Ashes to Ashes by Tami Hoag Page B

doesn’t cough up.”
    Kovac narrowed his eyes as if he were playing the theory through again for review. “No ransom demand we know of, and she’s been missing since Friday. Still, maybe … But you don’t think so.”
    “I’ve never seen it happen that way, that’s all,” Quinn said. “As a rule, with this type of murder you get a killer with one thing on his mind: playing out his fantasy. It’s got nothing to do with money—usually.”
    Quinn turned a little more toward Kovac, knowing this was the member of the task force he most needed to win over. Kovac was the investigative lead. His knowledge of these cases, of this town, and of the kind of criminals who lived in its underbelly would be invaluable. Trouble was, Quinn didn’t think he had the energy left to pull out the old I’m-just-a-cop-like-you routine. He settled for some truth, instead.
    “The thing about profiling is that it’s a proactive tool based on the reactive use of knowledge gained from past events. Not a perfect science. Every case could potentially present something we’ve never seen before.”
    “I hear you’re pretty good though,” the detective conceded. “You nailed that child-killer out in Colorado right down to his stutter.”
    Quinn shrugged. “Sometimes all the pieces fit. How long before you can get your hands on Bondurant’s medical records for comparison with the body?”
    Kovac rolled his eyes. “I oughta change my name to Murphy. Murphy’s Law: Nothing’s ever easy. Turns out, most of her medical records are in
France
,” he said as if France were an obscure planet in another galaxy. “Her mom divorced Peter Bondurant eleven years ago and married a guy with an international construction firm. They lived in France. The mother’s dead, stepfather still lives there. Jillian came back here a couple of years ago. She was enrolled at the U—University of Minnesota.”
    “The Bureau can help get the records via our legal attaché offices in Paris.”
    “I know. Walsh is already on it. Meantime, we’ll try to talk to anyone who was close to Jillian. Find out if she had any moles, scars, birthmarks, tattoos. We’ll get pictures. We haven’t turned up any close friends yet. No boyfriend anyone knows of. I gather she wasn’t exactly a social butterfly.”
    “What about her father?”
    “He’s too distraught to talk to us.” Kovac’s mouth twisted. “‘Too distraught’—that’s what his lawyer says. If I thought somebody whacked my kid, I’d be fucking distraught, all right. I’d be climbing all over the cops. I’d be living in their back pockets, doing anything I could to nail the son of a bitch.” He cocked an eyebrow at Quinn. “Wouldn’t you?”
    “I’d turn the world upside down and shake it by its heels.”
    “Damn right. I go over to Bondurant’s house to break the news this might be Jillian. He gets a look like I’d hit him in the head with a ball bat. ‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God,’ he says, and I think he’s gonna puke. So I don’t think much of it when he excuses himself. The son of a bitch goes and calls his lawyer and he never comes out of his study again. I spend the next hour talking to Bondurant via Edwyn Noble.”
    “And what did he tell you?”
    “That Jillian had been to the house Friday night for dinner and he hadn’t seen her since. She left around midnight. A neighbor corroborates. The couple across the street were just getting home from a party. Jillian’s Saab pulled onto the street just as they turned onto the block at eleven-fifty.
    “Peter Filthy Fucking Rich Bondurant,” he grumbled. “My luck. I’ll be writing parking tickets by the time this thing is through.”
    He finished his cigarette, dropped it on the tarmac, and ground out the butt with the toe of his shoe.
    “Too bad DNA tests take so damn long,” he said, jumping back to the matter of identification. “Six weeks, eight weeks. Too damn long.”
    “You’re checking missing persons