“There was something from LeBlanc?” Quinn ventured.
“That son of a bitch! He killed her as much as I did!”
He curled down toward the tabletop, sobbing hard, a terrible braying sound tearing from the center of his chest up his throat. Quinn waited him out, thinking of Peter coming across Jillian's music as he straightened and tidied. The music may even have been his primary reason for going there, after the incident in his study Friday night, but Peter, out of guilt, would now claim Jillian's welfare had been the priority.
Quinn leaned forward and laid his hand on Bondurant's wrist across the table, establishing a physical link, trying to draw him back into the moment. “Peter? Do you know who really killed Jillian?”
“Her friend,” he said in a thin, weary voice, his mouth twisting at the irony. “Her one friend. Michele Fine.”
“What makes you believe that?”
“She was trying to blackmail me.”
“Was?”
“Until last night.”
“What happened last night?” Quinn asked.
“I killed her.”
EDWYN NOBLE WAS on Quinn the second he stepped out the door of the interview room.
“Not one word of that will be admissible in court, Quinn,” he promised.
“He waived his rights, Mr. Noble.”
“He's clearly not competent to make those decisions.”
“Take it up with a judge,” Sabin said.
The lawyers turned on each other like a pair of cobras. Yurek pulled aside the assistant prosecutor, Logan, to talk about a warrant for Michele Fine's home. Kovak stood ten feet down the hall, leaning against the wall, not smoking a cigarette. The lone coyote.
“Need a ride, GQ?” he said with a hopeful look.
Quinn made a very Kovac-like face. “I am definitely now a confirmed masochist. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but, let's go.”
THEY RAN THE media gauntlet out of the building, Quinn offering a stone-faced “No comment” to every query hurled at him. Kovac had left his car on the Fourth Avenue side of the building. Half a dozen reporters followed them the whole way. Quinn didn't speak until Kovac put the car in gear and roared away from the curb.
“Bondurant says he shot Michele Fine and left her body in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. She'd been trying to blackmail him with some of Jillian's more revealing pieces of music, and with the things Jillian had allegedly confessed to her. Last night was supposed to be the big payoff. He'd bring the money, she'd hand over the music, the tapes she had, et cetera.
“At that point, he didn't know she'd been involved in Jillian's murder. He said he was willing to pay to keep the story under wraps, but he took a gun with him.”
“Sounds like premeditation to me,” Kovac said, slapping the dash-mount light on the bracket.
“Right. Then Michele shows up with the stuff in a duffel bag. She shows him some sheet music, a couple of cassettes, zips the bag shut. They make the trade. She starts to go, not thinking he'll look in the bag again.”
“Never assume.”
Quinn braced himself and held on to the door as the Caprice made a hard right on a red light. Horns blared.
“He looked. He shot her in the back and left her where she fell.”
“What the hell was she thinking, giving him the head?”
“She was thinking she'd be long gone before he called the cops,” Quinn speculated. “I noticed travel magazines at her apartment when Liska and I were there the other day. I'll bet she would have gone straight to the airport and got on a plane.”
“What about Vanlees? Did he say anything about Vanlees?”
Quinn held his breath as Kovac cut between an MTC bus and a Snap-on tool van. “Nothing.”
“You don't think she was working alone?”
“No. We know she didn't kill on her own. She wouldn't have tried the blackmail on her own either. Willing victims of a sexual sadist are virtual puppets. Their partner holds the power, he controls them through physical abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse. No way she did this on her own.”
“And Vanlees was in custody by the time this went down.”
“They probably had the plan in place and she followed through without knowing where he was. She would have been afraid not to.
“They knew each other.”
“You and I know each other. We haven't killed anyone. I have a hard time seeing Vanlees manipulating anyone at that level. He fits the wrong profile.”
“Who, then?”
“I don't know,” Quinn said, scowling at himself rather than at Kovac gunning the accelerator and nearly sideswiping a minivan. “But if we've got Fine, then we've got a thread to follow.”
FOUR RADIO CARS had arrived ahead of them. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden was an eleven-acre park dotted with more than forty works by prominent artists, the feature piece being a fifty-two- foot-long spoon holding a nine-and-a-half-foot-tall red cherry. The place had to be a bit surreal in the best of times, Quinn thought. As a crime scene it was something out of
“Report from the local ERs,” Yurek called as he climbed out of his car. “No gunshot wounds meeting Michele Fine's description.”
“He said they met at the spoon,” Quinn said as they walked quickly in that direction.
“He's sure he hit her?” Kovac asked. “It was dark.”
“He says he hit her, she cried out, she went down.”
“Over here!” one of the uniforms called, waving from near the bridge of the spoon. His breath was like a smoke signal in the cold gray air.
Quinn broke into a jog with the others. The news crews wouldn't be far behind.
“Is she dead?” Yurek demanded as he ran up.
“Dead? Hell,” the uniform said, pointing to a large cherry-red bloodstain in the snow. “She's gone.”
37
CHAPTER
ROB CAUGHT KATE by the hair and began to pull her up. Kate's fingers closed around the metal nail file in her pocket. She waited. This might be the best weapon she would get her hands on. But she had to use it accurately, and she had to use it at the perfect moment. Strategies ran through her head like rats in a maze, each desperate for a way out.
Rob slapped her face, and the taste of blood bloomed in her mouth like a rose.
“I know you're not dead. You keep underestimating me, Kate,” he said. “Even now you taunt me. That's very stupid.”
Kate hung her head, curling her legs beneath her. He wanted her frightened. He wanted to see it in her eyes. He wanted to smell it on her skin. He wanted to hear it in her voice. That was his thing. That was what he soaked up listening to the tapes of victims—his own victims and the victims of others. It sickened her to think how many victims had poured their hearts out to him, him feeding his sick compulsions on their suffering and their fear.
Now he wanted her afraid, and he wanted her submissive. He wanted her sorry for every time she'd ever mouthed off to him, for every time she'd defied him. And if she gave him what he wanted, his sense of victory would only further fuel his cruelty.
“I will be your master today, Kate,” he said dramatically.
