Dust To Dust (6 page)

Fallon scowled and waved him off. "Leave me alone. I don't need to hear it from you."

"Hear what?"

"Last night. Bad enough I did it. I don't need my nose rubbed in it." He looked pathetic sitting there in his underwear like a derelict Humpty-Dumpty: the barrel body and the twig legs, beard stubble and bloodshot eyes. He brushed over the flattop, wincing, pressing gingerly.

"Just let me in, will you?" Kovac said. "It's important."

Fallon squinted at him, trying to size it up. No one hated a surprise more than a cop.

Finally, he lifted a hand in defeat. "There's a key under the mat in back."

"A K E Y U N D E R the mat." Kovac set it on the counter and cocked a look at the old man. "Jeez, Mike. You used to be a cop. You oughta know better."

Fallon ignored him.The kitchen smelled of bacon grease and fried om'ons. The curtains were stiff with age. The countertops were lined with cups and glasses and plates and cereal boxes, and a giant jar of Metamucil with prescription bottles clustered around it like whitecapped toadstools. All the doors had been taken off the lower cupboards, exposing the contents: boxes of instant potatoes, canned vegetables, about a case of Campbell's soup.

Fallon hadn't bothered with pants. He rolled around the small room in his chair, his hairy, atrophied legs pushed to one side, out of the way. He ferreted out a bottle of Tylenol from the pharmacy on the counter, and got himself a glass of water from the door of the refrigerator.

"What's so damned important?" he demanded gruffly, though Kovac could see the tension in Fallon's shoulders, as if he was bracing himself "I got a hangover could drop a cow."

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" ik

M* e." Kovac waited until Fallon turned and looked at him, then took a deep breath. "Andy's dead. I'm sorry."

Blunt. just like that. People always thought they had to lead in to bad news with platitudes, but that wasn't the way. All that did was give the recipient a chance to panic at the many horrible possibilities. He had learned long ago to just say it and get it over with.

Fallon looked away, his jaw working. "We don't know yet what happened

"What do you mean, you don't know what happened?" Fallon demanded. "Was he shot? Was he stabbed? Was it a car accident?" He worked up a temper, anger being more comfortable, more familiar than grief A flush began at the base of his throat and pushed upward. "You're a detective. Somebody's dead.You can't tell me how they got that way? Jesus H."

Kovac let it roll off. "it nuight have been an accident. Or it might have been suicide, Mike. We found him hanging. I wish I didn't have to tell you, but there it is. I'm really sorry."

Sorry. As Andy had been. He could see the word on the mirror over the reflection of Andy Fallon. Naked. Dead. Bloated. Rotting. Sorry didn't mean a whole lot in the face of that.

Mike seemed to deflate and shrivel. Tears filled his small red eyes and spilled down his cheeks like glass beads.

"Oh,Jesus," he said.A plea, not a curse. "Oh, dearjesus."

He brought a trembling hand to his mouth. It was the size of a canned ham but looked fragile, the skin thin and spotted. A sound of terrific pain wrenched free of his soul.

iKovac looked away, wanting to allow the man at least that much privacy-This was the worst part of being the messenger: trespassing on those first acute moments of grief, moments that should not be witnessed by anyone.

That, and knowing he would have to intrude on the grief with questions.

Fallon abruptly spun his chair around and wheeled out of the room. Kovac let him go. The questions could wait. Andy was already dead, most likely by his own hand, purposely or not.What difference would ten minutes make?

He leaned against the counter and counted the bottles of pills. Seven brown prescription bottles for the treatment of everything from

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indigestion to arrhythmia to insomnia to pain. Prilosec, Darvocet, Ambien. At least Mike had plenty of chemicals to help him get through this.

"Damn you! Damn you!"

The shouts were accompanied by a crash and the sound of glass breaking. Kovac bolted out of the kitchen and down the short hall. "Damn you!" Mike Fallon screamed, smashing a framed picture

against the edge of the dresser.The cheap metal frame bent like modeling clay. Glass sprayed out across the dresser.

"Mike! Stop it!"

"Damn you!" the old man cried again, swinging his arms and the shattered frame, flinging broken glass across the room. "Damn you!" Kovac thought the curses might be for him at this point as he

grabbed Mike Fallon's wrist. The picture frame flew across the room like a Frisbee, crashing against the wall and falling to the hardwood floor. Fallon continued to fight, the strength in his upper body amazing for a man his age. His free arm flailed across the top of the dresser, sending more picture frames to the floor. Kovac got behind the wheelchair, bending at an awkward angle to try to restrain the man. Wailing, Fallon threw his head,back and butted him hard on the bridge of the nose. Blood came in an instant gush.

"Darrunit, Mike, stop it!" The blood ran down his chin and onto Fallon's shoulder, his ear, his hair.

Sobbing, the old man flung himself against the dresser top, then back. Back and forth, back and forth. The energy ran out of him little by little with each motion, until he laid his face on the dresser amid the shards of glass, and moved only his hands. Pounding, pounding, slapping, slapping, tapping, tapping.

Kovac stepped back, wiping his bloody nose on his coat sleeve as he fumbled for a handkerchief. He went over to where the first of the destroyed frames had landed and tried to nudge it over with his foot. His shoes and the bottoms of his pants legs were soaked from stomping through the snow, but the cold only began to register now that he'd seen the evidence. He couldn't feel his toes inside his shoes.

Handkerchief crammed against his nostrils to stem the flow of blood, he squatted down and picked up the picture with his free hand. Andy.Fallon's academy graduation. Andy beaming, Mike beside him

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in the wheelchair, a jagged line now cutting between them like a lightning bolt.

He shook off the last of the glass and tried to bend the frame back into shape.

"Mike," he said quietly. "Last night you said Andy was dead to you. What did you mean by that?"

Fallon kept his head on the dresser, his gaze on nothing, empty. He didn't answer. Kovac had to stare at him a moment to be certain the old man hadn'tiust died on him.That would have been the cap on the damn dayand it wasn't even two o'clock yet.

"The two of you were having problems?" he prompted.

"I loved that kid," Fallon said weakly, still not moving. "I loved him. He was my legs. He was my heart. He was everything I couldn't be."

But ...

The word hung in the air, unspoken. Kovac had a feeling he knew where it would lead. He looked around at the scattered photographs ofAndy Fallon. Handsome and athletic. And gay.

A hard-ass old-timer like Mike wouldn't have taken it well. Hell, Kovac didn't know how well he would have taken it if it had been his kid.

"I loved him," Mike murmured. "He ruined everything. He's ruined everything."

His face pinched tight as he looked inward, seeing the pain in its brightest light. He flushed red with the effort to hold the tears backor maybe to push them out. Hard to say which would have been more difficult for a man like Iron Mike.

Kovac dabbed absently at his nose, then stuffed the handkerchief in his coat pocket. Quietly, he picked up all the photographs and stacked them on the dresser so they would be there when the anger subsided and the need for memories set in.

The questions were there, lined up in the front of his mind, automatic, orderly, routine. Men was the last time you spoke to Andy? Did he talk to you about what he was working on? Mat was his mental state the last time you saw him? Did he ever talk about suicide? Had he been depressed? Did you know hisftiends, his lovers?

None of those questions made it to his lips. Later. "Is there anyone you'd like me to call, Mike?"

Fallon didn't respond. The grief had surrounded him like a force

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field. He wasn't hearing anything but the voice of regret in his head, wasn't feeling any pain but that in the deepest part of his soul. He was oblivious to everything external, including the bits of glass that cut into his cheek.

Kovac let out a long, slow breath, his gaze falling on one photograph that still lay on the floor, half under the dresser. He pulled it out and looked at a past that seemed as far away as Mars. The Fallons all together before one tragedy after another had torn them apart. Mike and his wife and their two boys.

" I'll call your other son, if you want:' he offered.

"I don't have another son," Mike Fallon said. "One shut me out years ago, and I shut out the other. Helluva deal, huh, Kojak?"

Kovac looked at the photograph for another moment, then set it on top of the others. Fallon's admission left him feeling hollow inside, an echo of the old man's emotions. Or maybe the emotions were his own. He was no less alone in his life than Mike Fallon.

"Yeah, Mikey. It's a helluva deal."

L I S K A S T 0 0 D I N the hall, staring at the door to Room 126. Internal Affairs. The name conjured up images of interrogation rooms with bare lightbulbs and SS officers with narrowed eyes and rubber truncheons.

The Rat Squad. She'd
had little cause to associate with them in her career, had never been investigated by them. She knew the job of IA was to root out bad cops, not to persecute the good ones. But the fear and loathing were instinctive things for most cops. Cops hung together, protected one another. IA turned on their own. Like cannibals.

For Liska, the aversion went deeper.

In the Minneapolis PD, IA was for fast-track, brownnose, brass types. People destined for management. People born to be hated by their peers. The kind who had regularly gotten pushed down on the playground as kids, and ran to the teacher every time. The kind of people who inspired neither admiration nor loyalty.

Liska thought of Andy Fallon hanging in his bedroom, and wondered who might have turned on him.

She went into the IA offices before she could balk again. There were no human heads mounted on pikes. No manacles bolted to the wall. At least not in the reception area.

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"Liska, homicide," she said, badging the receptiomist. "I'm here to see Lieutenant Savard."

She made the receptionist for early fifties. Plump and unsmiling, the woman asked no questions, which was likely a requirement of the job. She buzzed the lieutenant.

There were three offices off the reception area-one dark, one closed and lit, one open and lit. Looking in the last one, she could see a thin suit-and-tie standing behind the desk and frowming, deep in conversation with a short guy with chopped platinum hair and a neon-green parka.

don't appreciate being passed around," Neon whined, his voice just high enough to irritate. "This has been a nightmare from the start. Now you're telling me the case is being reassigned."

"In point of fact, the case is closed. I'll be your contact should you need one.That's purely out of courtesy on the part of the department. I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about the change in personnel," the suit explained. "The circumstances are beyond our control. Sergeant Fallon is no longer with us."

The suit caught Liska's gaze then. He frowned harder, came around the desk, and closed the door.

"Lieutenant Savard is expecting you," the receptionist said in the hushed tone of a funeral director.

Savard's office was immaculate. None of the usual cop clutter. A place for everything and everything in its place. The same could be said of the lieutenant. She stood behind her perfectly neat desk in a perfectly tailored black pantsuit. Forty or thereabouts, with perfectly symmetrical features and perfect porcelain skin. Her ash-blond hair was perfectly coiffed in chin-length waves ingeniously cut to appear careless, but likely requiring a cosmetology degree to style every day.

Liska resisted the self-conscious urge to reach up and touch her own boy-short crop.

"Liska, honnicide," she said by way of introduction, not offering her hand. "I'm here about Andy Fallon."

"Yes," Savard murmured, almost as if she were talking to herself "Of course."

She seemed too feminine to live up to her rep, Liska thought. Amanda Savard had been described as tough and smooth, sharp and cold as a tungsten steel blade.

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Liska helped herself to a seat. Cool, casual, in control. A good front anyway. She pulled out her notebook and pen.

"It's a terrible tragedy," Savard said, easing into her seat with care. As if she had a bad back but didn't want to show it. Her hand trembled slightly as she reached for her coffee cup. "I liked Andy. He was a good kid."

"What kind of cop was he?" "Dedicated. Conscientious." "When did you last see him?"

"Sunday evening. We needed to talk some things over in relation to a case he'd been working. He hadn't been pleased with the outcome."

"And where did you go?" "His home."

"Isn't that a little intimate?"

Savard didn't bat an eye. "Andy was gay. I was in Uptown doing some Christmas shopping. I called and asked him if I could drop by." "What time was that?"

"Around eight. I left around nine-thirty."

"Did he say anything about expecting someone else?" "No."

"And what was his frame of mind when you left?" "He seemed fine.We had talked everything through." "But he didn't come in for work yesterday?"

"No. He had asked to take Monday as a personal clay. Christmas shopping, he said. If I'd had any idea . . ." She looked away, taking a few seconds to tighten the straps on her composure.

"Had he given any indication of having emotional problems recently?"

Savard released a delicate sigh, seemingly lost in the stark beauty of a black-and-white winterscape photograph that hung on one wall.