Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  “No,” Wyatt said. “We’re finished here.”

  Kovac popped the carrot in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully as Wyatt walked away. He followed at a distance and watched as Ace Wyatt worked the crowd of people who had so little going on in their lives they would waste a Saturday watching this bullshit.

  Like me, he thought with a smirk, and walked out.

  THE ON-LINE ARCHIVES of the Minneapolis Star Tribune went back only to 1990. Kovac spent the afternoon in a room in the Hennepin County library, straining his eyes looking at microfiche, reading and rereading the articles written about the Thorne murder and Mike Fallon’s shooting. They laid out the story as he remembered it.

  The drifter-cum-handyman, Kenneth Weagle, had done some work for Officer Bill Thorne’s wife and had apparently taken a shine to her. He had come to the house that night knowing Bill Thorne was on patrol. He’d been in the neighborhood long enough to scope out the comings and goings of residents. He had attacked Evelyn Thorne in her bedroom, raped her, slapped her around, then started looting the house. By chance, Bill Thorne had stopped back home and walked into the house, unsuspecting. Weagle shot him with a gun of Thorne’s he had found in the house. At some point Mrs. Thorne had phoned Ace Wyatt across the street. But before Wyatt could arrive, Mike Fallon did.

  Bill Thorne was given a hero’s funeral with all the trimmings. There were photographs with that article. The long motorcade of police vehicles. A grainy shot of the widow in dark glasses, being consoled by friends and family.

  According to the article, Thorne had been survived by his wife, Evelyn, and an unnamed seventeen-year-old daughter. In the photo, Evelyn Thorne looked a little like Grace Kelly, Kovac thought. He wondered if either of them was still in the area. He wondered if any of Bill Thorne’s old cronies would know. Evelyn Thorne had been a relatively young woman at the time of the incident. Chances were she had remarried. She would be fifty-eight now, the daughter thirty-seven.

  If Andy Fallon had been looking into the case, wanting to come to some kind of understanding, he might already have done the legwork. But there was no file. Kovac wondered if Amanda could be talked into letting him look around Fallon’s office, check out his work computer. The Thorne murder wasn’t an active IA case. She might not care.

  You don’t even know if she’ll ever speak to you again, Kovac.

  There was that.

  “Sir?” The librarian’s voice startled him. He jerked around to find her standing too close.

  “The library is closing,” she said apologetically. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

  Kovac gathered the copies of articles he’d run off, and went back out into the cold. Afternoon had surrendered to night, though it was barely five. The homeless who had spent their day in the warmth of the library had been shooed out along with him. They milled around on the sidewalk, instinctively shying away from Kovac, smelling cop. The librarian had probably thought he was one of them. He hadn’t shaved, had spent the afternoon pulling at his hair and rubbing his eyes. He felt like one of them, standing on the cold street in this bleak, gray part of town. Alone, disconnected.

  He tried to call Liska on his cell phone and got her voice mail; debated paging her, then let it go. He drove home so he could feel alone and disconnected in a warmer setting.

  The neighbor had added to his lawn display a painted plywood cutout of Santa bending over, showing three inches of butt crack. Hilarious. It was positioned directly toward Kovac’s living room window. Such class.

  Kovac contemplated taking out his gun and blasting Santa an asshole. See the humor in that, cocksucker?

  The house still smelled of garbage, even though he had taken it out. Like the corpse smell at Andy Fallon’s. He tossed the copies of the Thorne murder articles on the coffee table and went into the kitchen. He burned some coffee grounds on the stove to get rid of the odor—a trick he’d learned at death scenes. See if Heloise put that in her helpful hints column. What to do in the event of putrid corpse decay.

  He went upstairs, took a shower, pulled on some jeans and wool socks and an old sweatshirt, and went back down in search of supper, even though he had no appetite to speak of. He needed calories to keep the mind going. If keeping his mind going was what he really wanted tonight.

  The only edible food in the house was a box of Frosted Flakes. He ate a handful, dry, and poured some of the scotch he’d picked up on the way home. Macallan. What the hell.

  On the stereo, he found the faux jazz station playing a faux jazz tune, and he stood at the window listening to it and sipping the Macallan and staring at Santa’s ass.

  This is my life.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there when the doorbell rang. The sound was so unfamiliar, it took three rings before he responded.

  Amanda Savard stood on the front step, the black velvet scarf swathing her head, hiding her wounds. Some of them anyway.

  “Well,” Kovac said, “you must be a detective too. I’m unlisted.”

  “May I come in?”

  He stood back and waved her in with the scotch glass. “Don’t expect much. I get so many tips from the Home and Garden channel, but I just don’t have the time.”

  She went to the middle of the living room, pushed the scarf off her head, but didn’t remove her gloves or the long black coat. She didn’t take a seat.

  “I came to apologize,” she said, looking just past his right shoulder. Kovac wondered if she could see Santa’s moon, but if she did, she didn’t react.

  “For what?” he asked. “Sleeping with me? Or throwing me out after?”

  She looked as if she wanted to be anywhere but there. She held her hands together, then brought one up to touch her hair near the burns. “I— I wasn’t— I didn’t mean—” She stopped and pressed her lips together and closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m not— I don’t easily . . . share my life . . . with other people. And I’m sorry if I . . .”

  Kovac set his glass on the coffee table as he stepped close. He touched her cheek, his thumb brushing just below the wound. Her skin was cold to the touch, as if she must have been sitting out front for a long time before she worked up the courage to come to the door.

  “You don’t have to be sorry, Amanda,” he said softly. “Don’t be sorry about me, or for me.”

  She met his gaze. Her lower lip was quivering ever so slightly.

  “I’m not good at this,” she said.

  “Hush.” He bent his head and touched his mouth to hers. Not with passion, but with something gentler. Her lips warmed, and softened, and opened to him.

  “I can’t stay,” she whispered, her voice tight with whatever conflict she was battling internally.

  “Shh . . .”

  He kissed her again. The scarf fell to the floor. He trailed the kiss down her neck and slipped her coat off her shoulders.

  “Sam . . .”

  “Amanda . . .” His lips brushed the shell of her ear. “I want you.”

  A delicate shiver ran through her. He felt it pass beneath his hands as he slid them down her back. She turned her head and her mouth found his. A trembling kiss. Hesitant, but anxious. Needing, but afraid. She opened her eyes and looked at him through tears.

  “I don’t know what we can have,” she said. “I don’t know what I can give you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he answered, the truth of the moment. “We can have this. We can have now.”

  He could feel her heart beat against his chest, marking the passing of time. Even now he couldn’t read her, didn’t know what questions she asked or answered within herself. He could feel the sadness in her, the emptiness, the loneliness, the conflict. He recognized those qualities, responded to them, lost himself in them as they sank down onto the sofa.

  They could have this. They could have now. Even if that was all they ever had, he didn’t have anything else that was worth a damn by comparison.

  “I CAN’T STAY,” Savard said softly.

  She lay in Kovac
’s arms, the pair of them on his sofa, covered by her coat. His skin was warm against hers. She liked the feel of his body pressed to hers, of her legs tangled with his; the feeling of being wrapped up with him, the suggestion of being inseparable. But it was a suggestion she couldn’t fulfill. That knowledge left her feeling empty, hollow, isolated.

  He touched the back of her head and pressed his lips to her forehead. “You don’t have to, but you can . . . if you want. I might even have clean sheets.”

  “No,” she said, forcing herself to move, to sit up. She pulled her clothes together and covered herself. “I can’t.”

  Kovac levered himself up on one arm and gently combed out the tangles he’d put in her hair. “Amanda, I don’t care where the nightmares come from. Do you understand what I mean by that? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t scare me that you have them.”

  It matters to me. It scares me, she wanted to say, but she didn’t.

  “You can share them with me if you need to,” he said. “Believe me, there’s nothing I haven’t heard.”

  Of course, that wasn’t true, but she didn’t point that out to him either. She had learned long ago when to argue and when to be silent.

  Kovac sighed behind her. “The bathroom’s down the hall on the right.”

  KOVAC WATCHED AS she walked out of the room, half dressed. If this was all he could have of her, it was better than anything he’d ever dared hope for. Let her keep her secrets. He was oh-for-two with deep relationships, why try again? But he knew better. Amanda was a mystery, a puzzle. He would never rest until he got to the heart of her. As guarded as she was, she would resent the intrusion, and he would ultimately destroy what they did have.

  He pulled his clothes on, rubbed a hand over his hair, and sat on the arm of the couch, sipping at his scotch while he waited for her to emerge. She came back into the room looking just as she had when she arrived. Beautiful, reserved, disguised.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said, addressing the empty aquarium.

  “Then don’t tell me anything. You brass types,” he said, making a face. “There doesn’t have to be a master plan.”

  She looked worried about that.

  He went to her and touched her face with the back of his hand.

  “Sometimes we just need to follow a trail and see where it goes,” he said. Sam Kovac, sage. “Listen to me. Like I know what I’m talking about. I’m a two-time loser. Every trail I take ends up in a dark tunnel with a train coming my way. I should stick to just being a cop. I’m good at that.”

  She found half a smile for him. It faded as her gaze fell on the coffee table. Her brows drew together.

  “What’s this?”

  “The Thorne murder. Mike Fallon’s shooting. Andy was looking at it. I’m just turning over rocks, see what crawls out.”

  “Follow the trail and see where it goes,” she said absently. She spread out some of the pages, not picking them up, just looking at them.

  “Sad story. You’re too young to remember.”

  “Sad,” she murmured, staring at the bad copy of the photograph of Bill Thorne’s widow being consoled by her family.

  “Life turns on a dime,” Kovac said.

  “Yes, it does.”

  She straightened and adjusted the velvet scarf, took a deep breath, looking past his shoulder again.

  “Just say, ‘I’ll see you around, Sam,’” he told her. “It beats the hell out of good-bye.”

  She tried to smile but failed, then rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek, her hands tightening on his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Then she was gone, and all he had left to keep him warm was a fifty-dollar bottle of scotch.

  “You’re not as sorry as me,” he said as he stood in the open door and watched her drive away.

  Next door, the Saint-O-Meter was counting down the minutes.

  The phone rang, and he actually hurried to pick it up. It didn’t even matter who it was.

  “Lonely Hearts Club,” he said. “Join now. Misery loves company.”

  “Do you take masochists?” Liska.

  “Two for one if you join with a sadist.”

  “What are you doing, Kojak? Sitting home feeling sorry for yourself?”

  “I don’t have anyone else to feel sorry for. My life is an empty shell.”

  “Get a dog,” she said without sympathy. “Guess who partnered with Eric Curtis until about a year before he was murdered?”

  Kovac took a sip of the Macallan. “If you tell me Bruce Ogden, I’m walking out of this movie, Jodie.”

  “Derek Rubel,” she said. “And guess who was at HCMC yesterday having a blood test, then lying about it?”

  “Derek Rubel.”

  “Give the man a cigar.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Kovac murmured.

  “No,” Liska said. “But I have a feeling Derek Rubel will be.”

  32

  CHAPTER

  STEELE’S WAS THE kind of gym where sweating and grunting were required. There were no jazz dance aerobic classes, no yoga. It was all iron, hard-bodied hard-asses, heavy metal blasting from the stereo. It had the ambience of a machine shop, and the stench of people with too much testosterone was enough to make a normal person’s eyes water.

  Liska badged the bored biker chick working the desk and went into the main weight room. She stood at the edge of the action for a moment, scanning the small crowd, secretly awestruck by the male bodies. Amazing to think what an ordinary human could become through well-applied obsessive behavior and, in some cases, the miracles of modern chemistry. Every third guy in the gym was built like the Incredible Hulk.

  Rubel stood in a corner, spotting someone on a bench. He wore a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off to accommodate upper arms as thick as Virginia hams. The muscles were so perfectly defined, he could have been used as a live model for a human anatomy class.

  Liska wove her way through the maze of people pumping iron, knowing the instant Rubel became aware of her, even though he didn’t look right at her. She could sense the energy change in the air. She walked up to the bench and looked down into Bruce Ogden’s ugly face. He was straining beneath a barbell loaded with iron plates the size of truck wheels, red in the face, squawling.

  She cut a look at Rubel. “Does he make this much noise in bed?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’d ask his girfriend, but he’s never had one as far as I’ve been able to find out.” She leaned over Ogden again and made a face of apology. “Whores don’t count. Sorry.”

  Ogden let out a roar and shoved the barbell up.

  “What do you want, Sergeant?” Rubel asked. “We’re in the middle of something here.”

  “I’ll say you are,” Liska said, deadly serious, showing some of her hatred for these two men. “You’re up to your necks in it. And note how I came here in person to tell you to your faces. No anonymous call from a pay phone. No photographs in the mail. I’ve got bigger balls than both of you put together.”

  Ogden racked the barbell and sat up, grunting, sweat running off his face like rainwater. “Yeah? We heard that about you.”

  Liska rolled her eyes. “Now with the lesbian innuendo. You’re too much, Ox. Maybe if you stopped trying to make yourself look like a big bad heterosexual male animal and exercised your brain instead, you wouldn’t be in this shit. But it’s too late for you to get smart now. You crossed the line when you decided to involve my children. There’s no going back from that. And, since it’s not legal for me to rip your beating hearts from your chests and show them to you while you die, I’m going to see you both in prison.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rubel said without emotion.

  Liska looked him in the eye and made him wait. “I’ve got Cal Springer. He’s mine. I turned him. And now the fun begins,” she said with malicious relish. “First one to the prosecutor gets the deal. Cal and I are sitting down with someone in Sabin’s office tomorrow a
t noon.”

  Ogden’s mouth curved in a pout. “You’re full of shit, Liska. You don’t have anything or you’d be pulling out cuffs.”

  “There’s nothing to have,” Rubel said, still cool. “There’s no case.”

  Liska smiled up at him. “You keep thinking that, sweetheart. And why don’t you also spend some time thinking about what happens in prison to good-looking boys like you? I hear it gets rough. Then again, maybe you like it that way.”

  She reached up and patted his cheek. “Too bad Eric’s not alive to fill us in.”

  Bang! Right between the eyes. Rubel didn’t flinch, didn’t change his expression, but he felt the hit as surely as if he’d taken a bullet. Liska felt the shock wave roll off him, and he knew she knew. She savored the moment. Maybe a thousand moments like that would make up for what she’d felt when she’d seen those photographs of Kyle and R.J.

  Maybe not.

  She turned to go and pulled up short. Just for a heartbeat. Rubel and Ogden probably didn’t even notice. She doubted she faltered longer than a split second. But in that split second, eye contact was made. Standing ten feet away, taking a break from squats on the Smith machine, was Speed.

  “ARE YOU SURE the voice activation thing works?” Springer whined. “What if it doesn’t turn on?”

  Barry Castleton knelt on the floor in front of him, duct-taping the microcassette recorder to Springer’s squishy midsection. As the lead on the Ibsen case, Castleton had deserved a heads-up when Springer broke. Liska wanted the collar herself—for personal reasons more than for what it would put in her jacket—but she couldn’t cut him out and live with herself. Castleton—forty-something, African American, a tendency to dress like an English professor—was a good cop and a good guy. If she had to share, she didn’t mind sharing with him.