Vanlees hesitated, struggled. Quinn waited, held his breath.

"I just want the truth, Gil. If you're innocent, it won't hurt you.

It's just between us. Man to man."

The silence stretched.

"I-I know it was wrong," Vanlees murmured at last. "I didn't really mean

to do it. But I was checking the yards one night, making the rounds-"

"When was this?"

"This summer. And .. . I was there "At Jillian's house."

He nodded. "She was playing the piano, wearing a silky robe that wanted

to fall off her shoulder. I could see her bra strap."

"So you watched her for a while," Quinn said, as if it was only natural, any man would do it, no harm.

"Then she slipped the robe off and stood up and stretched."

Vanlees was seeing it all in his mind. His respiration rate had picked

up, and a fine sheen of sweat misted his face. "She started moving her body, like a dance. Slow and very .. . erotic."

"Did she know you were there?"

"I didn't think so. But then she came to the window and pulled the cups of her bra down so I could see her t.i.ts, and she pressed them right to the gla.s.s and rubbed against it," he said in a near whisper, ashamed, thrilled.

"She-she licked the window with her tongue."

"Jesus, that must have been very arousing for you."

Vanlees blinked, embarra.s.sed, looked away. This would be where parts of

the story would go missing. He wouldn't tell about getting an erectionor taking his p.e.n.i.s out and masturbating while he watched her. Thenagain, he didn't have to. Quinn knew his history, knew the patterns...o...b..havior, had seen it over and over in the years of studying criminals.e.xual behavior.

He wasn't learning anything new here about Gil Vanlees. But if the story was true, he was learning something very significant about Jillian Bondurant.

"What'd she do then?" he asked softly.

Vanlees shifted on his chair, physically uncomfortable. "She-she pulled her panties down and she .. . touched herself between her legs."

"She m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed in front of you?"

His face flushed. "Then she opened the window and I got scared and ran.

But later I went back, and she had dropped her panties out the window."

"And those are the panties the police found in your truck. They are

Jillian's."

He nodded, bringing one hand up to his forehead as if to try to hide his face. Quinn watched him, trying to gauge him. Truth or a tale to cover

his a.s.s for having the underwear of a possible murder victim in his possession?

"When was this?" he asked again.

"Back this summer. July."

"Did anything like that ever happen again?"

"No."

"Did she ever say anything about it to you?"

"No. She almost never talked to me at all."

"Mixed signals," Quinn said again. "Did that make you mad, Gil?

That she would strip in front of you, m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e in front of you, then

pretend like nothing happened. Pretend like she hardly knew you, like you weren't good enough for her. Did that p.i.s.s you off9"

"I didn't do anything to her," he whispered.

"She was a tease. If a woman did that to me-got me hard and hot for her, then turned it off-I'd be p.i.s.sed. I'd want to f.u.c.k her good, make her pay attention. Didn't you want to do that, Gil?"

"But I never did."

"But you wanted to have s.e.x with her, didn't you? Didn't some part of

you want to teach her a lesson? That dark side we all have, where we hold grudges and plan revenge. Don't you have a dark side, Gil? I do."

He waited again, the tension coiled tight inside him.

Vanlees looked bleak, defeated, as if the full import of all that had

happened tonight had finally sunk in.

"Kovac is going to try to hang that murder on me," he said. "Because those panties are Jillian's. Because of what I just told you. Even when she was the bad one, not me. That's what's going to happen, isn't it?"

"You make a good suspect, Gil. You see that, don't you?"

He nodded slowly, thinking.

"Her father was there, at the town house," he mumbled. "Sunday morning.

Early. Before dawn. I saw him coming out. Monday his lawyer gave me fivehundred dollars not to say anything."

Quinn absorbed the information in silence, weighing it, gauging it.

Gil Vanlees was a.s.s deep in alligators. He might say anything. He mightsay he'd seen a stranger, a vagrant, a one-armed man near Jillian'sapartment. He chose to say he'd seen Peter Bondurant, and that PeterBondurant had paid him to shut up.

"Early Sunday morning," Quinn said.

Vanlees nodded. No eye contact.

"Before dawn."

"Yes."

"What were you doing around there at that hour, Gil? Where were you thatyou saw him-and that he saw you?"

Vanlees shook his head this time-at the question or at something playingthrough his own mind. He seemed to have aged ten years in the last tenminutes. There was something pathetic about him sitting there in hissecurity guard's uniform, the wanna-be cop playing pretend. The best hecould do.

He spoke in a small, soft voice. "I want to call a lawyer now."

CHAPTER 30.

KATE SAT ON THE OLD LEATHER COUCH in her study, curled into one corner,warding off the old house's morning chill with black leggings, thickwool socks, and a baggy old sweatshirt she hadn't worn in years.

Quinn had given it to her back when. The name of the gym he frequentedwas st.i.tched across the front. That she'd kept it all this time shouldhave told her something, but then, she'd always been selectively deaf.

She had pulled it out of her closet after Quinn had gone to meet withthe task force, freshening it in the clothes drier for a few minutes,and putting it on while it was still warm, pretending it was his warmth.

A poor subst.i.tute for the feel of his arms around her. Still, it madeher feel closer to him somehow. And after a night in his arms, the needfor that was strong.

G.o.d, what an inconvenient time to rediscover love. But given theirprofessions and their lives, what choice did they have? They were bothtoo aware that life held no guarantees. Too aware that they had alreadygiven up too much time they could never get back because of fear andpride and pain.

Kate imagined she could look down from the height of another dimensionand see the two of them as that time had pa.s.sed. Her time spent focusingmyopically on the minutiae of building a "normal" life for herself witha job and hobbies and people she saw socially at the requisite functionsand holidays. Nothing deeper. Going through the motions, pretending notto mind the numbness in her soul. Figuring it was preferable to thealternative. Quinn's time poured into the job, the job, the job. Takingon more responsibility to fill the void, until the weight of itthreatened to crush him. Crowding his brain with cases and facts untilhe couldn't keep them straight. Giving away pieces of himself andmasking others until he couldn't remember what was genuine. Exhaustingthe well of strength that had once seemed almost bottomless. Wearing hisconfidence in his abilities and his judgment as threadbare as the liningof his stomach.

Both of them denying themselves the one thing they had needed most toheal after all that had happened: each other.

Sad, what people could do to themselves, and to each other, Katethought, her gaze skimming across the pages of the victimologies she hadspread out on the coffee table. Four more lives f.u.c.ked up and ruinedbefore they had ever met the Cremator. Five with Angie.

Ruined because they needed love and couldn't find anything but atwisted, cheap replica. Because they wanted things out of their reach.

Because it seemed easier to settle for less than work for more. Because they believed they didn't deserve anything better. Because the peoplearound them who should have, didn't believe they deserved better either.

Because they were women, and women are automatic targets in Americansociety.

All of those reasons made a victim.

Everyone was a victim of something. The difference in people was whatthey did about it--succ.u.mb or rise above and move beyond. The womenwhose pictures lay before her would not be given that choice again.

Kate leaned over the coffee table, skimming her gaze across the reports.

She had called the office to say she was taking some personal time.

She'd been told Rob was out as well, and that office speculation wasthat they had beaten each other up and didn't want anyone to see thebruises.

Kate said it was more likely Rob was still working on his writtencomplaint to put in her personnel file.

At least she was free of him for the day. Which would have been a sweetdeal if not for the photographs she had to look at of burned andmutilated women, and if not for all the emotions and depressingrealities that those photographs evoked.