Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  “. . . that kind of publicity . . . unacceptable, Gavin.” Wyatt.

  “. . . situation can be defused . . . denials . . .” Gaines.

  “Goddammit, you have to . . . image . . . my audience is Middle America, for god’s sake.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  The door closed tight again. Kovac moved closer, straining to hear. Then Gaines came out, looking flushed and angry.

  “What’s the matter, Slick?” Kovac asked. “Hard day on your knees?”

  “I realize you have no appreciation for what I do, Sergeant,” he said. “There’s really no need for you to make the point every time we meet.”

  “But I like the way it makes your nostrils flare, Gavin.”

  Gaines looked ready to bend an iron bar with his teeth. “Captain Wyatt has been waiting for you.”

  “Good. I’m a busy man.” Kovac went to the door, then looked back at Wyatt’s right hand. “You can go, Gaines. The captain won’t be needing you. We’re just going to talk about old times.”

  Wyatt stood looking out a window at nothing. Darkness had fallen like an anvil an hour before. He watched Kovac’s reflection in the window.

  “No word yet on Rubel,” he said. A statement of fact.

  “You’ll hear it before I will.”

  “Shouldn’t you be out on the search?”

  “With all your citizens beating the bushes? They’ll bring him to you hog-tied. He can be the special guest on your next show.”

  Wyatt went for the straight line. “Maybe. I like the idea of the occasional interview with a bad guy. Let the public see how twisted minds work.”

  He’d been spending too much time with the WB VPs.

  “I have other cases ongoing,” Kovac said. “Mike’s murder. Andy’s murder . . .”

  Wyatt looked straight at him then.

  “No one called you?” Kovac said, feigning shock. “Stone believes Andy was strangled before he was hung.”

  The color drained from his face. “What?”

  “Marks on the throat,” he said, running a finger around his own to demonstrate. “Faint but there. The doc who did the autopsy missed them. I asked Dr. Stone to personally go back over the autopsy, just in case the new guy missed something—having had pressure on him from higher up. Good thing, huh? Or he might have been buried with that little secret.”

  “Why . . . ?” Kovac could see Wyatt scrambling mentally, trying to get his legs back under him, trying to sound intelligent and ignorant at once. “Do you think it had to do with Rubel?”

  “Personally, no,” Kovac said. “I think it’s a pretty damn strange coincidence that first Andy dies and it looks like suicide, then his old man buys it and it’s made to look like suicide. Don’t you find that strange?”

  Wyatt furrowed the famous brow. “So you like Neil for both murders?”

  Kovac ignored the question, feeling too raw and wrung out emotionally to dance the mental minuet. “I found Evelyn Thorne. Andy found her too. You think I’ll end up the same as he did, or the same as Mike?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jesus Christ, Ace,” Kovac said, the impatience burning through. “I don’t have time for this bullshit! It goes back to Thorne! Andy found something about what happened that night, something no one else saw at the time, because they didn’t want to see it, or they buried it because it was all in the family. It was cops. Thorne was a cop, you, Mike. The only one dead not a cop was that poor bastard Weagle.”

  “Weagle attacked Evelyn!” Wyatt said. “He—he beat her. He raped her. He shot Bill. Killed him. He shot Mike.”

  “Did he?” Kovac asked. “’Cause I’m wondering here, Ace, why people interested in that case, connected to that case, are suddenly dead if it happened the way we all heard back then.”

  Wyatt walked away, went behind his desk. Retreating, or taking cover . . . Kovac never took his eyes off the man, every muscle in his body taut, ready to move. He positioned himself so he could see both Wyatt and the door.

  “What did Evelyn say to you?” Wyatt asked. “She’s not a well woman. I’m sure the doctors told you she’s often delusional.”

  “You told me you’d lost touch with her. You told me you didn’t know where she was.”

  “I was trying to protect her. Evelyn never recovered from what happened. She was always . . . fragile. Something broke in her mind that night. The doctors have never been able to fix it. She retreated to a safe place, a world of her own. She seems to be happy there most of the time.”

  “She showed me photographs,” Kovac said. “Pictures of the old neighborhood, barbecues, friends. You know, she didn’t have one photograph of Bill. Not one photograph of her husband.”

  “Painful memories.”

  “How painful?” Kovac asked.

  Wyatt closed his eyes and drove his hands back over his hair. “What’s the point of this, Sam? It was twenty years ago.”

  Kovac stared at him, looked around the plush executive office, thought of the career Ace Wyatt had made for himself since the night someone had shot and killed Bill Thorne. What if it was all a lie? A house of cards. A legend born of blood. With Wyatt’s show poised to go national, what if Andy Fallon had found the answer to that question?

  “There’s a body count, Ace,” he said. “If you don’t see the point of that, you’re in a bad place.”

  Wyatt pulled down the game face, a granite mask. “You haven’t shown me any evidence that these deaths are tied to one another, or tied to the past. I don’t believe it.”

  “I’ll admit, at this point, I’m still fishing,” Kovac said. “Probably the same as Andy was fishing. But I think he found something—which is why he’s dead—and I think I know where he put it. If it’s there, Ace, it’s mine. Better for everyone to get out in front of it now. You know what I’m saying? You. Savard. I know she’s Thorne’s daughter.”

  Wyatt looked through him. “You’re saying you think I’ve done something wrong,” he said flatly. “I haven’t. I didn’t. There’s nothing to be gained in stirring up old dust, Sam. People, careers, reputations could be damaged. For nothing.”

  “I think two people are dead because of it,” Kovac said. “That’s something, Ace. I don’t give a damn about any of the rest of it.”

  He went to the door and put his hand on the knob, looking back at the legend. A man he’d never liked, and still there was a place deep inside him where he felt sorry.

  “Evelyn sends her love,” he said quietly, and let himself out.

  SHE WAS SO tired. . . .

  The workday had come and gone. Savard remained sequestered in her office. Hiding. Avoiding the press, avoiding having to go home. She had turned the lights off, except for her desk lamp, and sat, letting the silence envelop her. What a relief to be still, she thought, staring at the photograph she had taken and developed and framed herself years ago. A winter landscape.

  This was why she shot landscapes rather than people: the stillness. If she could find stillness in her surroundings, she could hope to achieve it within herself . . . if only for a little while. If only while she was lost in the stark beauty of the picture. For those few moments, she could successfully ease the tension that quivered at the core of her.

  The stillness didn’t last tonight. A cacophony of sound invaded her brain. Angry questions, blunt questions, demands, directives. All that and the message from Hazelwood on her voice mail. She was so tired.

  Kovac knew.

  It had been just a matter of time. In the back of her mind, she’d always known that. In her heart, she had hoped for something more: a fold in time where events could be trapped, contained, separated, isolated. What a lovely idea. If only. But the past was poisonous and difficult to restrain, seeping around the edges of the boundaries she erected.

  She closed her eyes and conjured an image, the fleeting memory of feeling safe and cared for. She had wanted so badly to accept it. She didn’t want to carry the weight anymore. She was so t
ired. . . .

  When she opened her eyes again, he was standing there. Panic clenched like a fist in her chest as she wondered if this moment was real or surreal. The nightmares came so frequently lately, it was becoming more difficult to tell.

  He stood there in the shadows, expressionless, silent, the collar of his coat turned up. A sense of dread began to build deep inside her.

  “You’re Bill Thorne’s daughter,” he said, and raised a gun.

  37

  CHAPTER

  KOVAC TOOK HIS time driving, playing it all through in his mind, trying to sort into chronological order the things he had learned today, patching the gaps with educated guesses. Trying not to react to any of it in an emotional way. Trying not to feel the sense of betrayal. Trying not to remind himself that he’d been right all along: that it was better not to want something more.

  Neil Fallon’s bar was closed, looking abandoned.The whole place looked like a shantytown that even the bums had forsaken—the crude cabins, the ice fishing houses, the work shed, the shed where Fallon stored the boats—all dark and empty of life, save for the rats. The only lights were a couple of security lights on poles and the Coors sign buzzing in the tiny window of the bar.

  Kovac parked under the light and got out. He dug his Maglite out from under a pile of junk on the floor behind the driver’s seat, then went to the trunk and rummaged through paper bags and evidence kits, finally coming up with the tire iron.

  The wind had not let up. The temperature had dropped. It wasn’t a night for a walk in the moonlight. Kovac took one anyway, going down to the boat shed. Senses sharp, he was hyper-aware of the cold, of the way it felt in his nose, in his lungs; hyper-aware of the sound of his shoes on the packed snow. He stopped near the shed and looked down the bank and down the shoreline.

  In the moonlight, he couldn’t see to where Derek Rubel’s truck had gone through the ice, but it wasn’t far. Standing among the empty buildings in the middle of nowhere, Kovac thought this was the kind of place where a man might vanish from one dimension into another and never be seen again.

  There was a secret worth knowing. He filed it away for future reference. He had a feeling escape was going to look like a fine option after this was all over.

  THE GUN WENT off with a deafening bang!

  Amanda jerked back, up and out of her chair, arms flinging out to the sides.

  And then she was awake.

  The office was empty.

  She stood behind the desk, her heart racing, lungs pumping as if she’d run a mile. She could smell her own sweat. Her clothes were damp with it. The emotions built and built and built inside her, choking her. Crushing her. A ragged sob tore from her throat and she flung herself at the desk, swinging her arms, knocking down the lamp, sending everything scattering, tumbling, falling, crashing. She pounded her fists on the desktop, crying, fighting, furious, terrified.

  When the adrenaline ebbed and the outburst died, she sat back down in her chair and forced her mind to work.

  No matter how she might have deluded herself all these years, it had always been only a matter of time.

  Time was up.

  She pulled open the desk drawer and took out the gun.

  WITH THE TIRE iron, Kovac pried loose the latch plate from the old door. The latch, complete with padlock, flopped to the side, and he went into the shed. He clicked on the flashlight in order to find the light switch.

  Half a dozen boats of various sizes and types had been parked for the winter. Kovac walked around them, looking at the names. Hang Time, Miss Peach, Azure II. He chose one called Wiley Trout and climbed the ladder. When he climbed back down, he held a large, heavy backpack by one padded strap.

  “Put it down, Kovac.”

  Kovac held the bag out to one side and breathed a sigh. “Put it down or what?”

  “Or I’ll kill you where you stand.”

  “As opposed to killing me later and making it look like suicide? You weren’t kidding when you said you did whatever the captain needed.”

  “No, I wasn’t kidding,” Gaines said. “Put the bag down.”

  “I guess you think there’s something in it worth having.”

  “It doesn’t matter what’s in it. Put it down.”

  “Ah,” Kovac said, turning his head, trying to see what Gaines had pointed at his back. “’Cause you see, there’s nothing in it but a ream of scrap paper. But you’ll kill me first and worry about the evidence later. I know this is going to sound like a cliché, but you won’t get away with it, Gaines. It’s too late. Too many people know too much.”

  “I don’t think so,” Wyatt’s assistant said with confidence. “You suspect, you don’t know. You’re just fishing, and you’re on your own. You don’t have an official investigation. You haven’t spoken with Leonard about your suspicions. You don’t have any evidence as of now. The only people aware of what Andy Fallon was looking into are people who stand to lose. Neil Fallon was arraigned today for his father’s murder. The ME won’t change the ruling on Andy’s death.”

  “You sound pretty damn sure of all that,” Kovac said. “Did Wyatt tell you he’d make it happen that way?”

  “Wyatt doesn’t know.”

  “He doesn’t know you’ve killed for him, that you’ve gotten rid of the people who could ruin his image with the American public? That’s selfless of you, Gavin. He should be giving you a bonus.

  “Or does that come later? When he’s established, when the show’s a hit and the big money rolls in? Is that when you show him the pictures or the videotape or whatever evidence you’ve squirreled away? Show him how much you love him.”

  “Shut up.”

  “And how do you explain my death?” Kovac asked, shifting his feet, shifting his position subtly. He still couldn’t see what Gaines had in his hands. “I’ll tell you right now, Slick, I ain’t gonna let it look like no suicide. If I’m going down, I’m going down kicking.”

  “I have some ideas. Put the bag down.”

  “It was easy with Andy, wasn’t it?” Kovac said. “He comes to Wyatt to ask some innocent questions. You see it makes Ace nervous. Maybe you decide to dig a little yourself, try to find out what Andy’s got. Maybe he doesn’t even realize what he’s got, so he’s got no worries. You’re a good-looking guy, he’s a good-looking guy. You go out a couple of times. He doesn’t think much of it when you drop by with a bottle of wine. . . .”

  “I didn’t want to kill him,” Gaines said, and Kovac could hear the emotion in his voice, a strange mix of regret and relish. “I’m not a killer.”

  “Yes, you are. You thought he had something that might ruin your future. You planned it out. You drugged him. You strangled him unconscious so he couldn’t fight. Then you hung him from a beam and let the noose do the last of the job.”

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “And I’ll bet you stood there and watched while he kicked and twitched. It’s amazing how fast it happens, isn’t it?”

  “I told him I was sorry,” Gaines said. “I was. But he would have ruined everything. He would have ruined Captain Wyatt. I’ve worked too hard for this chance. It’s right there, in reach. It’s happening—the show, the network deal. He would have taken it away. For nothing. For something that was over twenty years ago. For something that can’t be changed. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “You know what happened that night?” Kovac asked.

  “I know Mike Fallon knew. He’d kept his mouth shut all this time because Wyatt paid him off. Andy had figured that out. If he had gotten his father to talk . . . I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “Wyatt has to suspect, Gavin. You think he’s gonna keep you around if he knows you’re a murderer? He’s a cop, for chrissake. It’s a law enforcement show. If he’s smart, he’ll put the collar on you himself and save his own ass. Think of the network special that would make.”

  “Drop the fucking bag!”

  “You’re a murderer,” Kovac said again. “He finds out—”

/>   “So is he!” Gaines screamed. “Drop the fucking bag!”

  Kovac had no time to digest the revelation. He caught the motion of Gaines’s arm in his peripheral vision and dove forward. The claw hammer just grazed the back of his head, his shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. Even through the thickness of his coat, the pain was a hard, hot ball, burning into the muscle.

  Kovac rolled onto his back as Gaines swung wildly for his head again, burying the head of the hammer in the dirt floor.

  “Drop it, Gaines!” Liska shouted. “You’re under arrest!”

  “Gun!” Kovac yelled as Gaines drew from inside his open coat and ran.

  Kovac rolled to the side and half under the boat. But Gaines’s purpose now was escape, and he was already running, the backpack in his left hand, gun in his right. He swung his arm back and let a shot go. Liska answered back. Gaines kept running, heading for the lake-end door of the boat shed.

  Liska charged past as Kovac pushed to his feet and pulled his weapon. Gaines ducked around the side of the last boat for cover and fired two more shots. Liska ducked right, the second of the shots splintering the fiberglass hull she used for cover, the bullet coming through two inches from her head. Then Gaines was out the door.

  Kovac went out a side door and crouched behind several fifty-five-gallon oil drums, straining to hear, to get some bearing on which way Gaines had run. He couldn’t hear anything but the wind.

  “Elwood’s got his vehicle,” Liska said, dropping down behind him, breathing hard. “Tippen’ll have radio cars on the way by now.”

  They had set up the trap on the fly. No time to take the plan to Leonard. No desire to. Kovac admitted there hadn’t been much to use as bait, but he’d heard enough and pieced together enough to float a hunch. If they kept the plan between themselves and no one bit, nothing was lost. If they had taken it to Leonard and Leonard had nixed it, nothing could have been gained.

  Kovac pulled off a glove, touched the back of his head, and came away with bloody fingers. He swore under his breath. “Which way did he go? He gets off the property and we have another Rubel on our hands, you and I are gonna be on duty at the county landfill.”