Ashes to Ashes

He threw the candle at her, missing her head by three feet. He rushed up alongside her, grabbed a boning knife off the table beside her and jammed the point of it against her larynx. Kate swallowed reflexively, felt the tip of the steel bite into her skin.

“I'll cut it out!” he shouted in her face. “I'll fucking cut it out! I'm so sick of your bitching! I'm so sick of your voice!”

Kate closed her eyes and tried not to swallow again, holding herself rigid as he started to push the small, sharp blade into her throat. Terror tore through her. Instinct told her to jerk away. Logic told her not to move. And then the pressure stopped, eased away.

Rob stared at the tape recorder he'd left on the old barstool. He may not have wanted to hear her criticism of him, but he wanted to listen to her screams as he had listened to the screams and cries and pleading of all his victims. In fact, with her, he probably wanted it more. If he cut her voice out, he couldn't get that. If he couldn't get that, the act of killing her lost its meaning.

“You want to hear it, don't you, Rob?” she asked. “You want to be able to listen later and hear the exact moment I became frightened of you and gave you control. You don't want to give that up, do you?”

He picked up the tape recorder and held it close to her mouth. He put down the knife, picked up a pliers, and grabbed hold of the tip of her breast, squeezing brutally. Even through the buffer of her sweater and bra, the bite was sharp, then excruciating, making her scream. When he finally let go, he stepped back with a vicious smile and held up the cassette recorder.

“There,” he said. “I've got it.”

It seemed an eternity passed before the white noise faded from Kate's head. She was breathing as if she'd run the four-hundred-yard dash, sweating, shaking. The haze cleared from her vision and she was looking at Angie, the girl still standing in the same spot, clutching the knife to her. Kate wondered if she'd gone catatonic. Angie was her only hope, the weakest link in Rob's scenario. She needed the girl with her, lucid and able to act.

“Angie,” Kate croaked. “He doesn't own you. You can fight him. You've been fighting him, haven't you?” She thought of the scene that had played out upstairs—Rob wanting Angie to decribe what he'd done to her after taking her from the Phoenix House, Angie refusing, defying him, taunting him. She'd done it before—in the offices.

Rob's face reddened. “Quit talking to her!”

“Afraid she might turn on you, Rob?” Kate asked with not nearly the attitude she'd had five minutes earlier.

“Shut up. She's mine. And you're mine too, bitch!”

He lunged at her, grabbed hold of the neck of her sweater and tore at it with his hands, trying without success to rip it. Swearing, sputtering, flustered, embarrassed, he fumbled for another knife among the array of tools he had so carefully laid out on the table.

“You don't own her any more than you own me,” Kate said, glaring at him, straining against the bonds. “And you will never, ever own me, you toad.”

“Shut up!” he screamed again. He turned and slapped her across the mouth with the back of his hand. “Shut up! Shut up! You fucking bitch!”

The knives clattered together and he came away with a big one. Kate sucked in what she imagined might be her last breath and held it. Rob grabbed the neck of her sweater again and cut through it with the knife, violently rending the fabric with big, jagged tears. The tip of the knife bit into her breast, skipped along her belly, nicked the point of her hip.

“I'll show you! I'll show you! Angie!” he barked, swinging toward the girl. “Come here! Come here, now!”

He didn't wait. He rushed around the end of the table, grabbed the girl by the arm, and dragged her back to Kate.

“Do it!” he said in her ear. “For Michele. You want to do this for Michele. You want Michele to love you, don't you, Angie?”

Michele? Wild card, Kate thought, a fresh wave of terror flashing through her. Who the hell was Michele, and what did she mean to Angie? How could she fight an enemy she'd never seen?

Tears ran down Angie's face. Her lower lip was quivering. She clutched the butcher knife with both trembling hands.

“Don't do it, Angie,” Kate said, her voice vibrating with fear. “Don't let him use you this way.”

She couldn't know if the girl even heard her. She thought of what Angie had told her about the Zone, and wondered if she was going into that place now, to escape this nightmare. And what then? Would she act on autopilot? Was the Zone a dissociative state? Had it allowed her to participate in Rob's kills before?

She jerked again at the restraints, stretching the plastic another fraction of an inch.

“Do it!” Rob shouted against the side of Angie's face. “Do it, you stupid cunt! Do it for your sister. Do it for Michele. You want Michele to love you.”

Sister. The headline went through Kate's mind like a comet: Sisters Exonerated in Burning Death of Parents.

Pig eyes popping from his ugly round head, Rob screamed with frustration and raised the knife he held. “Do it!!”

Light hit a blinding starburst off the blade as it plunged through the air and into the hollow of Kate's shoulder just as she managed to twist her body a crucial few inches. The tip of the blade hit bone and glanced off, and the pain was like lightning striking her.

“Do it!” Rob screamed at Angie, striking her in the back of the head with the handle of the bloody knife. “You worthless whore!”

“No!” the girl cried.

“Do it!!”

Sobbing, Angie brought the knife up.

“WE GOT A hit on Fine's prints in Wisconsin,” Yurek said, stepping into the bedroom doorway.

The crime scene unit was removing the tattoo fetishes from the window, carefully folding tissue paper around each and sliding each into its own small paper sack.

“Her real name is Michele Finlow. She's got a handful of misdemeanors and a sealed juvenile record.”

Kovac arched a brow. “Is skinning people a misdemeanor in Wisconsin?”

“The state that brought us Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer,” Tippen remarked.

“Hey, aren't you from Wisconsin, Tip?” one of the crime scene guys asked.

“Yeah. Menomonie. Wanna come to my house for Thanksgiving?”

Quinn stuck a finger in his free ear and listened to Kate's home number ring unanswered for the third time in twenty minutes. Her machine should have picked up. He disconnected and tried her cell phone. It rang four times, then passed him on to her message service. Her clients called her on the cell phone. Angie DiMarco had the number. Kate wouldn't let it go unanswered. Not as responsible as she felt for Angie.

He rubbed a hand against the fire in his belly.

Mary Moss joined the group. “One of the neighbors down the hall says she sometimes saw Michele with a stubby, balding guy with glasses. She didn't get a name, but she says he drives a black SUV that once rear-ended the car of the guy in 3F.”

“Yes!” Kovac said, pumping one arm. “Smokey Joe, you're toast.”

“Hamill is talking right now with Mr. 3F to get the insurance info.”

“We can bust the Cremator in time for the six o'clock news and still make Patrick's for happy hour,” Kovac said, grinning. “This is turning into my kind of day.”

Hamill hustled into the apartment, dodging crime scene people. “You won't believe this,” he said to the task force at large. “Michele Fine's boyfriend was Rob Marshall.”

“Holy shit.”

Quinn grabbed Kovac by the shoulder and shoved him toward the door. “I have to get to Kate. Give me the keys. I'm driving.”

“DO IT! DO IT!”

Angie let out a long, distorted scream that sounded very far away in her own ears, like a wail coming down a