, Before Kate could respond, Angie shook her head a little, rubbed thetears from her face with the sleeve of her jacket, and sucked in aragged breath. That fast the window of opportunity shut and the steelmask was back in place.

"Never mind. Like you f.u.c.king care what happens to me."

"Angie, I care what happens to you or I wouldn't have this job."

"Yeah, right. Your job."

"Look," Kate said, out of energy for the argument, "it beats sleeping ina box. Give it a couple of days. If you hate it here, I'll see aboutmaking some other arrangements. You've got my cell phone number: Call meif you need me or if you just need to talk. Anytime. I meant what Isaid-I'm on your side. I'll pick you up in the morning." Angie saidnothing, just stood there looking sullen and small inside her too-bigdenim jacket that belonged to someone else.

"Try to get some sleep, kiddo," Kate said softly.

She had left the girl standing in the den, staring out a window at thelights of the house next door. The poignant picture brought a sense ofsympathy to Kate. The symbolism of a kid on the outside of a familylooking in. A child with no one.

"This is why I don't work with kids," she said now to the cat.

"They'd just ruin my reputation as a hard-a.s.s."

Thor trilled deep in his throat and rolled onto his back, offering hishairy belly for rubbing. She complied, enjoying the contact with anotherliving being who appreciated and loved her in his own way. And shethought of Angie Dimarco lying awake in the night, in a house filledwith strangers, the one connection in her life that meant anything toanyone being her connection to a killer.

ABLINKING MESSAGE light greeted Quinn as he let himself into his room atthe Radisson Plaza Hotel. He tossed the sack of Mexican takeout in the wastebasket beneath the writing table, called room service, and orderedwild rice soup and a turkey sandwich he probably wouldn't eat.

His stomach couldn't deal with Mexican anymore.

He stripped out of his clothes, crammed everything but his shoes into aplastic laundry bag, tied the bag shut, and set it by the door.

Someone down in laundry was in for an unpleasant surprise.

The water pounded out of the showerhead like a hail of bullets, as hotas he could stand it. He scrubbed his hair and body and let the waterwork on the knots in his shoulders, then he turned and let it pelt himin the face and chest. Images from the day tumbled through his head, outof order: the meeting, Bondurant's lawyer, the rush to the airport, thecrime scene tape fluttering around the trunks of st.u.r.dy maple trees,Kate.

Kate. Five years was a long time. In five years she had establishedherself in a new career, she had a new life-which she deserved after allthat had gone wrong in Virginia.

And what had he built in five years besides his reputation and a lot ofunused vacation time?

Nothing. He owned a town house and a Porsche and a closet full ofdesigner suits. He socked the rest of his money away for a retirementthat would probably end in a ma.s.sive coronary two months after he leftthe Bureau because he had nothing else in his life. If the job didn'tkill him first.

He turned the water off, climbed out of the shower, and toweled himselfdry. He had an athlete's body, solid,roped with muscle, leaner than itused to be-the reverse of most men in their mid-forties. He couldn't remember when his enjoyment of food had become indifference. Once,upon atime he had considered himself a gourmet cook.

Now he ate because he had to. The exercise he used to burn off tension burned off all the calories as well.

The greasy, spicy smell of the discarded Mexican food was permeating thebedroom. A smell preferable to a burned corpse, though he knew fromexperience it wouldn't be so welcome when it turned stale and he woke upto it at three in the morning.

The thought brought on a tumble of unpleasant memories of other hotelrooms in other cities and other dinners bought to fight off theaftertaste and smell of death. Of lying awake, alone in a strange bed inthe middle of the night, sweating like a horse from nightmares, hisheart racing.

The panic hit him in the gut like a sledgehammer, and he sat down on theedge of the bed in sweat pants and a gray FBI Academy T-shirt.

He put his head in his hands for a moment, dreading the attack-thehollowness, the dizziness; the tremors that started in the core of himand rattled outward, down his arms and legs; the sense that there wasnothing left of who he really was, the fear that he wouldn't know thedifference.

He cursed himself and reached down deep for the strength to fight it offas he had done again and again In the last year. Or was it two now? Hemeasured time by cases, measured cases by bodies. He had a recurringdream that he was locked away in a white room, pulling the hair out ofhis head one by one and naming each after the victims, pasting the hairsto the wall with his saliva.

He clicked the television on for noise to drown out the voice of fear in his head, then dialed the phone for his voice mail messages. Seven callsregarding other cases he had dragged here with him: a string ofrobberies and torture murders of gay men in Miami; the poisoning deathsof five elderly women in Charlotte, North Carolina; a child abductioncase in Blacksburg, Virginia, that had, as of 8:19 P.m. eastern standardtime, become a homicide with the discovery of the little girl's body ina wooded ravine.

G.o.dd.a.m.n, he should have been there. Or maybe he should have been inrural Georgia, where a mother of four had been beaten to death with aball peen hammer in a fashion reminiscent of three other murders in thelast five years. Or maybe he should have been in England, consultingwith Scotland Yard on the case that had turned up nine mutilated bodiesin the yard of an abandoned slaughterhouse, the eyes gouged out of eachand the mouths sewn shut with waxed thread.

"Special Agent Quinn, this is Edwyn n.o.ble-"

"And you got this number how?" Quinn asked aloud as the message played.

He wasn't thrilled with n.o.ble's in with this investigation. Beingmarried to the mayor gave him a foot in the door no other lawyer in thecity would have had. Being Peter Bondurant's attorney forced the dooropen wider.

"I'm calling on behalf of Mr. Bondurant. Peter would very much like tomeet with you tomorrow morning if possible. Please give me a call backtonight."

He left the number, then a seductive taped voice informed Quinn he hadno further messages. He recradled the receiver with no intention ofpicking it up again to call n.o.ble. Let him stew. If he had Somethingpertinent to the case, he could call Kovac or Fowler, the homicidelieutenant. Quinn called no one back, preferring to wait until after hedidn't eat his dinner.

The ten o'clock news led with the latest murder, flashing taped footageof the crime scene unit combing over the dumping site in the park, thengoing to the tape of the press conference. A photo of Jillian Bondurantcame up with another of her red Saab. A good three and a half minutes ofcoverage, total. The average news story ran less than half that.

Quinn dug the files for the first two murders out of his briefcase andstacked them on the writing desk. Copies of investigative reports andcrime scene photos. Autopsy reports, lab reports, initial and follow-upinvestigative reports. News clippings from both the Minneapolis StarTribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Descriptions and photos of thecrime scenes.

He had stated very clearly he wanted no information on possible suspectsif there were any, and none had been included. He couldn't let anyone'sspeculation about a possible suspect cloud his judgment or steer hisa.n.a.lysis in one direction or another. This was yet another reason hewould have preferred to put the profile together from his office inQuantico.

Here he was too close; the case was all around him.

The personalities involved in the cases could spur reactions he wouldnot have looking at a collection of adjectives and facts. There was too much worthless input, too many distractions.

Too many distractions-like Kate. Who hadn't called and had no reason to,really. Except that they had once shared something special .. . andwalked away from it .. . and let it die.. ..

Nothing in a Quinn life had the power to be quite so distracting as theirreparable past. The only cure Quinn had found for the past was @to tryto control the present, which meant pouring himself into the case athand.

Focus with intensity on maintaining control of the present. And onmaintaining control of his sanity. And when the nights stretched long-asthey all did-and his mind raced with the details of a hundred murders,he could feel his grip slipping on both.

ANGIE SAT AT the head of the small, hard twin bed, her back pressed intothe corner so that she could feel the nubby plaster wall biting throughthe baggy flannel shirt she had chosen to sleep in. She sat with herknees pulled up beneath her chin, her arms wrapped tight around herlegs. The door was closed; she was alone. The only light coming inthrough the window came from a distant streetlamp.

The Phoenix was a house for women "rising to a new beginning." So saidthe sign on the front lawn. It was a big, rambling old house withsqueaky floors and no frills. Kate had brought her there and dumped heramong the ex-hookers and ex-dopers and women trying to escape boyfriendswho beat the s.h.i.t out of them.

Angie had looked in at some of them watching TV in a big living roomfull of ratty furniture, and thought how stupid they must be. If therewas one thing she had learned in life, it was that you could escapecirc.u.mstance, but you could never escape who you were. Your personaltruth was a shadow: There was no denying it, no changing it, and nogetting rid of it.

She felt the shadow sweep over her now, cold and black. Her bodytrembled and tears rose in her eyes. She had been fighting it off allday, all night. She had thought it was going to swallow her whole rightin front of Kate-an idea that only added to the panic. She couldn't losecontrol in front of anyone. Then they'd know that she was crazy, thatshe was defective. They'd ship her off to the nuthouse. She'd be alonethen.

She was alone now.

The tremor began at the very core of her, then opened up wider and widerinto a weird, hollow feeling. At the same time, she felt herconsciousness shrinking and shrinking until she felt as if her body wasjust a sh.e.l.l and she was a tiny being locked inside it, in danger offalling off a ledge into some dark chasm inside and never being able toclimb out.

She called this feeling the Zone. The Zone was an old enemy. But as wellas she knew it, it never failed to terrify her. She knew if she didn'tfight it off, she could lose control, and control was everything.

If she didn't fight it off, she could lose whole blocks of time. Shecould lose herself, and what would happen then?

It shook her now, and she started to cry. Silently. Always silently.

She couldn't let anyone hear her, she couldn't let them know how afraidshe was. Her mouth tore open, but she strangled the sobs until herthroat ached. She pressed her face against her knees, closing her eyestight.

The tears burned, fell, slid down her bare thigh.

In her mind, she could see the burning corpse. She ran from it. She ranand ran but didn't get anywhere. In her mind, the corpse became her, butshe couldn't feel the flames. She would have welcomed the pain, but shecouldn't conjure it up with just her mind. And all the while she feltherself growing smaller and smaller inside the sh.e.l.l of her body.

Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! She pinched her thigh hard, digging theragged edge of her fingernails into the skin. And still she felt herselfbeing sucked deeper and deeper into the Zone.

You know what you have to do. The voice unfurled in her mind like ablack ribbon. She shivered in response to it. It twined itself throughvital parts of her, a strange matrix of fear and need.

You know what you have to do.

Frantically, she pulled her backpack to her, fumbled with the zipper,and dug through an inner pocket for the thing she needed. Her fingerscurled around the box cutter, which was disguised as a small plastickey.

Shaking, choking back the sobs, she crawled to a wedge of light on thebed and shoved up the left sleeve of the flannel shirt, exposing a thinwhite arm that was striped with narrow scars, one beside another andanother, lining her arms like bars in an iron fence. The razor emergedfrom the end of the box cutter like a serpent's tongue and she drew itacross a patch of tender skin near her elbow.

The pain was sharp and sweet, and seemed to short-circuit the panic thathad electrified her brain. Blood blossomed from the cut, a shiny blackbead in the moonlight. She stared at it, mesmerized as the calm flowedthrough her.

Control. Life was all about control. Pain and control. She had learned that lesson long ago.

"I'M THINKING OF changing my name," he says. "What do you think ofElvis? Elvis Nagel."

His companion says nothing. He picks up a pair of panties from the pilein the box and presses them to his face, burying his nose in the crotchand sniffing deep the scent of p.u.s.s.y. Nice. Smell is not as good astimulant as sound for him, but still .. .

"Get it?" he says. "It's an anagram. Elvis Nagel-Evil's Angel."

In the background, three televisions are running videotapes of the localsix o'clock newscasts. The voices blend together in a discordantcacophony he finds stimulating. The common thread that runs through themall is urgency. Urgency breeds fear. Fear excites him.

He especially enjoys the sound of it. The tight, quivering tensionunderlying a controlled voice. The erratic changes in pitch and tone inthe voice of someone openly afraid.

The mayor appears on two screens. The ugly cow. He watches her speak,wondering what it might be like to cut her lips off while she is stillalive. Maybe make her eat them. The fantasy excites, as his fantasiesalways have.

He turns up the volume on the televisions, then crosses to the stereosystem set into the bookcase, selects a ca.s.sette from the rack, andslips it into the machine. He stands in the center of the bas.e.m.e.nt room,staring at the televisions, at the furrowed brows of anchormen and thefaces of the people at the press conference shot from three differentangles, and lets the sounds wash over him-the voices of the reporters,the background echo in the cavernous hall, the urgency. At the same timefrom the stereo speakers comes the voice of raw, unvarnished fear.Pleading. Crying for G.o.d. Begging for death. His triumph.

He stands in the center of it. The conductor of this macabre opera.

The excitement builds inside him, a huge, hot, swelling, s.e.xualexcitement that builds to a crescendo and demands release. He looks to his companion for the evening, considering, but he controls the need.

Control is all. Control is power. He is the action. They are thereaction. He wants to see the fear in all their faces, to hear it intheir voices-the police, the task force, John Quinn. Especially Quinn,who hadn't even bothered to speak at the press conference, as if hewanted the Cremator to think he didn't warrant his personal attention.

He will have Quinn's attention. He will have their respect. He will havewhatever he wants because he has control.

He turns the televisions down to a dull mumble but leaves them on so he won't return to silence. Silence is something he abhors. He turns offthe stereo system but pockets a microca.s.sette recorder loaded with atape.

"I'm going out," he says. "I've had enough of you. You're boring me.

He goes to the mannequin he has been playing with, trying differentcombinations of the clothes of his victims.

"Not that I don't appreciate you," he says quietly.

He leans forward and kisses her, putting his tongue in her open mouth.

Then he lifts the head of his last victim off the shoulders of the mannequin, puts it back into its plastic bag, takes it to therefrigerator in the laundry room, and sets it carefully on a shelf.

The night is thick with fog and mist, the streets black and gleaming wetin the glow of the streetlights. A night reminiscent of the Ripper'sLondon. A night for hunting.

He smiles at the thought as he drives toward the lake. He smiles wideras he presses the play b.u.t.ton on the microca.s.sette recorder and holdsthe machine against his ear, the screams a twisted metamorphosis of awhispered sound are warped into hatred and fear.

CHAPTER 8.

"IF THE NEWSIES find us here, I'll eat my shorts," Kovac declared,turning around in a circle in the middle of the floor.

One wall was papered in a montage of naked women engaged in variouserotic pursuits, the other three in cheap red flocked paper that bestresembled moth-eaten velvet.

"Something tells me you could have gotten that done here for you," Quinnremarked dryly. He sniffed the air, identifying the smells of mice,cheap perfume, and damp underwear. "For a bargain price."

"The newsies find us here, our careers are toast," Elwood Knutson said.

The big homicide sergeant pulled a giant ceramic p.e.n.i.s out of a drawerbehind the counter and held it up for all to see.

Liska made a face. "Jesus, Sam. You sure know how to pick'em."

"Don't look at me! You think I hang out in ma.s.sage parlors?"

"Yeah. "Very funny. These lovely accommodations are courtesy ofDetective Adler, Hennepin County Sheriff's Office. Chunk, take a bow."

Adler, a chunk of muscle with ebony skin and a tight cap of steelgraycurls, gave a sheepish grin and a wave to the rest of the task force."My sister works for Norwest Banks. They foreclosed on the buildingafter s.e.x crimes shut the place down last summer. The location isperfect, the price is right-meaning free-and the press lost interest inthe place after the hookers moved out. No one's going to suspect this iswhere we're meeting."

Which was the main point, Quinn thought as he followed Kovac down thenarrow hall, the detective turning on lights in the succession of foursmaller room-two on either side of the hall. It was essential that the task force be allowed to do their jobs without interruption ordistraction, without having to run a gauntlet of reporters. A placewhere the case could be contained and leaks kept to a minimum.

And if the leaks continued, Elwood was right. The press would roasttheir careers on a public bonfire.

"I love it!" Kovac declared, striding back down the hall to the frontroom. "Let's set up."

Liska wrinkled her nose. "Can we hose it down with Lysol first?"

"Sure, Tinks. You can redecorate the place while the rest of us aresolving these murders."

"Oh, f.u.c.k you, Kojak. I hope you're the first to catch the cooties fromthe toilet seat."

"Now, that'll be Bear b.u.t.t in there with the Reader's Digest. Cootiessee his hairy a.s.s and come running. He's probably got a wholecivilization living in that pelt."

Elwood, who was roughly the size and shape of a small grizzly, raised his head with dignity. "On behalf of hairy people everywhere, I takeumbrage."

"Yeah?" Kovac said. "Well, take your umbrage outside and grab somestuff. We're burning daylight."