Dust To Dust (22 page)

"How'd you know he was a cop?" "Please. Like I can't spot one a nuile off." "Did you get a name? A badge number?"

"Right. After he knocked me on my ass, I demanded his badge number. Anyway, I don't need the hassle of filing a report. He was Just some asshole knew Andy. He made a crack. We took it outside." "What'd he look like?"

"Like half the cops in the world," Fallon said impatiently. He slipped the flask into his coat pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and went about that ritual, fumbling with his gloves, fingers clumsy with cold--or with nerves. He swore to himself, got the thing lit, took a couple of hard puffi.

"Look, I wish I hadn't said anything. I don't want to do anything with it. I'd had a few myself. I got a mouth on me when I'm tanked." "Big guy? Little guy? White? Black? Old? Young?"

Fallon scowled and fidgeted. He looked as if his skin suddenly didn't fit him right.-He wouldn't meet Kovac's gaze. "I don't even know that I'd know him if I saw him again. It didn't mean anything. It's not important."

"It could mean a hell of a lot," Kovac said. "Your brother worked Internal Affairs. He made enemies for a living."

"But he killed himself," Fallon insisted. "That was what happened, right? He hung himself The case is closed."

"Everyone seems to want it to be." "But you don't?"

"I want the truth-whatever it might be."

Neil Fallon laughed, then sobered, staring once again at the backyard-or back in time. "Then you picked the wrong family, Kovac. The Fallons have never been very dedicated to the truth about anything.

0 A 0

We he to ourselves and about ourselves and about our lives. That's what we do best."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. We're the all-American family, that's what. At least we were before two-thirds of us committed suicide this week."

"Could anyone else at your place ID this guy from last night?" Kovac asked, more concerned for the moment with the notion of Ogden going way the hell out to Neil Fallon's bar and bait shop than he was with the crumbling dynamics of the Fallon fanuily,

"I was working alone." "Other customers?"

"Maybe. Jesus," Fallon muttered, "I wish I'd told you I walked into a door."

"You wouldn't be the first person to try it today," Kovac said. "So, was it before or after the donnybrook when you talked to Mike?" Fallon blew smoke out his nose. Annoyed. "After, I guess. What the hell difference does it make?"

"He was pretty out of it when I saw him. On sedatives or something. If you talked to him after that, I guess he had snapped out of it." "I guess. When it came to chewing my ass, he always rose to the

occasion," he said bitterly. "Nothing was ever good enough. Nothing ever made up."

"Made up for what?"

"That I wasn't him. That I wasn't Andy. You might have thought after he found out Andy was queer ... Well, he's dead now, so what's the difference? It's over. Finally."

He looked at the oak tree once more, then threw the cigarette into the snow and checked his watch. "I have to get to the funeral home. Maybe I can get one in the ground before the other turns cold."

He gave Kovac a sideways look as he went to open the door. "Don't take it personal, but I hope I never see you again, Kovac."

Kovac didn't say anything. He stood on the stoop and looked back at the Fallon brothers' hanging tree, imagiming two young boys with their lives ahead of them, playing good guys and bad guys; the bonds of brotherhood twining the paths of their lives, shaping their strengths and weaknesses and resentments.

If there was one thing from which people never recovered, it was childhood. If there was one tie that could never truly be broken, for good or for ill, it was to family.

D U S T

T 0

He turned the thoughts over in his head like a bear turning over rocks to see what kind of grubs it might find. He thought about the Fallons, and the jealousies and disappointments and anger among them. He thought about the faceless cop Neil Fallon had picked a fight with in the parking lot of the bar and bait shop.

Would Ogden have been stupid enough to go there? Why? Or maybe stupid was the wrong word. What would he stand to gain? Maybe that was the question.

Even as he pondered that, Kovac couldn't stop thinking that Neil Fallon hadn't even asked to see his father. The vic's family usually did. Most people would refuse to believe the bad news until they saw the body with their own eyes. Neil Fallon hadn't asked. And he hadn't taken a step toward the bathroom when he'd said he felt sick. He'd i lit f

gone straig
or the back door.

Maybe he'd wanted air. Maybe he hadn't asked to see his dead father because he wasn't the sort of person who needed the visual image to make the death real, or maybe because he couldn't stomach that kind of thing.

Or maybe they should be running tests for gunpowder residue on Neil Fallon's hands.

The back door opened and Liska stuck her head out. "The vultures have landed."

Kovac groaned. He'd bought some time calling in the request for the crime scene unit over his cell phone, but dispatch would have called the team over the radio, and every reporter in the metro area had a scanner. News of a dead body never failed to bring out the scavengers. According to the press, The People had a right to know about the tragedies of strangers.

"You want me to handle them?" Liska asked.

"No. I'll give them a statement," he said, thinking about the life and times of Mike Fallon, the pain, the loss, the soured love and wasted chances. "How's this? Life's a bitch and then you die."

Liska arched a brow and spoke with heavy sarcasm. "Yeah. There's a headline."

She started to go back inside. Kovac stopped her with a question. "Hey, Tinks, when you saw Ogden this morning, did he look like he'd been in a fight?"

"No. Why?"

152
T A M

0 A G

"Next time you see him, ask him what the hell he was doing at Neil Fallon's bar last Might. See if you get a rise."

Liska looked unhappy. "He was at Fallon's bar?"

"Maybe. Fallon claims some cop was out there making cracks, and they mixed it up in the parking lot."

"Did he describe Ogden?"

"No. He dropped his little bomb, then clarnmed up. He acts like a man who's scared of something. Like retribution maybe."

"Why would Ogden go all the way out there? What would be the point? Even if-God, especially if he had something to do with Andy Fallon or with the Curtis murder. Go out there and pick a fight with Neil Fallon? Not even Ogden is that stupid."

"That's what I'm thinking. And the next logical question is, then why would Neil Fallon he about it if it didn't happen?"

"Neil Fallon, whose father is sitting in the bathroom missing the back of his head?"

Neil Fallon, who was seething with long-held hard feelings. Neil Fallon, who had admitted to a quick, harsh temper. Neil Fallon, who resented his brother and hated his father, even after their deaths.

"Let's do a little digging on Mr. Fallon," Kovac said. "Put Elwood on it, if he's not busy. I'll talk to some of Fallon's customers. See if anyone else saw this phantom cop."

"Will do."

Kovac took one last grim look at the hanging tree. "Make sure the ME'S people bag Mike's hands.We could be looking at a murder, after all."

D U S T

T 0

D U S T
153

C H A P T E

I T W 0 U L D N'T B E a cop funeral like the ones shown on the six o'clock news.The church would not overflow with ranks of uniforms who had rolled in from all over the state. There would be no endless caravan of radio cars to the cemetery. No one was going to play "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes. Andy Fallon had not fillen-in the line of duty. His death had not been heroic.

The place didn't even look like a church, Kovac thought as he left the car in the lot and walked toward the low brick building. Like most churches built in the seventies, it looked more like a municipal building. Only the thin, stylized iron cross on the front gave it away. That and the illuminated sign out near the boulevard.

ST. MICHAEL'S

ADVENT: WAITING FOR A MIRACLE?

MASS WEEKDAYS: 7 A.M.

SATURDAY: 5 Pm.

SUNDAY: 9 A.M. & 11 A.M.

As if rm'racles were performed regularly at those scheduled hours. The hearse was sitting on the circle drive near the side entrance.

154

No nuiracles for Andy Fallon. Maybe if he had come here Saturday at five ...

The wind whipped Kovac's coat around his legs. He bent his head into it to keep his hat. The windchill was in the teens. Mourners moved toward the church from scattershot spots in the parking lot. Cop. Cop.Three civilians together-a man and two women in their late twenties. The cops were in plain clothes, and he didn't know them, but he could spot a cop as easily as Neil Fallon. It was in the carriage, in the demeanor, in the eyes, in the mustache.

The usual dirge was playing on the organ as they trailed one another into the building to loiter in the narthex. Kovac renewed his promise to himself not to have a funeral when he died. His pals could hoist a few for him at Patrick's, and maybe Liska could do something with his ashes.Toss them out on the steps of city hall to Join the ashes of a thousand cigarettes smoked there by cops every day. Seemed fitting. He sure as hell wouldn't put people through this: standing around staring at one another, listening to god-awful organ music and choking on the smell of gladiolas.

He put his hat on the rack but kept his coat, and stood off to the side watching the civilians move as a trio to another small knot of their own kind. He would approach them later. Afterward. After they had all shared the experience of putting their friend in the ground. He wondered if any of them had been close enough to Andy Fallon to share a sexual paraphilia.

Impossible to tell. In his experience the most normal-seenuing people could be involved in the weirdest shit. Andy Fallon's friends looked Eke the cream of their generation. Well dressed, clean-cut, their faces pale with grief beneath the fading red of wind-kissed cheeks. Couldn't say who was gay, who was straight, who was into S and M.

The doors opened again, and Steve Pierce held one back, letting Jocelyn Daring precede him in. They made a handsome couple in expensive black cashmere coats: Jocelyn a statuesque porcelain doll with every blond hair neatly swept back and held in place with a black velvet bow. She may not have felt the loss of her fianc's best friend, but she knew how to dress the part. She appeared to be pouting. Pierce stood beside her near the coatrack with a thousand-yard stare. He didn't help her with her coat. She said something to him, and he snapped at her. Kovac couldn't make out the words, but his tone

D U S T
T 0
D U S T
15S

was sharp and her reaction was to intensify the pout. They didn't touch as they went into the church.

Not a happy couple.

Kovac went to the glass doors and looked in at the assembled mourners. The pews were chrome and black plastic chairs hooked one to the next. There were no kneelers, no creepy statues of the Virgin or the saints adorned with real human hair.There was nothing daunting about the place, no overriding sense of God glaring down on His terrified flock. Not like when Kovac had been a kid, when eating a burger on Friday during Lent was a sure pass to hell. He had feared and respected the church of his youth.This place was about as scary as going to a lecture at the public library.

Pierce and Daring had taken seats on the center aisle about halfway toward the front. Pierce rose abruptly and came back out, the girlfriend watching him all the way. He stared at the floor, digging a cigarette and a lighter from his coat pocket as he walked. Kovac moved away from the doors. Pierce didn't see him as he crossed the narthex and went outside.

Kovac followed and took a position three feet to Pierce's right on the broad concrete step. Pierce didn't look at him.

"I keep saying I'm qul*ttl'ngi'Kovac said, shaking one out of a pack of Salems. He hooked it with his lip and lit it with a Christmas Bic. Nothing says Christmas like lung cancer. "But you know what? I never do. I like it. Everybody tries to make me feel guilty about it, and I buy into that. Like I think I deserve it or something. So then I say I'm quitting, but I never do."

Pierce regarded him from the corner of his eye and lit his own cigarette with a slim brushed-chrome lighter that looked like a giant bullet. His hands were shaking. He returned his stare to the street and slowly exhaled.

"I guess that's Just human nature," Kovac went on, wishing he'd grabbed his hat on his way out. He could feel all his body heat rushing out the top of his head. "Everybody carries around a load of shit they think they ought to feel guilty about. Like somehow that makes them a better person. Like there's some law against just being who you are."

"There are plenty of laws against that," Pierce said, still staring at the street. "Depending on who you are."

Kovac let that hang for a moment.Walted. Pierce had opened the

T A M I
H 0 A 0

door.just a crack. "Well, sure, if you're a prostitute or a drug dealer. Or did you mean something less obvious?"

Pierce blew out a stream of smoke. "Like if you're gay," Kovac suggested.

Pierce moved his shoulders and swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing. "That would depend on who you ask."

"I'm asking you. Do you think that's something a person should feel guilty about? Do you think it's something a person should hide?" "Depends on the person. Depends on their circumstances." "Depends on whether he's engaged to the boss's daughter, for instance," Kovac offered.

He watched as the missile hit the target square in the chest. Pierce actually took a step back.

"I believe I've already told you I'm not gay," he said in a tight voice. His gaze darted from side to side, looking for eavesdroppers.

"You did."

"Then you clearly didn't believe me." Angrier.

Kovac took a slow pull on his smoke. All the time in the world. "Would you care to ask my fiancEe? Would you like us to videotape ourselves having sex?" Angrier. "Any requests for positions?" Kovac didn't answer.