THE B OF I Team swarmed over the burned-out Saab like vultures cleaning an elephant carcass. Kate sat behind the wheel of Kovac's car and watched, feeling numb and exhausted. The body—whoever she was—had been transported to HCMC. Someone else's corpse had just been knocked to number two on Maggie Stone's itinerary for the day that would soon be dawning.
Quinn opened the passenger door and climbed in on a cold breath of air. Snow clung to his dark head like dandruff. He rubbed a gloved hand over it.
“It's pretty clear the fire was set on the driver's side,” he said. “It burned hottest and longest there. The dashboard and steering wheel are melted. Our two best bets for fingerprints gone.”
“He's escalating,” Kate said.
“Yes.”
“Changing his MO.”
“To make a point.”
“He's building toward something.”
“Yes. And I'd give everything I have to know what and when.”
“And why.”
Quinn shook his head. “I don't care why anymore. There are no valid reasons. There are only excuses. You know all the contributing factors as well as I do, but you also know not all kids with abusive parents grow up to abuse, and not all kids with emotionally distant mothers grow up to kill. At some point in time a choice is made, and once it's made, I don't care why, I just want the bastards off the planet.”
“And you've appointed yourself responsible for catching them all.”
“It's a shit job, but what else have I got going for me?” He flashed the famous Quinn smile, worn around the edges now, running on too little sleep and too much stress.
“You don't need to be here now,” Kate said, feeling the fatigue and the pressure in every muscle of her body. “They'll fill you in at the morning briefing. You look like you could use a couple hours' sleep.”
“Sleep? I gave that up. It was taking the edge off my paranoia.”
“Careful with that, John. They'll pull you out of CASKU and stick you in The X-Files.”
“I am better-looking than David Duchovny.”
“Far and away.”
Funny, she thought, how they fell back into the old patterns of teasing, even now, even after all that had gone on tonight. But then, it was familiar and comforting.
“You don't need to be here either, Kate,” he said, going serious.
“Yes, I do. I'm the closest thing Angie DiMarco has to someone who cares about her. If that body turns out to be hers, the least I can do is miss a little sleep to hear the news.”
She expected another lecture from Quinn on her lack of culpability, but he didn't say anything.
“Do you think there's any chance that body is Jillian Bondurant?” she asked. “That she wasn't victim number three, and she did this to herself?”
“No. Self-immolation is rare, and when it does happen, the person usually wants an audience. Why would Jillian come here in the dead of night? What's her connection to this place? Nothing. We'll know for certain if it's Jillian after the autopsy, seeing as we can compare dental records this time, but I'd say the chances this is her and the fire was self-inflicted are nil.”
Kate turned up the corners of her mouth in a pseudo-smile. “Yeah, I know all that. I was just hoping that corpse might be someone I wasn't responsible for.”
“I'm the one who called the meeting, Kate. Smokey Joe did this to say ‘Fuck you, Quinn.' Now I get to wonder what set him off. Should I have been harder on him? Should I have tried to pretend I feel sympathy for him? Should I have stroked his ego and made him out as a genius? What did I do? What didn't I do? Why didn't I know better? If he was at the meeting, if he was sitting right there in front of me, why didn't I see him?”
“Guess your super X-ray vision that allows you to see what evil lurks in the hearts of men is on the fritz.”
“Along with your ability to foresee the future.”
This time the smile was genuine, if sad. “We're a pair.”
“Used to be.”
Kate stared at him, seeing the man she'd known and loved, and the man the intervening years had turned him into. He looked tired, haunted. She wondered if he saw the same in her. It was humbling to admit that he ought to. She'd fooled herself into believing she was fine. But that was all it had been: an act, a ruse. She had fully realized that truth an hour ago as she stood in the warm shelter of his arms. It had been like suddenly having back a crucial part of herself she had spent years refusing to acknowledge was missing.
“I loved you, Kate,” he said softly, his dark gaze holding hers. “Whatever else you think of me, and of the way things came apart, I loved you. You can doubt everything else about me. God knows, I do. But don't doubt that.”
Something fluttered inside Kate. She refused to name it. It couldn't be hope. She didn't want to hope for anything with regard to John Quinn. She preferred annoyance, indignation, a dash of anger. But none of that was what she really felt, and she knew it, and he would know it as well. He'd always been able to read the slightest shadow that crossed her mind.
“Damn you, John,” she muttered.
Whatever else she might have said was lost as Kovac's face appeared suddenly at Quinn's window. Kate started and swore, then lowered the window from the control panel on the driver's door.
“Hey, kids, no making out,” he quipped. “It's after curfew.”
“We're trying to save ourselves from hypothermia,” Quinn said. “I have a toaster that gives off more warmth than this heater.”
“Did you find the DL?” Kate asked.
“No, but we found this.” He held up a microcasette tape inside a clear plastic case. “It was on the ground about fifteen feet from the car. It's a pure damn miracle one of the firemen didn't squash it.
“It's probably some reporter's notes from the meeting,” he said. “But you never know. Every once in a blue moon we find evidence there is a God. I've got a player somewhere on the seat there.”
“Yeah, that and the Holy Grail,” Kate muttered as she dug through the junk on the seat: reports, magazines, burger wrappers. “Are you living in this car, Sam? There are shelters for people like you, you know.”
She came up with the player and handed it to Quinn. He popped the cassette out and carefully inserted the one Kovac handed him on the end of a ballpoint pen.
What came from the tiny speaker ran through Kate like a spike. A woman's screams, thick with desperation, interspersed with breathless, broken pleas for mercy that would never be delivered. The cries of someone enduring torture and begging for death.
Not proof there was a God, Kate thought. Proof there wasn't.
23
CHAPTER
ELATION. ECSTASY. AROUSAL. These are the things he feels in his triumph, stirred into the darker emotions of anger and hatred and frustration that burn constantly inside him.
Manipulation. Domination. Control. His power extends beyond his victims, he reminds himself. He exercises the same forces over the police and over Quinn.
Elation. Ecstasy. Arousal.
Never mind the rest. Focus on the win.
The intensity is overwhelming. He is shaking, sweating, flushed with excitement as he drives toward the house. He can smell himself. The odor is peculiar to this kind of excitement—strong, musky, almost sexual. He wants to wipe his armpits with his hands and rub the sweat and the scent all over his face, into his nostrils, lick it from his fingers.
He wants to strip and have the woman in his fantasies lick it all from his body. From his chest and his belly and his back. In his fantasy she ends up on her knees before him, licking his balls. His erection is huge and straining and he shoves it into her mouth and fucks her mouth, slapping her every time she gags on him. He comes in her face, then forces her down on her hands and knees and penetrates her anally. His hands around her throat, he rapes her viciously, choking her between screams.