Ashes to Ashes

do with her death. Her killer may not have known anything at all about her.”

“And then again, he might have known the one thing that set him off,” Quinn said. He took a business card from a slim case in his breast pocket and handed it to Brandt. “This is my direct line at the Bureau office downtown. I hope to hear from you.”

Brandt set the card aside and shook his hand. “With due consideration for the circumstances, it was a pleasure meeting you. I have to confess, I'm the one who suggested your name to Peter when he told me he wanted to call your director.”

Quinn's mouth twisted as he started for the door. “I'm not so sure I should thank you for that, Dr. Brandt.”

He left the office through the reception area, glancing at the woman waiting on the camelback sofa with her feet perfectly together and her red Coach bag balanced on her knees, her expression a carefully blank screen over annoyance and embarrassment. She didn't want to be seen there.

He wondered how Jillian had felt coming here and confiding all to one of her father's sycophants. Had it been a choice or a condition of Peter's support? She'd shown up every week for two years, and only God and Lucas Brandt knew why. And very possibly Bondurant. Brandt could preen for them and display his ethics like a peacock fanning his tail feathers, but Quinn suspected Kovac was right: When it came down to it, Brandt's first obligation would be to himself. And keeping Peter Bondurant happy would go a long way toward keeping Lucas Brandt happy.

Kovac was waiting in the foyer on the first floor, staring in puzzlement at an abstract painting of a woman with three eyes and breasts growing out the sides of her head.

“Jesus Christ, that's uglier than my second wife's mother—and she could break a mirror from fifty feet away. You suppose they hang it there just to give their crazies an extra little tweak on the way in and out?”

“It's a Rorschach test,” Quinn said. “They're looking to weed out the guys who think it's a woman with three eyes and breasts on the sides of her head.”

Kovac frowned and stole a last look at the thing before they stepped outside.

“One phone call from Brandt and my sorry butt's in a sling,” he groused as they descended the steps. “I can hear my lieutenant now—‘What the hell were you thinking, Kovac?' Jesus, Brandt'll probably sic the chief on me. They're probably in the same fucking backgammon league. They probably get manicures together. Greer'll get up on a ladder, rip my head off, and shout down the hole—‘What the hell were you thinking, Kovac? Thirty days without pay!'”

He shook his head. “What the hell was I thinking?”

“I don't know. What the hell were you thinking?”

“That I hate that guy, that's what.”

“Really? I thought we were playing good cop—bad cop.”

Kovac looked at him over the roof of the Caprice. “I'm not that good an actor. Do I look like Harrison Ford?”

Quinn squinted. “Maybe if you lose the mustache . . .”

They slid into the car from their respective sides, Kovac's laugh dying as he shook his head. “I don't know what I'm laughing about. I know better than to go off like that. Brandt yanks my chain, that's all. I'm kicking myself because I didn't place him until I saw him. I just wasn't expecting . . .”

No excuse was a good excuse. He blew air between his lips and stared out the windshield through the naked fingerling branches of a dormant bush to the lake in the distance.

“You know him from a case?” Quinn asked.

“Yeah. Eight or nine years ago he testified for the defense in a murder case I worked. Carl Borchard, nineteen, killed his girlfriend after she tried to break up with him. Choked her. Brandt comes in with this sob story about how Borchard's mother abandoned him, and how this stress with his girlfriend pushed him over a line. He tells the jury how we all should pity Carl, 'cause he didn't mean it and he was so remorseful. How he wasn't really a killer. It was a crime of passion. He wasn't a danger to society. Blah, blah, blah. Boo-hoo-hoo.”

“And you knew different?”

“Carl Borchard was a whiny, sociopathic little shit with a juvenile sheet full of stuff the prosecutors couldn't get admitted. He had a history of acting out against women. Brandt knew that as well as we did, but he wasn't on our payroll.”

“Borchard got off.”

“Manslaughter. First adult offense, reduced sentence, time served, et cetera, et cetera. The little creep barely had time to take a crap in prison. Then they send him to a halfway house. While he's living at this halfway house he rapes a woman in the next neighborhood and beats her head in with a claw hammer. Thank you, Dr. Brandt.

“You know what he had to say about it?” Kovac said with amazement. “He was in the Star Tribune saying he thought Carl had ‘exhausted his victim pool' with the first murder, but, hey, shit happens. He went on to say he couldn't really be held accountable for this little blunder because he hadn't been able to spend all that much time with Borchard. Fucking amazing.”

Quinn absorbed the information quietly. The feeling that he was getting too close to this case pressed in on him again. He felt the people in it crowding around him, standing too close for him to really see them. He wanted them back and away. He didn't want to know anything about Lucas Brandt, didn't want to have a personal impression of the man. He wanted what Brandt could give him from an arm's length. He wanted to go lock himself in the neat, paneled office the SAC had given him in the building on Washington Avenue downtown. But that wasn't the way things were going to work here.

“I know something else about your Dr. Brandt,” he said as Kovac started the car and put it in gear.

“What's that?”

“He was standing in the background at the press conference yesterday.”

“THERE HE IS.”

Kovac hit the freeze button on the remote control. The picture jerked and twitched as the VCR held the tape in place. To the side of the press mob, standing with a pack of suits, was Brandt. A muscle at the base of Kovac's diaphragm tightened like a fist. He punched the play button and watched the psychologist tip his head and say something to the man next to him. He froze the picture again.

“Who's that he's talking to?”

“Ahh . . .” Yurek tipped his head sideways for a better angle. “Kellerman, the public defender.”

“Oh, yeah. Worm Boy. Call him. See if Brandt and him were together,” Kovac ordered. “Find out if Brandt had any legit reason to be there.”

Adler raised a brow. “You think he's a suspect?”

“I think he's an asshole.”

“If that was against the law, the jails would be full of lawyers.”

“He jerked me around this morning,” Kovac complained. “Him and Bondurant are too cozy, and Bondurant's jerking us around too.”

“He's the victim's father,” Adler pointed out.

“He's the victim's rich father,” Tippen added.

“He's the victim's rich, powerful father,” Yurek, Mr. Public Relations, reminded all.

Kovac gave him a look. “He's part of a murder investigation. I've gotta run this investigation as tight as any other. That means we look at everybody. Family always comes under the microscope. I want to step on Brandt a little, let him know we're not just a pack of tame dogs Peter Bondurant can order around. If he can give us anything on Jillian Bondurant, I want it. And I also want to step on him because he's a fucking tick.”

“This smells like trouble, Kojak,” Yurek sang.

“It's a murder investigation, Charm. You want to consult Emily Post?”

“I want to come out of it with my career intact.”

“Your career is investigating,” Kovac returned. “Brandt had a connection to Jillian Bondurant.”

“You got any reason other than not liking him to think this prick shrink would off two hookers and decapitate a patient?” Tippen asked.

“I'm not saying he's a suspect,” he snapped. “He saw Jillian Bondurant Friday. He saw her every Friday. He