Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  He was silent for so long this time, Liska began to think she’d lost the connection.

  “What’s your number?” he asked at last.

  Liska breathed deeply, silently letting go a sigh of relief. The smell of exhaust was strong. She cracked the window but left the engine running. It was too damn cold to shut it off. She gave Dungen her shield number, along with her phone number, and hoped to God he wouldn’t call Leonard to check it out.

  “All right,” he said, satisfied. “What would you like to know?”

  “I know Curtis had complained to IA he was being harassed by someone on the job. What do you know about that?”

  “I know he’d gotten some hate letters. In the ransom-note style with letters cut out of magazines. ‘All faggots must die. That’s why God invented AIDS.’ That was the gist of it. The usual homophobic vitriol with bad grammar and bad spelling.”

  “Had to be a cop,” Liska said dryly.

  “Oh, it was a cop. No question. Two of the letters were slipped into his locker. One was found in his car after his shift. The mailman smashed out the passenger’s window to deliver it.”

  Liska looked to her blue plastic window, a chill running through her. “Did he have any idea who it was?”

  “He said no. He’d ended a relationship several months prior, but he swore it wasn’t the ex.”

  “And the ex was someone in the department?”

  “Yes, but the boyfriend wasn’t out. That’s one of the reasons he was an ex. Curtis wanted him to be honest about who he was.”

  “Curtis was out.”

  “Yes, but in a quiet way. He wasn’t some flaming militant. He was just tired of living a lie. He wanted the world to be a place where people could be who they are without having to fear for their lives. Ironic that he was killed by a gay man.”

  “Do you know who the ex was?”

  “No. I know Curtis had changed patrol partners a couple of times, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He didn’t suspect any of them. At any rate, it wasn’t my business. I’m not an investigator. My business was to lodge his complaint and work as a liaison with Internal Affairs and with his supervisor.”

  “Do you remember the names of his patrol partners?”

  “He was riding with a guy named Ben Engle at the time. As for the others, I don’t remember off the top of my head. He had no complaints with Engle. They seemed to get along well.”

  “When he was found murdered, did you think it was the person who had sent the letters?”

  “Well, yes, of course that was my first fear. It was terrible. I mean, we—that is to say, gay officers—we’ve all experienced harassment and prejudice to one degree or another. There are plenty of guys on the job with small brains and thick red necks. That whole weightlifting crowd comes readily to mind. But murder would have taken everything to a whole new, very ugly level. It was frightening to think. But that’s not how it turned out, thank God.”

  “You believe Curtis was killed by Renaldo Verma?”

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  “Some people aren’t convinced.”

  “Ah . . .” he said as if the lightbulb of awareness had just gone on. “You’ve been talking to Ken Ibsen.”

  The name meant nothing to her, but Liska put it to Neon Man’s face. Dungen took her silence for agreement.

  “There hasn’t been a bigger conspiracy theorist since Oliver Stone,” he said.

  “You think he’s a kook?”

  “I think he’s a drama queen. He doesn’t get enough stage time at the club he works. He has a history of filing lawsuits for sex discrimination and sexual harassment. He knew Eric Curtis—or claims to have known him—and so that gave him a reason to draw a bead on the department. And now he’s come to you because Internal Affairs got tired of listening to his theories,” Dungen added.

  “Actually, he came to me because the Internal Affairs officer he was working with was found dead.”

  “Andy Fallon. Yes. That was too bad.”

  “Did you know Fallon?”

  “I spoke with him regarding his investigation. I didn’t know him personally.”

  “He was gay.”

  “It’s not a club, Sergeant. We don’t all play together,” Dungen said. “I suppose Mr. Ibsen has found a way to incorporate Fallon’s death into his latest theory. It’s all a part of the larger conspiracy to cover up the menace of AIDS in the police department.”

  “Curtis had AIDS?”

  “He was HIV-positive. You didn’t know that?”

  “I’m new to the game. I’ve got some catching up to do,” Liska said, a part of her brain already reconfiguring the playing field, taking this new bomb into consideration. “He was HIV-positive and he was still working the streets?”

  “He hadn’t told his supervisor. He came to me first. He was afraid he’d lose his job. I told him that couldn’t happen. The department can’t discriminate against an officer because of a medical condition. So says the Americans With Disabilities Act. Curtis would have been taken off the street and reassigned. Obviously, there’s too great a risk—not the least of which is to the department in the form of potential lawsuits—having an HIV-positive officer on the street, having to deal with accident and injury situations, situations where the officer himself or herself might become injured and run the risk of infecting someone.”

  “At the time he was being harassed, who else knew Curtis was HIV-positive? Would other uniforms have known?”

  “To my knowledge, he hadn’t told anyone. I told him he was obligated to inform everyone he’d been intimate with. I don’t know if he did,” Dungen said. “The killer couldn’t have known. Who would be stupid enough to go after someone who was HIV-positive with a baseball bat?”

  Liska could see the crime scene in her head. Blood everywhere, splattering the walls, the ceiling, lampshades; spraying everywhere as the killer struck Eric Curtis again and again with the baseball bat.

  Who would knowingly expose himself to contact with contaminated blood?

  Someone ignorant about the transmission of the disease or someone who didn’t care. Someone arrogant enough to believe in his own immortality. Someone who was already infected.

  “When was the last time Fallon spoke with you about the case?” she asked, rubbing a thumb against her right temple, where a headache was taking root. She buzzed her window back up, thinking it was letting in more fumes than oxygen. “Recently?”

  “No. The case was closed. The guy cut a deal. What’s this about, Sergeant?” Dungen asked, suspicious. “I thought Andy Fallon committed suicide.”

  “Yeah,” Liska said. “Just trying to find out why, that’s all. Thank you for your time, David.”

  One of the great tricks of interviewing people: know when to quit. Liska bailed on the phone call, and wondered again if it would come back around to bite her in the ass with Leonard. The idea made her feel nauseated. Or maybe that was the carbon monoxide, she thought, only half joking. She felt a little dizzy.

  She turned off the engine and got out of the car, taking a big breath of cold air as she leaned against the roof of the Saturn.

  “Sergeant Liska.”

  The voice went through her like a blade. She turned abruptly to see Rubel twenty feet away. She hadn’t heard the elevator, hadn’t heard footfalls coming up the stairwell. It seemed as if he had simply materialized.

  “I tried to catch you at your office,” he said. “You’d already gone.”

  “It’s a little past the end of your shift, isn’t it?”

  He came steadily forward, looming larger and larger. Even without the mirrored shades he seemed to have no expression. “Paperwork.”

  “And you found me here . . . how?”

  He gestured to a black Ford Explorer across and down from the Saturn. “Coincidence.”

  My ass, Liska thought. Of all the parking spots in all the parking ramps in downtown Minneapolis . . .

  “Small world,” she said flatly. She leaned back agai
nst the car to offset the watery feeling in her legs, and slipped her hands into her coat pockets, curling her fingers around the handle of her ASP.

  “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Rubel asked. He stopped just a few feet from her. A foot closer than she would have liked, which he probably knew.

  “Like your pal B.O. didn’t fill you in. Please.”

  Rubel said nothing.

  “You knew IA was looking at Ogden for fucking with evidence in the Curtis investigation—”

  “That’s over.”

  “But you went to the investigator’s house on a DB call anyway. Whose bright idea was that?”

  “The call came over the radio. We were in the vicinity.”

  “You’re a regular magnet for coincidence.”

  “We had no way of knowing the dead body was Fallon.”

  “You knew it as soon as you got there. You should have hauled Ogden out of there. You seem to make a habit of saving his ass. Why didn’t you do it when you got to Fallon’s house?”

  Rubel stared at her for a long, unnerving time. Liska’s head pounded with the beat of her pulse. The nausea swirled in her stomach.

  “If you suspect some impropriety on our part,” he said at last, “why aren’t you talking to IA about it?”

  “Is that what you want me to do?”

  “You won’t because your case is closed. Fallon killed himself.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s over. It doesn’t mean I won’t still talk to your supervisor—”

  “Go ahead.”

  “How long have you been riding with Ogden?” Liska asked.

  “Three months.”

  “Who was he riding with before you?”

  “Larry Porter. He left the department. Hired on with the Plymouth PD. You could get all this from our supervisor. If you wanted to talk to him.”

  There was a hint of smugness in his tone, as if he knew she wouldn’t go to his supervisor for fear it would get back to Leonard.

  “You know, I’m trying to cut you a break here, Rubel,” she said irritably. “I don’t want bad blood with the uniforms. We need you guys. But we need you not to fuck up at a scene. A case can be made or broken on what happens at the scene. What if it turned out someone murdered Andy Fallon? You think a defense attorney isn’t going to make us all look like assholes when he hears Ogden, of all people, was there stomping around?”

  “You’ve made your point,” Rubel said calmly. “It won’t happen again.”

  He started to walk away toward his truck.

  “Your partner is a loose cannon, Rubel,” Liska said. “If he has the kind of problems I think he has, you’d be smart to get yourself clear of that.”

  Rubel looked at her over his shoulder. “I know what I need to know, Sergeant.” He looked at her car and said, “You’d better get that window fixed. I’d have to pull you over for that.”

  Liska watched him walk away and get in his truck. Gooseflesh pebbled the skin of her arms and raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck. The Explorer started with a rumble, exhaust billowing out the tailpipe. He backed out and drove away, leaving her alone again.

  She couldn’t decide who was scarier: Ogden with his steroid-pumped temper, or Rubel with his eerie calm. What a pair they made.

  Breathing deeply for the first time since Rubel had startled her, she moved away from the Saturn and made herself walk, hoping to shake off the weird weakness that trickled down the muscles of her arms and legs. She looked at her garbage-bag window and wondered if she was being paranoid reading into Rubel’s crack about getting it fixed. He wouldn’t have to break into her car to get her address off her junk mail. Cops had any number of ways to easily come by that information.

  But then, someone might have broken the window for another reason. Out of anger. To frighten her. As a setup to cast suspicion regarding any future crime against her on someone like the old drunk who had tried to jump in the car with her. None of the options was good.

  As she stared at the window, she slowly became aware of something hanging down from the back end of the Saturn. A chunk of grungy snow, she thought. Another reason to hate winter: the filthy snow boogers that built up behind the tires and would freeze to the density of granite if not quickly removed.

  But as Liska went back to kick the thing off, she realized that wasn’t what she’d seen at all. What had caught her eye wasn’t hanging behind the tire. It was hanging from the tailpipe.

  The nausea surged up her esophagus as she bent down. The pain in her temples intensified. Dizzy, she had to brace a hand against the trunk as she squatted behind the car.

  A filthy white rag had been stuffed into the tailpipe.

  A cold sweat misted her skin.

  For all intents and purposes, someone had just tried to kill her.

  The cell phone in her pocket began to bleat. Shaking, Liska rose and leaned against the car as she dug the thing out and answered it.

  “Liska, homicide.”

  “Sergeant Liska, we need to meet.”

  The voice was familiar. She put a name to it this time: Ken Ibsen.

  “Where and when?”

  20

  CHAPTER

  “HEY, RED, I have a couple of questions about autoerotic asphyxiation.”

  Kate Conlan stared at Kovac. Rene Russo might be this good-looking on her best day, he thought. She combed an errant strand of hair behind her ear. A wry smile pulled up one corner of her sexy mouth.

  “I’m so flattered you thought of me, Sam. Come on in,” she said, stepping back from the door. “John and I were just talking about indulging in some weird sex games.”

  “I didn’t need to know that.”

  “You rang the doorbell. Let me take your coat.”

  He stepped into the entry hall, scrubbing his shoes on the mat. “The house looks great.”

  “Thanks. I’m liking it out here in the ’burbs. It’s nice having space,” Kate said. “And there’s the added benefit that no one’s tried to murder me here, or died a hideous death in the basement.”

  She tossed that out as if she were saying it was great not to have carpenter ants. Oh, those pesky serial killers. The truth was that she had come too damn close to becoming a victim herself instead of an advocate for victims, which was her job. Kovac had been on the scene that day, along with John Quinn. Kovac ended up with smoke inhalation. Quinn ended up with the girl.

  The story of my life.

  “You’re something, Red.”

  “Follow me to the inner sanctum,” she said, leading the way down a wide hall with a polished wood floor and red oriental rugs. An enormous hairy cat sat on the hall table. It reached out and tapped Kovac with a paw as he started past.

  “Hey, Thor.”

  The cat made a sound like a squeaky toy, jumped to the floor with a thump, and dashed down the hall ahead of them with his huge plume tail straight up in the air.

  They went into a den with lots of light-stained pinewood paneling and dark green paint on the walls. A Christmas tree stood near a set of French doors that led outside. A fire crackled in a fieldstone fireplace. A big yellow Lab puppy slept heavily on a pillow near the hearth. Thor the cat went to the puppy and stared at him with suspicion and disdain.

  A pair of desks sat back-to-back on one side of the room, each fully equipped with computer, phone-fax machine, and the usual clerical clutter. John Quinn sat at one, intent on the computer screen.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” Kate said.

  Quinn did, and grinned, pulling off a pair of reading glasses. “Sam. Good to see you.”

  “Don’t be too thankful,” Kate said dryly. “He wants to talk about his sex life. The joys of autoerotic adventures.”

  Kovac blushed. “I’m not that desperate.”

  Quinn walked to him and shook his hand. Rugged and athletic, he looked younger now than when they had met during the Cremator case, more than a year past. There was an ease about Quinn he had not possessed then, and the haunted l
ook was gone from the dark eyes. That was apparently what love and contentment could do for a person.

  After the Cremator, Quinn had left the FBI, where he had been top gun among the mindhunters. Too many cases, too much death, too much stress had taken a toll on him. The Bureau had a history of running its best horses into the ground, and so they had done with Quinn—with Quinn’s willing participation. But nearly losing Kate to a killer had been the wake-up call. Quinn had traded the Bureau for private consulting and teaching—and life with Kate. A sweet deal all the way around.

  “Have a seat,” he offered, gesturing to a pair of fat couches in front of the fire. “What are you working on, Sam?”

  “An apparent suicide that was ruled an accident that might be something else.”

  “The Internal Affairs guy?” Kate asked, handing Kovac a neat scotch. She sat down on the couch too close to Quinn, and put her stocking feet up on the coffee table.

  “That’s the animal.”

  “He was found hanging, right?” Quinn asked. “Was he nude?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any evidence of masturbatory activity?”

  “No.”

  “Fantasy, role-playing, bondage?”

  “No, but there was a full-length mirror there so he could see his reflection,” Kovac said. “Someone had written the word Sorry on the glass with a marker.”

  Quinn’s brow furrowed.

  “Did he have any kind of protective padding positioned between the rope and his throat?” Kate asked. She herself had worked for the FBI in the old Behavioral Sciences unit—in a past life, as she said.

  “No.”

  Kate frowned. Quinn got up from the couch and went to a set of bookshelves on the far side of his desk.

  “Most practitioners of autoerotic asphyxiophilia—the more sophisticated and experienced ones—won’t risk the rope leaving a mark on their throat,” Kate said. “How would they explain it to coworkers, family members, friends, et cetera.”

  Kovac reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat. “I’ve got some of the Polaroids.”

  He laid them out on the coffee table. Kate looked at them without reaction, sipping at a gin and tonic from time to time.

  “Did you find any videotapes with sexual subject matter?” Quinn asked, coming back to the couch with a couple of books and a videocassette.