Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  “I could have stopped it,” she said, looking inward. The gun was in her hand, her hand was shaking badly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Andy. . . .”

  “You didn’t kill him, Amanda,” Kovac said gently, his anger shifting to fear as he watched her look at the weapon in her hand. “Let me have the gun. We’ll stop it now, tonight. I’ll help you.”

  “It’s too late,” she murmured, looking inward. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “Give me the gun, Amanda.”

  She looked at the weapon in her hand and raised it, turning the barrel toward herself.

  “DROP THE GUN, Rubel!” Castleton called. “We’re on you.”

  Rubel pointed the nine-millimeter at Liska’s chest and screamed, an animal roar, his face going red, the cords in his thick neck standing out like ropes beneath the taut skin.

  “GIVE ME THE gun, Amanda,” Kovac said, stepping toward her. Everything inside him was shaking. “It’s over now, honey.”

  “I could have stopped it,” she said.

  Kovac took another step. “Amanda, please . . .”

  She looked into his eyes. “You don’t understand.”

  “Amanda.”

  “It’s all my fault.”

  “No,” Kovac whispered, reaching out slowly. His hand was shaking like a drunk’s.

  “Yes,” she said softly, nodding her head. Her finger stroked the trigger. “They’re all dead because of me.”

  CASTLETON ROARED BACK, screaming, moving on Rubel.

  Liska jammed her hand into her coat pocket.

  Rubel turned his head, just for a second. A second was all she needed.

  The tactical baton snapped to full length, and Liska moved in and to the side, swinging it overhand as hard as she could. The bones in Rubel’s forearm snapped as the gun went off, and the shot went into a wall. Then Rubel crumpled to the floor, screaming, writhing.

  Liska dropped the baton and walked out of the cubicle.

  “AMANDA . . .” KOVAC WHISPERED. He would later look back on that single instant in time, and know that what he’d seen in her eyes at that moment was a reflection of his own dying hope.

  “Amanda . . . give me the gun.”

  “No,” she said softly. “No, Sam. Don’t you see? I could have stopped it twenty years ago. My mother didn’t shoot Bill Thorne. I did.”

  Kovac would never have any memory of the sound the gun made when it went off. He would never remember the screams—Ace Wyatt’s, his own. The memory would forever be in images only:

  The spray of blood and bone and brain matter.

  The split second of surprise in Amanda’s eyes before they went blank.

  Himself, sitting on the floor, holding her body, as if his consciousness had detached from his own body and pulled away to try to escape the horror.

  But there was no escape. There never would be.

  39

  CHAPTER

  “TIPPEN CALLED,” Liska said.

  She looked like hell. Tinker Bell on heroin. Pale, purple smudges under her eyes, hair sticking up in all directions. Who knew the last time she’d slept. Kovac could barely remember the last time he’d slept. Yet, exhausted as he was, the last thing he wanted to do was go home. The job was his refuge. Liska’s too.

  And so they had gone on instead of going home. A new day had dawned, bright and cold. They stood on the front steps of Gavin Gaines’s town house for the execution of the search warrant, looking for whatever they could find to tie him to the murders of Andy and Mike Fallon. Looking for anything that might suggest Ace Wyatt had knowledge of those murders.

  Kovac looked at the sun, a pale orange ball in the palest of blue skies, a halo around it. Sundog. Meant it was cold.

  No fucking lie.

  “He said they found Andy’s files,” Liska said. “In his boat. Good hunch.”

  “Neil told me Andy had been out there Sunday afternoon,” Kovac said. “The files weren’t anywhere else. Gaines didn’t have them, or he wouldn’t have followed me out there last night. Though I’ll bet he grabbed the laptop and got rid of that the night he killed him.”

  “Why do you think Andy hid the files and then let Gaines into his house?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he just didn’t want Gaines to get a look at them. I’m sure he didn’t think Gaines would kill for them.”

  “What’s going to happen to Wyatt?”

  Kovac shrugged. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder. We’ve got the tape with his confession to killing Weagle and shooting Mike.”

  “And his lawyer will say it was given under duress, and he hadn’t been Mirandized, and blah, blah, blah.”

  “Yeah. I’d say there’s no justice,” he said. “But there is. Sometimes it just takes a while to come around. And sometimes when it does, it’s not quite what we had in mind.”

  They said nothing for a moment, just stood there watching the street.

  “I’m sorry about Savard,” Liska said.

  Kovac hadn’t told her about his feelings for Amanda. What was the point in anyone hearing that? Bad enough that he had to deal with it at all. Worse to have sympathy. Worse yet, pity. But he’d told her the tale of what had happened in Wyatt’s house. He’d told her what he knew, what he’d pieced together, what Wyatt had told him in the aftermath.

  He could too easily picture Amanda, seventeen and vulnerable and afraid; in need of justice, not getting it from the people she should have been able to rely on. She’d done the only thing she thought would save her mother: she’d shot her father dead. Then Evelyn Thorne had done the only thing she believed would save her daughter: assumed culpability. Then Wyatt had come into the picture, and the tragedy spiraled on.

  He remembered now what Amanda had said to him Friday night as they stood in her kitchen. 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?

  “I’m sorry too,” he murmured at last, glad for the sunglasses that hid his eyes and the emotions in them.

  “There’s nothing left for Wyatt,” he said, digging a cigarette out of his pocket and hanging it on his lip. “He’s over. There’s nothing left . . .”

  For me, he thought, but he didn’t say it.

  He had the job, the only thing he’d ever been any good at.

  Somehow it didn’t feel like enough now. He didn’t think it would fill the hole inside him. Maybe nothing ever would.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  Liska shrugged and put on her shades. “Okay for having stared into the face of death. I wouldn’t want to do that every day.” She gave him the elbow and a smirk. “See? That Hollywood job would have been the way to go. Money for nothing.”

  They were quiet again for a moment, then she said, “I was scared. I’m still scared. I don’t want to think about the boys growing up without me. Someone sticks a gun in my face and I make a joke of it. But it’s not funny.”

  “You’re not gonna leave me, are you, Tinks?”

  She didn’t answer him right away, and when she did, it wasn’t really an answer at all. “I’m gonna take a vacation. Take the boys somewhere fun. Get a tan.”

  Elwood came to the door and stuck his head out. “You’ll want to see this.”

  They went into the town house and followed him through a maze of cops, up the stairs to the master bedroom and into a walk-in closet.

  Gaines had been a clotheshorse. The closet was hung with rods of suits and shirts. Shelves were stacked with sweaters and shoes. Someone had pushed aside the clothes on the rod that extended across the back of the closet to reveal a secret work of art.

  “Jesus,” was all Kovac could say.

  Gaines had filled the wall with photographs and news clippings of Wyatt. Articles about the man, about the show, about the deal with the WB network. Polaroids of Wyatt in fifty different settings, shaking hands, posing w
ith officials and fans. Photographs of the two of them in various social settings. In the center: Wyatt’s eight-by-ten glossy. A shrine.

  “Eew,” Liska said, wrinkling her nose. “Does anyone besides me want to go take a shower?”

  “I found these in an envelope on the shelf,” Elwood said, handing Kovac a stack of Polaroids.

  Andy Fallon hanging from the beam in his bedroom. Full body shot. Naked. Freshly dead. A close-up of his face. Mike Fallon sitting dead in his chair.

  “Something for the scrapbook,” Kovac said, echoing Gaines’s own words as he had shot pictures at Wyatt’s party and at the ice rink with the WB VPs.

  “You think he took them to blackmail Wyatt later on?” Elwood said.

  Kovac looked from the Polaroids to the collage and back.

  “No,” he said, handing the photographs back. “I don’t.”

  EPILOGUE

  AMANDA SAVARD’S FUNERAL was Thursday. A week to the day after Andy Fallon’s. Kovac attended alone, one of two dozen people in the small chapel at the funeral home. She had lived a confined, controlled life within the walls of her defenses. Kovac suspected he was one of the few people who had ever had a glimpse inside those walls.

  Evelyn Thorne was there with her doctor. Whether or not she knew what was happening was anyone’s guess. She sat quietly through the service, staring at the photograph she had brought with her. Amanda at the age of five. Bright-eyed and very serious. Her hair in a ponytail with a blue velvet bow. She showed it to Kovac three times. A part of him wanted to ask to keep it, but he didn’t.

  The service was simple, the basic closing on earthly existence. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Such an inadequate distillation of life: you’re born, you live, you die. There were no eulogies. There was no service graveside. She was not buried next to her father.

  The details of Amanda’s involvement in Bill Thorne’s death had been kept from the press. Her funeral was not considered newsworthy. Mike Fallon’s funeral drew a thousand law enforcement professionals from all over the upper Midwest, and made the front page of the Star Tribune. Kovac did not attend.

  He slipped back into the chapel after the service had ended, after the rest of the mourners had gone. He sat for a long time, staring at the closed casket, not quite allowing himself to wonder what might have been. The funeral home director came in and gave him that same hopeful look as waitstaff in a bar at closing.

  “Take your time,” the man said with a polite smile, backing away toward the potted palms along the side of the room.

  Kovac stood and dug a hand into his coat pocket. “Can I leave something with her? Is it too late for that?”

  “Certainly.” He came forward again, his eyes kind. “I can take care of that for you.”

  Kovac pulled out the badge he had carried as a patrolman when he’d first come on the job too many years ago. He looked at it, ran his thumb over it, then handed it to the funeral director.

  “I’d like her to have this.”

  The man took it, nodded, and offered a gentle smile. “I’ll see that she gets it.”

  “Thanks.”

  THERE WERE JUST two cars left in the side lot. His and Liska’s. She stood leaning against his driver’s side door, arms crossed.

  “You okay?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

  Kovac looked back at the building. “Naw, not really . . . I broke one of my own rules. Expected too much.”

  Liska nodded. “I broke that one too. . . . So, I guess we can be morose together.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the cold. One corner of his mouth twitched up. “I’m not morose, I’m bitter.”

  For a moment she just looked at him, not with the cop eyes, but with the eyes of a friend. Then she came away from the car and put her arms around him and held him. Kovac hugged her back, eyes squeezed tightly against the need to cry. They held each other that way for a minute, maybe two.

  When she stepped back, Liska popped him on the arm and tried to grin. “Hey, we’ve got each other, huh? Come on, partner, I’ll buy you a cup of joe.”

  Kovac smiled softly. “You’re on . . . friend.”

  BANTAM BOOKS BY TAMI HOAG

  Ask your bookseller for titles you may have missed

  DARK HORSE

  DUST TO DUST

  ASHES TO ASHES

  A THIN DARK LINE

  GUILTY AS SIN

  NIGHT SINS

  DARK PARADISE

  CRY WOLF

  STILL WATERS

  LUCKY’S LADY

  SARAH’S SIN

  MAGIC

  And coming soon in hardcover

  KILL THE MESSENGER

  Praise for the bestsellers of

  TAMI HOAG

  DARK HORSE

  “A thriller as tightly wound as its heroine . . . Hoag has created a winning central figure in Elena . . . Bottom line: Great ride.” —People

  “This is her best to date . . . [a] tautly told thriller.”

  —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

  “Hoag proves once again why she is considered a queen of the crime thriller.”

  —Charleston Post & Courier

  “A tangled web of deceit and double-dealing makes for a fascinating look into the wealthy world of horses juxtaposed with the realistic introspection of one very troubled ex-cop. A definite winner.”

  —Booklist

  “Anyone who reads suspense novels regularly is acquainted with Hoag’s work—or certainly should be. She’s one of the most consistently superior suspense and romantic suspense writers on today’s bestseller lists. A word of warning to readers: don’t think you know whodunit ’til the very end.”

  —The Facts (Clute, TX)

  “Suspense, shocking violence, and a rip-roaring conclusion—this novel has all the pulse-racing touches that put Tami Hoag books on bestseller lists and crime fans’ reading lists.”

  —The Advocate Magazine (Baton Rouge, LA)

  “Full of intrigue, glitter, and skullduggery . . . [Hoag] is a master of suspense.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Her best to date, an enjoyable read, and a portent of even better things to come.”

  —The Grand Rapids Press

  “A complex cerebral puzzle that will keep readers on the edge until all the answers are revealed.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  “To say that Tami Hoag is the absolute best at what she does is a bit easy since she is really the only person who does what she does. . . . It is testament to Hoag’s skill that she is able to go beyond being skillful and find the battered hearts in her characters, and capture their beating on the page. . . . A superb read.”

  —Detroit News & Free Press

  DUST TO DUST

  “Compelling and expertly told. Plot lines smolder and ignite as the suspense builds. The result leaves . . . the reader scorched.”

  —USA Today

  “[This] wintry tale of crime and punishment packs a powerful thrill. Bottom line: Good cops + bad cops = killer suspense.”

  —People (Page-turner of the week, starred review)

  “Dust to Dust breathes new life into the old good cop vs. bad cop genre. . . . A roller-coaster ride of a thriller that will leave fans awaiting the next installment.”

  —New York Post

  “Sharp dialogue and an unusual plot make this a highly engaging outing for Hoag.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Practice must make perfect after all because Tami Hoag . . . just keeps getting better. . . . Hoag not only develops her characters, she also thickens the plot with every chapter, until there is no alternative but to keep turning those pages.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “As a master of complex plots, Hoag is adept at faking readers into thinking they’ve figured out what’s happened, only to shatter their theories. Dust to Dust continues the tradition.”

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “In this well-crafted thriller, H
oag sets a complex plot in motion and gives it a powerful, emotional center.”

  —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

  ASHES TO ASHES

  “Hoag has more or less taken over the serial killer genre all by herself.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “You’ll want to lock the doors while you’re reading. . . . Hoag does her homework and gets the details right in this creepy story. . . . Powerful.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “An up-all-night read.” —The Detroit News

  “[A] detail-packed thriller . . .The Silence of the Lambs comes to mind more than once.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “[A] compelling . . . startling story.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Hoag has a way of sneaking up on the reader in superior thriller tradition. . . . She neatly side-steps the graphic crudeness of some of her competitors, while still providing enough surprise twists and stomach-turning carnage to satisfy any heebie-jeebie enthusiast.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Absorbing . . . always interesting . . . Once again, Hoag doesn’t disappoint.”

  —New York Post

  “Promises to keep readers up reading into the night. . . . A lot of bang for the buck.”

  —Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

  “Chilling . . . Patricia Cornwell wrote thrillers that had readers turning the pages until 3 a.m. Now Hoag is keeping readers up all hours.”

  —Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)

  “If ‘page turner’ is a term too easily used, Ms. Hoag has restored its legitimacy. Her stories shock us, shake us, take us to the darkest edges of criminal conduct.”

  —The Cincinnati Enquirer

  “We who know a little about Tami Hoag’s novels lock the doors, grab a bowl of popcorn, and settle down for an often unsettling read. With Ashes, we need to look over our shoulders every chapter or so because the evil therein gathers momentum with every move a serial killer makes.”