Ashes to Ashes

Calvin Klein denim jacket that had once belonged to someone named Rick. The name was printed in indelible ink above the left breast pocket. She kept the jacket on despite the fact that the room was warm. Security or hiding needle tracks, Kate figured.

“Oh, for godsake, Sam, give her a cigarette,” Kate said, shoving up the sleeves of her sweater. She took the vacant chair on the girl's side of the table. “And give me one too, while you're at it. If the PC Nazis catch us, we'll all go down together. What're they gonna do? Ask us to leave this rat hole?”

She watched the girl out of the corner of her eye as Kovac shook two more cigarettes out of the pack. Angie's fingernails were bitten to the quick and painted metallic ice blue. Her hand trembled as she took the gift. She wore an assortment of cheap silver rings, and two small, crude ballpoint tattoos marred her pale skin—a cross near her thumb, and the letter A with a horizontal line across the top. A professional job circled her wrist, a delicate blue ink bracelet of thorns.

“You've been here all night, Angie?” Kate asked, drawing on the cigarette. It tasted like dried shit. She couldn't imagine why she had ever taken up the habit in her college days. The price of cool, she supposed. And now it was the price of bonding.

“Yes.” Angie fired a stream of smoke up at the ceiling. “And they wouldn't get me a lawyer either.”

“You don't need a lawyer, Angie,” Kovac said congenially. “You're not being charged with anything.”

“Then why can't I blow this shithole?”

“We got a lot of complications to sort out. For instance, the matter of your identification.”

“I gave you my ID.”

He pulled it from the file and handed it to Kate with a meaningful lift of his eyebrows.

“You're twenty-one,” Kate read deadpan, flicking ashes into an abandoned cup of oily coffee.

“That's what it says.”

“It says you're from Milwaukee—”

“Was. I left.”

“Any family there?”

“They're dead.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I doubt it.”

“Any family here? Aunts, uncles, cousins, half-related circus freaks? Anyone at all we could call for you—to help you through this?”

“No. I'm an orphan. Poor me.” She bluffed a sarcastic laugh. “Trust me, I don't need any family.”

“You've got no permanent address, Angie,” Kovac said. “You have to realize what's happened here. You're the only one who can identify a killer. We need to know where you're at.”

She rolled her eyes in the way only teenage girls can, imparting both incredulity and impatience. “I gave you my address.”

“You gave me the address for an apartment you don't have keys for and you can't tell me the name of who it is you're staying with.”

“I told you!”

She pushed up out of her chair and turned away from Kovac, the cigarette in her hand raining ashes on the floor. The blue sweater she wore beneath her jacket was either cropped short or shrunken, revealing a pierced navel and another tattoo—three drops of blood falling into the waistband of her dirty jeans.

“Her name is Molly,” she said. “I met her at a party and she said that I could crash at her place until I get my own.”

Kate caught the hint of a tremor in the girl's voice, the defensive body language as she pulled in on herself and turned away from them. Across the room, the door opened and Liska came in with the coffee.

“Angie, no one's trying to jam you up here,” Kate said. “Our first concern is that you're safe.”

The girl wheeled on her, her eyes dark blue and glittering with anger. “Your concern is that I testify against this psycho Cremator creep. You think I'm nuts? He'll track me down and kill me too!”

“Your cooperation is imperative, Angie,” Sabin said with authority. The man in command. “You're our only witness. This man has killed three women that we know of.”

Kate shot a dagger look at the county attorney.

“Part of my job is to see to it that you're safe, Angie,” she explained, keeping her voice even and calm. “If you need a place to stay, we can make that happen. Do you have a job?”

“No.” She turned away again. “I been looking,” she added almost defensively. She gravitated toward the corner of the room, where a dirty backpack had been discarded. Kate was willing to bet everything the kid owned was in that bag.

“It's tough coming into a new town,” Kate said quietly. “Don't know your way around. Don't have any connections. Hard to get set up, get your life going.”

The girl bowed her head and chewed at a thumbnail, her hair swinging down to obscure her face.

“It takes money to set yourself up,” Kate went on. “Money to eat. Money for a place. Money for clothes. Money for everything.”

“I get by.”

Kate could imagine just how. She knew how it worked with kids on the street. They did what they had to do to survive. Beg. Steal. Sell a little dope. Turn a trick or two or ten. There was no shortage of depraved human scum in the world more than willing to prey on kids with no homes and no prospects.

Liska set the steaming coffee cups on the table and leaned down to murmur in Kovac's ear. “Elwood tracked down the building manager. The guy says the apartment's vacant and if this kid is living there, then he wants a five-hundred-dollar deposit or he'll press charges for criminal trespass.”

“What a humanitarian.”

“Elwood says to him: ‘Five hundred? What's that? A buck a cockroach?'”

Kate absorbed the whispered remarks, her eyes still on Angie. “Your life's tough enough right now without having to become a witness to a murder.”

Head still down, the girl sniffed and brought the cigarette to her lips. “I didn't see him kill her.”

“What did you see?” Sabin demanded. “We need to know, Miss DiMarco. Every minute that passes is crucial to the investigation. This man is a serial killer.”

“I think we're all aware of that, Ted,” Kate conceded with a razor's edge in her voice. “You really don't have to remind us every two minutes.”

Rob Marshall twitched hard. Sabin met her gaze, his own impatience showing. He wanted a revelation before he bolted for his meeting with the mayor. He wanted to be able to step in front of the cameras at the press conference and give the monster loose among them a name and a face and announce that an arrest was imminent.

“Angie seems to be having some difficulty deciding whether to cooperate or not,” he said. “I think it's important she realize the gravity of the situation.”

“She watched someone set a human body on fire. I think she understands the gravity of the situation perfectly.”

In the corner of her eye, Kate could see she had caught the girl's attention. Maybe they could be friends living on the street together after Sabin fired her for challenging him in front of an audience. What was she thinking? She didn't even want this mess in her lap.

“What were you doing in that park at that hour of night, Angie?” Rob asked, mopping at his forehead with a handkerchief.

The girl looked him square in the face. “Minding my own fucking business.”

“You can take your coat off if you want,” he said with a brittle smile.

“I don't want.”

His jaw clenched and the grin became more of a grimace. “That's fine. If you want to keep it on, that's fine. It just seems hot in here. Why don't you tell us in your own way how you came to be in that park last night, Angie.”

She stared at him with venom in her eyes. “I'd tell you to kiss my ass, but you're so fucking ugly, I'd make you pay in advance.”