Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  “I guess I know what that’s like,” Kovac said with a sheepish smile. “I’m not supposed to be spending time asking questions about Andy Fallon’s death—or his life, for that matter—but I want to know. I want to feel satisfied. It ain’t over till I say it’s over. That’s the way I am.”

  “It makes you a good cop.”

  “It makes me a pain in the ass. I once had a captain tell me that I’m paid to investigate crimes, not solve them.”

  “What did you say to that?”

  He laughed. “To his face? ‘Yes, sir.’ My bank account couldn’t handle a suspension. Behind his back? I called him something I shouldn’t say in front of a lady.”

  Savard picked up her coffee again and took a sip, looking at him from under her lashes. The almost-amusement, a shade of speculation. Sexy, he thought, for a lady with a beat-up eye. Beautiful, bruises or no.

  She glanced away. “I went over the case file, by the way. Ogden was verbally abusive to Andy several times during the investigation, but that’s not unusual. He made a couple of vague threats—also not unusual. Then Verma made his deal and it was over. There were no addendums to the file after the case closed. Ogden had no reason to continue contact.”

  “What about Ogden’s partner? Rubel?”

  “Nothing about him. I don’t think that was the name of his partner at the time of the incident. I think it was Porter. Larry Porter.

  “For what it’s worth,” she added, “I personally believe Ogden was dirty. I believe he planted Curtis’s watch at Verma’s apartment. There just wasn’t any way to prove it. We’d taken it as far as we could go based on what we had.”

  “And after Verma copped, you would have had the union on you for harassing Ogden. And the brass on you for pissing off the union,” Kovac said. “You’re paid to investigate, not to solve.”

  “And I have to live with the idea that Andy might have killed himself in part because of that,” she said quietly.

  “Maybe,” Kovac conceded. “Or maybe he killed himself because his lover wouldn’t come out of the closet. Or because he thought his father might never love him again because he had come out of the closet. Or maybe he didn’t kill himself at all.

  “See, maybe it wasn’t your fault at all. But you’ll let the idea hurt you anyway,” he said. “You’ll punish yourself and think of a dozen ways you might have stopped it from happening—if only you’d been quick enough, sharp enough, or able to read the future in tea leaves.”

  “I guess I’m an easy read.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said quietly, thinking she was one of the toughest people to read he’d ever come across. So guarded, so cautious. And that made her all the more intriguing to him. He wanted to know who she really was and why she had become that person. He wanted to be allowed behind the walls.

  “That’s just what I’d do, that’s all,” he said. “It’s what my partner would do too. I try to tell myself it’s proof we haven’t entirely detached from the human race. Though sometimes I think I’d be better off if I did.”

  The weight of the evening rolled up against him, the emotions pressing against his own walls. He had successfully kept it at bay for a little while: the image of the street full of emergency vehicles; of the child’s small body and the bloodstained snow.

  He wandered to a set of French doors that looked out on a deck. A security light illuminated a wedge of backyard. The moon brightened what lay beyond, reflecting off the snow in a way that gave the landscape a blue cast. Dreamscape. Trees edged the property, keeping the neighbors from looking in.

  “I lost one tonight,” he confessed. “The child of a witness to an assault I was working. A little girl shot to death just to send a message to the neighborhood.”

  “How is that your fault?”

  He could see her edging closer. The filtered light from outside fell across her face, a gossamer veil that made her skin look pearly. Softness, he thought. Soft skin, soft hair in soft waves, lips that looked as soft as satin. He didn’t try to see the walls and sharp edges; he wanted to pretend they didn’t exist.

  He shook his head. “It’s not. Not really. You look at a situation like that, an innocent child shot dead in the street. The shooter’s probably fourteen and got the job handed to him on account of he’s a juvenile, and he took it because a kill makes him with the gang. They shoot the little girl to scare people who are already on the edge of thinking life’s too damn hard to care about anything but their own hide. They do it to scare the mother who didn’t want to see a drug dealer getting his head beat in and wouldn’t have testified anyway ’cause her first concern is to stay alive long enough to raise her children not to be sociopaths.

  “You look at all that and there’s plenty of blame to go around. But I’m a part of that picture too. I’m supposed to protect people, not get them killed. And I had to stand there tonight and look in that woman’s face and offer an apology, like that would make it all right.”

  “Blaming yourself won’t make it right either,” Savard said.

  She stood just to his right. She could have taken his hand in hers. He held his breath as if she were some wild creature who would bolt at his slightest movement.

  “We do the best we can,” she said softly, looking inward. “And punish ourselves for it. I’ve tried to make my choices with the idea that I’ve made those choices for the greatest good. Sometimes someone suffers in the process, but I made the decision for the right reason. That should count for something, shouldn’t it?”

  Kovac turned slowly to face her, a part of him still afraid she might run away. The need for reassurance was so clear in her eyes, it hurt him to see. A glimpse over the wall.

  “It should,” he said. “What is it inside us that doesn’t let it?”

  “I’m afraid to know,” she confessed, eyes bright with tears.

  “Me too, I guess.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then whispered, “You’re a good man, Sam Kovac.”

  Half a smile curved his mouth. “Would you say that again?”

  “You’re—”

  He touched a forefinger to her lips. They felt exactly as he had imagined. “No. My name. Say it again. Just so I can hear how it sounds.”

  He moved his hand to cup her face. A single tear slid down her face, silvered by the light. The word slipped from her lips on a trembling breath. “Sam . . .”

  He bent his head and captured the word in his mouth as he touched his lips to hers. Hesitantly. Asking. Holding his own breath tight in his lungs, even as desire swept through his veins in a warm rush.

  Her hands came up slowly and rested on his forearms, not to push him away but to connect. Her mouth trembled beneath his, not out of fear but out of need. Accepting. Wanting. Her tongue touched his.

  The kiss went on. Time suspended. He lifted his mouth a scant inch from hers and whispered her name. He took her into his arms as carefully as if she were made of glass. When he raised his head again and looked into her eyes, she said one word:

  “Stay.”

  Except for the pounding of his heart, Kovac went absolutely still. “Are you sure?”

  She leaned up and touched her lips to his again. “Stay . . . Sam . . . Please . . .”

  He didn’t ask again. Maybe her life was as empty as his. Maybe their souls recognized the same pain in each other. Maybe she just needed to be held, and he needed to hold, to care for. Maybe it didn’t matter why.

  She led him up the stairs to a bedroom that carried a ghost of her perfume in the air and on the sheets. Pieces of her lay scattered on the dresser: earrings, a watch, a black velvet hair band. The lamp on the nightstand glowed amber, the light bathing her skin as he undressed her. He’d never seen anything so exquisite, had never been so moved by a woman’s gift of herself to him.

  She handed him a condom from a drawer in the nightstand; he tore open the package and offered it back to her. They didn’t speak. Everything was said with a touch, with a look, a shuddering breath, a trembling
sigh. She guided him to her. He entered her and thought his heart had stopped. They moved together, and it beat like a drum.

  Need. Heat. Passion. Immersion. Languor. Urgency. One melded into the next and back again. The tastes of salt on skin, coffee on tongues. The feel of warm and wet, hard and soft. When she came, it was on a crescendo of hard-caught breaths and the wordless, desperate sounds of need. Release for him came like a bolt of lightning. His body jumped and jerked, and he thought he cried out but he wasn’t sure.

  He never stopped kissing her. Even after. Even as she fell asleep in his arms, his lips moved over hers, against her cheek, on her hair. In his heart was the fear the chance might not come again and he had to get his fill now, tonight. Then exhaustion swept over him like a blanket, and he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  WHEN KOVAC CAME around, he thought he’d had one hell of a dream. Then he opened his eyes.

  Amanda.

  She lay on her side, curled toward him, sleeping quietly. He pulled the covers up over her bare shoulder, and she sighed. The lamplight fell across her face, drawing his attention to the raw burns and bruises around her eye and cheekbone. His stomach clutched at the thought that he might have—must have—touched those places as they’d made love, and caused her pain. The idea of hurting her made him sick. If he ever found out a man had made those marks on her, he would track the guy down and beat him.

  He rubbed a hand against his sternum, feeling as if he’d been kicked. Jesus, he’d slept with a lieutenant.

  He’d fallen for a lieutenant.

  You sure know how to pick ’em, Kovac.

  What was she going to think when she opened her eyes? That she’d made a mistake? That she’d lost her mind? Would she be embarrassed or angry? He didn’t know. What he did know was that what they had shared was pretty damn special and he wouldn’t regret it.

  He slipped from the bed carefully, pulled on his pants, and went down the hall in search of a bathroom, not wanting the sound of running water to wake Amanda. He found a guest bath with fancy towels and decorative soaps that were probably not intended for use. He used them anyway. The reflection that stared back at him in the mirror looked tough, beat-up, showing age and the effects of a life with more disappointment than fulfillment. What the hell would a woman see in that and want? he wondered.

  He washed up and went back into the hall, catching the smell of burning coffee wafting up from downstairs. They’d left the pot on.

  He went down to the kitchen and turned it off, pouring himself half a cup of what was left. Sipping at the coffee, he began to wander through the house, turning off lights as he passed through the rooms.

  Amanda Savard had created a nice retreat for herself. The furniture looked comfortable, inviting. The colors were soothing and quiet. Odd, though, that there was nothing of her—no family photos, no snapshots of friends or of herself. A lot of framed black-and-white photographs of empty places. He remembered seeing some of those in her office, and he wondered what they meant to her. He wanted to see something that spoke about her life. But maybe that was what he was seeing. God knew there wasn’t much evidence of who he was in his house. A stranger would have learned more about him in his cubicle at work.

  In the living room, he took a poker and stabbed at the dying embers of the fire, breaking them up, pushing them apart. He closed the glass doors and went to turn out the ginger jar lamp on the end table by the sofa. A book lay on the table. Stress management.

  Beyond the living room, beyond a pair of open French doors was another room with lights on and a stereo playing softly. It sounded like the same light jazz station Steve Pierce had been listening to.

  Kovac went in to turn it off. Her office. Another lovely oasis of cherry furnishings and photographs of nothing. He’d seen a desk this neat once in an office supply store. That kind of fastidiousness spoke of a need for order and control. No big surprise there. The cubbyholes of the shelves above the desk held a few mementos that made him smile. A small carving of a mother tiger and her cub rolling together. A collection of colored glass paperweights that were more works of art than tools. A stress relief toy that was a little rubber creature whose eyes popped out when squeezed. A badge.

  Curious, he picked up the badge and looked at it. It was an old style. One he recognized from when he had first come on the force half a million years ago. Certainly before Amanda’s time, which meant it had to have belonged to someone who meant something to her.

  City of Minneapolis. Badge number 1428.

  The first thing he’d seen in her home that hinted at her past, and it had to do with the job. Maybe her life really was as empty as his.

  He put the badge back in its place, turned off the lights and stereo, and left the room, the light falling from the second story guiding his way. He climbed the stairs, thinking of sliding back under the covers with her, feeling her warm, soft body next to his. It had been so long since he’d known that kind of comfort, he’d forgotten what it was like.

  “No!”

  The cry came as he was halfway up the stairs. Kovac bolted up the rest and ran for the bedroom.

  “No! No!”

  “Amanda!”

  She sat upright in the middle of the bed, eyes wide open, arms swinging at nothing, engaged in a battle with something only she could see inside her mind.

  “No! No! Stop it!”

  “Amanda?”

  Kovac stood beside the bed, not knowing what to do. It was an eerie sight. She appeared to be awake, but she didn’t seem to see him standing there. Slowly, carefully, he eased a hand out to touch her shoulder.

  “Amanda? Honey, wake up.”

  She jerked at his touch, shying toward the other side of the bed, wild-eyed. Kovac caught hold of her arm as gently as he could and still hold on to her.

  “Amanda, it’s me, Sam. Are you awake?”

  She blinked at him then, whatever horrible spell she had been under shattering. She tipped her face up and looked at him, seeing him, and the confusion in her face was enough to break his heart.

  “It’s all right, honey,” he said softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “It’s all right, sweetheart, you had a bad dream. You’re all right now. It’s all right.”

  He drew her to him and she curled against him like a child. Her whole body was shaking. Kovac held her with one arm and pulled a blanket up around her with the other hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “Shhh . . . There’s nothing to be sorry about. You had a bad dream. You’re all right now. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, miserable, embarrassed.

  Kovac just held her. “It’s okay.”

  “No,” she said, pulling away. Head down, not looking at him. “No, it’s not. I’m sorry.”

  She got up from the bed, finding a silk robe among the covers and pulling it on, covering herself as if she were ashamed to have him see her.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said, still not looking at him.

  Kovac said nothing as she hurried across the room and disappeared into the bathroom. There came that feeling again: that there wouldn’t be a second chance with her, that tonight was it. He had seen her at her most vulnerable. Amanda Savard would have a very hard time dealing with that.

  He sighed heavily and got up, finding his shirt and pulling it on. Knowing exactly how little good it was going to do, he went to the door of the bathroom and knocked.

  “Amanda? Are you all right?”

  “Yes, thank you. I’m fine.”

  He winced at the formality in her tone, recognizing it as one of her favorite defenses, a way to keep people at arm’s length. He deliberately took the other route.

  “Honey, you don’t have to be embarrassed. The line of work we’re in, we all have bad dreams. You ought to catch some of mine.”

  The water ran, then shut off. There was no other sound. He could imagine her staring at herself in the mirror, the way he had done earlier.
She wouldn’t like what she was seeing: the marks on her face, the pallor of her skin, the look in her eyes.

  He stepped back as the doorknob turned. She came out and stopped, arms wrapped around herself, her gaze just missing him.

  “This really wasn’t a very good idea—”

  “Don’t say that,” Kovac said.

  She closed her eyes for a second and went on. “I think we both just needed something tonight, and that was fine, but now—”

  “It was better than fine,” he said, moving into her space, willing her to look at him. She wouldn’t.

  “I want you to leave now.”

  “No.”

  “Please don’t make this more awkward than it already is.”

  “It doesn’t have to be awkward at all.”

  “I don’t see people from work.”

  “Oh, really? Who do you see?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Uh—yes, I think it is,” he argued.

  She sighed and looked away. “I don’t want a relationship. It’s best I say that now, so we can just let this go and move on.”

  “I don’t want to let this go,” Kovac said, putting his hands on her, taking gentle hold of her upper arms. “Amanda, don’t do this.”

  She turned her face away and stared at the floor. “Please leave.”

  She couldn’t hide the emotion that trembled in her voice. He heard it plainly: pain, sadness. He felt the same things for her in his own heart.

  “Please . . . Sam . . .” she whispered.

  He bent his head and touched his lips to her cheek. He brought up a hand to stroke her hair. “I’m sorry.”

  She closed her eyes tight against the threat of tears. “Please . . .”

  “All right,” he murmured. “All right.”

  He stepped away from her, seeking out the rest of his clothes. She didn’t move. When he was ready, he went to her again and touched her cheek with the back of his hand.

  “Come lock up behind me. I need to know you’re safe.”

  She nodded and went with him.

  In the entry hall, he pulled on his shoes and coat, and hunted his gloves up out of the pockets. She never met his eyes once. He tried to wait her out, just standing there by the door like a dope, but she wouldn’t look up and she wouldn’t say anything. He wanted to shake her and pull her into his arms and kiss her. But men weren’t allowed to make a point that way anymore, and it probably wasn’t the way to play Amanda anyway. She needed care and time; enough space not to feel threatened, but not so much that she could retreat.