Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 74

Present tense, Kate thought. As if she didn't know he was dead, that shehad killed him. Maybe she didn't. Maybe her mind would allow her thatone consolation.

"I hate him too," Kate said softly.

Facts about Rob and the Finlow sisters were coming out of Wisconsin andpiecing together into a terrible, sordid story America received newepisodes of every night on the news. The lurid quality of loverkillersand the fall of a billionaire made for juicy ratings bait. MicheleFinlow, who had lingered for ten hours after being found in Rob'sbas.e.m.e.nt, had filled in some of the blanks herself And Angie wouldsupply what fragments her mind would allow.

Daughters of two different men and a mother with a history of drug abuseand a.s.sorted domestic misery, Michele and Angie had been in and out ofthe child welfare system, never finding the care they needed. Childrenfalling through the cracks of a system that was poor at best. Both girlshad juvenile records, Michele's being longer and more inclined toviolent behavior.

Kate had read the news accounts of the fire that had killed the mother and stepfather. The general consensus of the investigators on the casewas that one or both of the girls had started it, but there hadn't beenenough evidence to take to court. One witness had recalled seeingMichele calmly standing in the yard while the house burned, listening tothe screams of the two people trapped inside. She had, in fact, beenstanding too near a window, and was burned when the window exploded andthe fire rolled outside to consume fresh oxygen. The case had broughtRob Marshall into their lives via the court system. And Rob had broughtthe girls to Minneapolis.

Love. Or so Michele had called it, though it was doubtful she had anyreal grasp of the meaning of the word. A man in love didn't leave hispartner to die a horrible death alone in a bas.e.m.e.nt while he skipped thecountry, which was exactly what Rob would have done.

Peter Bondurant's bullet had struck Michele in the back, severing herspinal cord. Rob, who had been watching from a distance, had waited forBondurant to leave, then picked her up and took her back to his home.Any gunshot wound brought into an ER had to be reported to the police.He hadn't been willing to risk that not even to save the life of thiswoman who allegedly loved him.

He'd left her there on the table, where they had played out their sick,s.a.d.i.s.tic fantasies; where they had killed four women. Left herparalyzed, bleeding, in shock, dying. He hadn't even bothered to coverher with a blanket. The payoff money had been recovered from Rob's car.

According to Michele, Rob had fixated on Jillian out of jealousy, butMichele had put him off. Then on that fateful Friday night Jillian hadcalled from a pay phone after the battery in her cell phone had gonedead.

She wanted to talk about the fight she'd had with her father. She neededthe support of a friend. Her friend had delivered her to Rob Marshall.

"Michele loves him," Angie said, picking at the bandage. A frown curvedher mouth and she added, "More than me."

But Michele was all she had, her only family, her surrogate mother, andso she had done whatever Michele had asked. Kate wondered what would happen in Angie's mind when she was finally told Michele was dead, thatshe was alone-the one thing she feared the most.

There was a soft rap at the door, signifying Kate's allotted time as avisitor was up. When she left she would be grilled by the people sittingon the other side of the observation window-Sabin, Lieutenant Fowler,Gary Yurek, and Kovac-back in good graces after scoring news time as ahero at Kate's fire-a photo of him and Quinn carrying her out the backdoor of her house had graced the cover of both papers in the Cities andmade Newsweekthey believed she was here at their request. But she hadn'tasked their questions or pressed for the answers. She hadn't come tothis locked psychiatric ward to exploit Angie Finlow. She hadn't come asan advocate to see a client. She had come to see someone she had shared an ordeal with. Someone whose life would be forever tied to hers in a way no one else's ever would be.

She reached along the tabletop and touched Angie's hand, trying to keepher in the present, in the moment. Her own hands were still discoloredand puffy, the ligature marks on her wrists covered by her own pristinewhite bandages. Three days had pa.s.sed since the incident in her house.

"You're not alone, kiddo," Kate whispered softly. "You can't just savemy life and breeze out of it again. I'll be keeping my eye on you.

Here's a little reminder of that."

With the skill of a magician, she slipped the thing from her hand toAngie's. The tiny pottery angel Angie had stolen from her desk, thenleft behind at the Phoenix.

Angie stared at the statue, a guardian angel in a world where suchthings did not truly exist--or so she had always believed. The need tobelieve now was so strong, it terrified her, and she retreated to theshadowed side of her mind to escape the fear. Better to believe innothing than wait for the inevitable disappointment to drop like an ax.

She closed her hand around the statue and held it like a secret. She closed her eyes and shut her mind down, not even aware of the tears thatslipped down her cheeks.

Kate blinked back tears of her own as she rose slowly and carefully.

She stroked a hand over Angie's hair, bent, and pressed the softest ofkisses to the top of her head.

"I'll be back," she whispered, then gathered her crutches and hobbledtoward the door, muttering to herself. "Guess maybe I'll have to stopsaying I don't do kids, after all."

The idea came with a wave of emotions she simply didn't have thestrength to deal with today. Luckily, she would have a lot of tomorrowsto work on them.

As she went into the hall, the door to the observation room opened andSabin, Fowler, and Yurek spilled out, looking frustrated. Kovac followedwith a look-at-these-clowns smirk. At the same time, a short, handsomeItalian-looking man in a thirty-five-hundred-dollar charcoal suitsteamed down the hall toward them with Lucas Brandt and a scowl.

"Have you been speaking with the girl without her counsel present?" he demanded.

Kate gave him the deep-freeze stare.

"You can't proceed with this until her competency has been determined,"

Brandt said to Sabin.

"Don't tell me my job." Sabin's shoulders hunched as if he might bring his fists up. "What are you doing here, Costello?"

"I'm here to represent Angie Finlow at the request of Peter Bondurant."

Anthony Costello, sleazeball to the rich and famous. Kate almost laughed. Just when she thought nothing could amaze her .. . Peter Bondurant paying for Angie's legal counsel. Retribution for shooting her sister in the back? Good PR for a man who would stand to face charges of his own? Or maybe he simply wanted to make up for the mess his daughter's life had become by helping Angie out of the mess her life had always been.

Karma.

"Anything she told you is privileged," Costello barked at her.

"I'm just here to see a friend," Kate said, hobbling away to let the men

duke it out.

A new act for the media circus.

"Hey, Red!"

She turned and stopped as Kovac came toward her. He looked as if he'd

fallen asleep at the beach. His face was the bright red of a bad

sunburn.

His eyebrows were a pair of pale hyphens, singed short. The requisite cop mustache was gone, leaving him looking naked and younger.

"How do you like them apples?" he croaked, fighting off a coughing fit.

The aftereffects of smoke inhalation.

"Curiouser and curiouser."

"Quinn back yet?"

"Tomorrow."

He had gone back to Quantico for the wrap-up and to put in for his first

holiday in five years-Thanksgiving.

"So you're coming tonight?"

Kate made a face. "I don't think so, Sam. I'm not feeling very social."

"Kate," he said on a disapproving growl. "It's TURKEY Wake! I'm the d.a.m.n

bishop, for Christ's sake! We've got a lot to celebrate."

True, but a rousing, ribald roast of a rubber chicken with a mob ofdrunken cops and courthouse personnel didn't seem the way to go for her.

After all that had happened, after the media she'd had to face in thelast few days, interaction was the last thing she wanted.

"I'll catch it on the news," she said.

He heaved a sigh, giving up, sobering for the real reason he had brokenaway from the pack. "It's been a h.e.l.l of a case. You held your own,Red."

A hint of his usual wry grin canted his mouth. "You're okay for acivilian."

Kate grinned at him. "Up yours, Kovak." Then she hobbled closer, leanedforward, and kissed his cheek. "Thanks for saving my life."

"Anytime."

A WARM FRONT had moved into Minnesota the day before, bringing sun andtemperatures in the high fifties. The snow was nearly gone, re-exposingdead yellow lawns and leafless bushes and dirt. Ever conscious of thelength of winter once it settled in with serious intent, the citizens ofMinneapolis had emerged from early hibernation on bicycles andRollerblades. Small packs of power-walking old ladies trooped downKate's block on the way to the lake, slowing to gawk at the blackenedexterior of her home.

Most of the damage had been contained to the bas.e.m.e.nt and first floor.

The house would be salvaged, repaired, restored, and she would try notto think too much about what had happened there every time she had to goto the bas.e.m.e.nt. She would try not to stand at the was.h.i.+ng machine andthink of Rob Marshall lying dead and burned to a charred black lump onher floor.

There were tougher jobs ahead than selecting new kitchen cabinets.

Kate picked her way through the charred mess that had been the firstfloor. A buddy of Kovac's who had done a lot of arson investigation hadgone through the structure for her, telling her where she could andcouldn't go, what she should and shouldn't do. She wore the yellowhardhat he'd given her to protect herself from falling chunks ofplaster. On one foot she wore a thick-soled hiking boot. Over thebandages on the other foot was a thick wool sock and a heavy-dutyplastic garbage bag.

She sorted through the debris with long-handled tongs, for things worthkeeping. The job depressed her beyond tears. Even with the timelyarrival of the fire department, the explosion of paint and solvents inthe bas.e.m.e.nt had damaged much of the first floor. And what the firehadn't ruined, the fire hoses had.

The loss of ordinary possessions didn't bother her. She could buyanother television. A sofa was a sofa. Her wardrobe was smoke-damaged,but insurance would buy her another. It was the loss of things richlysteeped in memories that hurt. She'd grown up in this house.

The thing that now looked like a pair of burned tree stumps had been her father's desk. She could remember crawling into the knee well duringgames of hide-and-seek with her sister. The rocking chair in the livingroom had belonged to her great-aunt. Photograph alb.u.ms holding alifetime's worth of memories had burned, melted, or been soaked, thenfrozen and thawed again.

She picked up what was left of an alb.u.m with pictures of Emily andstarted to page through, tears coming as she realized the photographswere mostly ruined. It was like losing her child all over again.

She closed the book and held it to her chest, looking around through theblur at the devastation. Maybe this wasn't the day to do this job. Quinnhad tried to talk her out of it on the phone. She had insisted she wa.s.strong enough, that she needed to do something positive.

But she wasn't strong enough. Not in the way that she needed to be. Shefelt too raw, too tired, emotions too close to the surface. She felt asif she'd lost more than what the fire had taken. Her faith in her judgment had been shaken. The order of her world had been upended. Shefelt very strongly that she should have been able to prevent what hadhappened.

The curse of the victim. Second-guessing herself. Hating her lack ofcontrol of the world around her. The test was whether a person couldrise above it, push past it, grow beyond the experience.

She carried the photo alb.u.m outside and set it in a box on the backsteps. The backyard was awash in yellow-orange light as the sun beganits early exit from the day. The grainy light fell like mist on herwinterdead garden in the far corner of the yard, and a statue she hadforgotten to put away for the season-a fairy sitting on a pedestal,reading a book. With nothing but dead stems around it, it looked far tooexposed and vulnerable.

She had the strangest urge to pick it up and hold it like a child.

Protect it.

Another wave of emotion pushed tears up in her eyes as she thought againof Angie looking so small and so young and so lost sitting in thetoo-big hospital gown, her gaze on the tiny guardian angel statue in herhand.

A car door slammed out front and she peered around the corner of thehouse to see Quinn walking away from a cab. Instantly her heart liftedat the sight of him, at the way he looked, the way he moved, the frownon his face as he looked up at the house without realizing she waswatching him.

And just as instantly her nerves tightened a notch.

They hadn't seen much of each other in the days since the fire. Thewrap-up of the case had taken much of Quinn's time. He'd been in demandby the media as they had insisted on rehas.h.i.+ng, a.n.a.lyzing andre-a.n.a.lyzing every aspect of it. And then the official summons back toQuantico, where he had several cases coming to a head at once. Eventheir phone conversations had been brief, and both of them had skatedaround the big issues of their relations.h.i.+p. The case had brought him toMinneapolis.

The case had brought them together.

The case was over. Now what?

"I'm out back!" Kate called.

Quinn fixed his gaze on her as he came up the walk beside the house. She

looked ridiculous and beautiful in a hardhat and a green canvas coatthat was a bit too big for her. Beautiful, even battered and bruised andshaken from the inside out.

He'd almost lost her. Again. Forever. The idea struck him with the forceof a hammer to the solar plexus about every five minutes. He'd almostlost her in part because he hadn't been able to see right in front ofhim the monster he was supposed to know as well as any man on earth.

"Hey, pretty," he said. He dropped his bags on the ground, took her intohis arms, and kissed her-not in a s.e.xual way, but in a way that gavethem both comfort. The hardhat tipped back on her head and fell off,letting her hair cascade down her back. "How's it going?"

"It sucks. I hate it," she said plainly, Kate-style. "I liked my house.

I liked my stuff. I had to start over once. I don't want to have to do