Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  “Had he had a failure lately? The Curtis case?”

  “Officer Curtis’s killer is sitting in jail awaiting sentencing.”

  “Renaldo Verma.”

  “If you know that, then you should know there is no case ongoing in this department regarding Eric Curtis.”

  “I guess not, what with your investigator being dead and all.”

  “The case was dead before Andy.”

  “Had Curtis complained about harassment?”

  Savard said nothing.

  Kovac felt his patience slip. “Look, I can go to the gay and lesbian officers’ liaison. Curtis would have told them before he came to IA. But then I’ll come back here, and I gotta think you’ve already seen enough of me to last you.”

  “Yes,” she said, letting the answer hang a moment. “Officer Curtis had filed a complaint some time before his death. Because of that there was some IA interest when he was murdered. But the evidence pointed to no one but Verma, and the case ended with Verma’s plea agreement.”

  “And the names of the officers in question?”

  “Will remain confidential.”

  “I can dig them up.”

  “You can dig all you want,” Savard said. “But you won’t do it here. The case is closed and I have no reason to reopen it.”

  “Why was Fallon so upset if the killer is sitting in jail?”

  “I don’t know. Andy had a lot on his mind this last month or so. Only he could tell you what or why. He didn’t confide in me. And I don’t care to speculate. No one can know another person’s heart. There are too many barriers.”

  “Sure you can.” Kovac met her eyes with an even gaze that tried to see past her barriers. Without luck, he acknowledged. Those walls were thick. A woman didn’t get where she was by letting weaknesses show.

  “You just have to be willing to chip away the bullshit,” he said. “Me, I’m knee-deep in it half the time. I don’t even mind the smell anymore.”

  The lieutenant said nothing, though Kovac had the impression she had much to say, that words were building up inside her like water behind a dam. He could sense the tension in her. But in the end she stepped away from him.

  “Take your pickax and chip elsewhere, Sergeant Kovac.” She pulled the door open, offering him the view of the outer office. “I’ve told you as much as I’m going to tell you.”

  Kovac took his time going to the door. When he was even with Amanda Savard, he stopped—just a hair inside her comfort zone. Close enough to catch the subtle hint of her perfume. Close enough to see the pulse beat beneath the delicate skin in the hollow at the base of her throat. Close enough to feel something like electricity hum just under his skin.

  “You know, somehow I don’t think so, Lieutenant,” he said softly. “Thank you for your time.”

  10

  CHAPTER

  RENALDO VERMA WAS an oily rat of a man. Slight of build, he had the sinewy, boiled-down look of a longtime crack addict, which he was. It was difficult to imagine him overpowering anyone, let alone a police officer. Yet he had pled guilty to murder in the second degree for beating a man to death with a baseball bat. His record ran the gamut from soliciting to drugs, from burglary to robbery. Assault and murder were recent additions to his repertoire, but he had shown a flair for both. He had fallen into a pattern of robbery and assault that shared traits beyond MO. The mindhunters liked to call it “signature,” acts committed during the crime that were unnecessary to the completion of the crime but fulfilled some inner need. He might eventually have graduated to serial killer had he been better at eluding capture.

  Verma came into the interrogation room with a swagger to his gait, as if he had something to be cocky about. He took his seat opposite Kovac and immediately reached for the pack of Salems on the table. His hands were long and bony, like the paws of a rodent, the skin marked with lesions that were likely a sign of AIDS.

  “I hadn’t ought to be speaking to you without my lawyer,” he said, and blew smoke out his nostrils. His nose was thin and long, with a pair of bumps along the bridge. A pencil-thin mustache rode his long upper lip like a dirty shadow. He had an affected, somewhat effeminate way of speaking, and an elaborate body language. His whole upper body swayed and bent and twisted as he spoke, as if he were listening to ballroom dance music in his head.

  “So call your lawyer,” Kovac said, rising. “But I don’t have time for that bullshit. By the time he gets here, I’ll be long gone and you’ll get stuck with the bill.”

  “Taxpayers get stuck with that bill,” Verma said, snickering, his bony shoulders collapsing together as his chest caved in. “What do I care?”

  “Yeah, I can see you don’t give a rat’s ass about anything,” Kovac said. “So you’ll only feed me what you think I want to hear because you’re looking for a trade. Only it’s too late for a trade. You made your bed with the county attorney. It’s in the pen in St. Cloud.”

  “No, it ain’t,” Verma said with smug confidence, wagging a finger at Kovac. “It’s in Oak Park Heights. I ain’t going to that slab of granite way the fuck north. That place is medieval. I’m going to the Heights. That’s part of the deal. I got friends in the Heights.”

  Kovac pulled a folded sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his suit coat, consulted it as if it were something more important than the receipt for his dry cleaning, put it back. “Yeah, well, whatever you think.”

  Verma narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “What do you mean? We did the deal. The deal is done.”

  Kovac shrugged, indifferent. “Whatever. I want to talk to you about the Eric Curtis murder.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “You know how many mutts say that?” Kovac countered. “Every last frigging one of ’em. Do I need to point out this ain’t the Ritz-Carlton we’re sitting in?”

  “I copped to the Franz murder. And I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “Of course not. How were you to know the human head can take only so much beating?”

  “I didn’t go there to kill him,” Verma clarified, pouting.

  “Oh, I see. It was his fault for being at home when you came by to rob him. He was clearly an idiot. You should be commended for taking him out of the gene pool.”

  Verma stood up. “Hey, I don’t need you on my ass, Kovac.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you’ve got some big homey back in lockup to cover that for you. Think he’ll go up to St. Cloud too? Or will you have to get back in the dating game?”

  Verma pointed the cigarette at him, ash raining down on the tabletop. “I am not going to St. Cloud. You talk to my attorney.”

  “Your attorney, the overworked, underpaid servant of Hennepin County? Yeah, I’ll look him up. See if he remembers your name.” He stood up, went around the table, and put a hand on Verma’s bony shoulder. “Have a seat, Mr. Vermin.”

  Verma’s butt hit the chair with a thud. He crushed out the cigarette on the tabletop and lit another.

  “I didn’t kill no cop.”

  “Uh-huh. So the county attorney charged that out just for the hell of it? Just ’cause he wanted some poor grunt in his office to do more paperwork?” Kovac made a face as he slid back down on his own chair. “Give me a break. He charged it out because it fit you to a T. Same MO as the others.”

  “So? You never heard of a copycat?”

  “You don’t strike me as a role model.”

  “Yeah? So how come I got the deal?” Verma asked smugly. “They didn’t have shit on me for that murder. No prints. No witnesses.”

  “No? Well, you’re the fucking Shadow, aren’t you? So if you didn’t do Curtis, how come you had his watch in your apartment?”

  “It was a shock to me,” Verma insisted. “I sure as hell didn’t put it there. Fucking Timex. Why would I steal that?”

  “Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’,” Kovac said. “That could come in handy where you’re going. You knew Eric Curtis,” he went on. “He ran you in for soliciting—twice.”

&nbs
p; Verma shrugged, pursing his lips and lowering his lashes coyly. “No hard feelings. Last time I offered him a freebie. He was cute. He said, ‘Maybe some other time.’ Wish he would have taken me up.”

  “So you dropped by his place for the rain check. One thing led to another . . .”

  “No,” Verma said firmly. He looked Kovac in the eye as he drew hard on the cigarette. The smoke came out in a forceful stream directed at Kovac’s chest. “Look, Kojak, those other cops tried to stick me with that Curtis murder, and they couldn’t. The county attorney tried, and he couldn’t.”

  He leaned across the table, trying to look seductive. It made Kovac’s skin crawl. “I know you’re hard for it,” he murmured, “but you can’t stick it in me either.”

  “I’d rather stick it in a light socket.”

  Verma threw himself back in the chair and laughed dementedly. “Spoken like a man who doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

  “Believe me, I’m not missing it.”

  Verma snickered, then stuck his tongue out as far as he could and waggled it obscenely. “You don’t want me to suck you off, Kojak? Maybe stick my tongue in your ass?”

  “Jesus Christ.” Kovac shoved his chair back from the table. He pulled a brown muffler from the pocket of the overcoat he had hung over the back of the chair, went across the room to the corner where the video camera hung, and draped the scarf over it.

  Verma sat up straight, one hand fluttering at the base of his throat. “Hey, man, what you do that for?”

  “Uh-oh, Renaldo!” Kovac whispered, wide-eyed, as he came back toward the table. “I don’t think that video camera is working anymore!”

  Verma tried to scuttle off the chair, but Kovac caught him by the back of the neck and held him firmly in place, leaning down over his shoulder from behind.

  “The only thing I want to put up your ass is the toe of my shoe,” he said softly. “Cut the crap, Vermin. You think I don’t have people in St. Cloud who owe me favors?”

  “I’m not going to—” The pressure tightened on his neck, cutting him off. His shoulders came up to his ears.

  “My sister’s kid is a guard up there,” Kovac lied. “He’s a big dumb fuck straight off the dairy farm. Not too bright, but he’s loyal as a dog. Too bad about his temper.”

  “Okay! Okay!”

  Kovac let him go and went back to his seat.

  “Can’t blame me for trying,” Verma pouted, reaching for the Salems. Kovac pulled them out of reach, shook one out, and lit up, telling himself it was a tactical move rather than caving in.

  “You’ve got that rugged thing going on,” Verma said, playing coy. “So hot.”

  “Vermin . . .”

  “What?” he asked with a great show of exasperation. “What d’you want from me, Kojak? You want me to cop to Curtis? Fuck you. The deal is done and I didn’t do him. The county attorney didn’t press it ’cause they got shit. But they’ll let it hang on my rep. They’ll say they got me cold for Franz and saved the state some money on a trial. And that’s okay by me. Won’t do me no harm to have the boys at the Heights think I did a cop. But I didn’t do Curtis. You want to know who did Curtis, you ask your homicide sergeant Springer. He knows who did Curtis.”

  Kovac let that hang in the air for a moment, as if maybe he hadn’t even been paying attention. He looked off into the middle distance, smoking, wondering how sick it was to actually enjoy the feel of tar and nicotine settling in his lungs.

  “Yeah?” he said at last, turning back to Verma. “Then why didn’t he nail the son of a bitch?”

  “On account of the son of a bitch was another cop.”

  “Says you.”

  “Says that good-looking boy from Internal Affairs.”

  “I don’t know who you mean,” Kovac said, nerves tightening.

  “Lean muscle, pretty, like a Versace model.” Verma closed his eyes and hummed to himself. “Yummy.”

  “Uh-huh. So this IA weasel comes around and talks to you. He tells you balls-out he thinks a cop whacked Curtis?”

  Verma stuck out his lower lip and slouched. Kovac wanted to smack him.

  “Yeah, I thought so,” he said. “What’d he ask you about?”

  Verma shrugged. “This and that. Stuff about the murder. Stuff about after the murder. The investigation—I use the term loosely.”

  “And you told him what?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “’Cause I’m asking you. You oughta be happy about that, Renaldo. You rank above IA. Then again, so does the clap.”

  “I tell him I didn’t kill Curtis and I don’t care how many cops want me to say different. Not him. Not Springer. Not the uniform.”

  “What uniform?”

  “The one gave me this,” he said, pointing to the higher of the two bumps on the bridge of his nose. “Said I was resisting.”

  “I apologize on behalf of the department,” Kovac said without remorse. “This uniform have a name?”

  “Big dude,” Verma said. “Studly Steroid, I called him. He didn’t like it. His partner called him B.O. He didn’t seem to mind that,” he complained, flinging up a hand in disgust. “But I guess that was short for something besides the way he smelled. I read his name on his chest just before he knocked me out. Ogden.”

  “Ogden,” Kovac repeated, the flashback coming so fast it damn near made his head swim: Steve Pierce wrestling on the floor of Andy Fallon’s kitchen with a human moose. The moose stumbling to his feet with blood gushing from his nose.

  Ogden.

  “VERMA GOT A deal because your people fucked up,” Chris Logan said bluntly as he dug through a drift of paperwork on his desk. “Talk to Cal Springer about chain of evidence. Ask him if he knows dick about the specifics of a search warrant.”

  “Something was funky about the evidence?” Kovac stayed on his feet near the door of Logan’s small office, ready to bolt with the prosecutor, who was due in court in five minutes.

  Logan swore under his breath, still staring down at the mess on his desk, hands on his hips. He was a tall, athletic type. Early thirties, with good looks and a big chip on his shoulder. A tough guy with a law degree and a quick temper.

  He was a good prosecutor. Ted Sabin’s sword arm, seeing as the county attorney rarely tried a case himself.

  “Everything was wrong,” Logan mumbled.

  He dove for the wastebasket sitting beside his desk, tearing through crumpled paper, discarded candy wrappers, mutilated bags from half a dozen take-out places in the skyway system that connected into the government center. He came up with a yellow wad the size of a softball, spread it out, and scanned the handwriting. After a moment he blew out a sigh of relief and rolled his eyes heavenward. He crammed the paper into the briefcase and headed for the door.

  Kovac followed, then matched him stride for stride.

  “I’m due in court,” Logan said, weaving his way through the population in the hall outside the county attorney’s offices.

  “I don’t have a lot of time, myself,” Kovac said. He wondered if Savard had followed through on her threat to call his boss. She was too tough a read to say for sure one way or the other. Who could say how long before Leonard yanked him in for the Big Talk.

  They stepped into an empty elevator and Kovac badged the people trying to get on behind them.

  “Police business, folks. Sorry,” he said, hitting the CLOSE DOOR button with his free hand.

  Logan looked unhappy, but then, he looked that way a lot of the time.

  “Everything we had was circumstantial,” he said. “Prior association, motive, Verma’s MO. But there were no witnesses placing Verma at or near the scene, and there was no forensic evidence. No prints. No fibers. No bodily fluids. Verma had jacked off at the other crime scenes. Not with Curtis. We don’t know why. Maybe something made him leave the scene early. Maybe he couldn’t get it up. Who knows? It could have been anything.”

  “So, what was the deal with the watch?” Kovac asked as the elevato
r landed and the doors pulled back to reveal a human hive of activity.

  The hall outside the courtrooms was perpetually packed with wheeler-dealers, shysters, losers, the frightened, the bewildered. All summoned to feed themselves into the machine of the Hennepin County justice system.

  “So, some idiot uniform claimed he found it on Verma’s dresser, but the whole deal stank to high heaven,” Logan said, angling for a courtroom door. “It was O.J. and the fucking bloody glove all over again. No way we were getting it admitted. And in light of the last few lawsuits against your department, Sabin didn’t even want to try.”

  “Even though the vic was a cop,” Kovac said with disgust.

  Logan shrugged, heading for the counsel table nearest the best air vent in the room. “We couldn’t have won the case. The city didn’t want another lawsuit. What was the point of pressing for it? We got Verma to cop to Franz. He’s going away.”

  “On murder two.”

  “Piggybacked on assault with intent, on felony robbery. It’s no lightweight stretch. Besides, he killed Franz with Franz’s own baseball bat. Weapon of opportunity. How could we argue premeditation?”

  “Was there ever any feeling Verma didn’t do Curtis? That maybe he really was being railroaded?”

  “There were some rumors Curtis had been harassed by other patrol cops because he was gay. But it didn’t add up to murder, and the circumstantial case spelled out VERMA in big fat caps.”

  Kovac sighed and looked around the room. The bailiff was joking with the clerk. The defense attorney, a squat woman with a frizzy gray bun and huge clear-rimmed glasses, set her mega-briefcase on the defense counsel table and came over to Logan with a hopeless smirk on her face.

  “Last chance for a deal, Chris.”

  “In your dreams, Phyllis,” Logan said, hauling a file as thick as the Bible out of his case. “No breaks on kiddie porn freaks.”

  “Too bad you don’t feel as strongly about murderers,” Kovac said, and walked away.

  “WHY’D YOU GO to Verma?” Liska asked, plucking a french fry from the red plastic basket Kovac’s food had come in. She was late. He’d ordered without her. “Lying sack of shit,” she added.