Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  “Holiday Inn,” Kovac said. “I suppose some people could argue it’s full of latent homosexual subtext or some such bullshit.”

  “That’s a little more subtle than I was thinking.” Quinn went to the television, punched on the VCR and the set, and loaded the tape.

  “No porn—gay, straight, or otherwise. The vic was gay, by the way, if that matters.”

  “It doesn’t. There’s no data suggesting this paraphilia is more a gay hobby than a straight one,” Quinn said. “The reason I asked about videotapes is that a lot of people who indulge in this kind of thing will videotape themselves, so they can relive the fun later on.”

  He came back to the couch, settled in next to Kate, and hit the play button on the remote. Kovac leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs and his eyes on the screen, studiously avoiding looking at Kate’s hand, which settled casually on her husband’s stomach.

  The show that rolled across the screen was sordid and sad and pathetic. A man’s home video of his own accidental death. A pudgy, balding guy with too much body hair, dressed in a black leather S and M harness. He set the stage carefully, checking the elaborate rigging of the rope, which hung in what looked to be a garage or storage shed. He had draped the background with white drop cloths and strategically placed a couple of female mannequins dressed in dominatrix garb. He spent three minutes taping a riding crop into the hand of one of his silent witnesses. INXS played in the background: “Need You Tonight.”

  When he was satisfied with the set, he walked to a full-length mirror and went through his own little play, complete with dialogue. He sentenced himself to punishment, pulled a black discipline mask over his head, and wrapped a long black silk scarf around his throat several times. Then he danced his way from the mirror toward his makeshift gallows, fondling himself, presenting himself to the mannequins. He mounted the step stool and put the noose around his neck. He stroked his erection and eased one foot and then the other off the step.

  His toes were just touching the floor, a position he couldn’t maintain for long. The noose tightened. He didn’t realize he was in trouble yet. He was still playing out the fantasy. Then he began to struggle with his balance. He extended one foot back to step onto the stool. The stool skidded backward and the noose tightened as he tried to reach behind and hook the thing with his foot. He let go of his penis to grab for his safety rope, but he had twisted to one side in an effort to catch the stool and he couldn’t quite reach the rope.

  And then it was too late. That fast. Seconds, and his dance became something from a horror movie.

  “See how quickly it all goes wrong?” Quinn said. “A couple seconds too long, a slight miscalculation—it’s all over.”

  “Jesus,” Kovac muttered. “You don’t want to accidentally return this one to Blockbuster.”

  Though Kovac knew this was from Quinn’s tape library. His specialty was sexual homicide.

  They sat there and watched a man die the way other people would sit through their neighbor’s vacation video. When the guy stopped kicking and his arms pulled up and went back down for the last time, Quinn clicked the tape off. From start to finish, the hanging had taken less than four minutes.

  “There’s not always this much ceremony involved,” Quinn said. “But it’s not uncommon. Not that any of this is common. Rough estimate, you’re probably looking at a confirmed thousand autoerotic deaths in this country every year, with maybe two or three times that that are missed calls, labeled suicide or something else.”

  “But those are just the people who miscalculate and don’t escape whatever contraption they’ve devised,” Kate said. “Who knows how many actually practice the paraphilia and don’t screw up. You haven’t found any family or friends who suggested he was into this kind of thing?”

  “The brother says they used to play hangman when they were kids. You know, cowboy stuff, war games, like that. Nothing kinky. But what about that angle? Have you ever seen family members involved in this kind of thing together?”

  “There’s not much I haven’t seen, Sam,” Quinn said. “I haven’t seen that, but it could certainly happen. I never say never, ’cause just when I think I can’t be shocked, someone comes up with something worse than I ever imagined. What’s your read on the brother?”

  “He’s a redneck type. I don’t make him for kinky sex, but I could be wrong. There was a lot of resentment for the younger brother.”

  “What about friends?” Kate asked.

  “The best friend says no, Fallon wasn’t into kink, but the best friend is hiding something.”

  “The best friend—a man or a woman?” Kate asked.

  “Male, allegedly straight, engaged to someone prominent. The vic, like I said, was gay. He’d just come out to his family.”

  “You think they might have been partners,” Quinn said.

  “I think they could have been. That might explain the word on the mirror. Things got out of hand, went wrong, the friend panicked . . .”

  Kate shook her head as she studied the Polaroids. “I don’t see this as a game. I still say he would have taken some precautions with his neck. It looks more like suicide.”

  “Then why the mirror?” Quinn challenged.

  “Self-humiliation.”

  While they argued over details Kovac had wrestled with again and again, he flipped through the books Quinn had brought out: The DSM-IV, Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life, The Handbook of Forensic Sexology, Autoerotic Fatalities. A little light reading. He had already studied the photographs in the “Modes of Death” chapter of Practical Homicide Investigation, which showed photo after photo of one dumb schmuck after another, dead in some elaborate invention of ropes and pulleys and vacuum cleaner hoses and plastic garbage bags—contraptions designed for bigger, better orgasms. Floaters on the shallow end of the gene pool. People surrounded with bizarre sex toys and sick pornography. People living in crappy basement apartments with no windows. Losers.

  “He doesn’t seem to fit in with this crowd,” Kovac said.

  “You never see Rockefellers and Kennedys in these books,” Kate said. “That doesn’t mean they can’t be just as sick or worse. It just means they’re rich.”

  Quinn agreed. “The studies show this behavior crosses all socioeconomic lines. But you’re right too, Sam. The scene strikes me as being wrong for AEA. It’s too neat and tidy. And the absence of sexual paraphernalia . . . The scene we’re looking at doesn’t fit. Any reason to believe it’s not suicide?”

  “Motives and suspects coming out my ears.”

  “Murder by hanging is rare,” Quinn said. “And damn hard to pull off without leaving tracks. Any defense wounds on the hands or arms?”

  “Nope.”

  “Contusions to the head?”

  “No. I don’t have the full report on the autopsy, but the doc who cut him didn’t mention anything to Liska about a head wound,” Kovac said. “Toxicology is back. He’d had a drink and taken a prescription sleeping pill—not an overdose, just a couple of pills.”

  “That’s sounding like suicide.”

  “But there’s no trace of a prescription bottle anywhere in his house. If he had a scrip, he didn’t fill it at his usual pharmacy, nor was it written by his shrink.”

  “He was seeing a psychiatrist?”

  “Minor depression. He had a bottle of Zoloft in his medicine cabinet. I talked to the doc this afternoon.”

  “Did the doctor consider him a candidate for suicide?” Kate asked.

  “No, but he wasn’t surprised either.”

  “So you’ve got yourself a genuine whodunit,” Quinn said.

  “Unfortunately, no one wants to hear about it. The case is closed. I’m hanging my ass out on a limb for a victim everyone wants buried. He’d be in the ground right now if it hadn’t turned so fucking cold.”

  He scooped the Polaroids up, returned them to his coat pocket, and pasted on a sorry smile for the couple sitting across from him. “But, hey, what else have I got to do with m
y time? It’s not like I have a life or anything.”

  “I recommend getting one,” Quinn said, winking at Kate, who smiled at him with warmth and love.

  Kovac stood up. “All right. I’m out of here before the two of you embarrass yourselves.”

  “I think we’re embarrassing you, Sam,” Kate said, getting up from the couch.

  “There’s that too.”

  Quinn and Kate saw him out together. His last image before the front door closed was the pair turning to walk back into their lovely home, each with an arm around the other. And damn if that didn’t hurt, he thought as he started the car.

  He hated admitting it, wished he could have lied to himself, but there it was: he’d been half in love with Kate Conlan for the better part of five years and had never done a damn thing about it. Because he wouldn’t allow himself to try. Nothing ventured, nothing lost. What would a woman like her see in a guy like him?

  He would never find out now. Facing that reality left a hollow feeling in the deepest part of his soul. There was no escape from it, sitting there in the dark. He’d never felt more alone.

  Unbidden, Amanda Savard’s face came to mind. Beautiful, battered, haunted by something he couldn’t even guess at. He wanted to tell himself she was just a part of the puzzle, that that was his entire interest in her. But there were no lies in him tonight. The truth was right there, just under the surface. He wanted her.

  Night was wrapped closer to the earth here than in the city. Kate and Quinn’s house was technically in Plymouth, but it was more in the country than in a suburb. The drive was off a secluded side road. There was a small lake practically in their backyard. Few lights, less traffic. No distractions to keep him from looking too closely at what he was feeling tonight as he sat in his car on the side of the road.

  Maybe there was an advantage to having a neighbor who lit up his yard like a cheap Vegas hotel after all.

  21

  CHAPTER

  KEN IBSEN COULDN’T shake the feeling someone was watching him, but then, that was nothing new. Ever since the start of this mess, he’d felt as if some giant malevolent eye had hovered above him, tracking his every move. And the worst of it was, it all seemed for nothing on his part. He had done his best to be a conscientious citizen and a good friend, and all he’d gotten for his trouble was ridicule and harassment. Eric was just as dead. The wrong man was sitting in jail for his murder, and no one cared he hadn’t done it—apparently, including the convict. The world had gone stark raving mad.

  Andy Fallon had been the only one interested in getting to the truth of what had happened to Eric, and now Fallon was dead. Ken counted himself lucky to be alive. Maybe it wasn’t such a terrible thing having people think he was a flaming conspiracy nut.

  But Liska seemed genuinely interested in the truth.

  So where the hell was she?

  She had agreed to meet him at 10:30. After his first show. He was due back onstage at 11:30. He checked the delicate watch he wore over his white kid glove, and sighed out a delicate stream of cigarette smoke. 10:55. It was a cold five-minute walk in heels back to the club, and he would have to touch up his lipstick. . . .

  He wished now he’d told her to meet him backstage, but he hadn’t wanted certain extra ears listening in. And the parking lot behind Boys Will Be Girls did too brisk a business in clandestine trysts, even in this cold. He didn’t want Liska hearing the guy in the next car getting a blowjob while Ken tried to tell her about the organized hatred of gays in the Minneapolis Police Department. Credibility was a major issue. Bad enough that he would be meeting her in full costume.

  He hoped she would see past the makeup and mascara, but then, that was the problem with people, wasn’t it? Judgments were most often based on face value and stereotypes. Most of the people in this coffeehouse would have looked at him sitting here dressed as a woman and decided he was a transvestite/transsexual, the terms being interchangeable to the average heterosexual. He was neither. They would have a neat package of preconceived ideas about the way he would walk, the way he would talk, his likes, dislikes, talents. Some of their ideas would be right, but most would not.

  What he was was a gay man with an exceptional voice and a talent for mimicry. He was a serious actor working at a ridiculous job because it paid well. He liked to shoot pool and wear jeans. He owned a Weimaraner dog, which he never dressed up in costumes. He preferred steak over quiche, and he couldn’t stand Bette Midler.

  Most people are more than their stereotypes.

  He sipped his coffee and crossed his legs, staring back at the older man who was watching him from across the room. Just to be a jerk, he pursed his lips and sent the old fart an air kiss.

  Instead of feeling conspicuous dressed as Marilyn Monroe, he felt safe hidden beneath the platinum wig and behind the thick stage makeup. He had slipped into the coffeehouse the back way and taken a back corner table to avoid the notice of the other customers. There weren’t many. It was too cold to bother to go out on a weeknight. That suited Ken’s plan—a public place without much of the public present.

  Now all he needed was Liska.

  He sipped his coffee and watched the door.

  LISKA SWORE A blue streak under her breath as she idled at yet another red light. She was late. She was shaken. She was angry. Tonight of all nights she hadn’t been able to find a sitter who could stay late. She’d spent an hour and a half on the phone, calling everyone she could think of while Kyle complained that she’d promised to help him with his math, and R.J. expressed his displeasure in her by covering the dining room table with action figures, then dramatically sweeping them onto the floor.

  In the end she’d called Speed. Grudgingly. Hating it. There was nothing worse to her than having to rely on him openly for anything. Especially when it came to the boys. She was supposed to be self-reliant, had to be self-reliant, was self-reliant. But instead, she felt inadequate, and a failure, and a poor mother. It frustrated her no end that had the circumstances been reversed, Speed would have done exactly the same thing and never batted an eye. He wouldn’t have even bothered to go through the endless calls to the sitters, and he wouldn’t have felt inadequate.

  A huge, hot ball of emotion wedged in her throat, and tears burned her eyes. She’d caught him on his cell phone at the gym with every other ironhead in the department, and he had whined about having his workout interrupted. Liska doubted he had cut it short or skipped his shower. It had taken him for-fucking-ever to get to the house. Asshole. Now she was late.

  The light changed and she gunned the Saturn around a Cadillac, cut him off, and took the next right fast. She didn’t know how long Ibsen would wait. Drama queen that he was, he was playing the skittish informant to the hilt, refusing to tell her his tale over the phone, insisting on a face-to-face. She wanted to believe he had something valid to tell her. But given the mood she was in, she was more inclined to believe he’d turn out to be everything Dungen had said, and she would have put herself through this evening and risked her career, only to be proved a big idiot.

  Still, beneath the simmering cynicism, Liska believed she was poking at a live hornet’s nest rather than a dead case, and Ken Ibsen—kook or no kook—was a part of that. If he would wait five minutes more, she might find out just what his role in the drama could be.

  SHE WASN’T COMING. He’d said it in his mind every two minutes for the last ten. In between, he’d distracted himself by doodling on a napkin, drawing a caricature of himself in costume, writing random notes.

  Maybe she didn’t believe him. Maybe she had spoken with that viper David Dungen, and he had poisoned her mind against him. Dungen, the traitor. Dungen, the puppet of the department higher-ups. He was nothing but a shill, a warm gay body willing to fill the token post of liaison. The Minneapolis Police Department cared nothing for the concerns of its gay officers.

  Of course, Ken didn’t know this from firsthand experience, but he was certain of it nevertheless. Eric had alluded to as much. The liaison
post had been created to pay lip service to gay issues. Therefore, the department hadn’t really cared about the harassment Eric had suffered. Therefore, the department had fostered the environment of hatred that had led to Eric’s death. Therefore, Ken wrote on his napkin, underlining the word, the department should be held accountable in a wrongful death suit.

  If only the court would recognize his right to file the suit. He was no blood relation to Eric Curtis. They hadn’t been married—same-sex marriage was (unconstitutionally, to his way of thinking) against the law. Therefore, the court would hear nothing from him.

  Sure, it was fine for Neanderthal cops to bludgeon people for their private preferences, but allow caring individuals to express their love . . . Not that he and Eric had been in love. They had been friends. Well . . . acquaintances, with the potential to be friends. Who knew what they might have become.

  The bell above the coffeehouse door rang and Ken looked up from his doodling, hopeful, only to have his heart sink. The newest patron was a scruffy-looking guy in an old army fatigue jacket.

  She wasn’t coming.

  Eleven-eighteen.

  He put out his smoldering cigarette, stuffed the napkin he had written on into the pocket of his full-length faux leopard coat, and went out the back way.

  Not that he liked going by way of the alleys. Drunks and drug addicts and the homeless traveled this maze of back routes, avoiding the cops. That was his reason as well. He’d been harassed by the police more than once for walking down the street in costume. Like any common street whore could do the kind of job he did. Idiots. And, naturally, they assumed any man in a blond wig and a dress was a prostitute. Then there was the fact that he hadn’t exactly made a lot of friends among the patrol cops with his diligent pursuit of the truth in Eric’s death.

  It was awfully dark and creepy in this alley. The buildings created a sinister canyon of concrete. The darkness was broken only intermittently by weak bulbs over the back doors of dubious businesses. Every Dumpster, every empty box was a potential hiding place for a predator or a scavenger.