Ashes to Ashes (22 page)

“… You should consider that the problems Jillian brought to me may have had nothing whatsoever to do with her death. Her killer may not have known anything at all about her.”

“But I’ll bet you a dollar he did, Dr. Brandt,” he said softly, staring at the snapshot of the girl. He could feel it in his gut. Jillian was the key. Something in her life had put her in the crosshairs of this killer. And if they could find out what that something was, then they might have a hope in hell of catching the son of a bitch.

He went back to the desk and flipped through the binder pages to the section of photographs: eight-by-ten color prints, neatly labeled as to subject matter. The crime scenes: general shots, lay-of-the-land shots, body position from various angles, close-ups of the burned, defiled women. And from the ME’s office: general and close-up shots of the victims before and after clean-up at the morgue, autopsy photographs, close-up shots of wounds. Wounds inflicted before death—indicative of a sexual sadist. Wounds inflicted after death—which were more fetishistic than sadistic, intrinsic to the killer’s fantasies.

Sophisticated fantasies. Fantasies he’d been developing for a long, long time.

He paged slowly through the close-ups of the wounds, examining every mark the killer had left, lingering on the stab wounds to the victims’ chests. Eight stab wounds clustered in a group, longer wounds alternating with shorter in a specific pattern.

Of all the gruesome aspects of the murders, this bothered him most. More than the burning. The burning seemed more for show, making a public statement.
Ashes to ashes
. A symbolic funeral, the end of his connection to the victim. These stab wounds meant something more personal, intimate. What?

A cacophony of voices filled Quinn’s head: Bondurant’s, Brandt’s, the medical examiner’s, Kovac’s; cops and coroners and experts and agents from hundreds of past cases. All of them with an opinion or a question or an ax to grind. All of them so loud he couldn’t hear himself think anymore. And the fatigue only seemed to magnify the noise until he wanted to beg someone to turn it off.

The Mighty Quinn
. That was what they called him back in Quantico. If they could see him now … Feeling as if he might choke on the fear of missing something or turning the investigation in the wrong way.

The system was on overload, and he was the one at the switch—and there was the most frightening thought: that only he could make things change, and he wouldn’t make things change because as awful as this was, the alternative scared him even more. Without the job, there was no John Quinn.

A fine trembling started deep within him and subtly worked its way out into his arms. He fought against it, hating it, tightening his biceps and triceps, trying to force the weakness back down inside him. Eyes squeezed shut, he dropped to the floor and began push-ups. Ten, twenty, thirty, more, until his arms felt as if the skin would burst open, unable to contain the straining muscle mass, until the pain burned the noise out of his mind and all he could hear was the pounding of his own pulse. And then he forced himself to his feet, breathing hard, warm and damp with sweat.

He focused on the photograph before him, seeing not the torn flesh or the blood or the corpse; seeing only the pattern of the wound. X over X.

“Cross my heart,” he murmured, tracing a fingertip over the lines. “Hope to die.”

“A SERIAL KILLER stalks the streets of Minneapolis. Today, Minneapolis police released a composite sketch of the man who may have brutally slain three women, and
that
is our top story tonight …”

The women of the Phoenix House sat in, on, and around the mismatched assortment of chairs and couches in the living room, their attention on the broad-shouldered, square-jawed anchor of the Channel Eleven news. The camera cut to film footage of the afternoon press briefing, the chief of police holding up the sketch of the Cremator, then the screen was filled with the sketch itself.

Angie watched from the doorway, her attention on the women. A couple of them weren’t much older than she was. Four were in their twenties. One was older, fat, and ugly. The fat one wore a sleeveless top because the furnace had gone haywire and the house was as hot and dry as a desert. Her upper arms were flabby and fish-belly white. Her stomach rested on her thighs when she sat down.

Angie knew the woman had been a hooker, but she couldn’t imagine a man ever being hard up enough to pay to have sex with her. Men liked pretty girls, young girls. Didn’t matter how old or ugly the man was, they all wanted pretty girls. That was Angie’s experience. Maybe that was why Fat Arlene was there. Maybe she couldn’t get a man to pay her, and the Phoenix was her retirement home.

A redhead who had the thin, pale, bruised look of an addict started to cry when photographs of the three murder victims came onscreen. The other women pretended not to notice. Toni Urskine, who ran the Phoenix, perched on the arm of the redhead’s chair, leaned down, and touched her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “It’s okay to cry. Fawn was your friend, Rita.”

The redhead pulled her bony bare feet up onto the seat of her chair and buried her head against her knees, sobbing. “Why’d he have to kill her that way? She didn’t hurt nobody!”

“There’s no making sense of it,” another one said. “It could have been any of us.”

A fact that was clear to all of them, even the ones who tried to deny it.

Fat Arlene said, “You gotta be smart about who you go with. You gotta have a sense about it.”

A black woman with ratty dreadlocks shot her a mean glare. “Like you got to pick and choose. Who wanna tie your fat ass down? See all that fat jiggling like Jell-O while he cut you up.”

Arlene’s face went red and squeezed tight, eyes disappearing in the round mounds of cheeks and puffy brows. She looked like a chow chow Angie had seen once. “You can just shut your hole, you bony bitch!”

Looking angry, Toni Urskine left the crying redhead and moved toward the middle of the room, holding her hands up like a referee. “Hey! None of that! We’ve got to learn to respect and care for one another. Remember: group esteem, gender esteem,
self
-esteem.”

Easy for her to say, Angie thought, slipping back from the door. Toni Urskine had never had to go down on some old pervert to get enough money for a meal. She was little miss do-gooder, in her casual-chic outfits from Dayton’s and a hundred-dollar hairdo by Horst. She drove up to this crappy house in her Ford Explorer from some beautiful home out in Edina or Minnetonka. She didn’t know what it did to a person inside to find out she was worth only twenty-five bucks.

“We
all
care about these murder victims,” Urskine said passionately, dark eyes shining, her sharp-featured face aglow. “We
all
are angry that the police have done virtually nothing until now. It’s an outrage. It’s a slap in the face. It’s the city of Minneapolis telling us the lives of women in desperate circumstances mean nothing. We need to be angry about that, not angry with each other.”

The women listened, some intent, some halfheartedly, some pretending not to.

“I think what we need here is involvement. We need to be proactive,” Urskine said. “We’ll go down to city hall tomorrow. The press can hear our side of it. We’ll get copies of the composite sketch and canvass …”

Angie backed away from the door and moved silently down the hall. She didn’t like it when people started talking about the Cremator cases. The Phoenix women weren’t supposed to know who she was or that she was involved in the case, but Angie always got the tense feeling that the other women would look at her and somehow figure out she was the mystery witness. She didn’t want anyone to know.

She didn’t want it to be true.

Sudden tears filled her eyes and she rubbed her hands against them. No show of emotion. If she showed what she felt, then someone would see a weakness in her, or a need, or the madness that sucked her into the Zone and made her cut herself. No one would understand that the blade severed the connection to insanity.

“Is everything all right?”

Startled, Angie jerked around and stared at the man standing in the open doorway to the basement. Late thirties, good-looking, dressed in tan chinos and a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt to work on the furnace: He had to be some relation to Toni Urskine. Sweat and dirt streaked his face. He worked a gray rag between hands dark with grime and something the color of blood.

He glanced down as Angie did and looked back up with a crooked smile. “The old furnace in this place,” he said by way of explanation. “I keep it running with willpower and rubber bands.

“Greggory Urskine,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“You cut yourself,” Angie said, not accepting the gesture, her gaze still on the smear of blood that crossed his palm.

Urskine looked at it and rubbed the rag over it, chuckling in that nervous way people sometimes have when they are trying to make a good impression. Angie just stared at him. He looked a little like Kurt Russell, she thought: a wide jaw and small nose, tousled sandy hair. He wore glasses with silver wire rims. He had cut himself that morning shaving his upper lip.

“Aren’t you hot in that jacket?” he asked.

Angie said nothing. She was sweating like a horse, but the sleeves of her sweater were too short and didn’t cover all the scars on her arms. The jacket was a necessity. If she got any money out of Kate, she was going to buy herself some clothes. Maybe something brand new and not from the Goodwill or a thrift shop.

“I’m Toni’s husband—and handyman,” Urskine said. He narrowed his eyes. “I’m guessing you’re Angie.”

Angie just stared at him.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Urskine said in a confidential tone. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

It seemed like he was making fun of her somehow. Angie decided she didn’t like him, handsome or not. There was something about the eyes behind the expensive designer glasses that bothered her. Like he was looking down at her, like she was a bug or something. She wondered idly if he had ever paid a woman for sex. His wife seemed like the kind of woman who thought sex was dirty. Saving women from having to do it was Toni Urskine’s mission in life.

“We’re all very concerned about this case,” he went on, looking serious. “The first victim—Lila White—was a resident here for a while. Toni took it hard. She loves this place. Loves the women. Works like a trooper for the cause.”

Angie crossed her arms. “And what do you do?”

Again with the flashing smile, the nervous chuckle. “I’m an engineer at Honeywell. Currently on leave so I can help fix this place up before winter—and finally finish my master’s thesis.”

He laughed like that was some kind of big joke. He didn’t ask Angie what she did, even though not all of the women in this place were hookers. He was looking at her stomach, at the navel ring and tattoos revealed as her too-small sweater crept up. She cocked a hip, flashing a little more skin, and wondered if he was thinking he might want her.

He glanced back up at her. “So, they’ve got a good chance of catching this guy, thanks to you,” he said as a half-statement, half-question. “You actually saw him.”

“No one’s supposed to know that,” Angie said bluntly. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

End of conversation. She ignored the closing niceties, backed away from him, then headed up the stairs. She felt Greggory Urskine’s eyes on her as she went.

“Uh, good night, then,” he called as she disappeared into the darkness of the second story.

She went to the room she shared with a woman whose ex-boyfriend had held her down and cut all her hair off with a hunting knife because she refused to give him her AFDC check so he could buy crack. The woman’s kids were in foster care now. The boyfriend had skipped to Wisconsin. The woman had been through drug rehab and come out of it with a need to confess. Therapy did that to some people. Angie had been too smart to let it happen to her.

Don’t tell your secrets, Angel. They’re all that make you special.

Special
. She wanted to be special. She wanted not to be alone. It didn’t matter that there were other people in this house. None of them were here
with
her. She didn’t belong. She’d been dropped here like an unwanted puppy. Fucking cops. They wanted things from her, but they didn’t want to give her anything back. They didn’t give a shit about her. They didn’t care about what she might want from them.

At least Kate was halfway honest, Angie thought as she paced the room. But she couldn’t forget that Kate was still one of
them
. It was Kate Conlan’s job to try to wedge open her defenses so the cops and the county attorney could get what they wanted. And that would be the end of it. She wasn’t really a friend. Angie could count the only friends she’d ever had on one hand and have fingers left over.

She wanted one tonight. She wanted not to be stuck in this house. She wanted to belong somewhere.

She thought of the woman burning in the park, thought of where that woman had belonged, and wondered fancifully what would happen if she just took that woman’s place. She would be a rich man’s daughter. She would have a father and a home and money.

She’d had a father once: She had the scars to prove it. She’d had a home: She could still smell the sour grease in the kitchen, could still remember the big, dark closets with the doors that locked from the outside. She’d never had money.

She went to bed with her clothes on and waited until the house was quiet and her roommate was snoring. Then she slipped out from under the covers and out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house through the back door.

The night was windy. Clouds rolled across the sky so fast, it looked almost like time-lapse photography. The streets were empty except for the occasional car rolling down one of the big cross streets going north and south. Angie headed west, jittery, skittish. The feeling that she was being watched constantly scratched at the back of her neck, but when she looked over her shoulder, there was no one.

The Zone was chasing her like a shadow. If she kept walking, if she had a purpose, focused on a goal, maybe it wouldn’t catch her.