by Tami Hoag
“Do you ever read any of this?” Kovac asked.
She peered down at a photo through a pair of funky reading glasses and an illuminated magnifying glass. “Read what?”
Her hair was a peculiar toffee shade this month, cut in a pixie style and slicked to her head with goo. Most days she looked as if she hadn’t remembered to use a comb since the eighties.
“What did you find?”
“Okay.” She swung the magnifying glass on its swivel arm so that Kovac could look through it from the other side of the desk. “What I look for on the neck in a hanging death is a V-shaped bruising or abrasions, obviously following the angles of the noose. We see that clearly here,” she said, pointing out the marks. “And you found him hanging. We know he was hung. However, I also see what looks to be some shadows of a straight-line bruise around the neck here.”
“You think he was strangled, then hung?”
“The bruising isn’t clear. Anyone looking at this case with a foregone conclusion of suicide wouldn’t even notice it. But I feel that it’s there. If I’m right, I suspect the killer might have put protective padding between the ligature and the victim’s neck. If we’re lucky and the funeral home did a poor job of preparing the body, I may still be able to get some fibers off the throat. And, if the bruising is there, I’ll bet there’s more at the back of the neck.”
She sat back, made two fists, and held them out in front of her to demonstrate. “If the killer tightens the ligature with his hands, the knuckles press into the back of the neck, leaving several bruises. If you’re looking at a garrote, then the pressure at the point where the ligature crosses and tightens creates a significant single bruise.”
“There aren’t any photographs of the back of his neck?”
“No. I admit this wasn’t the most thorough of autopsies. But it came in looking like a slam-dunk suicide, and apparently there were calls from your end of things to move it through quickly for the family’s sake.”
“Didn’t come from me,” Kovac corrected her, frowning as he looked at the photographs. He stared at the barely discernible bruises on Andy Fallon’s throat, just below the vivid marks the noose had made. The nerves in his stomach came to life like a tangled pile of worms. “I’m on the ass-end on my end of things. That pressure came from higher up the food chain.”
That pressure had come from Ace Wyatt.
KOVAC LEANED OVER the counter and caught Russell Turvey sitting back in the corner paging through Hustler.
“Jesus, Russell. Do me a favor and don’t offer to shake my hand.”
Turvey barked and growled, his chest sounding like thunder in the distance. “Kojak! J. Christ! You’d be back here too, if you got the chance.”
“Not with you.”
Turvey laughed again, tossing the magazine under his chair. He grabbed hold of the counter and rolled himself into position without getting up.
“I hear Springer bought it,” he said, fixing his squint eye on Kovac. The other one looked off to the left. “I never liked him.”
Like that had made Cal Springer’s demise inevitable.
“You were there too,” Turvey said.
“I swear I didn’t pull the trigger. Liska can vouch for me.”
“Ha! Argh . . . Liska,” he purred, his expression a postcard for the word lascivious. “Is she a dyke?”
“No!”
“Not even . . .” He waggled a hand.
“No,” Kovac said emphatically. “Can we move on, please? I came down here for a reason.”
Turvey waved a hand at him. “What?”
“I need to look at an old file. The Thorne murder. I don’t have a case number but I’ve got the dates—”
“Don’t matter,” Turvey said. “It’s not here.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m here every goddamn day. You think I don’t know the place?”
“But—”
“I know it’s gone because someone from IA came down and asked for it a couple of months ago. Mike Fallon’s kid. It wasn’t here then. It ain’t here now.”
“And you don’t know where it is?”
“Nope.”
Kovac sighed and started to turn away, wondering who might have it or have a copy.
“Funny you should ask for that one,” Turvey said.
“Why is that?”
“’Cause I found that badge number you asked for the other day. It belonged to Bill Thorne.”
AMANDA SAVARD HAD Bill Thorne’s badge sitting on her desk in her home.
Kovac just stood there, trying to get his brain around that idea.
“I remember Bill Thorne,” Turvey said, rubbing his knobby chin. “I rode patrol in the Third Precinct back then. He was the meanest son of a bitch I ever knew.”
“You’re sure?” Kovac asked.
Turvey’s brows went up. “Sure? I once saw him knock a prostitute’s teeth out for lying to him.”
“You’re sure it’s Thorne’s badge?”
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
Kovac walked away, Russell Turvey’s words blurring into white noise.
Amanda Savard had Bill Thorne’s badge on her desk.
He went into the men’s room, ran the cold water and splashed his face, then stood there with his hands braced on the sink, staring into the mirror.
His mind scanned back over the days, flashing on images of her, of the two of them. He thought back to Saturday night. They’d made love on his couch. And when she was getting ready to leave, she’d looked down at the coffee table and had seen the articles he had gathered at the library.
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.
Life turns on a dime, he’d said.
And gives back change.
He went to the first floor, where traffic was heavier than usual, the hall busy with cops and with reporters looking for scraps on the Rubel manhunt. No one seemed to see him. He stood at the edge of the scene, looking past the crowd, toward Room 126.
She was likely in her office. IA would be busy digging up dirt on Rubel and Ogden, going through any reports of prior problems with either of them. Savard would likely be called on the carpet by a captain who would demand to know why the investigation into Ogden and the Curtis murder had died out. Why hadn’t any mention been made of Rubel at the time?
If he went down there right now, he might catch her between calls. And . . . what? Confront her like some cheated husband? He could see the scene in his mind. He could feel the humiliation. No.
One of the reporters spotted him, and life snapped back into fast-forward mode.
“Hey, Kovac,” the guy said, coming over, trying to keep his voice down so as not to tip off his competition. “I hear you were on the scene Saturday night. What happened?”
Kovac held up a hand and turned away. “No comment.”
He ducked into the anteroom, pushed past the crowd trying to circumvent the receptionist, and keyed his way into the main office. Liska was gone. Donna from the phone company had come through with Andy Fallon’s phone records for the past three months. Distraction. He could do this while his brain tripped and stumbled over the subject of Amanda. He turned on his computer, brought a reverse phone directory up on-line, and started in.
Too many of the numbers were unlisted. Nowadays, everyone wanted anonymity—and to avoid telemarketers. Those numbers that were listed were not of much interest. Mike, Neil, take-out restaurants. There were several calls to something called the Hazelwood Home. Kovac looked it up in the on-line Yellow Pages and found the place discreetly described as a “care facility.” Care of what? A rest home for Mike, maybe? Though Mike Fallon hadn’t really seemed in need of anything like that. A housekeeper, yes. A nursing home? No.
When he had gone through the list with the reverse directory, Kovac started with the cold calls, dialing the unlisted numbers and, for the most part, getting answering machines.
One of the machines belonged to Amanda Savard. Fallon had called her at home several times in the last few days of his life.
Andy Fallon had been looking into the Thorne murder. Amanda Savard had Bill Thorne’s badge on her desk.
She had very coolly denied Andy’s mentioning his private investigation into the Thorne case.
God damn! If only he had Fallon’s notes. There had to be files somewhere . . . and his laptop . . .
Or he could walk down the hall and ask Amanda point-blank about Thorne’s badge.
His gut told him not to ask.
Or maybe it wasn’t his gut at all.
She had Bill Thorne’s badge. She had seen Andy Fallon on the night of his death. She had been to his house. Andy had phoned her house frequently just before he died.
I love a puzzle, he thought, a vicious feeling cracking through him like a whip.
Amanda Savard had gone to bed with him. Twice. He was poking around in the death of Andy Fallon. Andy Fallon had been poking around in the death of Bill Thorne. Amanda had Bill Thorne’s badge.
He grabbed the telephone receiver and punched in the number for the Hazelwood Home.
The Hazelwood Home was a psychiatric care facility.
Kovac grabbed his coat and hat and bolted.
THE WIND SKIMMED over the snow, lifting a fine powder into the air so that, from the end of the driveway, the Hazelwood Home appeared shrouded in mist. A former private residence, the home was a sprawling, overdone homage to Frank Lloyd Wright. Long, low, horizontal lines gave the impression that the building was crouching into the ground. Huge old trees studded the snow-covered lawn. Beyond the grounds, the landscape looked open and marshy, which was much of the landscape west of Minneapolis.
Kovac parked under the carport at the entrance and went in past dueling holiday displays. Christmas on one side of the foyer, Hanukkah on the other. The overwhelming impression of the entry hall was darkness. A low beamed ceiling seemed too close overhead.
He looked for the youngest, least-experienced staff member working around the front desk, and homed in on her. A cherubic girl with natural blond curls clipped like a poodle’s. Her name tag read “Amber.” Amber’s eyes went wide as Kovac showed her his badge, using it to lure her away from the older woman answering the phone.
“Is he near here?” the girl asked, worried.
“Excuse me?”
“That guy,” she answered in a hushed whisper. “That killer. Are you here looking for him?”
Kovac leaned toward her. “I’m not at liberty to say,” he whispered back.
“Oh, my gosh.”
“I need to ask you a couple of questions, Amber,” Kovac said, pulling out a snapshot of Andy Fallon he had taken from Mike’s place. “Have you seen this man around here?”
She seemed disappointed the photograph wasn’t of Derek Rubel, but she recovered gamely.
“Yes. I’ve seen him. He’s been here a couple of times.”
“Lately?”
“In the past few weeks. He’s a police officer too,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “At least, he claimed to be.”
“What was he doing here? Who did he speak to?” Kovac kept one eye on the older woman at the other end of the desk. At a place like Hazelwood, discretion would be the rule. Amber looked too innocent of sin to understand the meaning of the word.
“He came to visit Mrs. Thorne,” she said simply, eyes blinking.
“YOU HAVE TO understand, Sergeant, Evelyn lives in her own world,” the doctor said as they walked down the long hall toward Evelyn Thorne’s room. “She’ll acknowledge your presence. She’ll interact with you. But the conversation will be her own.”
The psychiatrist was a large, soft-looking woman with a thick mane of long blond hair.
“I just want to ask her a couple of questions about the cop who came to see her a couple of times,” Kovac said. “Sergeant Fallon. Did he speak with you?”
The doctor looked troubled. “I spoke briefly with Mr. Fallon. I wasn’t aware he was here on police business. He told me he was Evelyn’s nephew. He asked me if she ever speaks about her husband’s murder.”
“Does she?”
“No. Never. She had her breakdown shortly after his death.”
“And she’s been like this ever since?”
“Yes. Some days she’s better than others, but she pretty much stays in hiding in her mind. She feels safe there.”
The doctor looked in the glass set in the center of Evelyn Thorne’s door, then rapped twice before going in.
“Evelyn, you have a visitor. This is Mr. Kovac.”
Kovac stopped just inside the room, feeling as if he’d taken a fist in the belly. Evelyn Thorne sat in an upholstered armchair, looking out her window, dressed in a blue track suit. She was thin, the kind of thinness that came from nerves. Her hair had gone gray. She wore it swept back from her face with a velvet headband. In the newspaper photograph he’d thought she looked a little like Grace Kelly. In reality she looked too much like someone else.
She turned her head to see him, her eyes a little vacant but her mouth curved in a pleasant smile.
“I know you!”
“No, ma’am, you don’t,” he said, walking toward her.
“Mr. Kovac needs to ask you some questions about the young man who came to see you, Evelyn,” the doctor said.
She paid no attention to the doctor. “You were a friend of my husband,” she said to Kovac.
The doctor gave him the I-told-you-so look and left them.
The room was spacious, with normal-looking furniture except for the hospital bed, which was draped with a pretty flowered spread. Not a bad place to while away the hours locked inside your own reality, Kovac thought. It had to cost some major bucks. He wondered if Wyatt was footing the bill for this as well. No wonder he needed to go Hollywood.
“So nice of you to come,” Evelyn Thorne said with formality. “Please have a seat.”
Kovac took the chair across from her and held out the photograph he’d shown Amber. “Mrs. Thorne, do you remember Andy Fallon? He came to see you recently.”
She took the photograph, still smiling. “Oh, isn’t he handsome? Your boy?”
“No, ma’am. He’s Mike Fallon’s boy. Do you remember Mike Fallon? He was a police officer. He came to your house the night your husband died.”
He didn’t know if she heard a word he said. She seemed not to.
“They grow up so fast,” she said, getting up from her chair and going to a little bookcase that held a lot of magazines and a Bible.
“I have pictures too,” she said, digging for a magazine at the bottom. Redbook. “She thinks she took them all. She doesn’t like having photographs out, not of family. But I had to keep a few.”
She pulled a manila envelope from the magazine and extracted a couple of snapshots.
“My daughter,” she said proudly, holding them out to Kovac. He didn’t want to touch them, as if not touching them, not looking at them, would keep their truth at bay. But Evelyn Thorne pushed them into his hands.
She was younger in the photograph. A little thinner. Her hair was different. But there was no mistaking Evelyn and Bill Thorne’s daughter: Amanda Savard.
36
CHAPTER
AMANDA SAVARD WAS Bill Thorne’s daughter.
He remembered the only hint in the newspaper articles from all those years ago: Thorne is survived by his wife and one daughter. That was it. No name, no photo.
Savard was Evelyn’s maiden name. He had been able to get that much out of her. Amanda must have taken the name for her own after the murder. Otherwise, she never could have come on the job without people making something of it.
Andy Fallon worked for Amanda Savard, Bill Thorne’s daughter. He’d been looking into Bill Thorne’s murder, the night Mike Fallon was shot, the night Ace Wyatt became a hero. Ace Wyatt had been paying off Mike Fallon for years. Andy Fallon was dead. Mike Fallon was dead. . . .
Kovac sat
in the dark parking lot of the building that housed the Wyatt Productions offices. On his third cigarette in two hours, his head was pounding. Hell of a day. He felt beat up. He felt old. He felt hollow. Funny, he’d thought he was too cynical to be disillusioned or disappointed. The joke’s on you, Kovac.
The building was nondescript. A brick two-story like a thousand others in the western suburbs. The parking lot had emptied in the last hour as the business day had come to a close and the CPAs and attorneys and orthodontist who shared the building had climbed into their cold vehicles and rolled down the street in a fog of exhaust to edge their way into the rush-hour crawl on 494.
Wyatt was expecting him. Had expected him ten minutes ago. Kovac let him wait, let the office staff leave. The Lincoln was parked in a reserved spot near the front of the building. Kovac had parked three rows back, alone. His pager trilled and he checked the display. Leonard. Fuck ’em.
He turned off the car and walked across the lot and into the building, tossing his cigarette just outside the door, not caring where it landed. The circular reception desk was deserted, the telephone ringing. A directory board on the wall showed Wyatt Productions to be on the second floor.
Kovac walked past the elevator, went up the stairs, and slipped into the outer office unnoticed. Like the rest of the building, everything was gray—the carpet, the walls, the upholstery on the square furniture. The walls were covered mainly with photographs of the great man being given commendations for this and that remarkable feat, being honored for his selfless service to the community. Photographs of him with local celebrities, with legends in law enforcement, with movie stars buttonholed on the sets of pictures being shot in the metro area.
The man had never met a camera he wouldn’t turn his good side to. Evelyn Thorne’s included.
Kovac sniffed and shook his head.
The knob turned on the door to Wyatt’s office and the sound of voices spilled out in dribs and drabs, the volume rising and falling.
