Dust to Dust

by Tami Hoag

  Viewed that way, he could almost think of the photographs as abstract art instead of pictures of a man he had known for twenty years. It was certainly easier to look at the pictures than it had been to stand in on the autopsy and see a personal acquaintance sliced and diced.

  Maggie Stone, the Hennepin County ME, had performed the autopsy herself. Despite such eccentricities as carrying concealed weapons and changing hair color every six months, Stone was the best. When she said it was so, it was so. Kovac had known her for years. They had the kind of rapport that allowed him to ask for favors, such as standing in on an old friend’s autopsy at the crack of dawn. Stone hadn’t blinked an eye. To someone who spent her life cutting open the dead to extract their internal organs and their secrets, nothing much came as a shock.

  And so Kovac had stood there in the autopsy suite, just out of the way as Stone and her assistant, Lars, moved around the stainless steel table, doing their thing. A hell of a way to kick off the morning.

  Liska came into the cubicle looking grim, no color in her cheeks, despite the fact she had come in from outside, where the temperature was struggling toward the mid-teens. She said nothing as she put her purse in a drawer and slipped out of her coat.

  “How’s your snitch?”

  “Looks like he’ll live. Sort of. I just came from the hospital.”

  “Is he conscious?”

  “No. But he hasn’t curled up like a fetus, so they’re hopeful there’s no serious brain injury. Broken bones will heal, and hey, who would mind having a colostomy, really?” she said sarcastically. “And looking like the Elephant Man? A minor trade-off for not biting the big dirt sandwich.”

  “You didn’t do it to him, Tinks,” Kovac said evenly.

  Liska didn’t meet his eyes. “I know. I’m dealing with it. I am. It’s just that seeing him again . . .” She took a deep breath and let it go. “If I had gotten there on time . . .”

  “Feeling guilty won’t change anything, kiddo. He made his own choices, and you did the best you could.”

  She nodded. “It’s just frustrating, that’s all. But I’ll handle it.”

  “I know you will. And you know I’m here when you need me.”

  She looked at him with fondness and appreciation and a sheen of tears in her eyes. “Thanks.”

  “That’s what partners do. We back each other up.”

  “Don’t make me cry, Kovac,” she said with a phony scowl. “I’ll have to hurt you.”

  “Careful,” he warned. “I might like it. I’m a lonely guy.” He paused. “So, what’s the word on the case? Are you in?”

  “I have to talk to Leonard,” she said, and made a face. “Ibsen was my informant. I was on the scene. I’m the one who got the call to leave it alone.”

  “That call says dumb and dumber all over it. If it was a random assault, you never would have gotten a call after the fact.”

  Liska agreed. “Dumb as dirt. Now I’ve got something I can take to IA and use to get access to the files on the Curtis investigation. Why would anyone warn me off a closed case unless there was a damn good reason to open it back up?”

  “Anything on the caller ID?”

  “The number came back to a pay phone on the backside of nothing. So Deep Throat gets credit for having a couple of brain cells. I have no hope for witnesses of the call being placed.”

  “And Ogden and Rubel—their alibi holds up?”

  Liska made a sound of contempt. “What alibi? They were shooting pool in Rubel’s basement. And guess who was with them? Cal Springer.”

  “That’s cozy.”

  “He’d probably swear they’d all been on the moon at the time if that was what the other two said, he’s such a chickenshit. They must have pictures of him doing a goat,” Liska said with disgust. “Anyway, Castleton was up for Ibsen’s assault. He and the shift supervisor both said I’m welcome as second if Leonard clears it.”

  “Leonard’s gonna have your ass for digging around in IA business.”

  Liska shrugged. “Can I help it if the guy would only talk to me? According to what I’ve heard, the rest of the department had tuned him out. Nobody wanted to hear about his AIDS conspiracy theories.”

  “Who has AIDS?”

  “Eric Curtis was HIV-positive. Puts a new wrinkle into it, huh? What homophobe would beat a gay man to death and run the risk of coming into contact with contaminated blood?”

  Kovac frowned, recalling his visit with the man credited with the Curtis homicide. “Twenty says Verma has it.”

  “But if Verma did it, then who’s warning me off? He’s in jail.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, Kovac swiveling his chair.

  “I still like Ogden for that,” he said.

  “Me too. That’s the way I’m playing it.”

  “Be careful.”

  She nodded. “How’d Mike’s autopsy go?”

  “No big revelations so far. Nothing under his fingernails but dirt. He had some bruising on the back of his hands, but not conclusively defense wounds. The skin wasn’t freshly broken, and we know he had taken a fall recently, which could explain any marks. For that matter, Stone couldn’t swear the discoloration was genuine bruising. There was a lot of lividity in the hands because of the position of the body.”

  “What about gunpowder residue?”

  “Both hands. Doesn’t mean somebody didn’t force him to put the gun in his mouth, but we can’t prove someone did either.”

  “So we’re nowhere with that,” Liska said. “Stone will rule it a suicide.”

  “She won’t do anything till all the lab work comes back, and she promised me everything is backed up—to say nothing of the fact that paperwork regularly gets mislaid, if you know what I mean.”

  Liska grinned. “I think Doc Stone wouldn’t mind getting mislaid by you, if you know what I mean.”

  Kovac felt heat rise in his cheeks. In his mind’s eye he flashed on Amanda Savard, not Maggie Stone. The look in her eyes when he’d cupped her chin in his hand: vulnerability. He forced a scowl. “I’m not going to bed with any woman who dissects people for a living. Anyway, she’ll buy us a little time, but we could do with a miracle about now. I also asked her to go back and look over Andy Fallon’s autopsy. In case Upshaw doesn’t know his ass.”

  “Need a miracle?” Elwood asked, walking over to the cubicle. He wore a thick mohair sweater over a shirt and tie. It made him look like a woolly mammoth.

  “I’d sell my soul,” Kovac said.

  “That would be something of a contradiction, as miracles are associated with positive higher powers,” Elwood pointed out. “You sell your soul to the devil.”

  “You can give him my regards if you don’t spill what you’ve got.”

  “A neighbor saw Neil Fallon’s truck parked in front of Mike’s house late Wednesday night. One oh-nine, to be precise. I checked the reports on the neighbors the uniforms canvassed yesterday. They hit this house, but the owner was out. The cleaning lady answered the door. So I called, and bingo.”

  Kovac vaulted up out of his chair.

  “That’s more like it.”

  “They saw this truck pull up, but they didn’t hear the gunshot?” Liska asked, dubious.

  “An insomniac with hearing aids,” Elwood said. “She’s eighty-three. But she’s sharp as a tack.”

  “How’s her eyesight?”

  “Great with the Bausch and Lomb binoculars she keeps on her coffee table.”

  “Light?”

  “Floodlights on the corners of her home. She’s a neighborhood watch commander. She didn’t recognize the truck, but she got the license number.”

  “Would she like my job after Leonard fires me?”

  “Did she see him leave?” Kovac asked.

  “One thirty-two.”

  “That’s earlier than the estimated TOD, but I’ll take it.”

  Kovac scooped the Mike Fallon Polaroids into a drawer and, looking into his blank computer monitor, tried to straighten his
tie.

  “Have Neil Fallon picked up for questioning,” he said to Elwood. “I’ll break the news to Leonard.”

  “WHAT THE HELL is this about?” Neil Fallon demanded.

  A pair of uniforms had pulled him out of his shop to bring him in. His filthy coveralls looked like the same ones he wore the day Kovac had told him about his brother. His hands were dark with dirt and grease.

  “Jesus Christ, my brother and my father are dead and—and—you drag me down here like a fucking criminal!” Fallon ranted as he paced hard in the tight confines of the interview room. The same room where Jamal Jackson had cracked Kovac in the head. “No explanation. No apology—”

  “You are a fucking criminal,” Kovac said, matter-of-fact. “We know about the assault conviction, Neil. Did you think we wouldn’t check? Now, how about you give me an explanation and an apology?”

  He stood with his arms crossed and his back against the wall beside the two-way mirror, watching Fallon’s reaction. Liska stood opposite him, against the other wall. Elwood had the door. No one availed themselves of the chairs at the friendly little round table. The red light glowed on the video camera.

  Fallon glared at him. “That was a long time ago, and it was bullshit besides. It was an accident.”

  “You accidentally beat some guy into a coma in a bar fight?” Liska said. “How does that work?”

  “There was a fight. He fell and hit his head.”

  Kovac looked over at Elwood. “Isn’t that what Cain said about Abel?”

  “I believe so.”

  “How about you apologize for lying to me yesterday, Neil?” Kovac said. “How about you explain to me what you were doing at your father’s house at one A.M. the same morning he died?”

  Fallon ran out of gas abruptly. He tried to hold on to some of the anger in his expression. Beneath it was a layer of confusion, then suspicion, then fear. “What are you talking about? I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Save it,” Liska advised. “A neighbor of your father’s put your truck in his driveway at one A.M.”

  “You told me yesterday the last time you spoke with him was on the phone that night.” Kovac paused.

  Fallon’s eyes darted around the room as if he might see an explanation somewhere.

  “Why would you lie to me like that, Neil? Were you embarrassed you couldn’t convince your old man to fork over the money you need to pay off your ex? If that’s what you talked about in the twenty-three-minute phone call placed from your bar at eleven oh-seven P.M.”

  Fallon sucked in a short breath and then another, like an asthmatic on the verge of an attack. He rubbed the side of his neck with his thick, filthy hand.

  Kovac shifted his weight lazily. “You’re getting that ‘oh, shit’ look, Neil. Don’t you think so, Tinks?”

  “Oh, shit,” she said. “It’s sphincter spasm time, Neil.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t call the phone company and request the local usage records on your phone?” Kovac asked. “You must think I’m pretty fucking stupid, Neil.”

  “Why would you do that?” Fallon asked, nervous. “I’m not a suspect for anything. Jesus, my father just killed himself—”

  “And I’m sick of hearing you remind me. I’m the one found him with his head blown half off. You think you need to keep reminding me of that? That’s not an effective strategy, Neil.

  “Someone dies a violent death like Mike did, it gets investigated,” Kovac said. “You know the first people who get looked at? Family. ’Cause no one’s got better motive to croak a person than a relative. You told me yourself: You hated Mike. Add to that the fact that you need money to pay off your soon-to-be ex, and that Mike wouldn’t give it to you. That’s called motive.”

  The fear began to rise to the surface. Fallon’s movements became jerky. Sweat misted his upper lip. He moved backward toward the corner with the built-in bookcase. All the shelves had been removed. “But he was my old man. I wouldn’t do that to him. He was my father.”

  “And he spent thirty-some years telling you you weren’t as good as your fag brother. That’s what we call a festering wound.”

  “He was a bastard,” Fallon declared. “I won’t say otherwise, but I didn’t kill him. As for that bitch Cheryl, it’s none of her goddamn business where I get the money. I’ll pay her off.”

  “Or you’ll lose the business you’ve busted your hump for,” Liska said. “Hell hath no fury like a bitter, vindictive woman. I should know, I am one.”

  “I spoke with your ex,” Kovac said. “She sounded like she’s losing patience, ready to put the squeeze on you. Did you ask your brother for the money?”

  He shook his head as if he’d taken a sharp smack in the ear, incredulous at this sudden downturn in his life. He looked from Liska to Kovac. “You gonna say I killed him too?”

  “We’re not saying you killed anybody, Neil. We’re just asking you questions pertinent to our case, that’s all. That and pointing out how things look from the police perspective.”

  “Stick your perspective up your ass, Kovac. Andy’s not your case. That’s over. Dead and buried. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. The brass signed off.”

  Kovac arched a brow. “And you’re trying to rub my face in that for what reason?”

  “I’m just saying it’s over.”

  “But see, we have to look at an established pattern of behavior here, Neil. One member of the family offs himself, that’s one thing. Two in a week? That’s something else. You hated them both. You’re going through a rough time emotionally and financially. We call those factors precipitating stressors. Stressors that might be enough to push a guy over the line. You have a record of violent behavior—”

  “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “What were you doing at Mike’s house at that time of night?”

  “I went to check on him,” Fallon said, his gaze sliding away. Absently, he touched his face just below the bruise on the crest of his cheek. “We’d talked earlier. I didn’t like the way he sounded.”

  “The way he sounded or what he had to say?” Kovac asked. “We know you’d been drinking. You told me so. You told me you were tanked enough to mix it up with a customer, the guy you made for a cop. Did your old man say something to piss you off?”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “How wasn’t it like that? You’re gonna try to tell me now your family was like something out of Ozzie and Harriet?”

  “No, but—”

  “You told me Mike was always chewing your ass. How was this different? What did you talk about?”

  “I told you yesterday—what time he wanted to be at the funeral home.”

  “Yeah, you told me yesterday. Why didn’t you tell me then you hadn’t liked the way he sounded? You didn’t say anything about having been concerned. In fact, if memory serves, you called him an old prick. Why didn’t you tell me you’d been to the house to check on him?”

  Fallon turned around in a slow circle, left hand massaging his forehead, right hand on his hip. “He killed himself after I left,” he said, lowering his voice. “I didn’t do a very good job seeing to his needs, did I? His only living son . . .”

  “What did he need? What did he say?”

  Kovac waited and watched as Neil Fallon paced his little circle. His bull shoulders curled in as if he were fighting a pain in his stomach. His face was flushed. He held a shallow breath, then puffed it out, held it, puffed it out. He dug into the pocket of his coveralls and came out with a pack of Marlboros.

  “Sorry, Mr. Fallon,” Elwood said. “We keep a smoke-free environment.”

  Fallon glared at him and shook one out of the pack. “So throw me out.”

  Kovac moved toward him slowly. “I don’t think that conversation was about what Mike needed, Neil,” he said softly, shifting gears. “I think it was more likely about what you need. I think you were drunk and pissed off when you called him, and you argued about the cash you need. And after that conversation, yo
u got angrier and angrier, thinking about what you need and how your old man wouldn’t give it to you, how he doted on Andy and shit all over you. And you got so mad, you got in your truck and you went to give it to him in his face.”

  “He was half drunk, half wasted on pills,” Fallon muttered. “I might as well have been talking to a turnip. He didn’t give a shit what I had to say about anything. He never did.”

  “He wouldn’t give you the money.”

  He shook his head and laughed. “He wouldn’t listen to the question. All he wanted to talk about was Andy. How much he loved Andy. How Andy let him down. How Andy couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Kovac looked at Liska, who had straightened abruptly.

  “He used those words?” she asked. “‘Let sleeping dogs lie’? Why would he say that?”

  “I don’t know,” he snapped. “Because of Andy coming out of the closet, I suppose. If he’d kept it to himself he was queer, then the old man wouldn’t have had to deal with it. ‘After all these years,’ he kept saying. Like it wasn’t fair telling him now. Like either he should have told when he was ten or waited for the old man to die. Jesus.”

  “That must have made you crazy,” Kovac said. “You’d had a few. You’d mixed it up with that customer. You’re there in the flesh and Andy’s dead, but he’s going on about Andy this and Andy that.”

  “That’s what I said to him. ‘Andy’s dead. Can we bury him and move on?’”

  He took a pull on his cigarette and blew the smoke out hard. His face had turned a deep red. He squinted to better picture the memory . . . or to keep tears at bay. He stared at the two-way mirror, not seeing it. “I got right down in his face and I screamed at him—‘Andy was a butt-fucking fag and I’m glad he’s dead!’”

  He shouted the words past the emotions that swelled in his throat. He covered his eyes with his left hand, the cigarette smoldering between his fingers.

  “What’d he do?”

  Fallon was crying, the tears sliding under his hand, tortured, broken sounds cracking from his mouth.

  “What’d Mike do when you said that, Neil?”

  “H-he h-hit m-me.”

  “And what did you do then?”