A black Lincoln Continental polished to a hard shine sat in the driveway near the house. Kovac pulled his dirt-brown Caprice alongside the luxury car and turned the key. The engine rattled on pathetically for half a minute.
“Cheap piece of crap,” he muttered. “Twenty-two years on the job and I get the worst fucking car in the fleet. You know why?”
“Because you won't kiss the right ass?” Quinn ventured.
Kovac huffed a laugh. “I'm not kissing anything that's got a dick on the flip side.” He chuckled to himself as he dug through a pile of junk on the seat, finally coming up with a mini-cassette recorder, which he offered to Quinn.
“In case he still won't talk to me . . . By Minnesota law, only one party to a conversation needs to grant permission to tape that conversation.”
“Hell of a law for a state full of Democrats.”
“We're practical. We've got a killer to catch. Maybe Bondurant knows something he doesn't realize. Or maybe he'll say something that won't ring a bell with you because you're not from here.”
Quinn slipped the recorder into the inside breast pocket of his suit coat. “The end justifies the means.”
“You know it.”
“Better than most.”
“Does it ever get to you?” Kovac asked as they got out of the car. “Working serial murders and child abductions twenty-four/seven. I gotta think that'd get to me. At least some of the stiffs I get deserved to get whacked. How do you cope?”
I don't. The response was automatic—and just as automatically unspoken. He didn't cope. He never had. He just shoveled it all into the big dark pit inside him and hoped to hell the pit didn't overflow.
“Focus on the win column,” he said.
The wind cut across the lake, kicking up whitecaps on water that looked like mercury, and chasing dead leaves across the dead lawn. It flirted with the tails of Quinn's and Kovac's trench coats. The sky looked like dirty cotton batting sinking down on the city.
“I drink,” Kovac confessed amiably. “I smoke and I drink.”
A grin tugged at Quinn's mouth. “And chase women?”
“Naw, I gave that up. It's a bad habit.”
Edwyn Noble answered the door. Lurch with a law degree. His expression froze at the sight of Kovac.
“Special Agent Quinn,” he began as they moved past him into an entry hall of carved mahogany paneling. A massive wrought iron chandelier hung from the second-story ceiling. “I don't remember you mentioning Ser-geant Kovac when you called.”
Quinn flashed him innocence. “Didn't I? Well, Sam offered to drive me, and I don't know my way around the city, so . . .”
“I've been wanting to talk to Mr. Bondurant myself anyway,” Kovac said casually, browsing the artwork on display in the hall, his hands stuffed into his pockets as if he were afraid of breaking something.
The lawyer's ears turned red around the rim. “Sergeant, Peter's just lost his only child. He'd like to have a little time to collect himself before he has to be subjected to any kind of questioning.”
“Questioning?” Kovac's brows arched as he glanced up from a sculpture of a racehorse. He exchanged a look with Quinn. “Like a suspect? Does Mr. Bondurant think we consider him a suspect? Because I don't know where he would have gotten that idea. Do you, Mr. Noble?”
Color streaked across Noble's cheekbones. “Interview. Statement. Whatever you'd like to call it.”
“I'd like to call it a conversation, but, hey, whatever you want.”
“What I want,” came a quiet voice from beyond an arched doorway, “is to have my daughter back.”
The man who emerged from the dimly lit interior hall was half a foot shy of six feet, with a slight build and an air of neatness and precision even in casual slacks and a sweater. His dark hair was cropped so close to his skull it looked like a fine coating of metal shavings. He stared at Quinn with serious eyes through the small oval lenses of wire-framed glasses.
“That's what we all want, Mr. Bondurant,” Quinn said. “There may still be a chance of making that happen, but we'll need all the help we can get.”
The straight brows drew together in confusion. “You think Jillian might still be alive?”
“We haven't been able to conclusively determine otherwise,” Kovac said. “Until we can positively identify the victim, there's a chance it's not your daughter. We've had some unsubstantiated sightings—”
Bondurant shook his head. “No, I don't think so,” he said softly. “Jillie is dead.”
“How do you know that?” Quinn asked. Bondurant's expression was somber, tormented, defeated. His gaze skated off somewhere to Quinn's left.
“Because she was my child,” he said at last. “I can't explain it any better than that. There's a feeling—like a rock in my gut, like some part of me died with her. She's gone.
“Do you have children, Agent Quinn?” he asked.
“No. But I've known too many parents who've lost a child. It's a terrible place to be. If I were you, I wouldn't be in any hurry to get there.”
Bondurant looked down at Quinn's shoes and breathed a sigh. “Come into my study, Agent Quinn,” he said, then turned to Kovac, his mouth tightening subtly. “Edwyn, why don't you and Sergeant Kovac wait for us in the living room?”
Kovac made a sound of dissatisfaction.
Concern tightened the lawyer's features. “Perhaps I should sit in, Peter. I—”
“No. Have Helen get you coffee.”
Clearly unhappy, Noble leaned toward his client across the hall like a marionette straining against its strings. Bondurant turned and walked away.
Quinn followed. Their footfalls were muffled by the fine wool of a thick Oriental runner. He wondered at Bondurant's strategy. He wouldn't talk to the police, but he banished his attorney from a conversation with an FBI agent. It didn't make sense if he was trying to protect himself. Then again, anything incriminating he said in the absence of his attorney would be worthless in court, audiotape or no audiotape.
“I understand you have a witness. Can she identify the man who did this?”
“I'm not at liberty to discuss that,” Quinn said. “I'd like to talk about you and your daughter, your relationship. Forgive me for being blunt, but your lack of cooperation with the police thus far comes across as puzzling at best.”
“You think I'm not reacting in the typical way of a parent of a murdered child? Is there a typical reaction?”
“Typical is maybe not the word. Some reactions are more common than others.”
“I don't know anything that would be pertinent to the case. Therefore, I have nothing further to tell the police. A stranger abducted and murdered my daughter. How could they expect me to have any information relevant to such a senseless act?”
Bondurant led the way into a spacious office and closed the door. The room was dominated by a massive U-shaped mahogany desk, one wing of which was devoted to computer equipment, one to paperwork. The center section was meticulously neat, the blotter spotless, every pen and paper clip in its place.
“Take your coat off, Agent Quinn. Have a seat.” He gestured a thin hand toward a pair of oxblood leather chairs while he went around the desk to claim his own place in a high-backed executive's throne.
Putting distance and authority between them, Quinn thought, shrugging out of his topcoat. Putting me in my place. He settled into a chair, realizing immediately that it squatted just a little too low to the ground, just enough to make its occupant feel vaguely small.
“Some maniac murdered my daughter,” Bondurant said again calmly. “In the face of that, I can't really give a good goddamn what anyone thinks of my behavior. Besides, I am helping the investigation: I brought you here.”