that she had been a B student in high school or that shehad often cried her heart out over not being able to raise her ownchild.

In the file folder on the pa.s.senger seat of Moss's car were snapshots ofLila and Kylie in the Whites' backyard. Smiling and laughing, andwearing party hats for Kylie's fourth birthday. Photos of mother anddaughter splas.h.i.+ng in a green plastic wading pool. Three weeks latersomeone had tortured the life from Lila White, desecrated her body andset it on fire like a pile of garbage.

Victim number one, convicted prost.i.tute and drug addict.

Moss went through the rea.s.surances in her own mind. The police couldn'tform a task force for every homicide in the city. Lila White's murderhad been investigated fully. Sam Kovac had caught the case, and Kovac'sreputation was that he did his best for every victim, regardless of whoor what they had been in life.

Still, she couldn't help but wonder-as Jeannie White had wonderedaloud-how differently things might have turned out if Jillian Bonduranthad been victim number one.

THE LOCKS HAD been changed on Jillian Bondurant's town house atEdgewater and a new key delivered to the PD. Liska worked the s.h.i.+ny newkey into the dead bolt and opened the door. She went to the bedroomswith Michele Fine and watched as Fine looked through the closets,pausing now and again to linger briefly over something that struck amemory for her.

"Jesus, it's eerie," she said, looking around. "Seeing the place soclean."

"Jillian didn't have a cleaning service?"

"No. Her old man tried to give her maid service as a present once.

He's the most a.n.a.l man on the planet. Jillie said no. She didn't wantpeople going through her stuff.

"I don't see anything missing," she said finally.

As she stood at Jillian's dresser, her gaze drifted across the fewobjects there: a mahogany jewelry box, some scented candles in mismatched holders, a small porcelain figurine of an elegant woman in aflowing blue dress. She touched the figurine carefully, her expressionwistful.

As Fine gathered her few clothing items from the guest bedroom, Liskawalked down the steps and took in the main rooms at a glance, seeing theplace differently from before she'd met Jillian's friend. It should havebeen a mess, but it wasn't. She'd never known a killer to offer maidservices as part of the package, but someone had cleaned the place up.Not just wiped it down to get rid of prints. Cleaned it, folded and putaway clothes, washed the dishes.

Her thoughts turned back to Michele Fine and Jillian as friends.

They must have seemed an unlikely pair: a billionaire's daughter and acoffeehouse waitress. If there had been a ransom demand to Peter Bondurant, the relations.h.i.+p would have automatically fallen underscrutiny.

Even without it, the suspicions flashed through Liska's mind out ofhabit.

Considered and dismissed. Michele Fine was cooperating fully.

Nothing she had said or done seemed out of place. Her grief appearedgenuine, and was colored with the shades of anger and relief and guiltLiska had encountered time and again in the people a murder victim leftbehind.

Still, she would run Michele Fine's name through the computer and see ifanything kicked up.

She crossed the living room to the electronic piano. Jillian Bonduranthad written music but was too shy to perform. That was the kind ofdetail that made her a real person in a way that knowing she was PeterBondurant's daughter did not. The sheet music stacked neatly on thestand was cla.s.sical. Another contradiction in Jillian's image.

Liska lifted the padded seat and glanced through the collection there:folk, rock, alternative, new age'hold it right there!"

Her first impulse was to go for her gun, but she held herself bent overat the piano stool, breathing through her mouth. Slowly, she turned herhead and relief swept through her, her temper hot on its heels.

"It's me, Mr. Vanlees. Detective Liska," she said, straightening.

"Put the gun down, please."

Vanlees stood just inside the doorway in his security guard's uniform, aColt Python clutched in his hands. Liska wanted to pull the gun awayfrom him and smack him in the head with it.

He blinked at her and lowered the weapon, a barely sheepish grin pullingat his mouth. "Oh, jeer, Detective, I'm sorry. I didn't know you werecoming over. When I saw there was someone moving around over here, Ithought the worst. You know, tabloid reporters have been coming around.I hear they'll steal anything that's not nailed down."

"You didn't recognize my car, then?" Liska said with a little too much edge.

"Uh, I guess I didn't. Sorry."