Dust To Dust (25 page)

"First time around, two of our little elves were Ogden and Rubel." Kovac groaned. "Great.That's what we need, Ogden telling people they didn't see anything."

"If a wit saw someone other than him or Rubel-like Neil Fallon or Pierce
n Ogden would have brains enough to bring it to our attention," Liska said.

"So we have to hope the uniforms missed that someone."

"Who missed who?" Leonard demanded, coming to an abrupt halt at the cubicle.

Kovac pretended to search for a file on his desk, covering the notes he'd made regarding Andy Fallon's death.

"The guy that beat up Nixon," he said. "Deene Combs's henchman.We have to hope his people missed scaring the shit out of someone who knows something about it."

"Have you talked to that woman again? The one the cab driver saw going inside that building as the perp ran away.

"Five times."

"Talk to her again. She's the key.We know she knows something." "That's a dead end," Kovac said. "She'll take it to her grave."

"If Nixon isn't going to rat the guy out himself, Charmiqua Jones isn't gonna do it for him:'Liska pointed out.

Leonard frowned at her. "Talk to her again. Go to where she works. Today. I don't want these gangbangers thinking they can run wild." Kovac glanced at Liska, who looked down at the floor and crossed

her -eyes. The common logic regarding the Nixon assault was that

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Wyan Nixon had shorted his boss, Deene Combs, on a small-time drug deal and had been made an example by said boss, but no one was talking, including Nixon. The county attorney, who wanted to take a more publicly visible hard line against drug dealers, had pledged the county would press the charges if Nixon wouldn't. But without a witness, there was no case, and the cab driver hadn't seen enough to give a detailed description of the assailant..

"It's a black hole," Kovac said. "No one's going to testify to anything.What's the point?"

Leonard made his monkey frown. "The point is, it's yourjob, Kovac." "I know my job-"

"Do you? It sounds to me that you've been redefining the parameters."

"I don't know what you're talking about." "Fallon is closed. Leave it alone."

"You heard about Mike?" Kovac said. The deliberate curveball, even as he wondered who had ratted him out to Leonard. His money was on Savard. She didn't want him hanging around, getting too close to her, threatening to breach the security of the walls she had so carefully erected around herself Wyatt didn't give a shit what went on in Kovac's little world. AD he cared about was getting to his next PR event.

Leonard looked confused. "That he killed himseIP" "I'm not so sure that's what happened."

"He ate his gun." "Looked that way."

"There are a couple of red flags, Lieutenant," Liska said. "The positioming of the body, for instance."

"You're saying the scene was staged?"

"Not staged, but a little too convenient. And there's no suicide note." "That doesn't mean anything. A lot of suicides don't leave notes." "The older son has some issues-and a record."

"I want to dig a little," Kovac said. "Maybe Mike did whack himself, but what if he didn't? We owe him better than to let it slide because suicide was the easy answer."

"Let's see what the ME has to say," Leonard said grudgingly, unhappy with the idea of a slam dunk turning into a whodumit-especially this case, with Wyatt and the rest of the brass monkeys looking on. "In the meantime, go see Charniqua Jones. Today. I want the county attorney's office off my ass about Nixon."

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V D R AT H E R S T I C K myself with needles than go to the Mall of America during the Christmas season."

Kovac glanced over at Liska as he piloted the Caprice through rush-hour traffic going east on 494. "Where's your consumer spirit. "Dying from lack of oxygen down at the bottom of my bank

account. Do you have any idea what kids want for Christmas nowadays?"

"Semiautomatic weapons?"

"R.J. gave me a list that looks like the inventory forToys'R'Us." "Look on the bright side, Tinks. He didn't send it to you from a juvenile detention center."

"Whoever said it cost a million bucks to raise a kid through college did not take Christmas into account."

Kovac negotiated a lane change around a snot-green Geo doing fifty with a white-knuckled balding guy at the wheel. Iowa plates. "I-wegian farmers," he growled. "They don't know how to drive

without a cornfield on either side of them."

He cut across two lanes to catch the exit he wanted. His driving spurred remarks from Liska, but she said nothing, seeming lost her thoughts of the holiday bearing down on them.

Kovac remembered the Christmas the year after his first wife had left. He'd sent gifts to their daughter. Stuffed animals. A rag doll. Shit like that.Things he'd hoped a little girl might like.The boxes had been returned unopened. He'd hauled the stuff to a Toys for Tots drop, then gone out and drunk himself into a stupor. He wound up in a fistfight with a Salvation Army Santa out in front of the government center, and got suspended for thirty days without pay. I

"He's your kid," he said. "Get him something he really wants and quit your bitching. It's only money."

Liska stared at him.

"What's he really want?" he asked, uncomfortable with her scrutiny. "He wants me and Speed to get back together."

'Jesus H.Any danger of that happening?"

She was silent half a beat too long as they drove into the mall's west-side ramp. Kovac looked over at her again.

"Has hell frozen over yet?" she asked defensively. "Did I miss that on the news?"

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"He's an asshole."

"I don't need you to tell me that." "I'm just saying."

Kovac parked and memorized the level and row number. One of

12,750 parking spaces on mall property. This was not the place to get lost.

The Mall ofAmerica was like a giant, elegant, four-tiered rat maze, the wide hallways teerruing with frantic humans scurrying from one store to the next. The biggest mall in the United States-five hundred stores, two and a half million square feet of commercial space and still there weren't enough retail outlets for those searching for the perfect item to wrap and have returned two days after Christmas. Human nature.

The noise from the Camp Snoopy amusement park at the mall's center was constant; the dull roar of roller coasters and the water flume ride, punctuated by shrieks of customers. A high school choir was assembling on risers in front of the entrance to Macy's, boys cutting up and girls wandering toward the windows of Lerner's as their director barked at them ineffectually.

They passed the three-story Lego Imagination Center with its twenty-five-foot Lego clock tower, huge Lego dinosaur, Lego space station, and a Lego blimp made from 138,240 Lego blocks hanging suspended above it all.

Kovac turned in at Old Navy with a jaundiced eye on a display of track pants andT-shirts and ugly quilted vests.

"Look at this shit."

"Retro-seventies," Liska said. "Shirts in the all-my-clothes-shrunkin-the-wash-but-I-wear-them-anyway style."

"I thought it was ugly the first time around. Looking at this is like having a bad flashback on high school."

The clerk Kovac badged was a girl with a hp ring, cat-eye glasses, and maroon hair that looked as if a five-year-old had hacked at it with a pinking shears. "Is your manager around?"

"I'm the manager. Is this about that guy who's always hiding in the racks and flashing his thing at women?"

"No." "You ought to do something about him."

"I'll put him on my Est. Is Chamiqua Jones working?"

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"Yes." The girl's eyes looked big behind the glasses. "Whatd she do? She's never flashed a penis at a
nyone.

"We've just got a couple questions:' Liska said. "She's not in any trouble."

Cat Eyes looked skeptical but made no comment as she led them toward the dressing rooms.

Chamiqua Jones was twenty-something, looked forty-something, and was built like a fifty-five-gallon drum with a rusty Brillo pad hairdo. She stood guard near the dressing rooms, directing would-be consumers and shoplifters.

"That door over there, honey." She pointed a customer down the row, then shook her head and muttered under her breath as the customer walked away, "Like you gonna get your fat white ass in them pants."

She glanced at Kovac and Liska, then let herself into one of the dressing rooms to pick up a tangled pile of discarded jeans.

"You again." "Hey, Charmqua."

"I don't need this hassle on my job, Kovac."

"Here I was missing you, and
.that's the greeting I get? I feel like we're getting to be old pals."

/Jones didn't smile. "You gonna get my ass killed, that's what." "You still don't have anything to say about Nixon?" Liska said. "The president? Nope. Nothing. I wasn't born yet. I hear he was a crook, but ain't they all?"

"Witnesses put you at the scene of the assault, Chamiqua."

"That rag-head cab driver?" she said, carrying the jeans to a table. "He lying. I never seen no assault. I told y'all before."

"You didn't see a man jump Wyan Nixon and beat him with a tire iron."

"No, ma'am. All I know 'bout Wyan Nixon is he is bad news. Especially for me."

She folded the jeans with quick, practiced movements. Her hands were chubby, with short fingers and taut skin.They made Kovac think of small balloon animals. Her gaze darted twenty feet away to a stocky young man with a tight white spandex cap that looked like a condom for the skull. Kovac had never seen him before, but there was no 1111'staking what he was: muscle. A hundred eighty pounds of sociopathic

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meanness. He nu*ght have been sixteen or seventeen, but he was no kid. He stood near a rounder of polar fleece vests, turning it without looking, his flat, cold gaze on Charmiqua Jones.

"I'm very busy here:'she said, and went to unlock a dressing room with a key hanging from a neon-green plastic coil around her wrist. Kovac turned his back to the muscle. "We can offer you protection,

Charruiqua.The county attorney wants Deene Combs behind bars." "Protection:' she snorted. "What? You gonna send me on a bus to some flea-trap motel in Gary, Indiana? Hide me out?" She shook her head as she returned to the table with another pile of clothing. "I'm a decent person, Kovac. I work two jobs. I'm raising three good kids. I want to live to see them through school, thank you very much. Wyan Nixon can look out for his own black ass. I'm looking out for mine."

"If he wants to be a hard-ass, the county attorney can charge you as accessory after the fact," Liska said, fishing. "Obstruction ofjustice, failure to cooperate . .."

Jones held her hands out in front of her, darting a glance at Condom Cap. "Then you put the cuffs on me and take me away. I got nothing to say about Wyan Nixon or Deene Combs. I didn't see nothing."

Kovac shook his head. "Not today. See you around, Chamiqua." "I hope not."

"Nobody loves me today," Kovac complained.

Liska pulled out a business card and put it down on the stack of folded jeans. "Call if you change your mind."

Jones tore the card in two as they walked away.

"Who can blame her?" Kovac said under his breath, giving the skunk eye to Condom Cap as they passed.

"She's looking out for her kids:'Liska said. "I'd do the same. It's not like she could take Deene Combs off the street, anyway.You know he didn't do Nixon himself She could give up some piece of meat like that guy watching her and still get herself killed for her trouble, and for what? There's a thousand more where he came from."

"Yeah. Let it go. One scumbag beats the shit out of another scumbag.That's one less scumbag on the street for a whileWho cares? Nobody cares."

"Somebody has to care:'Liska corrected him. "We have to care." Kovac looked at her. "Because we're all that's standing between society and anarchy?"

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Liska made a face. "Please. Because our clearance rates count bigtime toward promotion. Screw society. I have kids to put through college."

Kovac laughed. "Tinks, you never fail to put things in their proper perspective."

"Someone has to keep you from getting morose." "I'm never morose."

"You're always morose."

11Fm not morose, I'm bitter," he corrected her as they passed the Rainforest Cafe, where sounds of thunder and rain were playing over the speaker system, and one of the live parrots on display was screaming like a banshee. People lined up for that.

"There's a difference," he said. "Morose is passive. Bitter is active. Being bitter is like having a hobby."

"Everyone needs a hobby," Liska agreed. "Mine is the mercenary pursuit of easy money."

She veered to the entrance of Sam Goody, where a near-life-size cutout ofAce Wyatt stood with its arm protectively around a box full of videotapes tided Pro-Active: A Police Professional's Tips on How Not to Become a Victim. She put her sunglasses on and struck a pose beside the display.

"What do you think? Don't we look good together?" she said, grinning. "Don't you think he needs a younger female partner to broaden his demographics? Id wear a bikini if I had to."

Kovac scowled at the cardboard Wyatt. "Why don't you just go up to the third floor here and get a job at Hooters? Or you could walk Hennepin Avenue."

"I'm a mercenary, not a prostitute. There's a difference." "No, there isn't."

"Yes, there is. A mercenary doesn't use a vagina."

"Jesus." Kovac felt heat creep up his face. "Don't you ever embarrass yourself?"

Liska laughed. "With what? My mouth or my seemingly shameless quest for advancement?"

"I was raised not to talk about ... those . . ." He flushed an even darker shade of red as they started back down the hall.

"Vaginas?" Kovac gave her a furious look as passing shoppers turned to stare at them.

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"That might help explain why you don't have one at your disposal," Liska speculated. "You need to open up, Sam.You need to get in touch with your feminine side."