by Tami Hoag
Leonard looked confused. “That he killed himself?”
“I’m not so sure that’s what happened.”
“He ate his gun.”
“Looked that way.”
“There are a couple of red flags, Lieutenant,” Liska said. “The positioning of the body, for instance.”
“You’re saying the scene was staged?”
“Not staged, but a little too convenient. And there’s no suicide note.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. A lot of suicides don’t leave notes.”
“The older son has some issues—and a record.”
“I want to dig a little,” Kovac said. “Maybe Mike did whack himself, but what if he didn’t? We owe him better than to let it slide because suicide was the easy answer.”
“Let’s see what the ME has to say,” Leonard said grudgingly, unhappy with the idea of a slam dunk turning into a whodunit—especially this case, with Wyatt and the rest of the brass monkeys looking on. “In the meantime, go see Chamiqua Jones. Today. I want the county attorney’s office off my ass about Nixon.”
“I’D RATHER STICK myself with needles than go to the Mall of America during the Christmas season.”
Kovac glanced over at Liska as he piloted the Caprice through rush-hour traffic going east on 494. “Where’s your consumer spirit?”
“Dying from lack of oxygen down at the bottom of my bank account. Do you have any idea what kids want for Christmas nowadays?”
“Semiautomatic weapons?”
“R.J. gave me a list that looks like the inventory for Toys ‘R’ Us.”
“Look on the bright side, Tinks. He didn’t send it to you from a juvenile detention center.”
“Whoever said it cost a million bucks to raise a kid through college did not take Christmas into account.”
Kovac negotiated a lane change around a snot-green Geo doing fifty with a white-knuckled balding guy at the wheel. Iowa plates.
“I-wegian farmers,” he growled. “They don’t know how to drive without a cornfield on either side of them.”
He cut across two lanes to catch the exit he wanted. His driving usually spurred remarks from Liska, but she said nothing, seeming lost in her thoughts of the holiday bearing down on them.
Kovac remembered the Christmas the year after his first wife had left. He’d sent gifts to their daughter. Stuffed animals. A rag doll. Shit like that. Things he’d hoped a little girl might like. The boxes had been returned unopened. He’d hauled the stuff to a Toys for Tots drop, then gone out and drunk himself into a stupor. He wound up in a fistfight with a Salvation Army Santa out in front of the government center, and got suspended for thirty days without pay.
“He’s your kid,” he said. “Get him something he really wants and quit your bitching. It’s only money.”
Liska stared at him.
“What’s he really want?” he asked, uncomfortable with her scrutiny.
“He wants me and Speed to get back together.”
“Jesus H. Any danger of that happening?”
She was silent half a beat too long as they drove into the mall’s west-side ramp. Kovac looked over at her again.
“Has hell frozen over yet?” she asked defensively. “Did I miss that on the news?”
“He’s an asshole.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that.”
“I’m just saying.”
Kovac parked and memorized the level and row number. One of 12,750 parking spaces on mall property. This was not the place to get lost.
The Mall of America was like a giant, elegant, four-tiered rat maze, the wide hallways teeming with frantic humans scurrying from one store to the next. The biggest mall in the United States—five hundred stores, two and a half million square feet of commercial space—and still there weren’t enough retail outlets for those searching for the perfect item to wrap and have returned two days after Christmas. Human nature.
The noise from the Camp Snoopy amusement park at the mall’s center was constant; the dull roar of roller coasters and the water flume ride, punctuated by shrieks of customers. A high school choir was assembling on risers in front of the entrance to Macy’s, boys cutting up and girls wandering toward the windows of Lerner’s as their director barked at them ineffectually.
They passed the three-story Lego Imagination Center with its twenty-five-foot Lego clock tower, huge Lego dinosaur, Lego space station, and a Lego blimp made from 138,240 Lego blocks hanging suspended above it all.
Kovac turned in at Old Navy with a jaundiced eye on a display of track pants and T-shirts and ugly quilted vests.
“Look at this shit.”
“Retro-seventies,” Liska said. “Shirts in the all-my-clothes-shrunk-in-the-wash-but-I-wear-them-anyway style.”
“I thought it was ugly the first time around. Looking at this is like having a bad flashback on high school.”
The clerk Kovac badged was a girl with a lip ring, cat-eye glasses, and maroon hair that looked as if a five-year-old had hacked at it with a pinking shears. “Is your manager around?”
“I’m the manager. Is this about that guy who’s always hiding in the racks and flashing his thing at women?”
“No.”
“You ought to do something about him.”
“I’ll put him on my list. Is Chamiqua Jones working?”
“Yes.” The girl’s eyes looked big behind the glasses. “What’d she do? She’s never flashed a penis at anyone.”
“We’ve just got a couple questions,” Liska said. “She’s not in any trouble.”
Cat Eyes looked skeptical but made no comment as she led them toward the dressing rooms.
Chamiqua Jones was twenty-something, looked forty-something, and was built like a fifty-five-gallon drum with a rusty Brillo pad hairdo. She stood guard near the dressing rooms, directing would-be consumers and shoplifters.
“That door over there, honey.” She pointed a customer down the row, then shook her head and muttered under her breath as the customer walked away, “Like you gonna get your fat white ass in them pants.”
She glanced at Kovac and Liska, then let herself into one of the dressing rooms to pick up a tangled pile of discarded jeans.
“You again.”
“Hey, Chamiqua.”
“I don’t need this hassle on my job, Kovac.”
“Here I was missing you, and that’s the greeting I get? I feel like we’re getting to be old pals.”
Jones didn’t smile. “You gonna get my ass killed, that’s what.”
“You still don’t have anything to say about Nixon?” Liska said.
“The president? Nope. Nothing. I wasn’t born yet. I hear he was a crook, but ain’t they all?”
“Witnesses put you at the scene of the assault, Chamiqua.”
“That rag-head cab driver?” she said, carrying the jeans to a table. “He lying. I never seen no assault. I told y’all before.”
“You didn’t see a man jump Wyan Nixon and beat him with a tire iron.”
“No, ma’am. All I know ’bout Wyan Nixon is he is bad news. Especially for me.”
She folded the jeans with quick, practiced movements. Her hands were chubby, with short fingers and taut skin. They made Kovac think of small balloon animals. Her gaze darted twenty feet away to a stocky young man with a tight white spandex cap that looked like a condom for the skull. Kovac had never seen him before, but there was no mistaking what he was: muscle. A hundred eighty pounds of sociopathic meanness. He might have been sixteen or seventeen, but he was no kid. He stood near a rounder of polar fleece vests, turning it without looking, his flat, cold gaze on Chamiqua Jones.
“I’m very busy here,” she said, and went to unlock a dressing room with a key hanging from a neon-green plastic coil around her wrist.
Kovac turned his back to the muscle. “We can offer you protection, Chamiqua. The county attorney wants Deene Combs behind bars.”
“Protection,” she snorted. “What? You gonna send me on
a bus to some flea-trap motel in Gary, Indiana? Hide me out?” She shook her head as she returned to the table with another pile of clothing. “I’m a decent person, Kovac. I work two jobs. I’m raising three good kids. I want to live to see them through school, thank you very much. Wyan Nixon can look out for his own black ass. I’m looking out for mine.”
“If he wants to be a hard-ass, the county attorney can charge you as accessory after the fact,” Liska said, fishing. “Obstruction of justice, failure to cooperate . . .”
Jones held her hands out in front of her, darting a glance at Condom Cap. “Then you put the cuffs on me and take me away. I got nothing to say about Wyan Nixon or Deene Combs. I didn’t see nothing.”
Kovac shook his head. “Not today. See you around, Chamiqua.”
“I hope not.”
“Nobody loves me today,” Kovac complained.
Liska pulled out a business card and put it down on the stack of folded jeans. “Call if you change your mind.”
Jones tore the card in two as they walked away.
“Who can blame her?” Kovac said under his breath, giving the skunk eye to Condom Cap as they passed.
“She’s looking out for her kids,” Liska said. “I’d do the same. It’s not like she could take Deene Combs off the street, anyway. You know he didn’t do Nixon himself. She could give up some piece of meat like that guy watching her and still get herself killed for her trouble, and for what? There’s a thousand more where he came from.”
“Yeah. Let it go. One scumbag beats the shit out of another scumbag. That’s one less scumbag on the street for a while. Who cares? Nobody cares.”
“Somebody has to care,” Liska corrected him. “We have to care.”
Kovac looked at her. “Because we’re all that’s standing between society and anarchy?”
Liska made a face. “Please. Because our clearance rates count big-time toward promotion. Screw society. I have kids to put through college.”
Kovac laughed. “Tinks, you never fail to put things in their proper perspective.”
“Someone has to keep you from getting morose.”
“I’m never morose.”
“You’re always morose.”
“I’m not morose, I’m bitter,” he corrected her as they passed the Rainforest Cafe, where sounds of thunder and rain were playing over the speaker system, and one of the live parrots on display was screaming like a banshee. People lined up for that.
“There’s a difference,” he said. “Morose is passive. Bitter is active. Being bitter is like having a hobby.”
“Everyone needs a hobby,” Liska agreed. “Mine is the mercenary pursuit of easy money.”
She veered to the entrance of Sam Goody, where a near-life-size cutout of Ace Wyatt stood with its arm protectively around a box full of videotapes titled Pro-Active: A Police Professional’s Tips on How Not to Become a Victim. She put her sunglasses on and struck a pose beside the display.
“What do you think? Don’t we look good together?” she said, grinning. “Don’t you think he needs a younger female partner to broaden his demographics? I’d wear a bikini if I had to.”
Kovac scowled at the cardboard Wyatt. “Why don’t you just go up to the third floor here and get a job at Hooters? Or you could walk Hennepin Avenue.”
“I’m a mercenary, not a prostitute. There’s a difference.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is. A mercenary doesn’t use a vagina.”
“Jesus.” Kovac felt heat creep up his face. “Don’t you ever embarrass yourself?”
Liska laughed. “With what? My mouth or my seemingly shameless quest for advancement?”
“I was raised not to talk about . . . those . . .” He flushed an even darker shade of red as they started back down the hall.
“Vaginas?”
Kovac gave her a furious look as passing shoppers turned to stare at them.
“That might help explain why you don’t have one at your disposal,” Liska speculated. “You need to open up, Sam. You need to get in touch with your feminine side.”
“If I could touch my own feminine side, I wouldn’t need . . . one of those . . . at my disposal.”
“Good point. And you could have your own TV show—Hermaphrodite Homicide Detective. Think of the following that would have. You could stop being jealous of Ace Wyatt.”
“I’m not jealous of Ace Wyatt.”
“Yeah, right. And I’m Heather Locklear.”
“You’re just hot for his assistant. That’s what you’re after,” Kovac said.
Liska rolled her eyes. “Gaines? Please. He’s gay.”
“Gay or not interested?”
“Same difference.”
Kovac laughed. “Tinks, you’re too much woman for him, either way. The guy’s a prick. And Wyatt’s a big asshole. They deserve each other.”
“Yeah, all that community service, helping people, working with victims . . . What a jerk.”
Kovac scowled darkly. “All that publicity, all those promotions, all that Hollywood money. Ace Wyatt never did anything that didn’t benefit Ace Wyatt.”
“He saved Mike Fallon’s life.”
“And became a legend.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that was premeditated.”
Kovac made a face at the bad taste in his mouth.
“All right. He did one decent, selfless thing in his life,” he conceded as they pushed through the doors and were hit with cold air and exhaust. “That doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole.”
“People are complex.”
“Yeah,” Kovac agreed. “That’s why I hate them. At least with a psychopath, you know where you stand.”
19
CHAPTER
THE SHIFT HAD changed and Leonard had gone by the time they returned to the office, saving them from having to report their lack of success with Chamiqua Jones. Liska considered and discarded the idea of making phone calls from her desk. She couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone around her was watching her, listening, straining to hear—all because the questions she needed to ask were about other cops.
She had always thought of herself as tough, able to take whatever the job dished out, but she would have preferred any kind of case to this, with the exception of a child killing. Nothing was worse than working a child’s murder. As she gathered her stuff and left the office, she wondered what she would do if the road to advancement led through IA. Make another road.
The walk to the Haaff ramp was cold, the wind biting her cheeks and ears. The drive home wouldn’t be much better. She hadn’t been able to get an appointment with the glass replacement shop. Too bad the busted window diminished the chances of the car’s being stolen. Her insurance would at least have paid for a loaner then.
The same fat attendant manned the booth. He recognized her and ducked his head, afraid to attract her attention. Liska rolled her eyes and felt in her pocket for the reassuring weight of her ASP. She had briefly considered parking elsewhere, but in the end had made herself go back to the scene of the crime. Climbing back on the horse—with an eye peeled for her perpetrator at the same time. If she was lucky, she could conquer her fear and make a collar all in one fell swoop, though it seemed unlikely her mystery man would still be hanging around. Unless he had chosen her specifically as his target.
Nothing stolen. Nothing disturbed but her mail . . .
Patrol had been instructed to take tours through the concrete maze of the ramp today. The show of a police presence in the form of the occasional radio car was meant to scare off the vagrants, who all had likely moved across the street to piss in the corners of the Gateway Municipal ramp and try all the car doors there in search of spare change.
The Saturn sat a third of the way down a mostly empty row, parked nose out. The plastic window was still intact. No one had broken any of the others. Liska walked past it, checking, scanning the area. This level of the ramp was quiet, half deserted. She went back to her car and let herself in. She
locked the doors, started the engine and the heater, and dug her cell phone out of her purse. She punched in the number for the gay and lesbian officers’ liaison and stared at the CHECK ENGINE light glowing red on her dash as the phone rang on the other end.
Rotten car. She was going to have to think about trading. Maybe in January, provided her finances survived Christmas. Maybe bite the bullet and trade up to an SUV. The extra room would be good for hauling the boys with their buddies and all their hockey gear. If she could squeeze Speed for the money he owed her . . .
“Hello?”
“Is this David Dungen?”
“Yes, it is.”
“David, this is Sergeant Liska, homicide. If this is a good time for you, I have a couple of questions you might be able to help me with.”
A cautious pause. “Regarding what?”
“Eric Curtis.”
“About the murder? That case is closed.”
“I realize that. I’m looking into a related matter.”
“Have you spoken with Internal Affairs?”
“You know how they are. They don’t want to untie the nice, neat bow, and they’re not inclined to share anyway.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Dungen said. “These matters are sensitive. I can’t just volunteer information to anyone who asks.”
“I’m not just anyone. I’m homicide. I’m not asking because I have some kind of morbid curiosity.”
“This has something to do with another case?”
“I’ll be honest with you, David.” Use the first name. You’re my pal. You can tell me anything. “It’s a fishing expedition at this point. If I get something I can take to my lieutenant . . .”
Dungen said nothing for a moment, then finally, “I’ll need to take your badge number.”
“I’ll give it to you, but I don’t want any paperwork on this. You understand?”
Again the pregnant pause. “Why is that?”
“Because some people would sooner let sleeping dogs lie, if you know what I mean. I’m checking out some things regarding Curtis because someone asked me personally. I don’t know that anything will come of it. I can’t go to my boss with hunches and funny feelings. I need something real.”