Dust To Dust (17 page)

He could see her plainly as she had looked standing beside the desk in her office. A face right off a Hollywood glossy from the days of black-and-white and Verom*ca Lake. And he somehow knew that what lay beneath those looks was a mystery worthy of any of the great detectives, real or fictional.That drew him in as much as the looks. He wanted to slip in the secret door and find out what made her tick.

"Like you got a shot, Kovac," he mumbled, amazed by and embarrassed at himself "You and the IA lieutenant.Yeah, that could happen." It struck him then, as he wasted time with thoughts of a woman he

couldn't have, that there was something rmissing from Andy Fallon's desktop. There was no computer. The printer cord with its wide, multi-pinned connector lay there like a flat-headed snake, its other end J oined with an ink-Jet printer. Kovac checked the drawers again, finding a box of blank diskettes. He pulled the drawer with the case files and found that each folder contained a diskette. He went to the bookcase and found, in the collection of instruction manuals for phone/fax, for printer, for stereo equipment, a manual for an IBM ThinkPad laptop computer.

"So where is it?" Kovac asked aloud.

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As he considered possibilities, a sound pierced his consciousnesssharp, electronic, coming from another part of the house. A beep followed by the creak of a floorboard. He flicked off the desk lamp, plunging the room into darkness. His hand went automatically to the Glock in his belt holster as he moved to the door, waited for his eyes to adjust, then slipped into the hall.

Out of habit he had turned out the lights as he left each room during his search. Not wanting to attract attention from the neighbors. The only light now was muted and white, coming in through the glass panes in the front door. Enough to backlight the figure of a person.

Kovac pulled the Glock and leveled it in his right hand, located the hall light switch with his left.

The figure near the front door lifted a hand close to the face. Kovac held his breath, waiting for the click of a trigger.

"Yes, it's me," a man's voice. "I'm at the house. I-" "Freeze! Police!" Kovac yelled, hitting the switch.

The man started, letting out a cry, eyes going wide, then squinting against the light, free hand coming up as if to ward off bullets. A tinny voice squawked out of the cell phone in his hand.

"No, it's all right, Captain Wyatt," he said, slowly lowering his free hand. The cell phone was still pressed to his ear. "Just one of the city's finest, doing his job-"

Kovac took a good long look at the man before him, keeping the Glock out because' he was pissed now and wanted to show it. He recognized the face from the party. Mr. Too Handsome with the black hair and the smell ofAce Wyatt's ass on his breath.

"Hang up the phone," Kovac ordered crossly. Too Handsome stared at him. "But it's-"

"Close the goddamn phone, Slick.What are you doing walking in here?This is a secure police scene."

Wyatt's man clicked the little phone shut and slipped it into the inner breast pocket of an expensive charcoal topcoat. "Captain Wyatt asked me to meet him here.You might think that would be reason enough-"

"You might think wrong, Slick," Kovac snapped, coming forward, gun still in hand. "I could have blown your pretty head off. You never heard of a doorbell?"

"Why would I ring the bell at a dead man's house?" "Why would you come here at all?"

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"Captain Wyatt's on his way with Mike Fallon. Mr. Fallon has to select burial attire for his son," he explained, using the kind of tone one might use on ignorant hired help. "I work for Captain Wyatt. Gavin Gaines is my name, in case you get tired of calling me Slick."

The smile was a little too self-amused, Kovac thought. Collegeeducated pricks were his least-favorite kind.

"Should I assume the position?" Gaines asked, hands out at his sides. Outside a car door slammed.

"Don't be a smartass." Kovac slid the Glock back into its holster. "Like you can help it.What exactly do you do for Captain America?" "Personal assistant, public relations, media liaison. Whatever he needs."

Translation: toady, gofer, suckup.

"He needs you to help get Mr. Fallon in the house," Kovac said, going to the door and opeming it. "Or win that muss the look?" Gaines gritted the perfect teeth. "Like I said, whatever he needs. I live to serve."

It took the two of them to negotiate the steps with Fallon, Mike hanging on them, deadweight. Worse than when he had been drunk, Kovac thought. Grief had somehow increased his body mass; the desperation of it had sapped his strength. Ace Wyatt brought the wheelchair.

"Sam, I hear you nearly took out my right hand here," Wyatt joked. Mr. Congeniality

"If you're paying him per brain cell, he probably owes you some change back," Kovac said. "He's a little short in the commonsense department."

"What makes you say that? It's not as if Gavin was walking into a crime scene. He had no reason to expect anyone to be here.Why are you here, by the way?"

"Just doing the usual walk-through," Kovac said. "Looking for pieces."

"You know Andy's death has been ruled an accident:' Wyatt said in a hushed tone, his gaze on Mike Fallon sitting slumped in his wheelchair. Gaines stood farther into the room, waiting with his hands folded in front of him and a thousand-yard stare going off in the direction of the Christmas tree. A look he'd probably picked up watching actors play Secret Service agents in the movies.

"So I heard," Kovac said. "That was big of you, Ace, moving things along the way you did."

Wyatt missed the bite in Kovac's voice. "Well, what was the point of prolonging Mike's misery? Whose interest would be served caning it suicide?"

"The insurance company. Fuck 'em."

"Mike gave the department everything," Wyatt said. "His legs. His son. The least they can do is pay out the benefits and put a better face on it."

"So you've seen to it."

"My last great act as captain." He flashed a tired version of the famous smile. His skin looked a little jaundiced under the hall light, and the lines at the corners of his eyes seemed chiseled deeper than two nights ago. No makeup.

His last great act. Fitting, Kovac thought, considering the case that had launched Ace Wyatt's stardom within the department had been the one that had brought Mike Fallon down.

"Where's my boy?" Mike roared. Wyatt looked away.

Kovac squatted beside the chair. "He's gone, Mikey. Remember? I told you."

Fallon stared at him, face slack, eyes vacant. But he knew. He knew his son was gone, knew he was going to have to face it, deal with it, carry on. But if he could pretend for just a little while ... An old man should be entitled to that.

"I can take care of selecting the clothes, if you'd like, Captain," Gaines offered, moving toward the stairs.

"You want that, Mike?" Kovac asked. "You want a stranger picking what your boy wears to the hereafter?"

"He won't go," Fallon mumbled, bleak. "He took his own life. That's a mortal sin.,,

"You don't know that, Mikey. Might have been an accident, like the ME said."

Fallon stared at him for several seconds. "I know. I know what he was. I know what he did."

His eyes filled and he started to shake. "I can't forgive him, Sam," he whispered, clutching Kovac's forearm. "God help me. I can't forgive him. I hated him. I hated him for what he was doing!"

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"Don't talk that way, Mike," Wyatt said. "You don't mean it."

"Let him say what he needs to," Kovac said shortly. "He knows what he really means."

"Why couldn't he just do like I said?" Fallon mumbled, talking to himself or his God-the one who kept a bouncer at heaven's gate to keep out gays and the suicidal and whoever else didn't fit within the confines of Mike Fallon's narrow mind. "Why?"

Kovac touched the old man's head. A cop-to-cop benediction. "Come on, Mikey. Let's go do it."

They left the wheelchair at the foot of the stairs. Again, Kovac and Gaines carried Mike Fallon.Wyatt brought up the rear of the procession.They set the old man on the edge of the bed with his back to the mirror that bore the apology for his son's death. But there was nothing to do about the smell-a smell every cop knew too well.

Mike Fallon hung his head and began to cry silently, lost in the torment of wondering where it had all gone so wrong for his boy. Gaines went to the window and looked out.Wyatt stood at the foot of the bed and stared at the mirror, frowning.

Kovac went into the closet to pull out a couple of Andy Fallon's suits, and wondered who would do the chore for him when the

time came.

"You like one of these, Mike?" he asked, coming out of the closet with a blue suit in one hand and a dark gray in the other.

Fallon didn't answer. He stared across the room at the photograph on the dresser. The one of Andy's graduation from the academy. A frozen split second of pride and i OY.

"A man should never outlive his kids," he said bleakly. "He ought to die before they can break his heart."

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A M A N S H 0 U L D never outlive his kids. He shouldn't have.

He hadn't.

He can see the scene unfold before his eyes, as plainly as if two decades hadn't passed: The still night. The squeak of his shoes. The sound of his own breathing.

The house seems huge. A trick of the adrenaline rush. The back door stands ajar.

In the kitchen.White fluorescent under-counter lights humming like high-voltage wires. Pass through into darkness. Rooms dark, moon bright and beaming through windows. A silence that presses like fingers against his eardrums. Seconds that pass in slow mot'

ion. He moves with athleticism. (The feeling is vivid, even though he hasn't been able to feel anything below his waist for twenty years. He remembers the tension in each and every muscle of his body-his legs, his back, the fingers of his left hand curled around the grip of his gun, the contractions of his heart.)

Then there it is. Surprise at the sight of something he can't quite remember. Death in a sudden blue-white flash. An explosion so loud-The power of it knocks him backward even as he shoots in reflex.

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Officer down.

Blind. Deaf Floating. Disbelief Panic. Release. I'm dead.

He wishes he had stayed that way.

He stares in the darkness, listens to his own breathing, feels his own frailty, feels his own mortality, and wonders for the millionth time whyhe didn't check out that night. He has wished it often enough but has never done anything about it, has never found the nerve. Instead, he's stayed alive, steeping himself in bitterness and booze and drugs. Twenty years in purgatory. Never emerging because he won't look the demons in the face.

He faces one now. Even in his drugged state, he sees it clearly and recognizes it for what it is: the Demon of Truth. The Angel of Death. It speaks to him calrrdy and quietly. He sees its mouth move, but the sound seems to come from within his own head.

Time to die, Mike. A man should never outlive his kids.

He stares at his old service revolver, a squat .38 with a big scar on the butt where the bullet that severed his spinal cord had cut deep on its way to his body. The gun they said he had killed his killer with that night, the last night of his career.

He hears a little cry of fear and guesses it must have come from his own body, though it sounds far away. His hands try to push at the wheels of his chair, as if his body were trying to escape the fate his Mind has already accepted. Strange.

He wonders if it was this way for Andy-fear swelling as the noose tightened around his throat. God, the feelings that image sets loose inside him! Embarrassment, rage. Guilt and hate and love.

"I loved him:'he says, his speech slurred. Spittle runs down his chin from the corner of his mouth. "I loved him, but I hated him! He did that. It was his own fault."

Saying it is like plungin a knife into his chest over and over.Yet he

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can't stop saying it, thinking it, hating Andy, hating himself.What kind of man hates his own son? He cries again, a loud, agonized wail that rises and falls and rises and falls, like a siren's call. Only the demon hears him. He is alone in the world, alone in the night. Alone with his demon, the Angel of Death.

A man should never outlive his kids. He ought to die before they can break

his heart. Or before he can break theirs. You killed him. You hated him. You killed him -

"But I loved him too. Don't you see?"

I saw what you did to him, how you broke his heart. He did everythingfor you, and you killed him.

"No. No," he says, tastmig tears. Panic and anguish swell like a tumor in the base of his throat. "He wouldn't listen. I told him. I told him ... Goddamn him:'he sobs. "Goddamn fag."

The pain tears out of him in a raw scream and he flails his arms at the demon, pawing like an animal.

You killed him.

"How could I do that?" he cried. "My beautiful boy!" You wantfree of it, Mike? End the pain.

End the pain....

The voice is seductive, tempting. He cries out again, nearly choking on the fear as it thrusts up his throat.

End the pain. It's a sin!

It's your redemption. Do it, Mike.

End it.

The cold barrel of the service revolver kisses his cheek. His tears roll over the black steel.

End the pain.

After all these years. Do it.

Sobbing, he opens his mouth and closes his eyes. The flash is blinding.The explosion is deafening. The deed is done.

Smoke drifts in sinuous strings in the silent air. Time passes. A moment. Two. Respect for the dead. Then another flash, and the whir of a motor drive.

The Angel of Death slips the photo in a pocket, turns and walks away.

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S H E W 0 K E F R 0 M a restless, dream-filled sleep and saw him, He stood beside her bed, backlit by the grainy light that seeped around the bathroom door: a huge, faceless silhouette with shoulders like mount
am slopes.