"He's excited tonight," he says, smiling.

"He gets that way when he's inside too much. He doesn't like youeither," Mrs. Vetter says defensively, and takes the dog back to herhouse.

"f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h," he whispers. The anger will vibrate within him for along while, like a tuning fork still trembling long after it's beenstruck.

He will play through the fantasy of killing Yvonne Vetter again andagain and again.

He goes into the garage, where the Blazer and a red Saab sit, and entersthe house through a side door, eager to read about the Cremator in thetwo newspapers. He will cut out all stories pertaining to theinvestigation and make photocopies of them, because newsprint is cheapand doesn't hold up over time. He has taped both the network eveningnews and the local evening news, and will watch for any mention of theCremator.

The Cremator. The name amuses him. It sounds like something from a comicbook. It conjures images of n.a.z.i war criminals or B-movie monsters.

The stuff of nightmares.

He is the stuff of nightmares, And like the creatures of childhoodnightmares, he goes to the bas.e.m.e.nt. The bas.e.m.e.nt is his personal s.p.a.ce,his ideal sanctuary.

The main room is outfitted with an amateur sound studio. Walls and ceiling of sound-absorbing acoustic tile. Flat carpet the color ofslate, He likes the low ceiling, the lack of natural light, thesensation of being in the earth with thick concrete walls around him.His own safe world.

Just like when he was a boy.

He goes down the hall and into the game room, holding the newspapers outin front of him to admire the headlines.

"Yes, I am famous," he says, smiling. "But don't feel bad. You'll befamous soon too. There's nothing quite like it."

He turns toward the pool table, holding the newspapers at an angle sothat the naked woman bound spread-eagle on it can glance at theheadlines if she wants to. She stares, instead, at him, her eyes gla.s.sywith terror and tears. The sounds she makes are not words, but the mostbasic vocalizations of that most basic emotion-fear.

The sounds touch him like electrical currents, energizing him. Her feargives him control of her. Control Is power. Power is the ultimateaphrodisiac.

"Soon you'll be a part of this headline," he says, running a fingerbeneath the bold black print on page one of the Star Tribune. "Ashes toAshes.

DAY SLIPPED INTO evening, into night. Quinn's only indicator was hiswatch, which he seldom checked.

There were no windows in the office he'd been given, only walls, whichhe'd spent the day papering with notes, often with the telephonereceiver sandwiched between ear and shoulder, consulting on theBlacksburg case, where the suspect seemed on the brink of confession. Heshould have been there, His need for control fostered the conceit thathe could prevent all mistakes, even though he knew that wasn't true,Kovac had offered him s.p.a.ce at what the task force had unofficiallydubbed the Loving Touch of Death offices. He had declined. He neededseparation, isolation. He couldn't be there when a dozen cops were tossing theories and suspect names like a chopped salad. He already felttainted as it was.

Now word was out that John Quinn had been brought on board the Crematorcase. Kovac had called with the bad news after the press briefing. Itwas only a matter of hours before he would have to deal with the mediahimself.

d.a.m.n, he'd wanted more time. He had these next few hours. He should havesettled in and lost himself, but he couldn't seem to. Exhaustion pulledat him. His ulcer was burning. He was hungry and knew he needed fuel tokeep his brain running, but he didn't want to waste the time going out.There was too much information and the buzz of too much caffeine swarming in his head. And there was a familiar sense of restlessnessvibrating deep within-the urgency that came with every on-site case,compounded this time by extenuating circ.u.mstances and intrusive,fragmented memories from the past.

Compounded again by a feeling that had been creeping up on him more andmore and more lately-fear. The fear that he wouldn't make a differencein the case fast enough. The fear that he would screw up. The fear thatthe fatigue pressing down on him would suddenly be too much. The fearthat what he really wanted was to just walk away from it all.

Needing to move to escape the emotions, he began to pace back and forthin front of the wall of notes, taking in s.n.a.t.c.hes of them at a glance.The faces of Bondurant and Brandt blew around inside his head like leaves.

Peter Bondurant was holding back more than he was giving them.

Lucas Brandt had a license to keep secrets.

Quinn wished he'd never met either of them. He should have argued harderagainst coming here so early in the investigation, he thought, rubbingat a knot in his right shoulder. The issue was control.

If he walked on stage with his strategy mapped out, he had the upperhand.

That methodology applied to more than just this case. It was how he ranhis whole life-from dealing with the bureaucracy on the job, to dealingwith the Chinese people who ran the mailbox place where he kept a box,to buying his groceries. In any and all situations ana relationships,control was key.

Kate slipped into the back of his mind, as if to taunt him. How manytimes over the years had he replayed what had happened between them,adjusting his own actions and reactions to get a different outcome? Moretimes than he would admit. Control and strategy were his watchwords.He'd had neither where Kate was concerned. One minute they'd beenacquaintances, then friends, then in over their heads. No time to think,too tangled up in the moment to have any perspective, drawn together bya need and a pa.s.sion that was stronger than either of them. And then itwas over, and she was gone, and .. .

nothing. Nothing but regrets that he had let lie, sure that they bothwould eventually see it was for the best.

It was for the best. For Kate anyway. She had a life here. She had a new career, friends, a home. He should have had sense enough to back awayfrom all that, leave well enough alone, but the temptation ofopportunity lured him like a crooked finger and a seductive smile.

And the force of all those regrets pushed him from behind.

He supposed five years was a long time to carry regrets, but he'dcarried others longer. Cases not solved, trials lost, a child-killer whohad slipped away. His marriage, his mother's death, his father'salcoholism.

Maybe he never let anything go. Maybe that was why he felt so hollowinside: There was no room left for anything but the dried detritus ofhis past.

He swore under his breath, disgusted with himself. He was Supposed to bedelving into the mind of a criminal, not his own.

He didn't remember sitting back against the desk, had no idea how manyminutes he'd lost. He rubbed his big hands over his face, licked hislips, and caught the phantom taste of scotch. An odd psychologicalquirk, and a need that would go unfulfilled. He didn't allow himself todrink. He didn't allow himself to smoke. He didn't allow himself much. If he added regret to that list, what would he have left?

He walked to the section of wall where he had taped up brief notes onthe Cremator's victims, scrawled in his own hand in colored markers. All caps.

Tight, with a hard right-hand slant. The kind of handwriting that madegraphologists raise their brows and give him a wide berth.

Photographs of all three women were taped above his notes. A three-ringbinder lay open on the desk, filled with page after page of nearly typedreports, maps, scale drawings of the crime scenes, crime scenephotographs, autopsy protocols-his portable bible of the case.

But he found it helpful to lay out some of the basic information in amore linear way, and thus the notes on the wall and the photographs ofthree smiling women-gone now from this world, their lives snuffed outlike candles, their dignity torn violently from them.

Three white women. All between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-three.

Height varied from five five to five nine. Body types ranged fromlarge-boned Lila White to pet.i.te Fawn Pierce to average Jane Doe/JillianBondurant.

Two prost.i.tutes and a college student. They had lived in different partsof town. The hookers worked two different neighborhoods as a rule,neither of which was frequented by Jillian Bondurant. Lila and Fawn mayhave crossed paths occasionally, but it was highly unlikely Jillianwould have frequented any of the same bars or restaurants or stores.

He had considered the drug connection, but they bad nothing to support.i.t so far. Lila White had gotten straight after entering a countyprogram more than a year ago. Fawn Pierce had never been known to use,although she'd had a reputation for the occasional dayslong bender oncheap vodka.

And Jillian? No drugs had been found in her home, none in her system.

She had no criminal record relating to drug use. As yet, no anecdotalstories of drug use.

"You think they'd like people to know why their daughters became wh.o.r.esand drug addicts?"

He could still hear the bitterness in Peter Bondurant's voice.

Where had it come from?

Jillian was the piece that didn't fit in the puzzle of these crimes. Shewas the one that skewed the profile. There was a common type of killerwho preyed on prost.i.tutes. Prost.i.tutes were high-risk victims, easypickings.

Their killers tended to be socially inadequate, underemployed whitemales who had a history of humiliating experiences with women and soughtto get back at the gender by punishing what they considered to be theworst of the lot.

Unless Jillian had led a secret life as a hooker .. . Not beyond therealm, he supposed, but so far there were no indications Jillian had hada single boyfriend, let alone a list of johns.

"Boys didn't interest her. She didn't want temporary relationships.

She'd been through so much.

What had she been through? Her parents' divorce. Her mother's illness.

A stepfather in a new country. What else? Something deeper?

Darker? Something that pushed her into therapy with Lucas Brandt.

", .. You should consider that the problems Jillian brought to me mayhave had nothing whatsoever to do with her death, Her killer may nothave known anything at all about her."

"But I'll bet you a dollar he did, Dr. Brandt," he said softly, staringat the snapshot of the girl. He could feel it in his gut. Jillian wasthe key. Something in her life had put her in the crosshairs of thiskiller.

And if they could find out what that something was, then they might havea hope in h.e.l.l of catching the son of a b.i.t.c.h.

He went back to the desk and flipped through the binder pages to thesection of photographs: eight-by-ten color prints, neatly labeled as tosubject matter. The crime scenes: general shots, lay-of-the-land shots,body position from various angles, close-ups of the burned, defiled women.

And from the ME's office: general and close-up shots of the victimsbefore and after clean-up at the morgue, autopsy photographs, close-upshots of wounds. Wounds inflicted before deathindicative of a s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t.

Wounds inflicted after death-which were more fetishistic than s.a.d.i.s.tic, intrinsic to the killer's fantasies.

Sophisticated fantasies. Fantasies he'd been developing for a long, longtime.

He paged slowly through the close-ups of the wounds, examining everymark the killer had left, lingering on the stab wounds to the victims'chests.

Eight stab wounds cl.u.s.tered in a group, longer wounds alternating withshorter in a specific pattern.

Of all the gruesome aspects of the murders, this bothered him most. Morethan the burning. The burning seemed more for show, making a publicstatement. Ashes to ashes. A symbolic funeral, the end of his connectionto the victim. These stab wounds meant something more personal,intimate.

What?

A cacophony of voices filled Quinn's head: Bondurant's, Brandt's, themedical examiner's, Kovac's; cops and coroners and experts and agentsfrom hundreds of past cases. All of them with an opinion or a questionor an ax to grind. All of them so loud he couldn't hear himself thinkanymore. And the fatigue only seemed to magnify the noise until hewanted to beg someone to turn it off.

The Mighty Quinn. That was what they called him back in Quantico.

If they could see him now .. . Feeling as if he might choke on the fearof missing something or turning the investigation in the wrong way.

The system was on overload, and he was the one at the switch-and therewas the most frightening thought: that only he could make things change,and he wouldn't make things change because as awful as this was, thealternative scared him even more. Without the job, there was no JohnQuinn.

A fine trembling started deep within him and subtly worked its way outinto his arms. He fought against it, hating it, tightening his bicepsand triceps, trying to force the weakness back down inside him. Eyessqueezed shut, he dropped to the floor and began push-ups. Ten, twenty,thirty, more, until his arms felt as if the skin would burst open,unable to contain the straining muscle ma.s.s, until the pain burned thenoise out of his mind and all he could hear was the pounding of his ownpulse. And then he forced himself to his feet, breathing hard, warm anddamp with sweat.

He focused on the photograph before him, seeing not the torn flesh orthe blood or the corpse; seeing only the pattern of the wound. X over X."Cross my heart," he murmured, tracing a fingertip over the lines.

"Hope to die."

"A SERIAL KILLER stalks the streets of Minneapolis. Today, Minneapolispolice released a composite sketch of the man who may have brutallyslain three women, and that is our top story tonight .. ."

The women of the Phoenix House sat in, on, and around the mismatcheda.s.sortment of chairs and couches in the living room, their attention on the broad-shouldered, square-jawed anchor of the Channel Eleven news.The camera cut to film footage of the afternoon press briefing, thechief of police holding up the sketch of the Cremator, then the screenwas filled with the sketch itself.

Angie watched from the doorway, her attention on the women. A couple ofthem weren't much older than she was. Four were in their twenties. One was older, fat, and ugly. The fat one wore a sleeveless top because thefurnace had gone haywire and the house was as hot and dry as a desert.Her upper arms were flabby and fish-belly white.

Her stomach rested on her thighs when she sat down.

Angie knew the woman had been a hooker, but she couldn't imagine a manever being hard up enough to pay to have s.e.x with her. Men liked prettygirls, young girls. Didn't matter how old or ugly the man was, they allwanted pretty girls. That was Angie's experience. Maybe that was why FatArlene was there. Maybe she couldn't get a man to pay her, and thePhoenix was her retirement home.

A redhead who had the thin, pale, bruised look of an addict started tocry when photographs of the three murder victims came onscreen.

The other women pretended not to notice. Toni Urskine, who ran thePhoenix, perched on the arm of the redhead's chair, leaned down, andtouched her shoulder.

"It's okay," she said softly. "It's okay to cry. Fawn was your friend,Rita."

The redhead pulled her bony bare feet up onto the seat of her chair andburied her head against her knees, sobbing, "Why'd he have to kill herthat way? She didn't hurt n.o.body!"

"There's no making sense of it," another one said. "It could have beenany of us."

A fact that was clear to all of them, even the ones who tried to denyit.

Fat Arlene said, "You gotta be smart about who you go with. You gottahave a sense about it."

A black woman with ratty dreadlocks shot her a mean glare. "Like you gotto pick and choose. Who wanna tie your fat a.s.s down? See all that fatjiggling like Jell-O while he cut you up."

Arlene's face went red and squeezed tight, eyes disappearing in theround mounds of cheeks and puffy brows. She looked like a chow chow.a.n.gie had seen once. "You can just shut your hole, you bony b.i.t.c.h!"

Looking angry, Toni Urskine left the crying redhead and moved toward themiddle of the room, holding her hands up like a referee.

"Hey! None of that! We've got to learn to respect and care for oneanother. Remember: group esteem, gender esteem, self-esteem," Easy forher to say, Angie thought, slipping back from the door.

Toni Urskine had never had to go down on some old pervert to get enoughmoney for a meal. She was little miss do-gooder, in her casualchic outfits from Dayton's and a hundred-dollar hairdo by Horst. She drove upto this c.r.a.ppy house in her Ford Explorer from some beautiful home outin Edina or Minnetonka. She didn't know what it did to a person insideto find out she was worth only twenty-five bucks.

"We all care about these murder victims," Urskine said pa.s.sionately,dark eyes shining, her sharp-featured face aglow. "We all are angry thatthe police have done virtually nothing until now. It's an outrage. It'sa slap in the face. It's the city of Minneapolis telling us the lives ofwomen in desperate circ.u.mstances mean nothing. We need to be angry aboutthat, not angry with each other."

The women listened, some intent, some halfheartedly, some pretending notto.

"I think what we need here is involvement. We need to be proactive,"Urskine said. "We'll go down to city hall tomorrow. The press can hearour side of it. We'll get copies of the composite sketch and canva.s.sAngie backed away from the door and moved silently down the hall. Shedidn't like it when people started talking about the Cremator cases. ThePhoenix women weren't supposed to know who she was or that she wasinvolved in the case, but Angie always got the tense feeling that theother women would look at her and somehow figure out she was the mysterywitness. She didn't want anyone to know.

She didn't want it to be true.

Sudden tears filled her eyes and she rubbed her hands against them. Noshow of emotion. If she showed what she felt, then someone would see aweakness in her, or a need, or the madness that sucked her into the Zoneand made her cut herself. No one would understand that the blade severed the connection to insanity.

"Is everything all right?"

Startled, Angie jerked around and stared at the man standing in the opendoorway to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Late thirties, good-looking, dressed in tanchinos and a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt to work on the furnace: He had tobe some relation to Toni Urskine. Sweat and dirt streaked his face. He worked a gray rag between hands dark with grime and something the colorof blood.

He glanced down as Angie did and looked back up with a crooked smile.

"The old furnace in this place," he said by way of explanation.

"I keep it running with willpower and rubber bands.