by Tami Hoag
“The world’s full of them, I hear.”
“Yes.”
Satisfied with the scarf, she walked past Kovac and out under her own steam. Show no weakness. Too late for that.
He had left her coat draped over a table piled with church bulletins. She picked it up and started to put it on, the pain in her neck and upper back grabbing hold and stopping her with only one arm in a sleeve. Kovac helped her on with it the rest of the way, standing a little too close behind her, trapping her between himself and the table.
“I know,” he said softly. “You’re fine. You could have done it yourself.”
Savard stepped sideways and ducked around him, heading across the narthex. The organ had started up again, and the acrid-sweet smell of incense burned the air.
“I’m not letting you drive away from here, Lieutenant,” Kovac said, falling into step beside her. “If you’re dizzy, you’re not safe to be behind the wheel.”
“I’m fine. It’s passed.”
“I’ll give you a ride. I’m headed back to the station myself.”
“I’m going home.”
“Then I’ll drop you off.”
“It’s out of your way.”
He held the door for her. “That’s all right, the ride will give me the chance to ask you a couple of questions.”
“God, do you never stop?” she said through her teeth.
“No. Never. I told you—I don’t let go. Not until I get what I want.”
His hand slipped around hers and she tried to jerk away, her heart jumping, eyes going wide behind the glasses. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He stared at her for a second, reading God knew what in her expression. Even with the scarf and glasses, she felt naked in front of him.
“Keys.”
As he said it, the muscles of her hand relaxed marginally and he slipped the key ring from her fingers. A major tactical error. She didn’t want Kovac driving her home. She didn’t want him in her house. She didn’t want his interest. She was accustomed to a position of power, but even though she outranked him, Kovac had years and experience over her. Knowing that made her feel subordinate, like a little girl pretending at a job of great importance.
“If you have a question, ask it,” she said, folding her arms around herself. The wind was bitter and raw. The temperature had dropped in the hour they’d been in the church. The sun was already sagging in the winter-white sky. “Then you’ll give me my keys back, Sergeant.”
“Did Andy Fallon ever talk about his brother?”
“No.”
“Did he ever mention he was seeing someone—dating—or that he was having problems in his personal life?”
“I told you before—his personal life was none of my business. Why are you pursuing this, Sergeant?”
He tried to look innocent, but Savard doubted he had been able to pull that off even as an infant. There was a world-weariness to Kovac that surpassed his years by a thousand. “I’m paid to investigate,” he said.
“To investigate crimes. There’s been no crime I’m aware of.”
“Mike Fallon is minus half his head,” Kovac said. “I’m gonna make damn sure somebody else didn’t do that job for him before I walk away from it.”
Savard stared at him through the dark glasses. “Why would you think anyone would murder Mike Fallon? Captain Wyatt said he took his own life.”
“Captain Wyatt was speaking prematurely. The investigation is ongoing. The body wasn’t even stiff yet when I left the scene to come here.”
“It wouldn’t make any sense for someone to murder Mike Fallon,” Savard argued.
“Who says it has to make any sense?” Kovac returned. “Someone gets pissed off, loses their temper, strikes out. Boom, murder. Someone holds a grudge long enough, gets fed up on it, something strikes a spark. Bang, somebody’s dead. I see it every damn day, Lieutenant.”
“Mr. Fallon was in poor health. He’d just lost his son. I’m assuming the signs at the scene of his death pointed to suicide. Doesn’t it seem more logical that he pulled the trigger himself than to think someone else might have done it?”
“Sure. But then, a clever killer might think that too,” Kovac pointed out.
“It must be slow in homicide these days,” Savard remarked, “that one of their best detectives can spend all his time on non-cases.”
“The more I’m around the people involved with Andy and Mike Fallon, the less I consider these deaths ‘non-cases.’ You knew Andy. You claim to have cared about him. You want me to walk away from this if I think there’s a chance he didn’t put that noose around his neck himself? You want me to shrug it off if it looks like maybe Mike didn’t stick that thirty-eight in his mouth without help? What kind of cop would I be if I did that?”
Behind them, the doors of the church swung open and the mourners came out, bundled against the cold and hurrying toward the parking lot. Kovac spotted Steve Pierce and Jocelyn Daring, Daring trying to put her arm through her fiancé’s, Pierce shrugging her off. Not far behind them came Ace Wyatt and his toady. Wyatt looked impervious to cold, shoulders back, jaw out. He drew a bead on Kovac like a laser-sight missile.
“Sam,” he said in his serious TV voice, “I understand you found Mike. My God, what a tragedy.”
“His death, or me finding him?”
“Both, I suppose. Poor Mike. He just couldn’t take the burden. I think he felt a tremendous guilt over Andy’s death, over the unresolved issues between them. It’s too bad. . . .”
He looked to Savard and nodded. “Amanda, good to see you, despite the occasion.”
“Captain.” Even with the shades on, Kovac could tell she was looking past Wyatt, not at him. “Terrible news about Mike Fallon,” she said. “I’m sorry to hear it. I know you and he had a history.”
“Poor Mike,” he said in a thick voice, looking away. He let a beat of silence pass, as if out of respect, then pulled in a cleansing breath. “I see you know Sam.”
“Better than I’d care to,” she said, and reached out and took her keys from Kovac’s hand. “If you gentlemen will excuse me . . .”
“I was just telling the lieutenant how it struck me odd Mike would be so upset last night about Andy killing himself, that being a mortal sin and all, then go home after and eat his gun,” Kovac said, effectively holding Savard in place. “Doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“Who says it has to make sense?” Savard said sarcastically.
“Amanda’s right,” Wyatt said. “Mike wasn’t in his right mind, was he?”
“He was barely coherent last I saw him,” Kovac said. “How about you, Ace? You took him home. How’d he seem when you left him?”
Gaines looked pointedly at his watch. “Captain . . .”
Wyatt made a face. “I know, Gavin. The meeting with the PR people.”
“And miss the interment?” Kovac said. There goes a photo op. Somehow, he managed to have the sense not to say that.
“It’s been postponed,” Gaines informed him. “Some kind of equipment problem.”
“Ah. TFC technical difficulty,” Kovac said. “Too Fucking Cold to dig the hole. Excuse my language, Lieutenant,” he said sweetly.
“I don’t think there is an excuse for you, Sergeant Kovac,” she said dryly. “And on that note, gentlemen, I’ll say good-bye.”
She raised a hand in farewell and made her escape across the snow-packed lot. Kovac let her go, sensing that to try to stop her now, with witnesses around, would be crossing a line he’d come too close to as it was. He allowed himself to watch her for a second.
“Sam, you can’t seriously be thinking Mike was murdered,” Wyatt said.
“I’m a homicide cop.” Kovac settled his hat on his head. “I think everyone’s murdered. It’s my natural mind-set. What time was it when you left Mike off?”
Gaines interrupted. “Captain, if you’d like to go on to the meeting, I’ll take care of this.”
“Do you eat his food and wipe his ass too?
” Kovac asked, earning a cold look from the assistant.
“You’re holding the captain from a very important meeting, Sergeant Kovac,” Gaines said curtly, subtly moving to put himself between them. “I was there with Mr. Fallon and the captain last night. I can answer your questions as well as Captain Wyatt.”
“There’s no need, Gavin,” Wyatt said. “By the time you bring the car around, Sam and I will be done.”
Kovac looked smug. “Yeah, Slick, you run along and start the car. You and I can get together later and get your take on things over a latte. So you’ll have that to look forward to.”
Gaines didn’t like being bested, and didn’t like being dismissed. The blue eyes were as cold as the concrete beneath their feet, the handsome jaw set. But he bowed to Wyatt’s orders and hustled away toward a black Lincoln Continental.
“That’s some elegant guard dog you’ve got yourself, Ace,” Kovac said.
“Gavin is my right hand. Ambitious, single-minded, fiercely loyal. I wouldn’t be where I am without him. He’s got a very bright future. He’s a bit overzealous at times, but I could say the same about you, Sam. Unless I’m out of the loop—and I’m not—there wasn’t anything about Mike’s death to warrant suspicion of murder.”
Kovac stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and sighed. “He was one of ours, Ace. Mike was special. Sure, maybe the legend was more special than the man, more important, but still . . . I feel like I owe him a good hard look. You know what I mean? You ought to, considering your own history with him.”
“It’s hard to think the door’s closing on that chapter of our lives. Hard to believe he’s gone,” Wyatt said quietly, staring across the parking lot as exhaust billowed in a cold vapor cloud from the tailpipe of the Lincoln.
It had to be as much a relief to him as anything, Kovac thought. The night of the Thorne murder, all those years ago, had been the defining moment in the lives of Ace Wyatt and Mike Fallon. That night their lives had turned on a dime, never to be the same again, always to be linked by that moment that had made Mike Fallon a cripple and Ace Wyatt a hero. With Mike gone, the weight of that burden must have lifted, a sensation that would both relieve and confuse. How could there be an Ace Wyatt if there was no Mike Fallon to counterbalance?
“It was around ten-thirty when we left Mike’s house,” Wyatt said. “He was quiet. Wrapped up in his grief. I had no idea what he was thinking or I would have tried to stop him.” His mouth twisted with irony as the car pulled up. “Or maybe that would have been the greater tragedy. He suffered a lot of years. Now it’s over. Let him go, Sam. He’s at peace now.”
Gaines got out of the car and went around to open the passenger door. Wyatt got in without another word, and the Lincoln was off in a cloud of exhaust. The Lone Ranger and Tonto riding off into the sunset.
Kovac stood on the curb a moment longer, the only one left of the group who had come to see Andy Fallon off to the hereafter. Even the priest had disappeared.
“Lone Ranger,” he muttered, and started across the frozen parking lot with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched into the wind.
18
CHAPTER
“NEIL FALLON HAS a record.”
Kovac paused with his coat half off. “That was fast.”
“Service with a smile,” Elwood said, peering over the cubicle.
Liska sat on her chair, her maniacal pixie look lighting her face. She was something when she caught a scent on a case, he thought. It was like an addiction with her. The excitement was so intense, it was just a few steps to the right of sexual. Kovac couldn’t remember ever being that hot for the job, and the job was the one great love of his life. Maybe he needed to consider hormone therapy.
“He has a juvie record—sealed, of course, though I’ve put through a request to have a peek,” Liska said. “He spent seven years in the army. I’ve requested his service records. The year he got out, he went away for assault. Three to five. He did eighteen months.”
“What’d he do?”
“Got in a fight at a bar. He put the guy in a coma for a week.”
“Temper, temper, Neil.”
Kovac finished taking off his coat and hooked it on the rack, thinking. The office was the usual buzzing hive of constant low-level activity. Phones rang, someone laughed. A multiply-pierced twenty-something thug with bleached, spiked hair and pants hanging off his ass was led past in cuffs and ushered into an interview room. In the days of Mike Fallon, someone would have kicked his ass for his fashion choices alone.
“So how’d he get a liquor license with a felony conviction on his sheet?” Kovac asked, sagging into his chair.
“He didn’t,” Elwood said.
“Come around here, for chrissake,” Kovac groused. “You’re giving me a stiff neck.”
Liska grinned and pushed at his chair with the toe of her boot. “You should be glad for the sensation.”
“Very funny.”
Elwood rounded the end of the cubicle, holding out a fax. “The license on the bar was issued by the municipality of Excelsior in the name of Cheryl Brewster, who months later became Cheryl Fallon.”
“Ah, the estranged missus,” Kovac said.
“The soon to be ex-missus,” Liska corrected. “I called her at home. She’s a nurse. She works nights at Fairview Ridgedale. She says she’s divorcing him, and it can’t happen a moment too soon to suit her. Drunken, mean son of a bitch—just a sampling of the terms of endearment.”
“Gee, and I found him such an agreeable fellow,” Kovac said. “So, the wife holds the liquor license. What happens when she dumps him?”
“Neil’s shit-out-of-luck, that’s what,” Liska said. “They can sell the bar with the license, pending approval of the new owner by the powers that be in Excelsior. Neil could get himself a new front man, but that hasn’t happened yet. Cheryl says he’s trying to buy the rest of the business out and forget the liquor license, but he can’t seem to get the cash together for that either. Even if he could, she says he can’t make a living off the place without the bar, so . . .
“I asked her if she thought he’d try to borrow money from his family. She laughed and said that Mike wouldn’t give Neil change for a dime, let alone enough money to buy out the business—even though she says she knows Mike had plenty.”
“We call that motive in the detective business,” Elwood pointed out.
“I wonder if he put the touch on Andy,” Kovac mused.
“He had told Cheryl he was going to see if Andy wanted to invest, but she didn’t know what ever happened with that,” Liska said. “We can ask Pierce. It’s safe to think he might have advised Andy on his financial stuff.”
“But if Pierce thought Andy’s brother might have had something to do with his death, why wouldn’t he have said so?” Elwood asked.
Kovac nodded. “Why not point the finger instead of acting like the weight’s on his shoulders?
“Let’s check through the notes on the canvass of Fallon’s neighbors. See who we missed, make some follow-up calls. Maybe someone might recognize a car, or know he’d been seeing someone. Elwood, do you have time to run through Fallon’s address book and check with the friends?”
“Will do.”
“We’ve got to redo part of the neighborhood canvass anyway,” Liska said.
“Why?”
“First time around, two of our little elves were Ogden and Rubel.”
Kovac groaned. “Great. That’s what we need, Ogden telling people they didn’t see anything.”
“If a wit saw someone other than him or Rubel—like Neil Fallon or Pierce—even Ogden would have brains enough to bring it to our attention,” Liska said.
“So we have to hope the uniforms missed that someone.”
“Who missed who?” Leonard demanded, coming to an abrupt halt at the cubicle.
Kovac pretended to search for a file on his desk, covering the notes he’d made regarding Andy Fallon’s death.
“The guy that beat up Nixon,
” he said. “Deene Combs’s henchman. We have to hope his people missed scaring the shit out of someone who knows something about it.”
“Have you talked to that woman again? The one the cab driver saw going inside that building as the perp ran away.”
“Five times.”
“Talk to her again. She’s the key. We know she knows something.”
“That’s a dead end,” Kovac said. “She’ll take it to her grave.”
“If Nixon isn’t going to rat the guy out himself, Chamiqua Jones isn’t gonna do it for him,” Liska pointed out.
Leonard frowned at her. “Talk to her again. Go to where she works. Today. I don’t want these gangbangers thinking they can run wild.”
Kovac glanced at Liska, who looked down at the floor and crossed her eyes. The common logic regarding the Nixon assault was that Wyan Nixon had shorted his boss, Deene Combs, on a small-time drug deal and had been made an example by said boss, but no one was talking, including Nixon. The county attorney, who wanted to take a more publicly visible hard line against drug dealers, had pledged the county would press the charges if Nixon wouldn’t. But without a witness, there was no case, and the cab driver hadn’t seen enough to give a detailed description of the assailant.
“It’s a black hole,” Kovac said. “No one’s going to testify to anything. What’s the point?”
Leonard made his monkey frown. “The point is, it’s your job, Kovac.”
“I know my job.”
“Do you? It sounds to me that you’ve been redefining the parameters.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fallon is closed. Leave it alone.”
“You heard about Mike?” Kovac said. The deliberate curveball, even as he wondered who had ratted him out to Leonard. His money was on Savard. She didn’t want him hanging around, getting too close to her, threatening to breach the security of the walls she had so carefully erected around herself. Wyatt didn’t give a shit what went on in Kovac’s little world. All he cared about was getting to his next PR event.