Dust To Dust (21 page)

Neither of them spoke for a moment as an awkward tension fell around them.

"I'm really sorry, Sam," Liska said softly. "I know he meant a lot to YOU."

Kovac sighed. "It's always the tough ones that eat their guns." Liska gave him a little shove. "Hey, you do that to me, I'll revive you just so I can shoot you myself."

He tried to smile but couldn't, so he looked away, to next door. Fallon's neighbor had plywood silhouettes of the three wise men on camels in front of their picture window, hot on the trail of the Christ child. A schnauzer was taking a whiz on one of the camels.

D U S T

T 0

D U S T
143

"I'm not that tough, Tinks"' he confessed. He felt as if all of that old armor had rusted and flaked away, layer by layer, leaving him exposed. Which was worse? Being too hard to feel, too remote to be touched, or being open to feel the touch of other people's lives and emotions, open to being hurt by that contact? Hell of a choi

I
ice on a

day like this. Like trying to decide if you'd rather be stabbed or bludgeoned, he thought.

"Good." Liska put her hand on his back and leaned her head against his shoulder for a few seconds. The contact gave comfort, like something cool against a burn.

Better to be open, he decided, reflecting back on the original question. Even if it hurt more often than not. Sometimes it felt like this. He slipped his arm around his partner's shoulders and gave her a squeeze. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. Really," she teased, straight-faced, as she stepped away. "I have a reputation to uphold. And speaking of people with reputations ... Guess who was seen dining together this morning at that celebrity hot spot Chez Chuck."

Kovac waited.

"Cal Springer and Bruce Ogden." "I'll be damned."

"Strange bedfellows, huh?" "Were they happy to see you?"

"Yeah, like they'd be happy to have head lice. My guess is it wasn't a planned meeting. Cal was sweating like a monk in a whorehouse. He bolted at the first chance."

"He's pretty damn nervous for a man who's been cleared of any wrongdoing."

"I'll say. And Ogden . . ." She looked out at the street as if she might find something there to compare him to. A garbage truck rumbled past. "That guy's like a keg of mitro with a tricky detonator. I'd love a peek in his personnel jacket."

"Savard told me she'll check Fallon's case file regarding the Curtis investigation. See what notes he might have made about Ogden, whether Ogden threatened him, that kind of thing."

"But she wouldn't let you see the file." "No."

"You're losing your touch, Sam."

He huffed a laugh. "What touch? I'm hoping she gets so sick of the

A M

sight of me she gives me what I want Just to make me go away. Aversion therapy."

"Well, I have to say, if I weren't such the tough cupcake, Ogden would have given me a little chill this morming"' Liska admitted. "There we are, him getting in my face, and all I could think of was Curtis-beaten to death with a ball bat."

Kovac turned it over in his head. "You're thinking what if Ogden was the one harassing Curtis and went off on him for complaining to IA. But Ogden would never have been privy to the Curtis investigation if there'd been any beef about him harassing Curtis in the past. That shit only happens in the movies."

"Yeah," Liska said on a sigh. "If you were Mel Gibson and I were Jodie Foster, that could happen."

"Mel Gibson's short."

"Okay. If you were ... Bruce Willis." "He's short and bald."

"Al Pacino?"

"Looks like someone dragged him down a gravel road behind a truck."

Liska rolled her eyes. "Jesus. Harrison Ford?" "He's getting kind of old."

"So are you," Liska pointed out, then looked at the street again. "Where's the CSU?" She bounced up and down a little on the balls of her feet. She wasn't wearing a hat, and the rims of her ears had turned bright pink in the cold.

"At a terminal domestic situation," Kovac said." Get this. Conu-nonlaw wife says she got fed up with the hubby raping her when she was passed out drunk-after nine years of it. She stabbed him in the chest, face, and groin with a busted vodka bottle."

"Wow. Absolut homicide."

"Good one. Anyway, they'll be a little while."

"I'll do the Polaroids, then." She held her hand out for his car keys so she could go get the camera.

By the book. Every violent death was processed like a homicide. Kovac went back into the house with her and started making notes. There was a certain comfort in the routine, provided he didn't remind himself the victim had been his mentor once upon a lifetime ago. Liska made none of the usual dark jokes they used to take the edge off a horrific death scene. For a time the only sound was the

D U S T

T 0

D U S T
145

click and whir of the camera as it spat out one gruesome photo after another. When he realized the sound had stopped, Kovac looked up from his notebook.

Liska was squatting down in front of Fallon, staring at him as if she expected him to answer some question she had asked telepathically. "What?" Kovac asked.

She didn't answer, but stood and glanced from wall to wall in the narrow bathroom, then over her shoulder and back. Her brows puckered together and she made a little knot of her mouth. "Why'd he back in?"

"Huh?" "This room is narrow, besides the obstacles of the toilet and sink. Why'd he back in? That had to be tricky. Why bother?"

Kovac considered the old man and the question.
"He goes in frontwise, whoever opens the door opens it on the hamburger side of his head. Maybe he wanted to preserve a little dignity."

"Then he might have had the consideration to put on some clothes, don't you think? Those skivvies don't exactly scream 'Respect me."'

" Suicides don't always make sense. Someone's gonna take and eat a thirty-eight slug, he's not exactly in his right mind. And you know as well as I do-plenty of people off themselves in the can.You'd think they were gonna have to clean up the mess themselves."

Liska said nothing. Her attention had gone to the floor, dingy vinyl that had been mostly white twenty years ago. Behind Fallon, the vinyl had taken a spray of blood flecked with bits of bone and chunks of brain matter that looked like overcooked macaroni. In front of him: nothing. The shower curtain was a mess; the door they had entered through was clean.

Anyone corming into-or going out of-the room had a clean path. No blood to step in or to'mark fingerprints.

"If he'd been a billionaire with a young, pretty wife, I'd say you9re on a hot scent, Tinks," Kovac said. "But he was a bitter old man in a wheelchair who just lost his favorite son. Whatd he have left to live for? He was torn up about Andy, couldn't forgive himself for not forgiving the boy. So he rolled it in here, parked it, and capped himself And he did it the way he did it to make a neat death scene
o none of us would come busting in here and step on his brain."

I Liska pointed the Polaroid at the .38 on the floor and snapped one last shot.

"That'll be his old service weapon," Kovac said. "When we look around, we'll find that he kept it in a shoe box in the back of his closet, 'cause that's where old cops always stash their guns." He made a sharp, hard-edged smile. "That's where I stash mine, if you want to come and take it away from me.We7re pathetic creatures of pattern and habit." He stared at Fallon. "Some of us more pathetic than others."

"You're sounding a little bitter yourself, Kojak," Liska said, handing the snapshots to him.

He slipped them into the inside breast pocket of his topcoat. "How can I look at this and not be?"

From another part of the house came the thump of an exterior door closing. Kovac gladly turned away from the corpse and started down the hall.

"It's about damn time," he barked, then pulled up short at the same time Neil Fallon stopped dead in the archway between the living room and dining room.

He looked as if he'd been rolled. His hair stood up on one side, a purpling bruise crowned the crest of his right cheek, and his lip was spht.The brown suit looked slept.in. The cheap tie was askew and the top button of the white shirt undone. He couldn't have gotten the collar closed with a winch. He'd obviously bought the shirt a couple of neck sizes ago and hadn't had occasion to wear it since.

He gulped a couple of breaths, pumping himself up.

"Jesus Christ, he can't even leave this to me?" he said, his expression sliding from shock to anger. "I can't even drive him to the goddamn funeral home? He's gotta have one of his own for that too? The son of a bitch-"

"He's dead, Neil," Kovac said bluntly. "Looks like he shot himself. I'm sorry.,,

Fallon stared at him for a full minute, then shook his head in amazement. "You're the regular Angel of Death, aren't you?"

"Just the messenger."

Fallon turned around as if he might walk right back out the front door, but he just stood there with his hands on his hips, the bull shoulders rising and falling.

Kovac waited, thinking about another cigarette and that glass of whiskey he'd wanted earlier. He remembered the bottle of Old Crow Neil had had out in his shed the day he'd told him about his brother,

D U S T

T 0

D U S T
147

and how they had stood out in the cold and shared it while they stared at the snow blowing across the frozen lake. It seemed a year ago.

"When did you last talk to Mike?" he asked, falling back on the routine, same as he always did.

"Last night. On the phone." "What time was that?"

Fallon started to laugh, a harsh, discordant sound. "You're some piece of work, Kovac," he said, starting to pace a small circle at the far end of the dining room table. "My brother and my old man dead inside a week and you're giving me the fucking third degree.You're something. I hadn't seen the old man five times in the last ten years, and you think maybe I killed him.Why would I bother?"

"That's not why I asked, but as long as you've brought it up, I'll need to know for the record where you were this morning between midnight and four A.M."

"Fuck you."

"I think I'd remember that. Must have been someone else." "I was home in bed."

"Got a wife or girlfriend to corroborate?" "I've got a wife.We're separated."

Fallon looked around as if searching for some neutral third party to witness what was happening to him now, but there was no one. He paced some more and shook his head, the anger and frustration building visibly.

He made a little lunge toward Kovac and bounced back, jabbing the air with a forefinger, a grimace contorting his face. "I hated that old son of a bitch! I fucking hated himl"

Tears squeezed out of his tightly closed eyes and rolled over his cheeks. "But he was my old man," he said, and sucked in a quick breath. "And now he's dead. I don't need any shit from you!"

He stopped pacing and bent over with his hands on his knees, as if he'd taken a blow to the stomach. He groaned in the back of his throat. "Christ, I'm gonna be sick."

Kovac moved to block the path to the bathroom, but Fallon went for the kitchen instead and straight out the back door.

Kovac started to follow, then pulled up as the head of the crime scene unit walked in the front door. just as well. By the time he was able to join Neil Fallon on the back steps, any gastrointestinal pyrotechnics had subsided. Fallon stood leaning against the railing, staring at the backyard,

148
T A M

sipping out of a shin metal flask. His skin looked slightly gray, his eyes rimmed in red. He didn't acknowledge Kovac's presence, but pointed to a naked oak tree in the far corner of the yard.

"That was the hanging tree," he said without emotion. "When Andy and I were kids."

"Playing cowboys."

"And pirates, and Tarzan, and whatever. He should have come back here and done it. Andy hanging dead in the backyard, Iron Mike in the house with his head blown off. I could have come and parked my car in the garage and gassed myself"

"Howd Mike sound last night on the phone?"

"Like an asshole, like always.'I wanna be at the goddamn funeral home by ten o'clock."' The impersonation was less than flattering, but not less than accurate. "'You can damn well be here on time.' Fucking old prick," he muttered, and swiped a gloved hand under his

running nose.

"What time was that? I'm trying to get a frame for what happened when' " Kovac explained. "We need it for the paperwork."

Fallon stared at the tree and shrugged. "I dunno. I wasn't paying attention. Maybe like nine or something."

"Couldn't have been. I ran into him at your brother's house around nine."

Fallon looked At him. "What were you doing there?"

"Poking around. There's a couple of loose ends need tying up." "Like what? Andy hung himself How can you have any doubts about that?"

"I like to know the why of things," Kovac said. "I'm funny that way. I want to look at what he was working on, what was going on in his personal life, things like that. Fill in the blanks, get the whole picture. You see?"

If Fallon saw, he didn't like it. He turned away and took another pull on the little flask.

"I'm used to people dying," Kovac said. "Drug dealers kill each other over money. junkies kill each other over dope. Husbands and wives kill each other out of hate. There's a method to the madness. Someone like your brother buys it, a guy with everything going for him, I need to try to make some sense of it."

"Good luck."

"Whatd you do to your face?"

0 U S T

T 0

D U S T
149

Fallon tried to shake off the attention. He touched a hand to the bruise on his cheek as if to brush it away. "Nothing. Mixed it up a little in the parking lot with a customer last might."

"Over what?"

"He made a remark. I took exception and said something about his sexual preferences and a sheep. He took a swing and got lucky." "That's assault," Kovac pointed out. "You call the cops?"

Fallon gave a nervous laugh. "That's a good one. He was a cop." "A cop? A city cop?"

"He wasn't in uniform."