Dust To Dust (7 page)

"Yes. He'd been quiet. Down. He'd lost some weight. I knew he was having some problems with a case. And I knew he was dealing with some stress in his personal life. But I didn't think he was a risk to himself. Andy did a good job of internalizing."

"Was he seeing the shrink?"

"Not that I was aware of I wish now I had been stronger in suggesting that."

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"You had suggested it?"

"I make it clear to my people the department psychologist is there for a reason. Internal Affairs can be a tough row to hoe.There's a considerable amount ofjob stress."

"Yeah, I guess ruining other cops could have its drawbacks," Lisk-aa muttered, scribbling in her pad.

"Cops ruin themselves, Sergeant," Savard said, a hint of the steel glinting now in her voice. "We stop them from ruining other people's lives.We provide a necessary service here."

"I didn't mean to imply that you didn't." "Of course you did."

Liska shifted on her chair, her gaze sliding away from Savard's cold

green eyes.

"I've lost a good investigator," Savard said. "And I've lost a young man I liked a lot. Do you think I don't feel that, Sergeant? Do you think IA rats have ice water in their veins?"

Liska stared down at her lap. "No, ma'am. I'm sorry."

"I'm sure you are.You're sitting there wondering if I'll complain to your lieutenant."

Liska said nothing because Savard was exactly right. She was more concerned about how this screw-up would affect her career than how it might have upset Savard personally. Sad but true. She put her career first when she wasn't busy sticking her foot in her mouth.
Habitual
behavior-on
both
counts.
Professional ambition was one part of the survivor mentality that had kept her head above water all her life. The other was an unfortunate tendency that had hindered her progress more than once.

"Don't worry, Sergeant," Savard said wearily. "My skin is thicker than that."

After an uncomfortable moment, Liska said, "Do you think Andy Fallon killed himselg"

Savard's brow furrowed delicately. "Do you think something else? I was told Andy hung himself."

"He was found hanging, yes.

"My God, you don't think he was-" The lieutenant broke off before she could say the word. Murdered. She had a hormicide detective sitting in front of her.

"It may have been an accident," Liska said. "We can't rule out

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autoerotic asphyxiation. At this point, we don't know what might have happened
*"

"An accident," Savard repeated, dropping her lashes. "That would be terrible too, but it's certainly better than any of the alternatives. No matter what, hanging isn't an easy way to die." Her hand settled briefly at the base of her throat, then moved away.

"I figure any way to die isn't fim:'Liska said. "Hanging's quick at least. It doesn't take long before you lose consciousness. A couple of minutes."

The thought of what those couple of minutes would be like struck them both at the same moment. Liska swallowed.

"What was he working on? This case you talked about Sunday night? What was that about?"

"I'm not at liberty to say."

"I,in investigating a death, Lieutenant. What if Andy Fallon didn't kill himselP What if he's dead because of one of his cases?"

She waited for Savard to cave, seeing no sign that would happen before the end of the decade.

"Sergeant Liska, Andy had been depressed," Savard pointed out calmly. "He was found hanging. I'm assurming his home was undisturbed, right? People don't say 'suspected suicide' if the door's been kicked in and the stereo is missing.

"I don't see a crime, Sergeant," she went on. "I see a tragedy."

"It's that no matter what," Liska said. "The details are for me to sort out. I'm only t * g to do my job, Lieutenant. I'd like to see Andy's ryin
j

case files and notes.

"That's out of the question.We'll wait until we hear what the ME has to say."

"It's Christmastime:'Liska pointed out. "The suicides are stacking up like cordwood. It could be days before they get to Fallon."

Savard didn't blink.

"An IA investigation is a serious thing, Sergeant. I don't want details getting out unless it's absolutely necessary. Someone's career could be damaged."

"I thought that was your goal:'Liska said, getting to her feet.

She closed her notebook, stuck it in her jacket pocket, and made a little face. "Shit. There goes that tone again. Sorry," she said without remorse. "Well, while you're telling my lieutenant how flip I am, toss

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in the fact that you don't want to cooperate with a death investigation, Lieutenant Savard. Maybe he'll have better luck persuading you than I have."

She made a mock salute and walked out.

The receptionist didn't so much as look up. The door was still closed on the suit's office. Liska could hear the tone of an argument but not the content.Whatever Neon Man had come here for involved Andy Fallon.The case was being reassigned.

She went out into the hall and looked up and down. Deserted-for the moment at least. The building often gave that impression, even though the place was full of cops and criminals, city officials and citizens. She went to the water fountain across the hall from 126 and waited.

Maybe three minutes went by before the door opened and Neon came out. His face was a shade of red that clashed badly with his parka. He crossed to the water fountain, ran some water on his fingers, and pressed them delicately to his cheeks. He breathed deliberately through pursed lips, visibly working to calm down.

"Frustrating place, huh?" Liska. said.

Neon's head snapped around. His green eyes were bright, clear and translucent, and suspicious.

"I didn't get what I went in there for either," Liska confided, moving closer. "Feel free to hate them. Everyone hates IA. I hate them, and

1 work here!

"All the more reason, isn't it?" he said. "It certainly is hateful from what I've seen."

Liska squinted at him. "You a cop? A narc? I'd know you otherwise." He was no more a cop than her paperboy, but she scored points asking. Up close, she was surprised to find that he was barely as tan as she was-and three inches of that were the soles of a very funky pair of shoes. Petite was the best word to describe him. He wore mascara and lip gloss, and had five earrings in one ear.

"Just a concerned citizen," he said, glancing up and down the hall. And what is it you're concerned about?"

'Injustice." "You've come to the right place. Theoretically." She dug a card out of her jacket pocket and handed it to him. "Maybe you're just talking to the wrong people."

Neon took the card. His manicure was better than hers. He looked at the card as if he were trying to memorize it.

"Maybe:' he said, and slipped it into his coat pocket and walked away.

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C H A P T E R

N E I L F A L L 0 N N A D forsaken not only his father but the city as well. Kovac drove west on the broad speedway multilanes of 394, which thinned down to four lanes, then two, then two with no shoulders, the last a narrow ribbon of road that wound around the fingers of Lake Minnetonka. On other tributaries of asphalt around this lake stood old mansions that had been built by lumber barons and industrialists, and new mansions built in recent years by professional athletes and rock stars. But here the strips of land were too meager for ostentation. Cabins perched on the banks, crouching beneath towering pines. Some were surnmer places, some fishing shacks that should have seen a wrecking ball a decade or two past, others were modest year-round homes.

Andy Fallon's brother owned a motley collection of cabins congregated on a wedge of land between the lake and a crossroads. Fallon's Bar and Bait Shop squatted nearest the road, a building not much bigger than a three-car garage, with green shingle siding and too-small windows that made the place look as if it were squinting.The windows were glowing with neon advertising Miller's and Coors and live bait.

The thought of a late lunch shriveled and died in Kovac's empty belly.

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. He wheeled the piece-of-shit Chevy Caprice into the small, ftozen parking lot, turned off the engine, and listened to it rattle on. He'd been driving the same car out of the department fleet for more than a year. In that time, no mechanic had been able to cure its hiccups or make the heater give more than a token effort. He had requested a different vehicle, but the paperwork had gone into a bureaucratic black hole, and no one on that end would return his phone calls. His driving record nuight have had something to do with it, but he preferred to think he was getting fucked over. Gave him an excuse to be pissed off.

A pool table dominated much of the floor space in the bar. Walls paneled with old barn wood were hung with dozens of photographs of peoplc--presumably customers-holding up fish. The television over the tiny bar was showing a soap. A lumpy woman with thin brown hair and a ciLarette hanging from her mouth stood inside the horseshoe-shaped bar drying a beer mug with a dingy cloth. Mental note to Kovac: Drink out of the bottle. On the consumer side of the bar, an old lake rat with half his teeth sat on a stool, a filthy red ball cap at a jaunty angle on his head.

"Hope would never do that to Bol" the woman scoffed. "He's the love of her goddamned life."

"Was," the lake rat corrected. "Ain't you been paying attention, Maureen? Stephano planted a microchip in her brain makes her fucking evil. Evil Gina, that's what they call her now."

"That's crap:'Maureen proclaimed, half an inch of ash glowing red on the end of her cigarette.

Kovac cleared his throat. "Neil Fallon?"

The woman gave him the head-to-toe. "What are you selling?" "Bad news."

"He's out back." Some friend.

She nodded him toward the kitchen door.

The kitchen was as cramped as a carnival concession stand and stank of rancid grease and sour washrags. Or maybe that damp scent came from dead minnows. Kovac kept his hands in the pockets of his topcoat and the coat pulled tightly around him. He tried not to wonder where Neil kept the live bait.

Fallon stood in the open mouth of a big storage shed. He looked like old Mike twenty-some years previous: built like a bull with a meaty, ruddy face and a bit of a downward hook to his mouth. He

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looked at Kovac coming across the yard, pulled a welder's mask down over his face, and went back to work on the runner of a snowmobile. Sparks arced away from the torch like a tiny fireworks display, bright against the gloom of the shed.

"Neil Fallon?" Kovac called above the roar. He pulled his shield out of his pocket and held it up, staying out of range of the sparks. "Kovac. Minneapolis PD."

Fallon stepped back, turned the torch off, and raised the mask. His face was blank. "He's dead."

Kovac stopped a yard from the snowmobile. "Someone called you?" "No. I just always knew they'd send a cop to tell me, that's all.You were more his family than I ever was." He pulled a red bandanna out of his coveralls pocket and wiped sweat from his face, despite the fact that the afternoon temperature was in the low twenti

I
les.

"So what was it? His heart? Or did he get drunk and fall out of the goddamn chair?"

"I'm not here about your father," Kovac said.

Neil looked at him as if he'd started speaking Greek. "I'm here about Andy. He's dead. I'm sorry." "Andy."

"Your brother."

"Jesus Christ, I know he's my brother," Fallon snapped.

He set the welding torch aside on a workbench, hands fumbling at the task, then at the thick, grimy welder's gloves. He jerked the mask off his head and threw it as if it burned him. It landed with a crash armid a stack of old gas cans.

"He's dead?" he said, short of breath. "How is he dead? How can he be dead? He can't be."

"It looks like suicide. Or an accident."

"Suicide?" Fallon repeated. "Fuck." Breathing harder, he went to a rusty metal locker beside the workbench, took out a half-empty bottle of Old Crow, and drank two good glugs of it. Then he put the bottle down and bent over with his hands on his knees, muttering a long string of curses. "Andy." He spat on the ground. "Suicide." He spat again. "Jesus." He took two steps out the door and puked in the snow. Everyone reacted differently.

Kovac dug around in his coat pocket and came up with a piece of Nicorette. Shit.

"Jesus," Fallon muttered. He came back and sat down on a stool

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fashioned from a tree trunk. He set the bottle of Old Crow between his feet. "Andy."

"Were you close?" Kovac asked, leaming back against the workbench. Fallon shook his head and scraped his fingers back through thick hair the color of old rust. "Once, I guess. Or maybe never. He spent a lot of time looking up to me when we were little kids 'cause I was older, tougher. 'Cause I stood up to the old man. But he was always Iron Mike's favorite. I wasted a lot of time hating him for that."

He made it sound as if he had given up the hate long ago, but there was still a trace of bitterness in his voice, Kovac noted. In his experience, family resentments were seldom set aside entirely, if at all. Instead people tossed a cover over them and ignored them, like an ugly old piece of furniture.

"Looked like he was the all-American kid,. all right," he said, poking at the old wound. "The star athlete. The good student. Followed in the old man's footsteps."

Fallon looked down at the floor, his mouth a tight, hard line. "He was everything the old man wanted in a son. That's what Mike thought anyway. I was none of it."

He reached inside the open zipper of his coveralls and dug a cigarette and a lighter out of his shirt pocket. On the first long exhale he muttered, "Fuck 'em." Then he huffed a humorless laugh, picked up the Old Crow, and took another swig.

"Did you see much of each other?" Kovac asked.

Fallon wagged his head, though Kovac wasn't certain if he was answering in the negative or still trying to shake off the news.