"s.h.i.t," Kovac breathed, backing away from the tub.

He went to the plastic hamper beside the sink and opened it gingerlywith 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?"

I "Call the crime scene guys." He pulled one towel and then another fromthe hamper, both of them wet and b.l.o.o.d.y. "Looks like we've got us acrime scene."

CHAPTER 17.

TONI URSKINE ENTERED the front room still dressed to impress in slimblack 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 leastturn their lights off? This is a neighborhood, Sergeant, and ourneighbors 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 d.a.m.n pain in the a.s.s, I know."

A redhead with the thin, brittle look of a crack addict came into theroom behind Toni Urskine, followed by Gregg Urskine, who looked like amodel for Eddie Bauer in scuffed work boots, jeans, and a flannel shirtopen at the throat to reveal a white T-shirt. He put a hand on theredhead'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 waswatching TV. I saw her go upstairs. She was in the bathroom for a longtime-I could hear the water running. We're not supposed to take longshowers."

: "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. Becauseof Fawn."

"Rita and Fawn Pierce-or, as you call her, victim number two were goodfriends." Toni put a supportive arm around Renner's bony shoulders. "Notthat anyone in your investigation cares."

Kovac held back a scowl. "I'm sorry about the oversight. I'll have adetective come by tomorrow for an interview. My priority tonight isAngie 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 embarra.s.sment 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 youbefore you left for the meeting?" He gave the nervous laugh, and she thought what an annoying habit that was, on a par with the Rob Marshall bootlicker's grin.

"Angie never has anything to say to me. She avoids me like the plague."

"What time did you leave for the meeting?" Kovac asked.

Urskine's brows went up above the rims of his gla.s.ses. "Am I undersuspicion of something?" he asked, pretending to be amused.

Toni glared at Kovac. "We're being punished, Gregg. Can't you see that?

The police don't appreciate having attention called to theirshortcomings."

Kovac gave her the cop eyes. "I'm just trying to get our time linestraight, ma'am. That's all."

"I left not long after Kate," Gregg said. "I must have gotten to themeeting about-what, honey?-eight-thirty, quarter to nine?"

"Something like that," his wife said, pouting. "You were late."

"I was working on the furnace." A muscle flexed in Urskine's jaw, and heturned again to Elwood. "I'll show you that cellar door now."

"Are we free to go, Sergeant?" Toni Urskine asked. "It's been a verylong evening."

"You're telling me," Kovac muttered, waving them off.

Kate followed them out of the room, but took a right to the front door,leaving Toni Urskine to rant to her captive audience of residentsgathered in the living room.

OUR LIVES MATMR TOO. The banner stretched across the front porch of thePhoenix, the oilcloth crackling as the wind picked up.

"It's going to snow," she said, burying her hands in her coat pocketsand hunching her shoulders, not against the weather, but against a coldthat was internal. She wandered to the far end of the porch, almost outof reach of the yellow bug light that hadn't been changed at summer'send, away from the traffic that came and went through the front door.

If Toni Urskine was unhappy with two cruisers parked at the curb, shewould be livid soon, Kate thought as the crime scene people parked theirvan on the front lawn. Uniforms had already begun KOD duty-knocking ondoors in search of a neighbor who might have seen a strange car, or aman on foot, or a man carrying something, or a man and a young womantogether-anything that might give them a time frame or a lead. Despitethe late hour, the neighborhood homes were well lit, and the occasionalfigure could be seen at a window, pulling the drapes back to look out.

"Kate, we don't know what happened," Quinn said.

"Well, I think it's safe to say Angie didn't cut herself shaving herlegs."

A tremor went through her as she saw the blood again in her mind.

The blood on the floor, the blood-streaked tile, the b.l.o.o.d.y towels. Shestiffened against the nauseating weakness seeping through her muscles.

Gotta be tough, Kate. Put those feelings in a box. Put the box in itsproper cubicle. Keep the walls intact.

"Looks this way to me," she said around the knot in her throat.

"He slips into the house through the back. Grabs her upstairs. There's astruggle, judging by the b.l.o.o.d.y handprints in the tub-I'm guessingthey're Angie's, Maybe he kills her, or maybe he just starts thejobprobably the first. And he lets her bleed out in the tub, otherwisethere would have been more mess elsewhere. He wants to make it look like she just left, so he tries to clean up, but he's in a hurry and he doesa poor job of it. Still, even the poor job he did would have bought himsome time if we hadn't come looking tonight."

"How did he know she was here?"

"I don't know. She felt like he was watching her. Maybe he was."

"And how does all this go down with no one hearing, no one seeinganything?"

"He'd already managed to grab, torture, and murder three women withoutanyone hearing or seeing a thing. Rita Renner was asleep on the firstfloor with the television going. It's a big house."

Quinn shook his head. "It doesn't feel right."

"Why not? Because you wanted him to be at the meeting?"

He sat back against the railing, shoulders hunched inside his trenchcoat. "He could still have been at the meeting. We're only a few blocksaway, and the meeting was over half an hour before Kovac and I startedover here. My question is, why would he risk it? The girl hadn't giventhe cops anything worthwhile-not a name, not a decent composite, shepulled nothing from the mug books. Why would he risk this?"

"To show us he can," Kate said. "What a nose-thumbing. The night of themeeting intended to draw him out, he slips into a house and takes theonly witness to his crimes. A killer like this one, he'll have a hard-onthe size of a Louisville Slugger over that. You know it."

Quinn looked over as one of the evidence guys carried a vacuum cleanerinto the house.

"Why did you come here tonight?" Kate asked. "Kovac never said."

"When you told him about Angie and her john in the park Sunday night,you mentioned the guy was in an SUV. I think there's a good chanceSmokey Joe is transporting his bodies to the parks in a truck of somekind. Something resembling a parks department vehicle. Possibly an SUV."

Kate felt her stomach turn. A chill pebbled her flesh from head to toe.

"Oh, G.o.d, John. You don't think he was her customer?"

"It would be right on target. He hates women, particularly the s.e.xuallypromiscuous variety. He's got a dead one in the back of his truck. Hepicks up another and takes her to his dumping grounds to have s.e.x withher.

This excites him. That excitement reminds him of the thrill and stimulation of the kill. At the same time he's mentally a.s.sertingdomination and control over the woman he's with. The secret knowledgethat he could do to his current partner what he did to his victim butchooses not to gives him a sense of control both over her and over hiscompulsion to kill."

"That decision not to kill bolsters his sense of power. And everythingis building toward the burning ceremony-the completion of the cycle,"Kate finished.

"Looks good on paper."

"Angie said the guy shoved her out of his truck and she watched himdrive away. From where he left her, he would have had to have doubledaround to that back lot in a hurry in order for her to have seen himburning that body.."

Quinn moved his shoulders. "It's still just a theory."

A theory from a man who knew more about s.e.xually s.a.d.i.s.tic killers thanperhaps anyone else in the country. Kate stared out into the darkness,watching the cloud of her breath float away.

"But if it was the same guy, why wouldn't she have told me? And whywouldn't she give us a better composite? She saw this john up close andpersonal."

"Those are questions only she can answer."

"And she can't answer them now," Kate said quietly. "It was so hard forher to tell me about it this afternoon. From the beginning of this mess,she'd talk so tough, give so much att.i.tude, but when she finally told meabout this john, it was like she was ashamed. She kept saying that shedidn't like doing it, that she was so sorry. And she cried and cried."

Her own emotions threatened to rise up at the memory, just as they hadthat afternoon with Angie.

"You like this girl," Quinn declared.

She huffed a breath. "What's to like? She's a lying, thieving,foulmouthed prost.i.tute."

"And she needs you," he said simply.