Ashes to Ashes Read Online Free PDF Page A

together. What’re they gonna do? Ask us to leave this rat hole?”
    She watched the girl out of the corner of her eye as Kovac shook two more cigarettes out of the pack. Angie’s fingernails were bitten to the quick and painted metallic ice blue. Her hand trembled as she took the gift. She wore an assortment of cheap silver rings, and two small, crude ballpoint tattoos marred her pale skin—a cross near her thumb, and the letter A with a horizontal line across the top. A professional job circled her wrist, a delicate blue ink bracelet of thorns.
    “You’ve been here all night, Angie?” Kate asked, drawing on the cigarette. It tasted like dried shit. She couldn’t imagine why she had ever taken up the habit in her college days. The price of cool, she supposed. And now it was the price of bonding.
    “Yes.” Angie fired a stream of smoke up at the ceiling. “And they wouldn’t get me a lawyer either.”
    “You don’t need a lawyer, Angie,” Kovac said congenially. “You’re not being charged with anything.”
    “Then why can’t I blow this shithole?”
    “We got a lot of complications to sort out. For instance, the matter of your identification.”
    “I
gave
you my ID.”
    He pulled it from the file and handed it to Kate with a meaningful lift of his eyebrows.
    “You’re twenty-one,” Kate read deadpan, flicking ashes into an abandoned cup of oily coffee.
    “That’s what it says.”
    “It says you’re from Milwaukee—”
    “
Was
. I left.”
    “Any family there?”
    “They’re dead.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I doubt it.”
    “Any family here? Aunts, uncles, cousins, half-related circus freaks? Anyone at all we could call for you—to help you through this?”
    “No. I’m an orphan. Poor me.” She bluffed a sarcastic laugh. “Trust me, I don’t need any family.”
    “You’ve got no permanent address, Angie,” Kovac said. “You have to realize what’s happened here. You’re the only one who can identify a killer. We need to know where you’re at.”
    She rolled her eyes in the way only teenage girls can, imparting both incredulity and impatience. “I
gave
you my address.”
    “You gave me the address for an apartment you don’t have keys for and you can’t tell me the name of who it is you’re staying with.”
    “I
told
you!”
    She pushed up out of her chair and turned away from Kovac, the cigarette in her hand raining ashes on the floor. The blue sweater she wore beneath her jacket was either cropped short or shrunken, revealing a pierced navel and another tattoo—three drops of blood falling into the waistband of her dirty jeans.
    “Her name is Molly,” she said. “I met her at a party and she said that I could crash at her place until I get my own.”
    Kate caught the hint of a tremor in the girl’s voice, the defensive body language as she pulled in on herself and turned away from them. Across the room, the door opened and Liska came in with the coffee.
    “Angie, no one’s trying to jam you up here,” Kate said. “Our first concern is that you’re safe.”
    The girl wheeled on her, her eyes dark blue and glittering with anger. “Your
concern
is that I testify against this psycho Cremator creep. You think I’m nuts? He’ll track me down and kill me too!”
    “Your cooperation is imperative, Angie,” Sabin said with authority. The man in command. “You’re our only witness. This man has killed three women that we know of.”
    Kate shot a dagger look at the county attorney.
    “Part of my job is to see to it that you’re safe, Angie,” she explained, keeping her voice even and calm. “If you need a place to stay, we can make that happen. Do you have a job?”
    “No.” She turned away again. “I been looking,” she added almost defensively. She gravitated toward the corner of the room, where a dirty backpack had been discarded. Kate was willing to bet everything the kid owned was in that bag.
    “It’s tough coming into a new town,” Kate said quietly.