by Tami Hoag
“WHAT HAPPENED TO you?” Liska asked, frowning at Kovac as he climbed out of the car.
“A woman scorned.”
“You don’t have a woman to scorn.”
“Why should that limit my chances at suffering?” he asked, taking in the scene.
Chamiqua Jones’s neighborhood was shabby, the houses sagging old monsters built in the early part of the century and later cut up into apartments. But it was by no means a slum. The families who lived here were poor, but for the most part did their best to look out for one another. The gangs and the crack dealers were far worse enemies to them than to white suburbia.
And this was why, Kovac thought as they walked toward the gathering of cops and crime scene techs.
A small body lay in the street near a pile of snow. The body had been covered. The mound of dirty snow was splashed with blood. Chamiqua Jones stood off to one side, wailing, screaming, rocking, friends and neighbors trying to comfort and restrain her.
“The kids were playing on the snowbank,” Liska said. “According to one of them, a car with three or four gangbangers pulled up, one stuck his head out the window and called the name Jones. When he saw which child reacted, he shot her. Caught her once in the face, two to the torso.”
“Aw, jeez.”
“Not exactly a subtle message.”
“Whose case?”
“Tom Michaels.”
At the mention of his name, Michaels looked up from a conversation with one of the uniforms, and immediately came toward them. Stocky and full of nervous energy, he wore his hair slicked straight back with a ton of goo to combat the fact that he looked about seventeen. It didn’t work. He was a good cop.
“Sam, I knew you and Liska were on the Nixon assault,” he said. “I figured you’d want a heads-up on this.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Kovac said. “Any ID on the shooter?”
Michaels made a face.
Answer: no. And there wouldn’t be. The Jones girl was dead because her mother had been asked to testify against one of Deene Combs’s thugs. The neighborhood’s leaders would make an angry show of demanding justice and daring citizens to stand up and fight back, but no one would. Not after this. And who the hell could blame them?
“I told you!”
The shout turned all their heads. Chamiqua Jones stormed toward them, her focus on Kovac, her eyes full of tears and pain and anger. She thrust a gloved finger at him.
“I told you you was gonna get me killed! Look what they did! Look what they did! They killed my child! They killed my Chantal! What you gonna do for me now, Kovac?”
“I’m sorry, Chamiqua,” Kovac said, knowing how horribly inadequate the apology was.
She glared at him and at Liska. “You’re sorry? My child is dead! I told you to leave me be, but you had to keep on. Testify, Chamiqua, you said. Tell what you saw or we’ll put your black ass in jail, you said. I told you what would happen. I told you!”
She hit Kovac in the chest with both fists as hard as she could. He let her have her shot. Then she stepped back, glaring at him because it hadn’t helped.
“I hate you!” she shouted.
Kovac said nothing. Chamiqua Jones didn’t want to hear how rotten he felt, or how badly he wished this hadn’t happened. She wouldn’t forgive him or absolve him for doing his job, for following orders. It wouldn’t impress her that he had become a cop because he wanted to help people, to try to do his little part to make the world a better, safer place. Chamiqua Jones didn’t give a shit about him, except to hate him.
“Ms. Jones, if there’s anything we can do—” Liska began.
“You’ve done enough,” Jones said bitterly. “Do you have children, Detective?”
“I have two boys.”
“Then you pray to God you don’t ever have to feel what I’m feeling. That’s what you can do.”
She turned away and went to where her daughter’s body lay. No one tried to stop her.
“It’s a pisser,” Michaels said quietly, watching as Jones pulled the cover back and touched her child’s bloody head. “If people could stand up and give us thugs like Combs, this wouldn’t happen. But because this kind of thing happens, nobody wants to stand up.”
“We tried to tell Leonard to back off,” Kovac said. “Come up with some other angle to get Combs. But Sabin thought if we could nail the guy from the Nixon assault, he could turn him for Combs.”
Michaels sniffed. “Bullshit. No banger’s gonna beat a guy’s head in with a tire iron, then give up his boss.”
“You know it and I know it.”
“And Chamiqua Jones pays for it,” Liska said, not able to take her eyes away from the grieving mother.
“Whatever you need from us relating to the Nixon case, just ask,” Kovac said.
“And vice versa,” Michaels said.
Kovac put a hand on Liska’s shoulder as Michaels went back to work. “Life sucks, and the night’s still young,” he said. “Come on, Tinks. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. We can cry on each other’s shoulders.”
“No, thanks,” she said absently, still watching Chamiqua Jones even as they started to walk away. “I need to get home to my boys.”
Kovac put her in her car and watched her drive away, wishing he had someone to get home to.
A TERRIBLE SENSE of urgency chased Liska home. A feeling of dread, of impending doom. She couldn’t escape the idea that while she had been paying her respects to the mother of a dead child, something horrible had happened to her own children. She drove fast, ignoring traffic laws and speed limits, feeling almost as if Chamiqua Jones’s words to her had been a curse. That was stupid, she knew, but it didn’t matter.
As a homicide detective, she encountered death on a regular basis. Like most cops, she had hardened herself to it long ago. That was the necessary route to maintain sanity. But there was no immunity to the effects of seeing a dead child. There was no escaping the emotions—the anger and sadness at how brief that young life had been, at the things that child would never experience; the heavy sense of guilt that the death could have been prevented somehow, some way. Adults could look out for themselves. Oftentimes an adult victim’s life choices put the person in the situation that ended his life. But children never chose to be put at risk. Children were dependent on the adults in their lives to keep them safe.
Liska felt that burden now, as she turned off Grand Avenue and spotted her home. It was still standing. That was a good start. It hadn’t been burned to the ground in her absence. It didn’t matter that the sitter had told her so just ten minutes prior when she’d called home on her cell phone.
She pulled in the driveway, abandoned the car, and hurried to the house, fumbling with her keys.
The boys were in their pajamas, stretched out on their bellies in front of the television, mesmerized by the video game they were playing. Liska dropped her purse, toed her shoes off, and hurried across the room to them, ignoring the sitter’s greeting. She fell down on her knees between them and scooped a boy into each arm, earning howls of protest.
“Hey!”
“You ruined my chance!”
“I was winning!”
“You were not!”
“Was so!”
Liska pulled them close and breathed deep the smell of clean hair and microwave popcorn. “I love you guys. I love you so much!”
“You’re cold!” R.J. exclaimed.
Kyle gave her a speculative look. “Do you love me enough to let me stay over at Jason’s house tonight? He called and asked.”
“Tonight?” Liska said, hugging him tighter. She closed her eyes against silly, sudden tears of relief and joy. “Not a chance, Sport. Tomorrow, maybe. Not tonight. Not tonight.”
THE SITTER SAW herself home. Liska played with the boys until they couldn’t keep their eyes open anymore, then shepherded them off to their beds and lingered at the door, watching them sleep.
Calmer, reassured they were safe and sound, she checked all the locks, then drew a
bubble bath—a rare, feminine treat. The warmth penetrated muscle, easing out the tension, the anxiety, the feeling of toxicity that always lingered after working a murder scene, as if evil hung in the air. She closed her eyes and rested her head on a rolled-up towel, a steaming cup of tea on the edge of the tub. She tried to clear her mind of everything and just drift, just be for a few minutes. What a luxury.
When she was completely relaxed, she opened her eyes, dried her hands, and reached for the stack of mail she’d piled on the edge of the vanity. No bills. No junk mail. Just a small stack of what looked to be Christmas cards. Once again, she wasn’t going to get her cards out until God knew what holiday.
There was a card from her Aunt Cici in Milwaukee. A photo card of cousin Phil the dairy farmer and his family all in matching “Got Milk?” T-shirts. Hallmark’s finest from a college friend who had otherwise lost touch so long ago she still addressed the envelope to Mr. and Mrs.; why did people like that bother? Was it really so much trouble to cull out the database?
The last of the envelopes was addressed only to her. Another computer label, no return address. Odd. Obviously a card. The envelope was red. She slipped the letter opener under the flap. A simple business-type card with “Season’s Greetings” on the front. Something fell from it as Liska opened the card, and she swore and grabbed the dark square as it hit the surface of the bathwater.
A Polaroid snapshot. No. Three photographs stuck together.
Photographs of her children.
Liska’s blood ran cold. Goose bumps pebbled every inch of her skin. Her hands began to tremble. One photograph had been taken as the boys stood in line to get on the bus at school. The second showed them playing with a friend as the school bus drove away from the stop down the block. The third showed them walking up the sidewalk to the house. On each photograph, someone had drawn a circle around each of the boys’ heads with a black marker.
Inside the card, the only message was a phone number typed in black.
Setting the card and photos aside, Liska hauled herself out of the tub, wrapped her dripping body in a towel, and grabbed the portable phone. She was shaking so badly, she misdialed the number twice. On the third try, the call went through, and she waited. A machine answered on the fourth ring, the recorded voice sending a bolt of fear straight through her.
“Hi. This is Ken. I’m out doing something so exciting, I can’t take your call right now. . . .”
Yeah. He was lying in a bed in a surgical intensive care unit. Ken Ibsen.
29
CHAPTER
FAMOUS LAST WORDS: It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Kovac rang the bell before he could change his mind. He knew the minute she looked out the peephole in the front door. He could feel her presence, could feel her scrutiny, her indecision. Finally, the door opened and she looked out at him.
“Yes, I do have a phone,” he said. “I have several, and I do know how to use them.”
“Then why don’t you?” Savard asked.
“You might have said no.”
“I would have said no.”
“See?”
She didn’t invite him in. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at his forehead. “Were you in a fight?”
Kovac touched his fingers to the spot, remembering that he’d never finished washing the blood off. “An innocent casualty of someone else’s war.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No. Neither did I,” he said, recalling the scene at Steve Pierce’s house. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Why did you come here?”
“Mike Fallon was murdered.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“Someone killed him. I’ve got his son, Neil, sitting in the pokey now, reflecting on the cleansing power of confession.”
“My God,” Savard murmured, opening the door a little wider. “What have you got on him?”
“Nothing, really. We did it with mirrors. If it weren’t the weekend and if he had a clever lawyer, he’d be sitting in his bar by now,” he admitted. “On the other hand, he had opportunity, motive, and a bad attitude.”
“You think he did it.”
“I think Neil is proof there should be a lifeguard at the gene pool. He’s a small, mean, angry person, bitter over the fact that people don’t love him in spite of himself. His father’s son,” he added, an ironic twist to his mouth.
“I thought Mike Fallon was your friend.”
“I respected what Mike represented on the job. He was an old-time cop.”
He looked back out toward the street, where a car was going by slowly. A couple checking house numbers. Normal people looking for another Christmas party. They probably hadn’t come to this neighborhood from a murder scene.
“Maybe I had a soft spot for him because I want someone to have a soft spot for me when I’m that old and that resentful.”
“Is that what you came here looking for?” Savard asked. “Sympathy?”
He shrugged. “I’d even settle for pity tonight.”
“I don’t keep much of that around.”
He thought she was almost allowing herself to smile. There was something softer in her eyes than he’d seen before.
“How about scotch?”
“I don’t keep that either.”
“Neither do I. I drink it,” he said.
“That’s right, you’re a stereotype. The tragic hero.”
“The twice-divorced, smoking, drinking workaholic. I don’t know what’s heroic about that. It reeks of failure to me, but maybe I have unrealistic standards.”
“Why did you come here, Sergeant? I don’t see what the news about Mike Fallon has to do with me.”
“Apparently so you could make me stand in the cold while you chip away at my self-esteem with your blunt indifference.”
Almost-amusement to go with the almost-smile. “Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?”
“I find subtlety is a waste of time. Especially when I’ve been drinking. I’ve already been indulging in that scotch we were talking about.”
“Drinking and driving? I guess I’d be doing a public service if I invited you in for a cup of coffee.”
“You’d be doing me a service. The only thing that overheats in my car is the radiator.”
Savard sighed and opened the door wider.
Kovac took advantage of the opportunity before she could change her mind. Winning the war of attrition. The house was warm and smelled of a wood fire and the aforementioned coffee. Homey. His house was cold and smelled of garbage.
“I think maybe you’re developing a soft spot for me, Lieutenant.”
“Mmm . . . in my head,” she said, and walked away.
Kovac toed off his shoes and followed her through a small formal dining room to a country kitchen. She was dressed for lounging in a loose, flowing outfit the color of sage. Like something an old-time Hollywood star would wear, he thought. Her hair tumbled around her head in soft, silver-blond waves. A very alluring picture, except that there was a stiffness in her back and neck as she moved that hinted of pain. He wondered again about her story of a fall. Obviously, there was no one living with her, no boyfriend hanging around on a Friday night.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
She took a stoneware mug from a cupboard and filled it from the pot simmering on the coffee machine. The room was lit softly by small yellow lights mounted under the cupboards and on the ceiling.
“I take it Neil Fallon doesn’t have an alibi.”
“Not that stands up in court,” Kovac said, leaning against the island. “People never believe anyone else was home alone in bed. They always suspect everyone in the world is having sex or committing crimes but them.”
“Milk? Sugar?”
“Black, thanks.”
“No physical evidence?”
“None I believe will hold up past the lab.”
“He didn’t leave any prints on the gun?”
“What made you decide it was murder, then? Something the ME came up with?”
“The scene. The position of the gun. It shouldn’t have fallen where it did. Couldn’t have, if Mike pulled the trigger.”
She handed him his coffee, sipped her own, and made a thoughtful sound. “That’s sad his life had to end that way. His own son . . . imagine . . .” she said, staring at the floor. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. You know, he had a chance to make things right with Andy and he didn’t take it. Then everything went to hell on a sled.” He tasted the coffee, a little surprised there was no exotic flavor to it. It was just coffee. “Apparently, Andy wanted to do something with Mike in relation to the Thorne homicide. Write down Mike’s story or something.”
“Really? Did Mike tell you that?”
“No. A friend of Andy’s mentioned it. Mike didn’t want to do it. I guess stewing in the memories and sharing them were two different things. Did Andy ever say anything about it to you?”
Savard set her cup aside and crossed her arms as she leaned back against the counter. “Not that I recall. Why would he?”
“No reason. I thought he might have mentioned it in passing, you being friends with Ace Wyatt. That’s all.”
“We’re not friends. He’s an acquaintance. We have people in common.”
“Whatever. I guess he must have dropped it, anyway,” Kovac said. “I didn’t see anything in his office relating to it. No file, no clippings or anything like that. Unless all that stuff is in the same place as his copy of the Curtis-Ogden file. The same place as his laptop. Wherever that might be.”
“What do you think he hoped to gain by looking into his father’s past?”
Kovac shrugged. “Understanding, I guess. What Mike was these last twenty years started the night of that shooting. Or maybe he was just a brownnoser, trying to win the old man over by pretending interest in his father’s life. You could say better than I—was Andy a kiss-ass?”
She thought about it a moment. “He needed to please. He needed to succeed. That’s why he took it so hard when the Curtis-Ogden case closed. He wanted to be the one to say it was over, not just have it end because Verma copped a plea.”