Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  He put his hat on the rack but kept his coat, and stood off to the side watching the civilians move as a trio to another small knot of their own kind. He would approach them later. Afterward. After they had all shared the experience of putting their friend in the ground. He wondered if any of them had been close enough to Andy Fallon to share a sexual paraphilia.

  Impossible to tell. In his experience the most normal-seeming people could be involved in the weirdest shit. Andy Fallon’s friends looked like the cream of their generation. Well dressed, clean-cut, their faces pale with grief beneath the fading red of wind-kissed cheeks. Couldn’t say who was gay, who was straight, who was into S and M.

  The doors opened again, and Steve Pierce held one back, letting Jocelyn Daring precede him in. They made a handsome couple in expensive black cashmere coats: Jocelyn a statuesque porcelain doll with every blond hair neatly swept back and held in place with a black velvet bow. She may not have felt the loss of her fiancé’s best friend, but she knew how to dress the part. She appeared to be pouting. Pierce stood beside her near the coatrack with a thousand-yard stare. He didn’t help her with her coat. She said something to him, and he snapped at her. Kovac couldn’t make out the words, but his tone was sharp and her reaction was to intensify the pout. They didn’t touch as they went into the church.

  Not a happy couple.

  Kovac went to the glass doors and looked in at the assembled mourners. The pews were chrome and black plastic chairs hooked one to the next. There were no kneelers, no creepy statues of the Virgin or the saints adorned with real human hair. There was nothing daunting about the place, no overriding sense of God glaring down on His terrified flock. Not like when Kovac had been a kid, when eating a burger on Friday during Lent was a sure pass to hell. He had feared and respected the church of his youth. This place was about as scary as going to a lecture at the public library.

  Pierce and Daring had taken seats on the center aisle about halfway toward the front. Pierce rose abruptly and came back out, the girlfriend watching him all the way. He stared at the floor, digging a cigarette and a lighter from his coat pocket as he walked. Kovac moved away from the doors. Pierce didn’t see him as he crossed the narthex and went outside.

  Kovac followed and took a position three feet to Pierce’s right on the broad concrete step. Pierce didn’t look at him.

  “I keep saying I’m quitting,” Kovac said, shaking one out of a pack of Salems. He hooked it with his lip and lit it with a Christmas Bic. Nothing says Christmas like lung cancer. “But you know what? I never do. I like it. Everybody tries to make me feel guilty about it, and I buy into that. Like I think I deserve it or something. So then I say I’m quitting, but I never do.”

  Pierce regarded him from the corner of his eye and lit his own cigarette with a slim brushed-chrome lighter that looked like a giant bullet. His hands were shaking. He returned his stare to the street and slowly exhaled.

  “I guess that’s just human nature,” Kovac went on, wishing he’d grabbed his hat on his way out. He could feel all his body heat rushing out the top of his head. “Everybody carries around a load of shit they think they ought to feel guilty about. Like somehow that makes them a better person. Like there’s some law against just being who you are.”

  “There are plenty of laws against that,” Pierce said, still staring at the street. “Depending on who you are.”

  Kovac let that hang for a moment. Waited. Pierce had opened the door. Just a crack. “Well, sure, if you’re a prostitute or a drug dealer. Or did you mean something less obvious?”

  Pierce blew out a stream of smoke.

  “Like if you’re gay,” Kovac suggested.

  Pierce moved his shoulders and swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “That would depend on who you ask.”

  “I’m asking you. Do you think that’s something a person should feel guilty about? Do you think it’s something a person should hide?”

  “Depends on the person. Depends on their circumstances.”

  “Depends on whether he’s engaged to the boss’s daughter, for instance,” Kovac offered.

  He watched as the missile hit the target square in the chest. Pierce actually took a step back.

  “I believe I’ve already told you I’m not gay,” he said in a tight voice. His gaze darted from side to side, looking for eavesdroppers.

  “You did.”

  “Then you clearly didn’t believe me.” Angrier.

  Kovac took a slow pull on his smoke. All the time in the world.

  “Would you care to ask my fiancée? Would you like us to videotape ourselves having sex?” Angrier. “Any requests for positions?”

  Kovac didn’t answer.

  “Would you like a list of my ex-girlfriends?”

  Kovac just looked at him, letting the anger roll off him. And still it was visibly building in Pierce, a kind of frenetic excitement he was having difficulty containing.

  “I’ve been a cop for a lot of years, Steve,” he said at last. “I can tell when someone’s holding something back on me. You’re carrying a lot of extra weight.”

  Pierce looked as if the blood vessels in his eyes might pop. “I just lost my best friend since college. I found him dead. We were like brothers. You think one man can’t grieve deeply for another without them being gay? Is that what your life is like, Sergeant? You wall yourself off for fear of what other people might think of you if they knew the truth?”

  “I don’t give a shit what anybody thinks of me,” Kovac said matter-of-factly. “I got nothing riding on it. I’m not trying to impress anyone. I’ve seen too many people carry rocks around every day until the weight of it all drags them under and kills them one way or another. You’ve got a chance to unload one.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “He’s going in the ground today. If you know something, it won’t go in the ground with him, Steve. It’ll hang around your neck until you take it off.”

  “I don’t know anything.” He gave a harsh laugh that came out on a cloud of smoke and warm breath in the cold air. “I don’t know a damn thing.”

  “If you were there that night—”

  “I don’t know who Andy was fucking, Sergeant,” Pierce said bitterly, turning the heads of several people going into the church. “But it wasn’t me.”

  The cords stood out in his neck. His face was as red as his hair. The blue eyes were narrow and filled with venom and tears. He threw his cigarette down and ground it out with the toe of an expensive oxford. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m a pallbearer. I have to go move my best friend’s corpse.”

  Kovac let him go and finished his own smoke, thinking that a lot of people would have called him cruel for what he’d just done. He didn’t think of it that way. He thought of Andy Fallon hanging dead from a rafter. What he did, he did for the victim. The victim was dead—there weren’t many things crueler than death.

  He crushed out the cigarette, then picked up both butts and deposited them in a plant pot near the door. Through the glass he could see the casket had been rolled into the narthex from a side hall. The pallbearers were being given instructions by a portly man from the funeral home.

  Neil Fallon stood off to one side, looking blank. Ace Wyatt put a hand on the funeral director’s shoulder and said something to him in confidence. Gaines, the über-assistant, hovered nearby, ready to step, fetch, or kiss an ass.

  “Are you going in, Sergeant? Or are you watching from the cheap seats?”

  Kovac focused on the faint reflection that had appeared beside his in the glass. Amanda Savard in her Veronica Lake getup. The glam sunglasses, the velvet scarf swathing her head. Not a getup, he thought, a disguise. There was a big difference.

  “How’s the head?” he asked.

  “Nothing hurt but my pride.”

  “Yeah. What’s a little concussion to a tough cookie like you?”

  “Embarrassing,” she said. “I’d sooner you let the subject go.”

  He almost laughed. “You do
n’t know me very well, Lieutenant.”

  “I don’t know you at all,” she said, taking hold of the door handle with a small gloved hand. “Let’s keep it that way.”

  She may as well have waved a red flag. He wondered if she knew that—and if she did, then what game she was playing at.

  You and the IA lieutenant. Yeah, right, Kovac.

  “I don’t let go,” he said, making her glance back at him over her shoulder. “You might as well know that.”

  Inscrutable behind the shades, she made no comment and went into the church. Kovac followed her. Glutton for punishment. The procession of casket and mourners had gone up the aisle. The organist was pounding out yet another depressing song of death.

  Savard chose a seat in the back, in an otherwise empty row. She didn’t so much as acknowledge Kovac as he slid in beside her. She didn’t sing the required hymn, didn’t join in the spoken prayers or responsories. She never took the sunglasses off or lowered the scarf or unbuttoned her coat. As if she were in a cocoon, the layers of clothing insulating her from the thoughts of the outside world. Wrapping her in her own thoughts about Andy Fallon.

  Kovac watched her from the corner of his eye, thinking he had to be an asshole to tempt fate this way, to push her buttons. One word from her and he’d be suspended. On the other hand, it seemed not a bad idea to give the appearance of having aligned himself with IA for the moment. Not that anyone in this crowd seemed to care.

  All focus—not simply that of Amanda Savard—seemed inward. No one really heard the priest, who hadn’t known Andy Fallon at all, and could speak of him only because someone had filled him in. As with most funerals, it didn’t matter what the presiding clergyman had to say anyway. What mattered was the panorama of memories playing through each person’s head, the mental and emotional scrapbooks of experiences with the person lost.

  As Kovac studied the faces, he wondered which, if any, hid memories of intimacies with Andy Fallon; memories of shared passions, of shared perversions. Which of these people might have helped Andy Fallon put a noose around his neck, then panicked when things went wrong? Which one knew that missing piece to the puzzle of Andy Fallon’s state of mind: would he have killed himself?

  Did any of them really care to know? The case had been closed. The priest was pretending the word suicide had never been mentioned in the same sentence with Andy Fallon’s name. In another hour, Andy Fallon would be in the ground, buried, a fading memory.

  The moment came for eulogies. Neil Fallon shifted in his seat, glancing furtively from side to side as if to see whether anyone was watching him not get up and speak at his only brother’s funeral. Steve Pierce stared down at his feet, looking as if he was having trouble getting a deep breath. Kovac felt a similar pressure in his own chest as he waited. The mindhunters called emotionally charged situations such as this “precipitating stressors,” triggers for actions, triggers for confessions, for testimonials. But this was Minnesota, a place where people were not naturally given to speaking openly about their emotions. The moment passed without drama.

  Savard rose, slipped her coat off, and—sunglasses and scarf still in place—walked with all the elegance and import of a queen to the front of the church. The priest stepped aside for her to take the lectern.

  “I’m Lieutenant Amanda Savard,” she said in a tone that was at once quiet and authoritative. “Andy worked for me. He was a fine officer, a dedicated and talented investigator, and a wonderful person. We are all richer for having known him and we are poorer for his untimely loss. Thank you.”

  Simple. Eloquent. She came back to the pew with her head bowed. Mysterious. Kovac rose and stepped into the aisle to allow her back to her seat. People were staring. Probably at Savard. Probably wondering how a guy like him came to be sitting with a woman like her.

  Kovac stared back, silently challenging. Steve Pierce met his gaze for just a moment, then looked away. Ace Wyatt rose and adjusted his shirt cuffs as he went to the lectern.

  “Jesus Christ,” Kovac grumbled, then crossed himself as the woman sitting two rows ahead turned and gave him a dirty look. “Can you believe this guy? Any excuse for a photo op.”

  Savard lifted a brow at him.

  “He’d hang his bare ass out a tenth-story window and fart the national anthem if he thought it’d get him publicity.”

  One corner of Savard’s perfect mouth curled in wry amusement. “Captain Wyatt is a longtime acquaintance of mine.”

  Kovac winced. “Stepped right into that, didn’t I?”

  “Headfirst.”

  “That’s how I do most everything. That’s why I look this way.”

  “I knew Andy Fallon when he was a boy,” Wyatt began with all the dramatic talent of a community theater actor. The fact that he was about to become a star on national television was testimony to the declining standards of the American public. “I didn’t know Andy Fallon the man very well, but I know what he was made of. Courage and integrity and determination. I know this because I came up through the trenches with his old man, Iron Mike Fallon. We all knew Iron Mike. We all respected the man and his opinions, and feared his temper if we screwed up. A finer police officer I have never known.

  “It is with deepest regret I have to announce Mike Fallon’s passing late last night.”

  A small gasp went through the crowd. Savard jerked as if she’d been hit with a cattle prod, her pale skin instantly turning paler. Her breathing turned quick and shallow.

  Wyatt went on. “Despondent over the death of his son . . .”

  Kovac leaned down. “Are you all right, Lieutenant?”

  “Excuse me,” she said, standing abruptly.

  Kovac rose to let her out. She pushed past him, nearly shoving him back into his chair. She wanted to run down the aisle and out of the church, and just keep on running. But she didn’t. No one she passed gave her more than a passing glance, their collective attention on Wyatt at the lectern. No one else seemed to hear the pounding of her heart or the roaring of her blood in her veins.

  She pushed open the glass door to the narthex and turned down the hall, seeking and finding the ladies’ room. The light was dim and the room smelled of commercial air freshener. Ace Wyatt’s voice was still in her head, bringing on a sense of panic. Then she realized it was coming from a speaker hung high on the wall.

  She tore off the scarf and sunglasses, nearly crying out in pain as the earpiece dragged through the oozing rug burn. Eyes squeezed tight against the threatening flood of tears, she fumbled blindly for the faucets. The water exploded into the sink, splashing up on her. She didn’t care. She scooped it with both hands and put her face in it.

  Dizziness swirled through her brain, weakness drained her legs. She fell against the sink, clutching at the porcelain basin with one hand, reaching to brace against the wall with the other. She tried to will herself past the nausea, begged God to get her through it, ignored her convenient faith in a higher power she had ceased to believe in long ago.

  “Please, please, please,” she chanted, doubled over, her head nearly in the sink. In her mind’s eye she could see Andy Fallon staring at her with accusation and anger. He was dead. Now Mike Fallon.

  Despondent over the death of his son . . .

  “Lieutenant?” Kovac’s voice sounded just outside the door. “Amanda? You in there? Are you all right?”

  Savard tried to push herself upright, tried to get a breath deep enough to speak with a steady voice. She couldn’t quite manage either.

  “Y-yes,” she said, wincing at the weakness of her tone. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  The door swung open and Kovac came in without hesitation or regard for the modesty of any woman who might have been in the rest room. He looked fierce.

  “I’m fine, Sergeant Kovac.”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” he said, coming to her. “Even better than when you were fine this morning, keeling over at your desk. Do you often feel the overwhelming urge to take a shower with your clothes on?” he asked,
his gaze cutting from the wet tendrils of hair plastered to the sides of her face to the dark splotches of water on her suit.

  “I was feeling a little dizzy,” she said, pressing a hand to her forehead. She took a slow breath through her mouth and closed her eyes for a second.

  Kovac put a hand on her shoulder and she stiffened, telling herself she should bolt, telling herself not to. She looked at him via his reflection in the mirror and saw the concern in his dark eyes. She saw herself and was appalled by how vulnerable she appeared in that moment—pale and battered.

  “Come on, LT,” he said softly, shortening her title to a nickname, “let me take you to a doctor.”

  “No.”

  She should have told him to take his hand off her, but the weight of it was solid and strong and reassuring, even if she couldn’t lean into it the way she wanted to, needed to. A shiver went through her. She shouldn’t have wanted or needed anything, certainly not from this man.

  She looked at the reflection of his hand on her shoulder. A big hand, wide, with blunt-tipped fingers. A working man’s hands, she thought, regardless of the fact that Kovac’s work was done with his mind and not his hands. His fingers tightened briefly.

  “Well, at least let’s get out of here,” he said. “This damn air freshener is enough to choke a goat.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Savard announced. “Really. Thank you anyway.”

  “Come on,” Kovac coaxed again, turning toward the door and neatly drawing her with him. Years of practice herding drunks and victims and people in various states of shock made it easy for him. “I’ve got your coat in the hall.”

  She pulled away, went back to the sink, and collected her sunglasses and carefully slid them on. The velvet scarf was wet in spots. She put it back on anyway, arranging it carefully, draping it just so. Kovac watched her.

  “I thought you only knew Mike Fallon by reputation,” he said.

  “That’s right. I’d spoken to him, of course. About Andy.”

  “Your reaction to the news of his death seems a little extreme, then.”

  “I told you, I was feeling dizzy,” she said. “The announcement of Mike Fallon’s death didn’t really have all that much to do with it. It’s a tragedy, of course. . . .”