Ashes to Ashes

were a nasty shade of yellow, the old woodwork dark with age and varnish. As it was all through the house, the furniture was mismatched and ill proportioned.

Angie's bed was a wad of unmade sheets. The shopping bag from their excursion to City Center lay in the midst of the mess, tissue tumbling out of it, the jeans and sweater she'd bought nowhere in sight. The dirty backpack was conspicuously absent, suggesting the girl had flown the coop of her own accord.

Sitting on the nightstand beside the cheap glass lamp was a tiny statue of an angel.

Kate picked it up and looked at it: an inch-high piece of pottery she'd bought for five bucks from a Navajo woman on the plaza in Santa Fe. She had slipped the old woman's five-year-old granddaughter an extra dollar for carefully wrapping the doll in tissue, her little brow furrowed as she concentrated on the importance of her task. Watching the little girl, she'd thought of Emily and, to her extreme embarrassment, had nearly started to cry.

“You know something about that?” Quinn asked softly, standing too close again.

“Sure. She stole it off my desk today.” She touched the gold-painted halo on the angel's dark head. “I have a collection of guardian angels. Ironic, huh? I don't really believe in them. If there were such things as guardian angels, then you and I wouldn't have jobs, and I wouldn't have lost my daughter, and we wouldn't have kids living lives like Angie's.

“Stupid,” she said, rubbing the angel's wings gently between her fingers. “I wish she'd taken this with her.”

The statue slipped from her grasp and fell to the old rug beside the bed. Kate knelt down to get it, putting her left hand down on the floor for balance. Her heart thumped hard in her chest, and she sat back against her heels as she raised the same hand, turning it palm up.

“Oh, Jesus,” she breathed, staring at the smear of blood.

Quinn swore, grabbing her hand, pulling it closer to the light.

Kate pulled away from him, twisting around, crouching low and straining to see against the dark wood of the old floor. The angle had to be perfect. The light had to hit it just right . . . Iverson hadn't seen it because he hadn't been looking hard enough.

“No,” she muttered, finding another droplet, then a smear where someone had tried to hastily clean up. I should have stayed with her.

The trail led to the hall. The hall led to the bathroom.

Panic fell like stone in Kate's stomach. “Oh, God, no.”

I should have stayed with her.

She stumbled to her feet and down the hall, all senses magnified, the pounding of her heart like a jack- hammer in her ears.

“Don't touch anything!” Kovac yelled, coming behind her.

Kate pulled up short of the bathroom door, which stood ajar, and allowed Kovac to bump it open with his shoulder. He pulled a ballpoint pen from his coat pocket and flipped on the light.

The room was awash in brain-bending hot pink, orange, and silver foil wallpaper from the seventies. The fixtures were older, the two-inch floor tiles long past being white. Dotted with blood. A fleck here. A smeared stain there.

Why didn't I stay with her?

“Come out in the hall, honey,” Quinn said, setting his hands on Kate's shoulders as Kovac moved to pull back the shower curtain.

“No.”

She held her ground, trembling, the breath held tight in her lungs. Quinn slipped an arm around her, ready to pull her out as Kovac drew the shower curtain back.

There was no body. Angie wasn't lying dead in the tub. Still Kate's stomach turned and a wave of cold washed over her. Quinn's arm tightened around her and she sagged back against him.

Blood streaked the tiled wall in pale smudges, like a faded fingerpainting. A thin line of water tinted rusty with diluted blood led from the center of the tub to the drain.

Kate pressed a hand across her mouth, smearing the blood on her palm across her chin.

“Shit,” Kovac breathed, backing away from the tub.

He went to the plastic hamper beside the sink and opened it gingerly with the same pen he had used to turn on the light.

“Hey, Kojak,” Elwood said, sticking his big head in the door. “What's up?”

“Call the crime scene guys.” He pulled one towel and then another from the hamper, both of them wet and bloody. “Looks like we've got us a crime scene.”

19

CHAPTER

TONI URSKINE ENTERED the front room still dressed to impress in slim black slacks and a cardinal-red blazer over a white blouse with an elaborate cravat. The fire of righteous indignation burned bright in her eyes.

“I don't appreciate those police cars out front. Could they at least turn their lights off? This is a neighborhood, Sergeant, and our neighbors are none too gracious about us being here as it is.”

“I'm sorry for the disruption, Ms. Urskine,” Kovac said dryly. “Abductions, murders, they're a big damn pain in the ass, I know.”

A redhead with the thin, brittle look of a crack addict came into the room behind Toni Urskine, followed by Gregg Urskine, who looked like a model for Eddie Bauer in scuffed work boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt open at the throat to reveal a white T-shirt. He put a hand on the redhead's back and urged her forward.

“This is Rita Renner. Rita was here with Angie tonight after I left.”

“I wasn't really with her,” Renner said in a small voice. “I was watching TV. I saw her go upstairs. She was in the bathroom for a long time—I could hear the water running. We're not supposed to take long showers.”

“And what time did you notice the shower stopped running?”

“I didn't. I fell asleep on the couch. I didn't wake up until the news.”

“And in the time you were awake, did you see or hear anyone else in the house—other than Angie?”

“Not after Gregg left.”

“No doors opening, closing? No footsteps? No nothing?”

Renner shook her head, staring at her feet.

“She's already told you she didn't hear or see anything,” Toni Urskine said impatiently.

Kovac ignored her. “Why didn't you go to the meeting with the others?”

Toni Urskine stiffened. “Is Rita under suspicion of something, Sergeant?”

“Just curious.”

Nervous, Renner looked from one Urskine to the other, as if seeking some kind of invisible sign for permission to speak. “I don't like crowds,” she said apologetically. “And, then, it's hard for me, you know. Because of Fawn.”

“Rita and Fawn Pierce—or, as you call her, victim number two—were good friends.” Toni put a supportive arm around Renner's bony shoulders. “Not that anyone in your investigation cares.”

Kovac held back a scowl. “I'm sorry about the oversight. I'll have a detective come by tomorrow for an interview. My priority tonight is Angie DiMarco. We need to find her.”

“You don't think this killer came in here and took her, do you?” Toni asked with sudden alarm.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Gregg said, trying to smile away the edge in his voice. “No one broke in.”

His wife turned on him with a venomous look. “I'm not ridiculous. Anyone could have come in here. I've been asking you for months to install new locks and seal off that old storm cellar door.”

Urskine contained his embarrassment to a dull blush. “The storm cellar door is locked from the inside.”

Kovac looked to Elwood. “Check it out.”

“I'll show you,” Urskine offered, starting for the door, eager to get away from his wife.

Kate held him up with a question. “Gregg, did Angie say anything to you before you left for the meeting?”