The muscles in Brandt's square jaw flexed. "Jillian had problems.

Peter loved his daughter. It would kill him to see her past and thedifficulties she'd had splashed across the tabloids and paraded beforeAmerica on the nightly news."

Quinn abruptly straightened away from the counter, putting himself intoBrandt's s.p.a.ce, frowning into his face. "I'm not in the business ofselling cases to the media."

n.o.ble spread his hands. The peacemaker, the diplomat. "Of course not.

We're simply trying to be as discreet about this as possible. That's whywe're talking to you rather than to the police. Peter and Lucas and Ihave discussed this, and we feel that you may be able to steer therudder of the case, so to speak. That if we could satisfy you withregard to the calls Jillian made that night, the matter could be put torest."

"What about your ethics?" Quinn asked, still looking at Brandt.

"A small sacrifice to the greater good."

His own, Quinn suspected.

"I'm listening."

Brandt took a breath, bracing himself for this breach of his patient'strust. Somehow Quinn didn't think it bothered his conscience nearly asmuch as defying Peter Bondurant would bother him socially andfinancially.

"Jillian's stepfather had contacted her several times in the past fewweeks, implying he wanted to mend their relationship. Jillian had verycomplicated, very mixed feelings toward him."

"Would she have wanted to resume some kind of relationship with him?"Quinn asked. "Her friend implied Jillian had been in love with him, thatshe wanted him to divorce her mother for her."

"Jillian was a very unhappy, confused girl when she was involved withSerge. Her mother had always been jealous of her, from Jillie's infancy.

She was starving for love. I'm sure you know people will go to terriblelengths to get it--or, rather, to get what will pa.s.s for love for them."

"Yes. I've seen the result in crime scene photographs. Why was thestepfather never prosecuted?"

"No charges were ever brought. Leblanc had brainwashed her," n.o.ble saidwith disgust. "Jillian refused even to talk to the police."

"Peter had hoped that in moving back to Minnesota and getting therapy,she had put it all behind her," Brandt said.

"And had she?"

"Therapy is a long, ongoing process."

"And then Leblanc started calling her again."

"Friday night she decided to tell Peter about it. Naturally, he wasupset. He was frightened for Jillie. She'd been doing so well." Anotherstrategically placed sigh. "Peter has difficulty expressing emotion. Hisconcern came out as anger. They ended up arguing. Jillie was upset whenshe left. She called me from her car."

"Where was she?"

"In a parking lot somewhere. She didn't really say. I told her to goback to Peter and talk it through, but she was embarra.s.sed and hurt, andin the end she just called him," Brandt said. "That's the whole story.It's as simple as that."

Quinn doubted him on both counts. What Lucas Brandt had just told himwas by no means the whole story, and nothing about Jillian Bondurant'slife or death would prove to be simple.

"And Peter couldn't have just told this story to Sergeant Kovac and mefour hours ago when we were standing in his foyer."

n.o.ble cast a nervous glance over his shoulder at the closed door on theother side of the room, as if he were waiting for the reporters to ramit down and storm in, microphones thrust before them like bayonets.

"It isn't easy for Peter to talk about these things, Agent Quinn.

He's an intensely private man."

"I realize that, Mr. n.o.ble," Quinn said, casually fishing a peppermintout of his pocket. He spoke as he unwrapped it. "The trouble with thatis that this is a murder investigation. And in a murder investigation,there's no such thing as privacy." He set the wrapper on the counter andpopped the candy in his mouth. "Not even if your name is Peter Bondurantand you have the ear of the director of the FBI-not as long as it's my case."

"Well," Edwyn n.o.ble said, stepping back, his long face as cold and hardas marble. "It may not be your case much longer."

They left looking like spoiled children who would immediately run homeand tell on him. They would tell Bondurant. Bondurant would callBrewster. Brewster might call and reprimand him, Quinn supposed. Or hemight simply have the ASAC pull him off the case and send him on toanother stack of bodies somewhere else. There was always another case.And another .. . and another .. . And what the h.e.l.l else did he have to do with his life?

He watched as n.o.ble and Brandt worked their way toward the exit,reporters d.o.g.g.i.ng their heels.

"What was that about?" Kovac asked.

"Heading us off at the pa.s.s, I think."

"Kate says our wit came clean with her. Little Mary Sunshine says shewas in the- park that night earning a Jackson doing the hokeypokey withsome loser."

"This loser have a name?"

Kovac snorted. "Hubert Humphrey, he tells her. BOLO: republican a.s.sholewith a bad sense of humor."

"That narrows it down," Quinn said dryly.

The television crews were packing up lights and cameras. The last of thecrowd was drifting out. The party was over, and with it went theadrenaline that had elevated his heart rate and tightened his nerves.

He actually preferred the tension because it fended off the depressionand the sense of being overwhelmed and exhausted and confused. Hepreferred action, because the alternative was to be alone in his hotelroom with nothing but the fear to keep him company. The fear that hewasn't doing enough, that he was missing something; that despite theacc.u.mulated knowledge from a thousand or more cases, he had lost hisfeel for the job and was just stumbling around like a newly blinded man.

"Of course, she didn't get a license number," Kovac went on. "Noaddress. No credit card receipt."

"Can she describe him?"

"Sure. He was about four inches long and made a sound like a meatgrinder when he came."

"That'll be an interesting lineup."

"Yeah. Just another pathetic yuppie with an SUV and a wife who won'tgive him a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b."

Quinn looked at him sharply. "A what?"

"A wife who-" "The other part. He was driving what?"

"A sport utility vehi-" Kovac's eyes rounded and he threw down thecigarette he had been about to light. "Oh, Jesus."

HE MOVES WITH the last of the crowd out of the doors of the communitycenter, picking up bits and pieces of conversation about himself "I wishthey would have talked more about the burning."

"I mean, the FBI guy says this killer looks and acts like anyone else,but how can that be? Setting bodies on fire? That's nuts. He's gotta benuts."

"Or just smart. The fire destroys evidence."

"Yeah, but cutting someone's head off is nuts."

"Don't you think the fire is symbolic?" he asks. "I think maybe the guyhas some kind of religious mania. You know: ashes to ashes and allthat."

"Maybe' "I'll bet when they catch him, the cops find out he had somekind of religious fanatic stepfather or something. A mortician, maybe,"he says, thinking of the man who had been involved with his motherduring much of his youth. The man who had believed he had been chargedby G.o.d to redeem her through s.e.xual subjugation and beatings.

"Sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Going around torturing and killing women because of hisown inadequacies. Should have been drowned in a sack at birth."

"And these creeps always put everything off on their mothers. Like theyhave no minds of their own."

He wants to grab the two women saying these things. Grab them by theirthroats, scream his name in their purpling faces, and crush theirwindpipes with his bare hands. The anger is now a living flame,bluecentered and hot.

"I've read about that Quinn. He's brilliant. He caught that childkillerout in Colorado."

"He can interrogate me anytime he wants," the other woman says.

"George Clooney's got nothing on him."

They laugh, and he wants to pull a claw hammer out of the air and smashtheir skulls in with it. He feels the heat of the fire in his chest.

His head is throbbing. The need is a fever just beneath the surface ofhis skin.

Outside the community center, the parking lot is in a state of gridlock.

He goes to the car and leans back against it, crossing his arms.

"No point trying!" he calls to one of the uniformed cops directingtraffic.

"Might as well wait it out."

The idiot. Who in this picture is inadequate? Not the Cremator, b.u.t.those who look for him and look at him and see a common man.

He watches others exit the building and come out onto the sidewalk. Theyellow-white floodlight washes over them. Some are citizens. Some arecops a.s.signed to the task force. Some he recognizes.

Quinn emerges from a side door toward the back of the buildinga spot themedia had chosen to ignore. He rushes out with no overcoat and standsjust out of cover of the shadows in the doorwell, hands on hips,shoulders square, his breath clouding the air as he looks around.

Looking for me, Agent Quinn? The inadequate loser with the mothercomplex? The mental monster. You're about to find out what a monsterreally is.

The Cremator has a plan. The Cremator will be a legend. The killer whobroke John Quinn. The ultimate triumph for the ultimate killer over theultimate hunter of his kind.

He slides behind the wheel of the car he has driven here, starts themotor, adjusts the heater, and curses the cold. He needs a warmerhunting ground. He backs the car out of the slot and follows a silverToyota 4Runner out of the parking lot and into the street.

CHAPTER 16.

KATE PILOTED THE 4RUNNER carefully into the narrow, ancient garage thatsat just off the alley behind her house. During the winter months sheregularly dreamed of an attached garage, but then spring would come andthe backyard perennial beds would bloom and she would forget about theha.s.sle of tromping through the snow, and the danger of walking in a darkalley in a city with a disturbing number of s.e.x crimes.

The wind scrambled and scattered the dead leaves that lay in a driftalong the side of the neighbor's garage. A little shiver snaked downKate's back, and she paused to turn and stare back into the darknessbehind her-just in case. But it was only her natural paranoia compoundedby the knowledge that 4he meeting she had just attended had been stagedfor the sole purpose of baiting a serial killer.

Old feelings from her days in the BSU came rushing back. Memories ofunspeakable crimes that were the topics of casual conversation aroundthe water cooler. Serial murder had been such an ingrained part of herworld, that kind of idle talk hadn't seemed strange to her until towardthe end of her career-after Emily died. Death had then suddenly taken ona more personal quality, and she had lost the veneer of detachment thatwas necessary for people in law enforcement.

Finally, she hadn't been able to stand it anymore.

She wondered how John still did .. . if he did. He'd looked paletonight, gaunt and gray in the harsh lights. Back in the old days, hiscoping strategy had been overwork. He didn't have to deal with feelingsif he was too busy to face them. That probably hadn't changed.

And what did she care if it had or not?

She slid the key into the back-door dead bolt and paused again beforeturning it, the hair rising up on the back of her neck. Slowly, she turned, straining to see past the reach of the motion-detector lightinto the shadowed corners of the yard. It struck her then that she'dleft her cell phone in the truck. In the truck, across the yard in the creepy garage.

Screw it. She could pick up any messages from the house phone. If therewas a G.o.d, none of her clients would have a crisis tonight. And shecould settle into a hot tub with a gla.s.s of her favorite coping method.This case might kill her, but at least she'd die clean and pleasantlynumb.

No maniac rushed to push his way in the door behind her, and no maniacwaited in the kitchen with a butcher knife. Thor ran in to complainloudly at the late dinner hour. Kate tossed her purse on the counter andclicked on the small television to catch the news. With one hand she unb.u.t.toned her coat, with the other she reached into the fridge for thecat food and then the bottle of Sapphire.

The lead story on the ten o'clock news was the meeting. There was a clipof the crowd-Toni Urskine and her Phoenix women prominent in theshot-Chief Greer thumping the podium, and John looking grave as he spokeabout the Bureau's role in the investigation.

Grave and handsome. The camera had always loved his face. He had agedhard, and even that looked good on him-the lines fanning out beside hiseyes, the gray in his close-cropped hair. His physical, s.e.xual appealhit her on a basic level she couldn't block, and could only pretend toignore.

Then it was back to the anchor, who rehashed the facts of the caseswhile photographs of Peter and Jillian Bondurant filled one corner ofthe screen.

Reward and hotline information followed, and they were on to the nexthot topic: beat cops warming themselves these chilly nights in the stripclubs downtown.

Kate left the news to Thor and wandered into the dining room, flippingon the old mission-style chandelier she had salvaged and rewiredherself, thinking about the Bondurant connection and how Jillian did ordidn't fit the victim profile.

"d.a.m.n you, John," she muttered.

"We'll talk about the case. I've got some ideas Id like to bounce offYOU."

"It's not my job. I'm not with BSU anymore."

"You were an expert in the field .. .

And he had access to every expert in the field. He didn't need her.

She hung her coat on the back of a chair and sat down at the oak tableshe'd refinished that first summer after she'd left the Bureau.

She had been wound, wired, still reeling from Emily's death and thewreck of both her marriage and her relationship with Quinn. Life as sheknew it had ended, and she had to start over again. Alone, except forthe ghosts.

She'd never told anyone close to her about Quinn, not her sister or herparents. They didn't know her resignation from the Bureau had come undera cloud of scandal. She couldn't have adequately explained theconnection she'd felt to Quinn as Steven had drifted away from her on atide of grief and anger. Even severed, that connection had been tooprecious to share with people who wouldn't understand.

And her parents wouldn't have understood any more than any of hercolleagues back in Quantico had.

She'd had an affair, cheated on her husband. She was a villain. That waswhat people wanted to believe-the worst and most sordid. No one wantedto know how alone she'd felt, how in need of comfort and support she'dbeen. They didn't want to hear about the powerful pull of something farbeyond physical attraction that had drawn her to John Quinn-and he toher.