“Kiss his wanna-be ass. Jeez.” Kovac's mustache twitched with distaste. “You know, he's not far off that piece-of-shit drawing we've got.”
“Neither are you. Get a Polaroid when he comes in. Build a photo array for the witness. Maybe she'll tag him.”
Greer finished his talk with a final dramatic plea for the public's assistance in the case, and pointed out detectives Liska and Yurek as being available to take information tonight. As soon as he declared the meeting over, the reporters started in like a pack of yapping dogs. The crowd instantly became a moving mass of humanity, some drifting toward the door, some moving toward the end of the room, where Toni Urskine from the Phoenix House was trying to rally support for her cause.
Kate wedged her way to the front of the pack, her attention on Kovac. As Kovac stepped toward her, Edwyn Noble moved in on Quinn like the specter of death, his wide mouth set in a hard line. Lucas Brandt stood beside him, hands in the pockets of his camel-hair topcoat.
“Agent Quinn, can we have a word in private?”
“Of course.”
He led them away from the podium, away from the press, into the kitchen of the community center, where industrial-sized coffeepots lined the red Formica countertop, and a hand-lettered sign taped above the sink read PLEASE WASH YOUR CUPS!
“Peter was very upset by your visit this evening,” Noble began.
Quinn raised his brows. “Yes, I know. I was there.” He slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the edge of the counter. Mr. Relaxation. All the time in the world. He gave a thin smile. “The two of you sat through this meeting to tell me that? Here I thought you were just another pair of concerned citizens.”
“I'm here to represent Peter's interests,” Noble said. “I think you should know he's talking about calling Bob Brewster. He's extremely displeased that you seem to be wasting valuable time—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Noble, but I know my job,” Quinn said calmly. “Peter doesn't have to like the way I do it. I don't work for Peter. But if Peter is unhappy, then he can feel free to call the director. It won't change the fact that Jillian made two phone calls after she left his home that night, or that neither Peter nor you, Dr. Brandt, bothered to mention that to the police. Something was going on with Jillian Bondurant that night, and now she may be dead. Certain questions need to be answered one way or another.”
The muscles in Brandt's square jaw flexed. “Jillian had problems. Peter loved his daughter. It would kill him to see her past and the difficulties she'd had splashed across the tabloids and paraded before America on the nightly news.”
Quinn abruptly straightened away from the counter, putting himself into Brandt's space, frowning into his face. “I'm not in the business of selling cases to the media.”
Noble spread his hands. The peacemaker, the diplomat. “Of course not. We're simply trying to be as discreet about this as possible. That's why we're talking to you rather than to the police. Peter and Lucas and I have discussed this, and we feel that you may be able to steer the rudder of the case, so to speak. That if we could satisfy you with regard to the calls Jillian made that night, the matter could be put to rest.”
“What about your ethics?” Quinn asked, still looking at Brandt.
“A small sacrifice to the greater good.”
His own, Quinn suspected.
“I'm listening.”
Brandt took a breath, bracing himself for this breach of his patient's trust. Somehow Quinn didn't think it bothered his conscience nearly as much as defying Peter Bondurant would bother him socially and financially.
“Jillian's stepfather had contacted her several times in the past few weeks, implying he wanted to mend their relationship. Jillian had very complicated, very mixed feelings toward him.”
“Would she have wanted to resume some kind of relationship with him?” Quinn asked. “Her friend implied Jillian had been in love with him, that she wanted him to divorce her mother for her.”
“Jillian was a very unhappy, confused girl when she was involved with Serge. Her mother had always been jealous of her, from Jillie's infancy. She was starving for love. I'm sure you know people will go to terrible lengths to get it—or, rather, to get what will pass for love for them.”
“Yes. I've seen the result in crime scene photographs. Why was the stepfather never prosecuted?”
“No charges were ever brought. LeBlanc had brainwashed her,” Noble said with disgust. “Jillian refused even to talk to the police.”
“Peter had hoped that in moving back to Minnesota and getting therapy, she had put it all behind her,” Brandt said.
“And had she?”
“Therapy is a long, ongoing process.”
“And then LeBlanc started calling her again.”
“Friday night she decided to tell Peter about it. Naturally, he was upset. He was frightened for Jillie. She'd been doing so well.” Another strategically placed sigh. “Peter has difficulty expressing emotion. His concern came out as anger. They ended up arguing. Jillie was upset when she left. She called me from her car.”
“Where was she?”
“In a parking lot somewhere. She didn't really say. I told her to go back to Peter and talk it through, but she was embarrassed and hurt, and in the end she just called him,” Brandt said. “That's the whole story. It's as simple as that.”
Quinn doubted him on both counts. What Lucas Brandt had just told him was by no means the whole story, and nothing about Jillian Bondurant's life or death would prove to be simple.
“And Peter couldn't have just told this story to Sergeant Kovac and me four hours ago when we were standing in his foyer.”
Noble cast a nervous glance over his shoulder at the closed door on the other side of the room, as if he were waiting for the reporters to ram it down and storm in, microphones thrust before them like bayonets.
“It isn't easy for Peter to talk about these things, Agent Quinn. He's an intensely private man.”
“I realize that, Mr. Noble,” Quinn said, casually fishing a peppermint out of his pocket. He spoke as he unwrapped it. “The trouble with that is that this is a murder investigation. And in a murder investigation, there's no such thing as privacy.” He set the wrapper on the counter and popped the candy in his mouth. “Not even if your name is Peter Bondurant and you have the ear of the director of the FBI—not as long as it's my case.”
“Well,” Edwyn Noble said, stepping back, his long face as cold and hard as marble. “It may not be your case much longer.”
They left looking like spoiled children who would immediately run home and tell on him. They would tell Bondurant. Bondurant would call Brewster. Brewster might call and reprimand him, Quinn supposed. Or he might simply have the ASAC pull him off the case and send him on to another stack of bodies somewhere else. There was always another case. And another . . . and another . . . And what the hell else did he have to do with his life?
He watched as Noble and Brandt worked their way toward the exit, reporters dogging their heels.
“What was that about?” Kovac asked.
“Heading us off at the pass, I think.”
“Kate says our wit came clean with her. Little Mary Sunshine says she was in the park that night earning a Jackson doing the hokey-pokey with some loser.”
“This loser have a name?”
Kovac snorted. “Hubert Humphrey, he tells her. BOLO: republican asshole with a bad sense of humor.”
“That narrows it down,” Quinn said dryly.
The television crews were packing up lights and cameras. The last of the crowd was drifting out. The party was over, and with it went the adrenaline that had elevated his heart rate and tightened his nerves. He actually preferred the tension because it fended off the depression and the sense of being overwhelmed and exhausted and confused. He preferred action, because the alternative was to be alone in his hotel room with nothing but the fear to keep him company. The fear that he wasn't doing enough, that he was missing something; that despite the accumulated knowledge from a thousand or more cases, he had lost his feel for the job and was just stumbling around like a newly blinded man.