Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  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 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.

  “Dammit, 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 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’t just died on him. That would have been the cap on the damn day—and 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 of Andy 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 back—or 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. When was the last time you spoke to Andy? Did he talk to you about what he was working on? What was his mental state the last time you saw him? Did he ever talk about suicide? Had he been depressed? Did you know his friends, 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 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.”

  LISKA STOOD IN 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.

  “Liska, homicide,” she said, badging the receptionist. “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 frowning, 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 g
aze 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, homicide,” 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.

  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 day. 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.

  “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.”

  “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 of job stress.”

  “Yeah, I guess ruining other cops could have its drawbacks,” Liska 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 himself?”

  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 homicide detective sitting in front of her.

  “It may have been an accident,” Liska said. “We can’t rule out 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 fun,” 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’m investigating a death, Lieutenant. What if Andy Fallon didn’t kill himself? 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 assuming 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 trying to do my job, Lieutenant. I’d like to see Andy’s 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 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 I 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 tall 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.

  6

  CHAPTER

  NEIL FALLON HAD 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 summer places, some fishing shacks that should have seen a wrecking ball a decade or two past, others were modest year-round homes.