“Not that I've heard about. I asked his wife, his boss, coworkers. Nothing.”
“Did you ask the wife about Jillian Bondurant? Whether she knew Jillian, whether she thought her husband knew her a little too well?”
“She said he liked to look at anything with tits. She didn't single out Jillian.”
“What are you thinking?” Kovac asked.
“I'm thinking it's bothered me all along that we've never gotten a positive ID on the third victim. Why the decapitation? The extra mutilation of the feet? Now using Jillian's car to burn the fourth victim. Why so much emphasis on Jillian?” Quinn asked. “We know she was an unhappy, troubled girl. What more permanent escape from an unhappy life than death—real or symbolic.”
“You think that could be Jillian's voice on the tape,” Liska said. “You think she could be Vanlees's partner?”
“I've said all along the key to this thing is Jillian Bondurant. She's the piece that doesn't fit. It just never hit me until now that maybe she isn't just the key. Maybe she's a killer.”
“Jesus,” Kovac said. “Well, it was a decent career while it lasted. Maybe I can take over Vanlees's job, chasing groupies away from the stage door at the Target Center.”
He glanced at his watch and tapped its face. “I gotta go. I've got a date with the wife of Peter Bondurant's ex-partner. Maybe I'll find out something about Jillian there.”
“I want to talk to this friend of hers—Michele Fine. See if she has copies of the music she wrote with Jillian. We could get some insights to her state of mind, maybe even to her fantasy life through her lyrics. I also want to find out what Fine's take on Vanlees is.”
“She doesn't have one,” Liska said. “I asked her the day we were at the apartment and we saw him. She said, ‘Who ever notices the losers?'”
“But predators recognize their own kind,” Quinn said. He turned to Kovac. “Who's on Vanlees?”
“Tippen and Hamill.”
“Perfect. Have them go ask him if this friend whose house he's staying at imports recording equipment, video cameras, stuff like that.”
Kovac nodded. “Will do.”
“There are a couple of possibilities to consider other than Vanlees,” Quinn pointed out. “If the relationship between Smokey Joe and his partner is about control, domination, power, then we have to look at Jillian's life and ask ourselves what men have held that kind of sway over her. I can name two that we know of.”
“Lucas Brandt and Daddy Dearest,” Kovac said with a grim look. “Great. We may finally be on to something, and it's that the daughter of the most powerful man in the state is a sicko freak murderer—and maybe she gets it from Dad. I just get all the luck.”
Liska patted his arm as they started down the hall. “You know what they say, Sam: You can't pick your relatives or your serial killers.”
“I've got a better one,” Quinn said as the myriad ugly possibilities for the close of this case flashed through his head. “It ain't over till it's over.”
28
CHAPTER
D'CUP WAS MOSTLY empty, with the same pair of old geezers in beret and goatee arguing about pornography today, and a different struggling artist contemplating his mediocrity by the window with a three-dollar latte at hand.
Michele Fine had called in sick. Liska gleaned this information from the Italian stallion behind the bar and made a mental note to start a daily cappuccino habit. Never mind D'Cup was miles out of the way to anything in her life. That was actually part of the allure.
“Did you know her friend at all?” Quinn asked. “Jillian Bondurant?”
The Roman god pursed his full lips and shook his head. “Not really. I mean, she came in here a lot, but she wasn't very sociable. Very internal, if you know what I mean. She and Chell were tight. That's about all I know besides what I've read in the papers.”
“Did you ever see her in here with anyone else?” Quinn tried.
“Michele or Jillian Bondurant?”
“Jillian.”
“Can't say that I did.”
“What about Michele? She have a boyfriend?”
He didn't seem to like that question, like maybe they were getting too personal and he was thinking he should take a stand for the Fourth Amendment. Liska pulled out the Polaroid of Vanlees and held it out.
“You ever see either one of them with this guy? Or the guy in here alone?”
Studly squinted at the photo the way people do in an effort to improve both their memory and their vision. “Nah. He doesn't look familiar.”
“What about their music?” Quinn asked. “Michele said they performed here sometimes.”
“Chell sings and plays the guitar on open-mike nights. I know they wrote some stuff together, but I couldn't tell you who contributed what. Jillian never performed. She was a spectator. She liked to watch other people.”
“What kind of music?” Quinn asked.
“The edgy feminist folk thing. Lots of anger, lots of angst, kind of dark.”
“Dark in what way?”
“Bad relationships, twisted relationships, lots of emotional pain.”
He said it as if he were saying “the usual,” with a certain air of boredom. A commentary on modern life.
Quinn thanked him. Liska ordered a mocha to go and tipped him a buck. Quinn smiled a little as he held the door.
“Hey,” Liska said. “It never hurts to be kind.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You didn't have to.”
The snow was still coming down. The street in front of the coffeehouse was a mess. Lanes invisible, drivers had adopted a survival-of-the-fittest mentality. As they watched, a purple Neon nearly lost its life to an MTC bus.
“You're pretty good at this cop stuff,” Liska said, digging the car keys out of her coat pocket. “You should consider giving up the glamour of CASKU and the FBI for the relative ignominy of the Minneapolis homicide unit. You get to be hassled by the brass, abused by the press, and ride around in a piece-of-shit car like this one.”
“All that and I'd get to live in this weather too?” Quinn turned up his collar against the wind and snow. “How can I resist an offer like that?”
“Oh, all right,” Liska said with resignation as she climbed behind the wheel. “I'll throw in all the sex you want. But you have to promise to want a lot.”
Quinn chuckled and looked out the back window at the traffic. “Tinks, you're something.”
Michele Fine's apartment was less than a mile away, in a slightly seedy neighborhood full of sagging old duplexes and square, ugly apartment buildings that housed an inordinate number of parolees and petty criminals on probation, according to Liska.
“Vanlees's apartment on Lyndale is just a few blocks south of here,” she said as they picked their way up the sidewalk, stepping in the rut others had stomped into the wet snow. “Don't you just love a coincidence like that?”
“But they seemed not to know each other when you were at the apartment?”
She thought back to the scene, furrowing her brow. “Not more than in passing. They didn't speak. Do you really think she might have caught him looking in Jillian's windows?”
“That was a shot in the dark, but it sure got a rise out of your boy. The thing I'm wondering is, if she caught him doing something like that, why wouldn't she have told you about it?”
“Good question.” Liska tried the building's security door, finding it unlocked. “Let's go get an answer.”
The elevator smelled of bad Chinese takeout. They rode up to the fourth floor with an emaciated hype who huddled into one corner, trying to look inconspicuous and eye Quinn's expensive trench coat at the same time. Quinn gave him a flat stare and watched the sweat instantly bead on the man's pasty forehead. When the doors opened, the hype hung back in the elevator and rode it back down.