Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 5

"You want to go to your hotel first or to the office?" Walsh asked.

As if what he wanted had anything to do with it. What he wanted in lifehad gone out of sight for him long ago.

"I have to go to the crime scene," he said, the unopened folder ofphotographs as heavy as a steel plate on his lap. "I need to see wherehe left her."

The park looked like a campsite the day after a Cub Scout jamboree. Thecharred ground where the fire had been, the yellow tape strung from treeto tree like bunting to fence off the area; the dead gra.s.s trampleddown, leaves pressed into the ground like wet paper cutouts.

Crumpled paper coffee cups had blown out of the trash can that sat justoff the blacktop trail on the hillside and skittered across the ground.

Walsh parked the car and they got out and stood on the blacktop, Quinnscanning the entire area from north to south. The crime scene wa.s.slightly below them in a shallow bowl of ground that had affordedexcellent cover.

The park was studded with trees, both deciduous and evergreen. By deadof night this would be a small world all its own.

The nearest residences-neat middle-cla.s.s single-family homes-were wellaway from the crime scene, the skysc.r.a.pers of downtown Minneapolisseveral miles to the north. Even the small service lot where they wereparked was obscured from view by trees and what was likely a beautifulrow of lilacs in the spring--camouflage to hide a small locked utilityshed and the park maintenance vehicles that came and went as needed.

Their UNSUB (unknown subject) had likely parked here and carried thebody down the hill for his little ceremony. Quinn looked up at thesodium vapor security light that topped a dark pole near the utilityshed. The gla.s.s had been shattered, but there were no visible fragmentsof it on the ground.

"We know how long that light's been out?"

Walsh looked up, blinking and grimacing as the rain hit him in the face.

"You'll have to ask the cops."

A couple of days, Quinn bet. Not long enough that the park service wouldhave gotten around to fixing it. If the damage was the work of their manin preparation for his midnight call .. . If he had come here inadvance, knocked out the light, cleaned up the gla.s.s to help avoiddetection of the vandalism and thereby improve his odds that thesecurity light would not be replaced quickly .. . if all of that wastrue, they were dealing with a strong degree of planning andpremeditation. And experience. MO was learned behavior. A criminallearned by trial and error what to do and what not to do in thecommission of his crimes. He improved his methods with time andrepet.i.tion.

Ignoring the rain that pelted down on his bare head, Quinn hunched hisshoulders inside his trench coat and started down the hill, consciousthat the killer would have taken this route with a body in his arms. Itwas a fair distance-fifty or sixty yards. The crime scene unit wouldhave the exact measurements. It took strength to carry a dead weightthat far. The time of death would have determined how he had carried her. Over the shoulder would have been easiest-if rigor had not yet setin, or if it had come and gone already. If he had been able to carry herover his shoulder, then his size could vary more; a smaller man couldaccomplish the task. If he had to carry her in his arms, he would had tohave been larger. Quinn hoped they would know more after the autopsy.

"What did the crime scene unit cover?" he asked, the words coming out ofhis mouth on a cloud of steam.

Walsh hustled along three paces behind him, coughing. "Everything. Thiswhole section of park, including the parking area and the utility shed.

The homicide guys called in their own Bureau of Investigation crimescene people and the mobile lab from the Minnesota Bureau of CriminalApprehension as well. They were very thorough."

"When did this rain start?"

"This morning."

"s.h.i.+t," Quinn grumbled. "Last night-would the ground have been hard orsoft?"

"Like a rock. They didn't get any shoe prints. They picked up somegarbage-sc.r.a.ps of paper, cigarette b.u.t.ts, like that. But'h.e.l.l, it's apublic park. The stuff could have come from anyone."

"Anything distinguis.h.i.+ng left at the first two scenes?"

"The victims' driver's licenses. Other than that, nothing to myknowledge."

"Who's doing the lab work?"

"BCA. Their facilities are excellent."

"I've heard that."

"They're aware they can contact the FBI lab if they need help orclarification on anything."

Quinn pulled up just short of the charred ground where the body had beenleft, a thick, dark sense of oppression closing tight around his chestas it always did at a crime scene. He had never tried to discern whetherthe feeling was anything as mystical or romantic as the notion of amalingering sense of evil or something as psychologically profound asdisplaced guilt.

The feeling was just a part of him.

He supposed he should have welcomed it as some proof of his humanity.

After all the bodies he'd seen, he had yet to become totally hardened.

Then again, he might have been better off if he had.

For the first time, he opened the folder Walsh had given him and lookedat the photographs someone had had the foresight to slip into plasticprotectors. The tableau presented might have made the average personrecoil. Portable halogen lights had been set up near the body toilluminate both the night and the corpse,- giving the photo a weirdlyartistic quality. As did the charring of the flesh, and the meltedfabric of the woman's clothing. Color against the absence of color; thefanciful vibrance of a triangle of undamaged red skirt against the grimreality of its wearer's violent death.

"Were the others wearing clothes?"

"I don't know."

"I'll want to see those photos too. I'll want to see everything they'vegot. You have my list?"

"I faxed a copy to the homicide detectives. They'll try to have it alltogether for the task force meeting. h.e.l.l of a sight, isn't it?" Walshnodded to the photograph. "Enough to put a person off barbecue."

Quinn made no comment as he further studied the photo. Because of theheat of the fire, the muscles and tendons of the limbs had contracted,pulling the victim's arms and legs into what was technically known as apugilistic att.i.tude-a position that suggested animation. A suggestionmade macabre by the absence of the head, Surreal, he thought. His brainwanted to believe he was looking at a discarded mannequin, somethingthat had been dragged too late out of the incinerator at Macy's. But heknew what he was looking at had been flesh and bone, not plastic, andshe had been alive and walking around three days earlier. She had eatenmeals, listened to music, talked with friends, attended to the boringminutae of the average life, never imagining that hers was nearly over.

The body had been positioned with the feet pointing toward downtown,which Quinn thought might have been more significant if the head hadalso been posed or buried nearby. One of the more infamous cases he hadstudied years before had included the decapitation of two victims. Thekiller, Ed Kemper, had buried the heads in the backyard of his familyhome, beneath his mother's bedroom window.

A sick private joke, Kemper had later admitted. His mother, who hademotionally abused him from boyhood, had "always wanted people to lookup to her," he'd said.

The head of this victim had not been found and the ground was too hardfor the killer to have buried it here.

"There're a lot of theories on why he's burning them," Walsh said.

He bounced a little on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, trying unsuccessfully tokeep the cold from knifing into his bones. "Some people think he's justa copycat of the Wirth Park murders. Some people think it's symbolism:Wh.o.r.es of the world burn in h.e.l.l-that kind of thing. Some think he'strying to obscure the forensic evidence and the victim's ident.i.ty at thesame time."

"Why leave the DL if he doesn't want them identified?" Quinn said. "Nowhe takes this one's head. That makes her pretty d.a.m.n hard torecognize-he didn't have to burn her up. And still he leaves thedriver's license."

"So you think he's trying to get rid of trace evidence?"

"Maybe. What's he use for an accelerant?"

"Alcohol. Some kind of high-test vodka or something."

"Then the fire is more likely part of his signature than it is part ofhis MO," Quinn said. "He might be getting rid of trace evidence, but ifthat's all he wanted, why wouldn't he just use gasoline? It's cheap.

It's easily had with little or no interaction with another person. Hechooses alcohol for an emotional reason rather than a practical one.

That makes it part of the ritual, part of the fantasy."

"Or maybe he's a big drinker."

"No. A drinker doesn't waste good booze. And that's exactly what he'dcall this: a waste of good liquor. He may be drinking prior to the hunt.

He may drink during the torture and murder phase. But he's no drunk. Adrunk would make mistakes. Sounds like this guy hasn't made any so far."

None that anyone had noticed, at any rate. He thought again of the twohookers whose death had preceded this woman's and wondered who hadcaught their cases: a good cop or a bad cop. Every department had itsshare of both. He'd seen cops shrug and sleepwalk through aninvestigation if they didn't feel the victim was worth their time. Andhe'd seen veteran cops break down and cry over the violent death ofsomeone most taxpaying citizens wouldn't sit next to on the bus.

He closed the file. Rain ran down his forehead and dripped off the endof his nose.

"This isn't where he left the others, is it?"

"No. One was found in Minnehaha Park and one in Powderhorn Park.

Different parts of the city."

He would need to see maps, to see where each dumping site was inrelation to the others, where each abduction had taken place-to try toestablish both a hunting territory and a killing and/or dumping territory. The task force would have maps in their command center,posted and flagged with little redheaded pins. Standard op. There was noneed to ask. His mind was already full of maps bristling with pins.

Manhunts that ran together like tag-team events, and command centers andwar rooms that all looked alike and smelled alike, and cops who tendedto look alike and sound alike, and smell like cigarettes and cheapcologne.

He couldn't separate the cities anymore, but he could remember everysingle one of the victims.

The exhaustion poured through him again, and he wanted nothing more thanto lie down right there on the ground.

He glanced over at Walsh as the agent fell into another spasm of deep,phlegm-rattling coughing.

"Let's go," Quinn said. "I've seen enough here for now."

He'd seen enough, period. And yet it took him another moment to move hisfeet and follow Vince Walsh back to the car.

Chapter 4.

The tension in the mayor's conference room was high and electric. Grimexcitement, antic.i.p.ation, anxiety, latent power. There were always thosewho saw murder as tragedy and those who sensed career opportunity. Thenext hour would sort out one type from the other, and establish thepower order of the personalities involved. In that time Quinn would haveto read them, work them, decide how to play them, and slot them intoplace in his own scheme of things.

He straightened his back, squared his aching shoulders, lifted his chin,and made his entrance. Show time. The heads turned immediately as hewalked in the door. On the plane he had memorized the names of some ofthe princ.i.p.al players here, scouring the faxes that had come into theoffice before he'd left Virginia. He tried to recall them now, tried tosort them from the hundreds of others he'd known in hundreds of conference rooms across the country.

The mayor of Minneapolis detached herself from the crowd when shespotted him, and came toward him with purpose, trailing lesserpoliticians in her wake. Grace n.o.ble resembled nothing so much as anoperatic Valkyrie. She was fifty-something and large, built like a treetrunk, with a helmet of starched blond hair. She had no upper lip tospeak of, but had carefully drawn herself one and filled it in with redlipstick that matched her suit.

"Special Agent Quinn," she declared, holding out a broad, wrinkled handtipped with red nails. "I've been reading all about you. As soon as weheard from the director, I sent Cynthia to the library for every articleshe could find."

He flashed what had been called his Top Gun smile---confident, winning,charming, but with the unmistakable glint of steel beneath it.

"Mayor n.o.ble. I should tell you not to believe everything you read, butI find there is an advantage to having people think I can see into theirminds."

"I'm sure you don't have to be able to read minds to know how gratefulwe are to have you here."

"I'll do what I can to help. Did you say you'd spoken with thedirector?"

Grace n.o.ble patted his arm. Maternal. "No, dear. Peter spoke with him.

Peter Bondurant. They're old friends, as it happens."

"Is Mr. Bondurant here?"

"No, he couldn't bring himself to face the press. Not yet. Not knowing.. ." Her shoulders slumped briefly beneath the weight of it all.

"My G.o.d, what this will do to him if it is Jillie .. ."

A short African American man with a weightlifter build and a tailoredgray suit stepped up beside her, his eyes on Quinn. "d.i.c.k Greer, chiefof police," he said crisply, thrusting out his hand. "Glad to have youon board, John. We're ready to nail this creep."

As if he would have anything to do with it. In a metropolitan policedepartment the chief was an administrator and a politician, a spokesman,an idea man. The men in the trenches likely said Chief Greer couldn'tfind his own d.i.c.k in a dark room.

Quinn listened to the list of names and t.i.tles as the introductions weremade. A deputy chief, a deputy mayor, an a.s.sistant county attorney, thestate director of public safety, a city attorney, and a pair of presssecretaries-too d.a.m.n many politicians. Also present were the HennepinCounty sheriff, a detective from the same office, a special agent incharge from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension with one ofhis agents, the homicide lieutenant from the PD representatives fromthree of the agencies that would comprise the task force.

He met each with a firm handshake and played it low key. Midwesternerstended to be reserved and didn't quite trust people who weren't. In theNortheast he would have given more of the steel. On the West Coast hewould have turned up the charm, would have been Mr. Affable, Mr. Spiritof Cooperation. Different horses for different courses, his old man usedto say. And which one was the real John Quinn-even he didn't know anymore.

".. . and my husband, Edwyn n.o.ble," the mayor finished theintroductions.

"Here in a professional capacity, Agent Quinn," Edwyn n.o.ble said.

"Peter Bondurant is a client as well as a friend."

Quinn's attention focused sharply on the man before him. Six five or sixsix, n.o.ble was all joints and sinew, an exaggerated skeleton of a manwith a smile that was perfectly square and too wide for his face.

He looked slightly younger than his wife. The gray in his hair wascontained to flags at the temples.

"Mr. Bondurant sent his attorney?" Quinn said.

"I'm Peter's personal counsel, yes. I'm here on his behalf."

"Why is that?"

"The shock has been terrific."

"I'm sure it has been. Has Mr. Bondurant already given the police hisstatement?"

n.o.ble leaned back, the question physically putting him off. "A statementregarding what?"

Quinn shrugged, nonchalant. "The usual. When he last saw his daughter.

Her frame of mind at the time. The quality of their relations.h.i.+p."

Color blushed the attorney's prominent cheekbones. "Are you suggestingMr. Bondurant is a suspect in his own daughter's death?" he said in aharsh, hushed tone, his gaze slicing across the room to check foreavesdroppers.