Dust To Dust (30 page)

She breathed a sigh and forced herself to her feet. She made the obligatory search of the downstairs rooms, walking through the silent house like a zombie, not really seeing anything, din-ily aware that she was searching for something that couldn't be seen. She ended the search back in the living room, standing for a long time just staring at the wall of photographs she had taken over the years. Black-andwhite, landscapes and still lifes. Beautiful, empty, bleak, stark-A projection of the photographer's inner self, a therapist would say.

Time slipped by unnoticed. She might have been standing there five minutes or an hour when the doorbell rang.The sound startled her so, she wondered if she had gone back under into that place of waking dreams and was now being shocked back out of it, or if this was part of the next nightmare and she wasn't really awake at an.

The bell rang again. Heart pounding, she went to the door and looked out through the peephole. Kovac stood on her front step. Not sure that her mind hadn't conjured the image, she pulled the door open.

"Your light 's were on' " he said by way of explanation for being there. Savard stared at him.

"I assumed you were up'
" he said. "Was I wrong about that?"

She touched her hair self-consciously, started to shield the wound around her eye, but stopped. She glanced down to see that she was actually wearing clothes. "I ... ah ... fell asleep on the couch."

"I'm sorry, then, if I got you up." "What do you want, Sergeant?"

He shifted from foot to foot, his hands in his coat pockets, his shoulders hunched." Getting in out of this cold would be a good start." Hugging herself against the night air, Savard went back into the

hall, leaving him to follow. She checked her reflection in the mirror above the hall table and was appalled. Dark circles, pale skin, hair limp and messy. She looked battered and lost. Haunted. She would rather he had caught her naked, at least then he wouldn't have been paying enough attention to her face to wonder at her mental state.

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"I'm not keeping you from anything-like a significant other?" he asked bluntly.

Not unless inner demons count, she thought."What are you doing here?" "I was in the neighborhood."

She caught his reflection in the mirror. He was looking at her, studying her, and she jerked around, the pain in her neck and shoulder making her wince. "Plymouth is -out of your jurisdiction."

"I'm off duty. I have friends out here.john Quinn.You know him?" "I know of him."

"I had a couple of questions for him regarding your boy Andy. I'm still not convinced he died alone or by choice. Could have been an accident:'he conceded. "But if it was an accident and he wasn't alone, then someone left the scene of a death, and Id wanna know who, cause they got something to answer for, you know?"

Savard smoothed one hand over the wrinkles sleep had pressed into her top. She couldn't quite keep her other hand from touchin

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her hair again. She hated him seeing her like this. Vulnerablethe word pulsed in her brain like a nerve that had been struck with a hammer.

"What did Mr. Quinn have to say?" She couldn't seem to make herself look directly at him. As if he couldn't really see what a mess she was if they had no direct eye contact. P' I can be still, they won't

see me....

"He had some thoughts," Kovac said, movin to stay in front ofher. "I don't always take a lot of stock in that mindlitinter stuff.You know, sometimes people do things just on account of they're rotten. Then again, sometimes a person's past can haunt him ---- or her-to the point of driving him to do things."

"Profiling is a tool for hunting serial crimi,nals:'Savard said. "You're not dealing with a serial crirmi nal. You're not dealing with a criminal at all."

4C The Fallon family might beg to differ, two of them being dead inside a week," Kovac said. "Anyway, as I was leaving his house, I remembered you, Lieutenant.

"With regards to?"

At the funeral, I forgot to ask if you'd looked up that case file. Fallon's investigation into the Curtis-Ogden thing."

"Are you now going to try to tell me Ogden was Andy's secret

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gay lover, and that he's a potential serial killer? You're losing me, Sergeant."

"I'm just trying to take in all the facts so I have as clear a picture as possible. I learned a long time ago, if an investigator gets tunnel vision on one aspect of a case, he runs the risk of rmissing crucial pieces of the puzzle. How can you know where everything fits if you can't see the big picture? So, did you look it up?"

She looked past the living room to her office, wanting to go in there and shut the door behind her. "No. I didn't have a chance." Kovac moved into her line of vision again. "Could we sit down?

You look like you need to, Lieutenant. No offense."

"Asking you to sit down would imply I don't mind you staying for an indefinite period of time," Savard pointed out. "I do mind."

He shrugged off the insult. "Then you sit. I'll stand. You look a little rocky."

For the-what?-third ti e that day, he put hi hands on her, and

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she allowed it. He guided her by the shoulders to the Windsor settee along the wall. She felt as small as a child, and fragile, and ineffectual. She could have just told him to leave, but there was that part of her that didn't want him to. Anger and frustration and shame coiled inside her with needs she rarely acknowledged having.

"You know, I looked for it at Andy's place," Kovac said. "I looked in his office there for a duplicate file on the Curtis-Ogden thing. I wanted to see what hewas investigating, what his take on things might be, see if he'd been threatened, anything like that, anything that could give me some idea of his life, his state of rmind. But there was no file, and his computer was gone. An IBM ThinkPad. You know anything about that? Did he leave it in his office downtown?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe he left it in his car. Maybe he'd lost it. Maybe it's in the shop. Maybe it had been stolen." "Maybe it was stolen by someone who didn't want something in it

to be seen by someone like me." He picked up a small carved Santa figurine from the hall table and studied it.

Savard sighed. "I'll check the file in the morning. Is that all, Sergeant?"

"No." He set the figurine aside and came toward her, leaning down. He tipped her chin up and looked in her eyes. "How are you feeling?"

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I'm fteling my pulse in my throat. I'm feeling light-headed. I'm feeling vulnerable. God, there was that word again.

"I'm fine. I'm tired. Id like to go to bed."

He traced a forefinger slowly in front of her eyes, the same as he had done in her office that morning. Across and back. Up and down. His left hand still cupped her chin.

"No offense, IT," he said softly, "but for a beautiful woman, you look like hell."

Savard arched a brow. "Gee, why would I take offense at that?"

He didn't answer her. He was looking at the rug burn, taking in the lines of her face ... still touching her chin.... His gaze lingered on her mouth. Her breath caught in her throat.

"You are, you know," he whispered. "Beautiful."

She turned her face away, the air shuddering from her lungs. "You should go now, Sergeant."

"I should," he admitted. "Before you see to it I get suspended for paying you a compliment. But I want one thing first."

Scraping together what was left of her strength, Savard managed to put on the imperious mask that was her everyday game face. It didn't make Kovac back off an inch.

"Call me Sam'
" he said, one corner of his mouth crooking upward. "Just to hear how it sounds."

I can't want this, she thought, fear tightening in a knot in her stomach. I can't want him. I can't need him.

"You should go now ... Sergeant Kovac."

He did nothing for a moment, and she held her breath and tried without success to read his mind. Finally, his hand dropped away from her face. He stepped back and straightened.

"Call me,"he said."Ifyou come up with anything from that case file." She rose to her feet, feeling unsteady, and banded her arms across her chest. Kovac paused at the door.

"Goodnight ... Amanda." He shrugged, the slight smile still pulling at his lips. "What's another suspension to an old horse Eke me?" Cold air rushed into the hall as he let himself out. Savard locked the

door behind him and leaned against it, thinking of the warmth of his fingers against her skin. Tears stung her eyes.

She climbed the stairs slowly. The table lamp was already on in her bedroom, and would remain on all night. She changed into a nightgown

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and crawled into bed, took a drink from the glass on the nightstand, and washed down a sleeping pill. Then she lay down carefully on her left side, hugging the spare pillow to her, and waited for sleep, eyes wide open, feeling so alone it was an ache in the very center of her being.

Goodnight ... Sam....

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C H A P T E

L I S K A. W I S H E D I T was all a nightmare. All of it: that her informant was a transvestite in a coma, that she'd spent half the night freezing to the bone in a filthy alley, that Speed's car was in her drive and he was in the house, waiting.

She parked at the curb, trying to remember the snow emergency rules, fatalistically certain her car would be mowed down by a city snowplow and she would be fined, to add insult to injury. Screw it, she thought, climbing out of the car and trudging to the front door. At least she'd collect insurance and get a new vehicle. A used Chevette, perhaps, considering where her career would be headed in the near future.

The table lamp was on low and the television was showing an infornercial for Tae-Bo. Billy Blanks offering self-esteem and spiritual enlightenment through kickboxing. Speed and RJ. were asleep, side by side, in the recliner, unmistakably father and son. Their hair even stood up in the same places. RJ. was in Spiderman pajamas with feet. The Cartman hand puppet was tucked under one arm.

Liska stood looking at them, hating the emotions the sight awakened in her. Longing, regret, need. How unfair to be hit with that tonight, on the heels of everything else that had happened.

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She pressed a hand to her mouth and fought the feelings as if they were demons.

Damn you. She didn't know if she had spoken the words or just thought them, didn't know if she was cursing her ex-husband or herself. Speed cracked an eye open and looked at her, then checked his

son. Slowly and carefully, he eased himself from the chair and covered R.J. with a throw from the couch.

"Is it that bad?" he asked softly as he came toward her.

He was asking about the moment, about the way she was looking at him, the way she felt about him being here. But taking a page from his book, Liska chose to interpret the question the way she wanted, and applied it to the case. "My drag queen informant is lying in ICU with a face only Picasso could love. According to two witnesses-one of whom was caught trying to steal valuables off the guy's bodyhe was attacked by ninjas with lead pipes."

"Ninjas don't use lead pipes. Nunchuks, maybe."

"Please don't be cute, Speed. I can't deal with it right now." "I thought you liked me cute. It's one of my better qualities." Liska Just looked away.

"Hey, come on. It can't be all that bad, you're still standing." "It's worse than bad," she whispered.

"You want to talk about it?"

Translation: Do you want to lean on me, confide in me, let me help carry the load?

Yes, but I won't let myse!f

"Nikki," he murmured, stepping too close. He touched her cheek with a warm hand, slid his fingers back through her short hair, and gathered her to him with his other arm. "You don't always have to be the tough one."

"Yes, I do."

"You don't tonight," he murmured, his lips brushing her temple. A shudder rippled through her as she fought the urge to melt against him, to let him hold her up.

"What's the worst part of it?" he asked.

Knowing you'll let me down in the end. Fearing that maybe I'm wrong and you wouldn't, but I won'tgive you the chance to prove it because I'm tired of you hurting me.

She sniffed back tears and said, "Thinking he ended up that way because I wasn't there in time."

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"The guy's a snitch, Nik. He got beat up because of that, not because of you."

"But if I had been there

"He would have got it some other time."

"I don't know if he'll live. I don't know if he'll want to," she said. "You should have seen what they did to him, Speed. It was horrible." "Don't do that to yourself, Nikki.You know better."

A cop learned early on not to allow that kind of emotion. The road to madness was paved with guilt. Kovac had reminded her of the same when she had called him from the scene with news of Ibsen's assault. Still, it was hard not to place the blame at her own feet. Ibsen had been there waiting for her.

. "They must have shattered every bone in his face," she said. "Broke his arm, his collarbone, ribs, one knee. They assaulted him anally with a pipe."

"Jesus." She took a deep breath and made the confession that lay at the heart of it for her: "And the worst part of it is, I think they were cops."

Speed went still. She could feel his heart beat beneath her hand. "God, Nikki, what are you into? Looking at other cops . . ."

"I don't want it to be true," she said. "I don't want any part of it. We're supposed to be the good guys. I don't want to be the one to prove otherwise."

The idea was so abhorrent to her, it felt like a virus in her blood, and she shuddered against the intrusion. Speed tightened,his arms around her. She allowed it. Because it was the middle of the night, and she felt very alone. Because it would be only for a moment. Because the feel and the smell of him were famidiar. Because when he left, she would have to carry all the weight herself