Ashes to Ashes Read Free Page B

she were the boss and the decision was hers to make.
    Sabin looked annoyed. “What case is this?”
    “Melanie Hessler. She was raped by two men in the alley behind the adult bookstore she works in downtown,” Kate explained. “She’s very fragile, and she’s terrified about the trial. She couldn’t take me abandoning her—especially not to a man. She needs me. I won’t let her go.”
    Rob huffed a sigh.
    “Fine,” Sabin declared impatiently. “But this case is priority one. I don’t care what it takes. I want this lunatic out of business. Now.”
    Now that the victim would garner more than a minute and a half on the six o’clock news. Kate had to wonder how many dead prostitutes it would have taken to get Ted Sabin to feel that same level of urgency. But she kept the question to herself and nodded, and tried to ignore the sense of dread that settled in her stomach like a lead weight.
    Just another witness, she told herself. Just another case. Back to the usual, familiar entanglements of her job.
    Like hell.
    A dead billionaire’s daughter, a case full of politicos, a serial killer, and someone winging in from Quantico. Someone from ISU. Someone who hadn’t been there five years ago, she had to hope—but knew that hope was a flimsy shield.
    Suddenly, Las Vegas didn’t seem so bad after all.
     
     
     

Chapter

3
     
     
    “THIS HAPPENED IN the night. It was dark. How much could she have seen?” Kate asked.
    The three of them walked together through the underground concourse that ran beneath Fifth Street and connected the government center to the depressing Gothic stone monstrosity that housed the Minneapolis city government offices and the Minneapolis police department. The underground corridor was busy. No one was going out onto the street voluntarily. The gloomy morning had turned dour as a leaden sky sank low above the city and let loose with a cold, steady rain. November: a lovely month in Minnesota.
    “She told the police she saw him,” Rob said, trundling along beside her. His legs were short for his body, and hurrying gave him the toddling gait of a midget, even though he was of average height. “We have to hope she saw him well enough to identify him.”
    “I’d like a composite sketch in time for the press conference,” Sabin announced.
    Kate ground her molars. Oh, yeah, this was going to be a peach of a case. “A good sketch takes time, Ted. It pays to get it right.”
    “Yes, well, the sooner we get a description out there, a picture out there, the better.”
    In her mind’s eye she could envision Sabin wringing information out of the witness, then tossing her aside like a rag.
    “We’ll do everything we can to expedite the situation, Mr. Sabin,” Rob promised. Kate shot him a dirty look.
    The city hall building had at one time in its history been the Hennepin County courthouse, and had been constructed with a sense of sober grandiosity to impress visitors. The Fourth Street entrance, which Kate seldom had cause to pass through, was as stunning as a palace, with a marble double grand staircase, incredible stained glass, and the enormous
Father of the Waters
sculpture. The main body of the building had always reminded her of an old hospital with its tiled floor and white marble wainscoting. There was forever a vacant feeling about the place, although Kate knew it was all but bursting at the seams with cops and crooks, city officials and reporters and citizens looking for justice or a favor.
    The criminal investigative division of the PD had been crammed into a gloomy warren of rooms at the end of a cavernous hall while remodeling went on in their usual digs. The reception area was cut up with temporary partitions. There were files and boxes stacked everywhere, beat-up dingy gray metal file cabinets had been pushed into every available corner. Tacked to the wall beside the door into the converted broom closet that now housed sex crimes investigators was a sign that