Bondurant nodded. The tears came harder. Elbows on the table, he cupped

his hands around his eyes.

"There was something from Leblanc?" Quinn ventured.

"That son of a b.i.t.c.h! He killed her as much as I did!"

He curled down toward the tabletop, sobbing hard, a terrible braying

sound tearing from the center of his chest up his throat. Quinn waitedhim out, thinking of Peter coming across Jillian's music as hestraightened and tidied. The music may even have been his primary reasonfor going there, after the incident in his study Friday night, butPeter, out of guilt, would now claim Jillian's welfare had been thepriority.

Quinn leaned forward and laid his hand on Bondurant's wrist across thetable, establishing a physical link, trying to draw him back into themoment. "Peter? Do you know who really killed Jillian?"

"Her friend," he said in a thin, weary voice, his mouth twisting at the irony. "Her one friend. Michele Fine."

"What makes you believe that?"

"She was trying to blackmail me."

"Was?"

"Until last night."

"What happened last night?" Quinn asked.

"I killed her."

EDWYN n.o.bLE WAS on Quinn the second he stepped out the door of the interview room.

"Not one word of that will be admissible in court, Quinn," he promised.

"He waived his rights, Mr. n.o.ble."

"He's clearly not competent to make those decisions."

"Take it up with a judge," Sabin said.

The lawyers turned on each other like a pair of cobras. Yurek pulled

aside the a.s.sistant prosecutor, Logan, to talk about a warrant forMichele Fine's home. Kovak stood ten feet down the hall, leaning againstthe wall, not smoking a cigarette. The lone coyote.

"Need a ride, GQ," he said with a hopeful look.

Quinn made a very Kovac-like face. "I am definitely now a confirmedm.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but, let's go."

THEY RAN THE media gauntlet out of the building, Quinn offering astone-faced "No comment" to every query hurled at him. Kovac: had lefthis car on the Fourth Avenue side of the building. Half a dozenreporters followed them the whole way. Quinn didn't speak until Kovacput the car in gear and roared away from the curb.

"Bondurant says he shot Michele Fine and left her body in theMinneapolis Sculpture Garden. She'd been trying to blackmail him withsome of Jillian's more revealing pieces of music, and with the thingsJillian had allegedly confessed to her. Last night was supposed to bethe big payoff.

He'd bring the money, she'd hand over the music, the tapes she had, etcetera.

"At that point, he didn't know she'd been involved in Jillian's murder.

He said he was willing to pay to keep the story under wraps, but he tooka gun with him."

"Sounds like premeditation to me," Kovac said, slapping the dashmountlight on the bracket.

"Right. Then Michele shows up with the stuff in a duffel bag. She showshim some sheet music, a couple of ca.s.settes, zips the bag shut.

They make the trade. She starts to go, not thinking he'll look in thebag again."

"Never a.s.sume."

Quinn braced himself and held on to the door as the Lumina made a hardright on a red light. Horns blared.

"He looked. He shot her in the back and left her where she fell."

"What the h.e.l.l was she thinking, giving him the head?"

"She was thinking she'd be long gone before he called the cops," Quinnspeculated. "I noticed travel magazines at her apartment when Liska andI were there the other day. I'll bet she would have gone straight to theairport and got on a plane."

"What about Vanlees? Did he say anything about Vanlees?"

Quinn held his breath as Kovac cut between an MTC bus and a Snap-on toolvan. "Nothing."

"You don't think she was working alone?"

"No. We know she didn't kill on her own. She wouldn't have tried the blackmail on her own either. Willing victims of a s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t arevirtual puppets. Their partner holds the power, he controls them throughphysical abuse, psychological abuse, s.e.xual abuse. No way she did thison her own."

"And Vanlees was in custody by the time this went down."

"They probably had the plan in place and she followed through withoutknowing where he was. She would have been afraid not to. If he's theguy."

"They knew each other."

"You and I know each other. We haven't killed anyone. I have a hard timeseeing Vanlees manipulating anyone at that level. He fits the wrongprofile."

"Who, then?"

"I don't know," Quinn said, scowling at himself rather than at Kovacgunning the accelerator and nearly sideswiping a minivan. "But if we'vegot Fine, then we've got a thread to follow."

FOUR RADIO CARS had arrived ahead of them. The Minneapolis SculptureGarden was an eleven-acre park dotted with more than forty works byprominent artists, the feature piece being a fifty-two-foot-long spoonholding a nine-and-a-half-foot-tall red cherry. The place had to be abit surreal in the best of times, Quinn thought. As a crime scene it wa.s.something out of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland "Report from the localERS," Yurek called as he climbed out of his car. "No gunshot woundsmeeting Michele Fine's description."

"He said they met at the spoon," Quinn said as they walked quickly inthat direction.

"He's sure he hit her?" Kovac asked. "It was dark."

"He says he hit her, she cried out, she went down."

"Over here!" one of the uniforms called, waving from near the bridge ofthe spoon. His breath was like a smoke signal in the cold gray air.

Quinn broke into a jog with the others. The news crews wouldn't be farbehind.

""Is she dead?" Yurek demanded as he ran up'dead? h.e.l.l," the uniformsaid, pointing to a large cherry-red bloodstain in the snow. "She'sgone."

CHAPTER 35.

ROB CAUGHT KATE by the hair and began to pull her up. Kate's fingersclosed around the metal nail file in her pocket. She waited.

This might be the best weapon she would get her hands on. But she had touse it accurately, and she had to use it at the perfect moment.

Strategies ran through her head like rats in a maze, each desperate fora way out.

Rob slapped her face, and the taste of blood bloomed in her mouth like a rose.

"I know you're not dead. You keep underestimating me, Kate," he said.

"Even now you taunt me. That's very stupid."

Kate hung her head, curling her legs beneath her. He wanted herfrightened. He wanted to see it in her eyes. He wanted to smell it onher skin. He wanted to hear it in her voice. That was his thing. Thatwas what he soaked up listening to the tapes of victims-his own victimsand the victims of others. It sickened her to think how many victims hadpoured their hearts out to him, him feeding his sick compulsions ontheir suffering and their fear.

Now he wanted her afraid, and he wanted her submissive. He wanted hersorry for every time she'd ever mouthed off to him, for every time she'ddefied him. And if she gave him what he wanted, his sense of victorywould only further fuel his cruelty.

"I will be your master today, Kate," he said dramatically.

Kate raised her head and gave him a long, level, venomous stare,s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her courage as she sucked at the cut in her mouth. He wouldmake her pay for this, but it seemed the way to go.

Very deliberately, she spit the blood in his face. "The h.e.l.l you will,you miserable little s.h.i.t."

Instantly furious, he swung at her with the sap. Kate ducked the punchand launched herself upward, bringing her right elbow up under his chin,knocking his teeth together. She pulled the nail file and stabbed itinto his neck to the hilt just above his collarbone.

Rob screamed and grabbed at the file, falling back, crashing into thehall table. Kate ran for the kitchen.

If she could just get out of the house, get to the street. Surely hewould have disabled her car somehow, or blocked it in. To get help, shehad to get to the street.

She dashed through the dining room, knocking chairs over as she ranpast.

Rob came behind her, grunting as he hit something, swearing, spittingthe words out between his teeth like bullets.

He couldn't outrun her on his stubby legs. He seemed not to have a gun.

Through the kitchen and she was home free. She'd run to the neighboracross the street. The graphic designer who had his office in his attic.

He was always home.

She burst into the kitchen, faltered, then pulled up, her heartplummeting.

Angie stood just inside the back door, tears streaming down her face, abutcher's knife in her hand-pointed directly at Kate's chest.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she sobbed, shaking badly.

Suddenly, the conversation that had taken place between Angie and Rob inthe den took on a whole new dimension. Pieces of the truth began to click into place. The picture they made was distorted and surreal.

If Rob was the Cremator, then it was Rob Angie had seen in the park. Yetthe man in the sketch Oscar had drawn at her instruction looked no more like Rob Marshall than he looked like Ted Sabin. She had sat across from him in the interview room, giving no indication . * , In the next secondRob Marshall was through the door behind her and six ounces of steelpacked in sand and bound in leather connected with the back of herskull. Her legs folded beneath her and she dropped to her knees on thekitchen floor, her last sight: Angie Dimarco.

This is why I don't do kids. You never know what they're thinking.

Then everything went dark.

THE TRAVEL MAGAZINES were still scattered on Michele Fine's coffee table with pages folded and destinations circled with notations in themargins.

Get a tan! Too $$$. Nightlife!

The murderer as a tourist, Quinn thought, turning the pages.

When the police checked with the airlines, they might find she hadbooked flights to one or more of those locations. If they were verylucky, they would also find matching flights booked in the name of herpartner.

Whoever he was.

With the amount of blood at the scene in the sculpture garden, it seemedhighly unlikely Fine had taken herself out of the park. Gil Vanlees hadbeen in custody. Both Fine and the money Peter Bondurant had brought tothe scene and subsequently walked away from were gone.

The cops swarmed over the apartment like ants, invading every cupboard,crack, and crevice, looking for anything that might give them a clue asto who Fine's partner in murder was. A scribbled note, a doodled phonenumber, an envelope, a photograph, something, anything. Adler and Yurekwere canva.s.sing the neighbors for information. Did they know her? Hadthey seen her? What about a boyfriend?

The main living areas of the apartment looked exactly as they had theday before. Same dust, same filthy ashtray. Tippen found a crack pipe inan end table drawer.

Quinn went down the hall, glancing into a bathroom worthy of a speedtrapgas station, and on to Michele Fine's bedroom. The bed was unmade.

Clothes lay strewn around the room like outlines where dead bodies hadfallen. Just as in the rest of the apartment, there were no personaltouches, nothing decorative-except in the window that faced south andthe back side of another building.

"Look at the sun catchers," Liska said, moving across the room.

They hung from hooks on little suction cups stuck to the window.