Dust To Dust (31 page)

"I hate it:'she whispered, knowing she meant more than the case. That she hated feeling needy, that she hated always having to be tough, that she hated the contradictions, that she hated the te-ars- that were burning her eyes and the conflicts she felt at being in the arms of her ex-husband.

"Why do you think they were cops?" he asked as softly as a lover whispering endearments.

"That's why he was meeting me--to talk about a rotten cop."

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"Maybe it was a random hate crime. Drag queens are unpopular in certain circles."

She pulled away and gave him a look. "Yeah, I believe in that kind of coincidence, and in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny."

She walked away from him to rearrange the blanket over her son, then went to the television and turned it off.

"Is this still about the dead IA guy?" Speed asked.

"Partly." She almost laughed. "It's about a closed murder with a convicted killer, and a closed suicide-slash-accident. Strange that someone should be beaten nearly to death over that, don't you think?" "Who are you looking at?"

"A uniform. No one you know," she said, then turned and looked at him with the scrutiny of a cop. He was in his stocking feet, in jeans that hung low on a flat belly, and a T-shirt that showed off an enviable physique. The cop in her resurfaced." Or maybe you do.You look like you've been pumping some iron lately. This guy's a serious lifter."

"Does he come to the St. Paul station house to do it?" "You're working out at the station like a common cop?" "It's free. I have enough obligations for my paycheck."

"Can't imagine what they are," Liska muttered. "I never see any evidence of it."

Speed opened his mouth to fire a retort, but Liska held up a hand to fend him off. R.J. was right there. Asleep, but who was to say how deeply or what sounds might penetrate his subconscious. She tried not to fight with Speed in front of the boys. She failed a lot, but she tried.

"Sorry," she said. "That was out of bounds. The fuse is a little short tomight, you know.What I meant to say was, I know a lot of the cops from both departments lift at that gym on University-Steele's. I thought you rmight have seen this guy there."

He just stood there for a moment, working up his hurt feelings. She could see it in his face. R.J. did the same thing when he felt he'd been wronged. She could see him mentally reliving each slight, each sharp remark in order to reinforce his sense of affront.

"I said I'm sorry," she rerminded him.

"You know, I'm trying here, Nikki:'he said, the wounded martyr. "I'm trying to help when I can with the boys. I told you Id come up with some cash soon-"

"I know-"

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I "But you just have to keep at it with the digs, don't you? Why is that, Nikki? Is it that you really hate me that much? Or is it because maybe you're afraid you still have feelings for me?"

Bull's-eye, she thought. "It's Just habit."

"Break it," he said softly, his eyes locked on hers. He went to her, lifted a hand, and touched her cheek. "I care about you, Nikki. I'm not afraid to say it, even if you are."

He bent his head and touched his lips to hers, a soft kiss that lingered but didn't press for more. Liska's heart seemed to press up against the base of her throat.

"Be careful, Nikki:'he said as he stepped back.

Of the case or of you? she wanted to ask. Then she thought, Both.

2ou make serious enemies when you turn on your own kind." 'If this guy is what I think he is, he's not'my kind."'

That was how she had to look at it, she thought, as Speed went to the front entry, stepped into his hiking boots, and pulled on his coat. If Ogden was a killer, if he was the kind of am*mal who could beat a man, rape a man with a piece of pipe, then the fact that he carried a badge was the worst kind of offense.

"What do you have on him? Anything solid?"

She shook her head. "Hunches, feelings. This drag queen was supposed to have something to fill me in. I think the cop's a juicer. If nothing else, maybe I can give him to the narcs"' she said, giving him a lopsided excuse for a smile as she went to the door.

"If the guy's doing steroids, his temper Will be unpredictable:' he said. "He's dangerous."

"That's not exactly news to me. Anyway, thanks for watching the boys.And thanks for caring."

"Thanks isn't what I'm after," he said, catching her off guard. She barely had time to register the look in his eyes before his arms were around her and his mouth was on hers. Not soft this time. Hot, hungry, demanding. Her lips felt bruised when he pulled away.

He was out the door the next moment. She listened to the slam of a car door, the growl of a motor turning over. Only then did she touch two fingers to her lips.

"I need this like I need the plague," she muttered.

She put a second throw over R.J., choosing not to disrupt his sleep, left the light on low, and went to bed herself, with no real hopes of sleep or dreams.

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The clock was glowing 3:19 when the phone rang. "Hello?"

The silence on the other end had the quality of a held breath. Or maybe the held breath was hers.

And then came a whisper that raised all the fine hairs on her arms. "Let sleeping dogs lie."

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C H A P T E R

TH E PHOTOGRAPHS ARE lyingona narrow worktable, a cone of yellow light shining down on them from the desk lamp. The room is otherwise in darkness.The room is silent.

The photographs are in a neat row. Life exploding. Blood spray. Bone splinters. Still life. Lifeless. A study in destruction. A testimony to the fragility of the human body. Abstract.Violent. Sad and pathetic. Too easily accomplished.

A necessary evil, but still ... it should have been impossible.The concept should have so gone against the moral grain that execution would simply not have been possible.

Execution. The word brings a rush of remembered emotions. Regret, loathing, relief, excitement. Fear. Fear of what had been done, of the rush of excitement in that final instant. Fear that something human, something civilized, something vulnerable could be replaced ... or had been replaced long ago.

But then if that were true, sleep would have come easily instead of not at all.

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C H A P T E

OBSERVATION: AN AUTOPSY is not agoodway to begin theday. The thought rolled around in Kovac's head as he settled into his

desk chair, a cup of bad coffee in hand. Liska was nowhere to be seen. The office was momentarily quiet. He had managed to slip in more or less unnoticed, and was glad for it. He needed a few minutes to reflect, to regroup. He pulled out Mike Fallon's death-scene Polaroids and spread them out on top of the paperwork he had been neglecting the last few days.

A nagging unease moved around the edges of his awareness, undefined, barely formed, a shadow. He could have called the case a slam-dunk suicide, and it would have been over, pending the paperwork from the ME. Except for that feeling, and the fact that Neil Fallon was starting to show as many rotten layers as a,bad onion.

Kovac let his gaze wash over the pictures almost without focusing, hoping to see something he'd been missing. At the same time, hoping he would see nothing. The idea that Iron Mike had chosen to check himself out was definitely preferable to the alternative.

Viewed that way, he could almost think of the photographs as abstract art instead of pictures of a man he had known for twenty

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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 suiteJust 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 smitch?"

"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 rminor 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 win. 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."

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"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 shootng pool in Rubel's basement. And guess who was with them?

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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." "Wh8 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 horm* cide. "Twenty says Verma has it."

"But if Verma did it, then who's warmi ng 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."

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"Be careful."

She nodded. "Howd 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 rm*nd'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 rm'racle?" 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 unliforms canvassed yesterday. They hit this house, but the owner was out. The cleaning lady answered the door. So I called, and bingo."