“Bitsy!” Mrs. Vetter shrieks from her front step. “Bitsy, come here!”
Yvonne Vetter is in her sixties, a widow, an unpleasant woman with a round, sour face and a shrill voice. He hates her in a deeply visceral way, and thinks of killing her every time he sees her, but something equally deep and fundamental holds him back. He refuses to examine what that feeling is, and becomes angrier imagining what John Quinn would make of it.
“Bitsy! Come here!”
The dog snarls at him, then turns and runs up and down the length of the garage, stopping to pee on the corners of the building.
“Bit-sy!!”
A pulse begins to throb in his head and warmth floods his brain and washes down through his body. If Yvonne Vetter were to cross the lawn now, he will kill her. He will grab her and smother her screams with the newspapers he holds. He will quickly pull her into the garage, smash her head against the wall to knock her out, then kill the dog first to stop its infernal barking. Then he will let loose his temper and kill Yvonne Vetter in a way that will satiate a vicious hunger buried deep within him.
She begins to descend the front steps of her house.
The muscles across his back and shoulders tighten. His pulse quickens.
“Bit-sy!! Come now!!”
His lungs fill. His fingers flex on the edge of the newspapers.
The dog barks at him one last time, then darts back to its mistress. Fifteen feet away, Vetter bends down and scoops the dog into her arms as if he were a child.
Opportunity dies like an unsung song.
“He's excited tonight,” he says, smiling.
“He gets that way when he's inside too much. He doesn't like you either,” Mrs. Vetter says defensively, and takes the dog back to her house.
“Fucking bitch,” he whispers. The anger will vibrate within him for a long while, like a tuning fork still trembling long after it's been struck. He will play through the fantasy of killing Yvonne Vetter again and again and again.
He goes into the garage, where the Blazer and a red Saab sit, and enters the house through a side door, eager to read about the Cremator in the two newspapers. He will cut out all stories pertaining to the investigation and make photocopies of them, because newsprint is cheap and doesn't hold up over time. He has taped both the network evening news and the local evening news, and will watch for any mention of the Cremator.
The Cremator. The name amuses him. It sounds like something from a comic book. It conjures images of Nazi war criminals or B-movie monsters. The stuff of nightmares.
He is the stuff of nightmares.
And like the creatures of childhood nightmares, he goes to the basement. The basement is his personal space, his ideal sanctuary. The main room is outfitted with an amateur sound studio. Walls and ceiling of sound-absorbing acoustic tile. Flat carpet the color of slate. He likes the low ceiling, the lack of natural light, the sensation of being in the earth with thick concrete walls around him. His own safe world. Just like when he was a boy.
He goes down the hall and into the game room, holding the newspapers out in front of him to admire the headlines.
“Yes, I am famous,” he says, smiling. “But don't feel bad. You'll be famous soon too. There's nothing quite like it.”
He turns toward the pool table, holding the newspapers at an angle so that the naked woman bound spread-eagle on it can glance at the headlines if she wants to. She stares, instead, at him, her eyes glassy with terror and tears. The sounds she makes are not words, but the most basic vocalizations of that most basic emotion—fear.
The sounds touch him like electrical currents, energizing him. Her fear gives him control of her. Control is power. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
“Soon you'll be a part of this headline,” he says, running a finger beneath the bold black print on page one of the Star Tribune. “Ashes to Ashes.”
DAY SLIPPED INTO evening, into night. Quinn's only indicator was his watch, which he seldom checked. There were no windows in the office he'd been given, only walls, which he'd spent the day papering with notes, often with the telephone receiver sandwiched between ear and shoulder, consulting on the Blacksburg case, where the suspect seemed on the brink of confession. He should have been there. His need for control fostered the conceit that he could prevent all mistakes, even though he knew that wasn't true.
Kovac had offered him space at what the task force had unofficially dubbed the Loving Touch of Death offices. He had declined. He needed separation, isolation. He couldn't be there when a dozen cops were tossing theories and suspect names like a chopped salad. He already felt tainted as it was.
Now word was out that John Quinn had been brought on board the Cremator case. Kovac had called with the bad news after the press briefing. It was only a matter of hours before he would have to deal with the media himself.
Damn, he'd wanted more time. He had these next few hours. He should have settled in and lost himself, but he couldn't seem to. Exhaustion pulled at him. His ulcer was burning. He was hungry and knew he needed fuel to keep his brain running, but he didn't want to waste the time going out. There was too much information and the buzz of too much caffeine swarming in his head. And there was a familiar sense of restlessness vibrating deep within—the urgency that came with every on-site case, compounded this time by extenuating circumstances and intrusive, fragmented memories from the past. Compounded again by a feeling that had been creeping up on him more and more and more lately—fear. The fear that he wouldn't make a difference in the case fast enough. The fear that he would screw up. The fear that the fatigue pressing down on him would suddenly be too much. The fear that what he really wanted was to just walk away from it all.
Needing to move to escape the emotions, he began to pace back and forth in front of the wall of notes, taking in snatches of them at a glance. The faces of Bondurant and Brandt blew around inside his head like leaves.
Peter Bondurant was holding back more than he was giving them.
Lucas Brandt had a license to keep secrets.
Quinn wished he'd never met either of them. He should have argued harder against coming here so early in the investigation, he thought, rubbing at a knot in his right shoulder. The issue was control. If he walked onstage with his strategy mapped out, he had the upper hand.
That methodology applied to more than just this case. It was how he ran his whole life—from dealing with the bureaucracy on the job, to dealing with the Chinese people who ran the mailbox place where he kept a box, to buying his groceries. In any and all situations and relationships, control was key.
Kate slipped into the back of his mind, as if to taunt him. How many times over the years had he replayed what had happened between them, adjusting his own actions and reactions to get a different outcome? More times than he would admit. Control and strategy were his watchwords. He'd had neither where Kate was concerned. One minute they'd been acquaintances, then friends, then in over their heads. No time to think, too tangled up in the moment to have any perspective, drawn together by a need and a passion that was stronger than either of them. And then it was over, and she was gone, and . . . nothing. Nothing but regrets that he had let lie, sure that they both would eventually see it was for the best.
It was for the best. For Kate anyway. She had a life here. She had a new career, friends, a home. He should have had sense enough to back away from all that, leave well enough alone, but the temptation of opportunity lured him like a crooked finger and a seductive smile. And the force of all those regrets pushed him from behind.