“After what I heard today, I believe you never deserved to have a daughter at all,” Kovac said, eliciting a gasp from the mayor. “You sure as hell deserved to lose her, but not in the way she's lost now. That is to say if she's dead at all—and we're nowhere near ready to say that she is.”
“Sergeant Kovac, I hope you have a very good explanation for this behavior.” Greer moved toward him aggressively, drawing his weight lifter's shoulders up.
Kovac stepped away from him. His full attention was on Peter Bondurant. And Peter Bondurant's attention was on him. He stopped his pacing, an instinctive wariness in the narrowed eyes, like an animal sensing danger.
“I had a long talk today with Cheryl Thorton,” Kovac said, and watched what color Peter Bondurant had leech away. “She had some very interesting things to say about your divorce from Jillian's mother.”
Edwyn Noble looked startled. “I fail to see what relevance—”
“Oh, I think it could be very relevant.” Kovac still stared hard at Bondurant.
Bondurant said, “Cheryl is a bitter, vindictive woman.”
“You think so? After she's kept her mouth shut all this time? I'd say you're an ungrateful son of a bitch—”
“Kovac, that's enough!” Greer shouted.
“Hardly,” Kovac said. “You want to kiss the ass of a child-molester, Chief, that's your business. I won't do it. I don't give a shit how rich he is.”
“Oh!” Grace Noble exclaimed, pressing her hand to her chest again.
“Maybe we should take this downstairs,” Quinn suggested mildly.
“Fine by me,” Kovac said. “We've got an interview room all warmed up.”
Bondurant had begun to tremble visibly. “I never abused Jillian.”
“Maybe you think you didn't.” Kovac circled slowly around him, moving away from Greer, keeping Bondurant's eyes on him and putting his back to his lawyer. “A lot of pedophiles convince themselves they're doing the kid a favor. Some even confuse fucking little kids with love. Is that what you made yourself believe?”
“You son of a bitch!”
Bondurant launched himself, grabbing Kovac by the lapels and running him backward across the room. They crashed into a side table and sent a pair of brass candlesticks flying like bowling pins.
Kovac held back the urge to roll Bondurant over and pound the shit out of him. After what he'd heard today, he dearly wanted to, and maybe he could have if they'd crossed paths in a dark alley. But men like Peter Bondurant didn't frequent dark alleys, and rough justice never touched them.
Bondurant got in one good swing, glancing his knuckles off the corner of Kovac's mouth. Then Quinn grabbed him by the back of the collar and pulled him away. Greer rushed in between them like a referee, arms spread wide, eyes rolling white in his dark face.
“Sergeant Kovac, I think you should step outside,” he said loudly.
Kovac straightened his tie and jacket. He wiped a smear of blood away from the corner of his mouth, and a smirk twisted his lips as he looked at Peter Bondurant.
“Ask him where he was last night at two o'clock in the morning,” he said. “While someone was setting his daughter's car on fire with a mutilated dead woman inside it.”
“I won't even dignify that with a comment,” Bondurant said, fussing with his glasses.
“Jesus, you're just the cat's ass, aren't you?” Kovac said. “You get away with child abuse. You get away with assaulting an officer. You're into this case like a bad infection. You think you might get away with murder if you want to?”
“Kovac!” Greer screamed.
Kovac looked to Quinn, shook his head, and walked out.
Bondurant jerked out of Quinn's hold. “I want him off the case! I want him off the force!”
“Because he's doing his job?” Quinn asked calmly. “It's his job to investigate. He can't help what he finds, Peter. You're killing the messenger.”
“He's not investigating the case!” he shouted, pacing again, gesturing wildly. “He's investigating me. He's harassing me. I've lost my daughter, for God's sake!”
Edwyn Noble tried to take hold of his arm as he passed. Bondurant twisted away. “Peter, calm down. Kovac will be dealt with.”
“I think we should deal with what Sergeant Kovac found, don't you?” Quinn said to the lawyer.
“It's nonsense,” Noble snapped. “There's nothing to the allegation whatsoever.”
“Really? Sophie Bondurant was an emotionally unstable woman. Why would the courts award her custody of Jillian? More to the point, why wouldn't you fight her, Peter?” Quinn asked, trying to establish eye contact with Bondurant.
Bondurant kept moving, highly agitated, sweating now, pale in the way that made Quinn think he might be ill.
“Cheryl Thorton says the reason you didn't fight was that Sophie threatened to expose you for molesting Jillian.”
“I never hurt Jillian. I wouldn't.”
“Cheryl has always blamed Peter for her husband's accident,” Noble said bitterly. “She didn't want Donald to sell out of Paragon. She punished him for it too. Drove him to drink. She's the one who caused the accident—indirectly—but she blames Peter.”
“And this bitter, vindictive woman never said anything until now about this alleged abuse?” Quinn said. “That would be hard to imagine if not for the generous monthly payments Peter sends to the convalescent home where Donald Thorton is spending the last of his life.”
“Some people would call that generosity,” Noble said.
“And some people would call it blackmail. Some people would say Peter was buying Cheryl Thorton's silence.”
“They'd be wrong,” Noble stated unequivocally. “Donald and Peter were friends, partners. Why shouldn't he see to it the man's needs are taken care of?”
“He took very good care of him in the buyout of Paragon—which, coincidentally, went on about the same time as the divorce,” Quinn continued. “The deal might have been considered overly generous on Peter's part.”
“What was he supposed to do?” Noble demanded. “Try to steal the company from the man who'd helped him build it?”
Bondurant, Quinn noticed, had stopped talking, and now confined his pacing to the corner by the window. Retreating. His head was down and he kept touching his hand to his forehead as if feeling for a fever. Quinn moved casually toward him, neatly cutting his pacing area in half. Subtly crowding his space.
“Why didn't you fight Sophie for custody, Peter?” he asked softly, an intimate question between friends. He kept his own head down, his hands in his pants pockets.
“I was taking over the business. I couldn't handle a child too.”
“And so you left her to Sophie? A woman in and out of mental institutions.”
“It wasn't like that. It wasn't as if she was insane. Sophie had problems. We all have problems.”
“Not the kind that make us kill ourselves.”
Tears filled the man's eyes. He raised a hand as if to shade his eyes from Quinn's scrutiny.
“What did you and Jillian argue about that night, Peter?”
He shook his head a little, moving now in a tight, short line. Pacing three steps, turning, pacing three steps, turning . . .
“She'd gotten a call from her stepfather,” Quinn said. “You were angry.”
“We've been over this,” Edwyn Noble said impatiently, clearly wanting to get between Quinn and his client. Quinn turned a shoulder, blocking him out.
“Why do you keep insisting Jillian is dead, Peter? I don't know that she is. I think she may not be. Why would you say that she is? What did you fight about that night?”