Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 51

Cheap technology combined with the killer's egotistic need had also madefor a lot of d.a.m.ning evidence in recent years. The trick for cops andprosecutors was to stomach hearing and seeing it. Bad enough to see theaftermath of crimes like these. Having to watch or listen to them inprogress could take a horrible toll.

Quinn had watched or listened to one after another, after another, afteranother .. .

Ears turned one k.n.o.b down and pushed two small levers up. "Coming uphere. I've isolated and muted the victim's voice and pulled out theothers. Listen close."

No one so much as took a breath. The screams faded into the backgroundand a man's voice, soft and indistinct, said, ".. . Turn .. . do it ..

." followed by white noise, followed by an even less distinct voice thatsaid, ".. . Want to .. . of me .. ."

"That's as good as it gets," Ears said, punching b.u.t.tons, running thetape back. "I can make it louder, but the voices won't be any moredistinguishable. They were too far away from the mike. But by thereadings I'm seeing, I'd say the first one is a man and the second oneis a woman."

Quinn thought of the stab wounds to each victim's chest, the distinctpattern: long wound, short wound, long wound, short wound .. . Cross myheart, hope to die .. . A pact, a pledge, a covenant.

Two knives-the light flas.h.i.+ng off one and then the other as theydescended in a macabre rhythm.

Those wounds made sense now. He should have thought of it himself: twoknives, two killers. It wasn't as if he hadn't seen it happen before.But he sure as h.e.l.l didn't want to have to see it again, he realized asresistance rose like panic up through his chest.

Murder didn't get any darker or more twisted than when the killers werea couple. The dynamics of that kind of relations.h.i.+p epitomized thesickest extremes of human behavior. The obsessions and compulsions, thefears and s.a.d.i.s.tic fantasies of two equally disturbed people tangledlike a pair of vipers trying to devour each other.

"Will you play with the tape some more, Ears?" Kovac asked. "See if youcan't pull out a few more words from one or both of them? I'd like toknow what they're talking about."

The tech shrugged. "I'll try, but I'm not making any promises."

"Do what you can. The career you save could be mine."

"Then you'll owe me two cases of beer I'll never see in this lifetime."

"Crack this for me, I'll send you a lifetime supply of Pig's Eye."

Quinn led the way back into the hall, already trying to sort through thetangle in his head in order to take his attention away from the tightfeeling in his throat. Concentrate on the problem at hand, not theproblem inside. Try not to think that just when he was beginning to feelthey were making some progress, the number of killers multiplied, likesomething in a nightmare.

Kovac brought up the rear, shutting the door behind him.

"There's a wrinkle we didn't need," he complained. "Bad enough lookingfor one psycho. Now I get to tell the bosses we're looking for two ofthem."

"Don't tell them," Quinn said. "Not right away. I need to think about this."

He put his back to the wall as if he intended to stand right there untilthe answer came to him.

"What's it do to the profile if he's got a partner?" Liska asked.

"What's it do to the profile if he's got a partner and his partner is awoman?" Quinn asked back.

"Complicates the h.e.l.l out of my life," Kovac said.

The hall was dark with a low ceiling and not much traffic this time ofday. Two women in lab coats walked past, engrossed in a conversationabout office politics. Quinn waited until they were out of earshot.

"Are they equal partners, or is the woman what we call a 'willingvictim'? Is she partic.i.p.ating because she likes it, or because she feelsshe has to for one reason or another-she's afraid of him, he controlsher, whatever." He turned to Liska. "Does Gil Vanlees have agirlfriend?"

"Not that I've heard about. I asked his wife, his boss, coworkers.

Nothing."

"Did you ask the wife about Jillian Bondurant? Whether she knew Jillian,whether she thought her husband knew her a little too well?"

"She said he liked to look at anything with t.i.ts. She didn't single outJillian."

"What are you thinking?" Kovac asked.

"I'm thinking it's bothered me all along that we've never gotten apositive ID on the third victim. Why the decapitation? The extramutilation of the feet? Now using Jillian's car to burn the fourthvictim.

Why so much emphasis on Jillian?" Quinn asked. "We know she was anunhappy, troubled girl. What more permanent escape from an unhappy lifethan death-real or symbolic."

"You think that could be Jillian's voice on the tape," Liska said.

"You think she could be Vanlees's partner?"

"I've said all along the key to this thing is Jillian Bondurant. She'sthe piece that doesn't fit. It just never hit me until now that maybeshe isn't just the key. Maybe she's a killer."

"Jesus," Kovac said. "Well, it was a decent career while it lasted.

Maybe I can take over Vanlees's job, chasing groupies away from thestage door at the Target Center."

He glanced at his watch and tapped its face. "I gotta go. I've got adate with the wife of Peter Bondurant's ex-partner. Maybe I'll find outsomething about Jillian there."

"I want to talk to this friend of hers-Michele Fine. See if she has copies of the music she wrote with Jillian. We could get some insightsto her state of mind, maybe even to her fantasy life through her lyrics.

I also want to find out what Fine's take on Vanlees is."

"She doesn't have one," Liska said. "I asked her the day we were at theapartment and we saw him. She said, "Who ever notices the loserst "

"But predators recognize their own kind," Quinn said. He turned toKovac.

"Who's on Vanlees?"

"Tippen and Hamill."

"Perfect. Have them go ask him if this friend whose house he's stayingat imports recording equipment, video cameras, stuff like that."

Kovac nodded. "Will do."

"There are a couple of possibilities to consider other than Vanlees,"Quinn pointed out. "If the relations.h.i.+p between Smokey Joe and hispartner is about control, domination, power, then we have to look atJillian's life and ask ourselves what men have held that kind of swayover her. I can name two that we know of."

"Lucas Brandt and Daddy Dearest," Kovac said with a grim look.

"Great. We may finally be on to something, and it's that the daughter ofthe most powerful man in the state is a sicko freak murderer-and maybeshe gets it from Dad. I just get all the luck."

Liska patted his arm as they started down the hall. "You know what theysay, Sam: You can't pick your relatives or your serial killers."

"I've got a better one," Quinn said as the myriad ugly possibilities forthe close of this case flashed through his head. "It ain't over tillit's over."

CHAPTER 26.

D'CUP WAS MOSTLY EMPTY,with the same pair of old geezers in beret andgoatee arguing about p.o.r.nography today, and a different strugglingartist contemplating his mediocrity by the window with a three-dollarlatte at hand.

Michele Fine had called in sick. Liska gleaned this information from theItalian stallion behind the bar and made a mental note to start a dailycappuccino habit. Never mind D'Cup was miles out of the way to anythingin her life. That was actually part of the allure.

"Did you know her friend at all?" Quinn asked, "Jillian Bondurant?"

The Roman G.o.d pursed his full lips and shook his head. "Not really, Imean, she came in here a lot, but she wasn't very sociable.

Very internal, if you know what I mean. She and Ch.e.l.l were tight.

That's about all I know besides what I've read in the papers."

"Did you ever see her in here with anyone else?" Quinn tried.

"Michele or Jillian Bondurant?"

"Jillian."

"Can't say that I did."

"What about Michele? She have a boyfriend?"

He didn't seem to like that question, like maybe they were getting too

personal and he was thinking he should take a stand for the Fourth

Amendment. Liska pulled out the Polaroid of Vanlees and held it out.

"You ever see either one of them with this guy? Or the guy in here alone?"

Studly squinted at the photo the way people do in an effort to improve

both their memory and their vision. "Nab. He doesn't look familiar."

"What about their music?" Quinn asked. "Michele said they performed here sometimes."

"Ch.e.l.l sings and plays the guitar on open-mike nights. I know they wrotesome stuff together, but I couldn't tell you who contributed what.Jillian never performed. She was a spectator. She liked to watch otherpeople."

"What kind of music?" Quinn asked.

"The edgy feminist folk thing. Lots of anger, lots of angst, kind of dark."

"Dark in what way?"

"Bad relations.h.i.+ps, twisted relations.h.i.+ps, lots of emotional pain." He

said it as if he were saying "the usual," with a certain air of boredom.

A commentary on modern life.

Quinn thanked him. Liska ordered a mocha to go and tipped him a buck.

Quinn smiled a little as he held the door.

"Hey," Liska said. "It never hurts to be kind."

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to."

The snow was still coming down. The street in front of the coffeehouse was a mess. Lanes invisible, drivers had adopted a survival-of the-fittest mentality. As they watched, a purple Neon nearly lost its life to an MTC bus.

"You're pretty good at this cop stuff," Liska said, digging the car keysout of her coat pocket. "You should consider giving up the glamour ofCASKU and the FBI for the relative ignominy of the Minneapolis homicideunit. You get to be ha.s.sled by the brasa.s.s, abused by the press, andride around in a piece-of-s.h.i.+t car like this one."

"All that and I'd get to live in this weather too?" Quinn turned up hiscollar against the wind and snow. "How can I resist an offer like that?"

"Oh, all right," Liska said with resignation as she climbed behind thewheel. "I'll throw in all the s.e.x you want. But you have to promise towant a lot."

Quinn chuckled and looked out the back window at the traffic.

"Tinks, you're something."

Michele Fine's apartment was less than a mile away, in a slightly seedyneighborhood full of sagging old duplexes and square, ugly apartmentbuildings that housed an inordinate number of parolees and pettycriminals on probation, according to Liska.