Dust To Dust (45 page)

"Frank Sinatra." "Kojak, he's dead."

"I'm on hold. Donna at the phone company. Anyway, what if the show gives someone a false sense of power, and they do something stupid and end up dead?"

"What if someone ends up dead because they're spineless and stupid and they don't watch the show?"

"I hate Ace Wyatt."

"The WB is promoting him as Captain America."

Disgust made a strangled sound in his throat. "Aw, jeez, those fuckingVPs.They stole that from me!"

"Call your agent, Hollywood."

"You're the one who wants that,Tinker Bell, not me."

"Just so I get my fame for catching Rubel, not for being killed by him."

Kovac drew breath to ask her how she was doing-really doingwhen, finally, a human being picked up on the other end of the line. "Sorry to keep you on hold, Sam.What can I do you for?"

"Hey, Donna. I need the LUDS on a Minneapolis number." "You have the paperwork?"

"Not exactly."

"That would mean no."

"Well ... yes. But the guy's dead.Who will care?" "How about his family?"

"Dead and in Jail."

"How about the county attorney?"

"I just need to shake something loose here, Donna. It doesn't have to stand up in court."

"Mmm ... You didn't get it from me." "I never have, but I live in hope."

Donna cracked up at that. Classy broad. Kovac gave her Andy Fallon's phone number and hung up.

"What are you after?" Liska asked.

"I'm not exactly sure," he admitted. "I want to go through Andy's phone records and see if something jumps out. Andy was poking

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around in the Thorne murder, trying to connect to Mike through his experiences. When I did some of that same poking, I got a rise out of Wyatt. I want to se,

"You're obsessed, Sam," Liska said. "You don't like Rubel for Andy's murder? If it was a murder."

"No. It doesn't fit. Andy's scene was too neat. Look what Rubel did-beat a guy to death with a ball bat, beat a guy near to death with a pipe, shot a guy point-blank in the chest.Where's the fi4esse?"

"But you said Pierce told you he'd seen Andy with another
guy. What if it was Rubel? That nuight track. Andy was looking at Ogden for being dirty. No one knew Ogden and Rubel were an item.Through his connection to Curtis-having once been a patrol partner-Rubel gets close to Andy to keep an eye on the case from the inside, so to speak. Andy gets too close to some truth.... See?"

"No way. Rubel was Ogden's partner-"

"Not at the beginning of the investigation. There was no connection between them at the time, none that anyone knew of Rubel had been patrol partners with Curtis, but Curtis swore none of his former partners harassed him."

"Until he infected one."

"And if Andy somehow found out about Rubel's HIV status . . She left Kovac to finish the thought for himself, then added, "I'm putting Rubel in a photo array and showing it to Pierce."

"Have at it," Kovac said. "Meanwhile, who broke into my house? Why would Rubel? It's not like I've got the one piece of evidence that can hang him."

"That could have,been anybody, for any reason. Probably a junkie looking for your secret cash stash. Or maybe it was some other scumbag you're looking at for something else. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Fallon."

The possibility had crossed Kovac's mind. He had other cases ongoing.... He grabbed his phone on the third ring.

"Homicide. Kovac."

"Kovac, Maggie Stone. I looked over that case Fallon, Andy." "And?"

"Is he in the ground yet?" "I don't think so.Why?"

"I'd like to have him back for a visit. I think he imight have been murdered."

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MAGGIE STONE'S OFFICE at the Hennepin County morgue always made Kovac think of those news stories about crazy old people whose bodies were found mummified among the stacks of newspapers and magazines and garbage they had not thrown out in nine years. The room was a maze of papers and professional journals and books on forensic medicine and motorcycle magazines. Stone rode a Harley Hog in good weather.

She waved Kovac into the office with one hand, holding a sugared jelly doughnut in the other. The doughnut was oozing red from its center, and bore a little too much resemblance to some of the stuff in the photographs spread out on the desk.

"Do you ever read any of this?" Kovac asked.

She peered down at a photo through a pair of funky reading glasses and an illuminated magnifying glass. "Read what?"

Her hair was a peculiar toffee shade this month, cut in a pixie style and slicked to her head with goo. Most clays she looked as if she hadn't remembered to use a comb since the eighties.

"What did you find?"

"Okay." She swung the magnifying glass on its swivel arm so that Kovac could look through it from the other side of the desk. "What I look for on the neck in a hanging death is aV-shaped bruising or abrasions, obviously following the angles of the noose. We see that clearly here' " she said, pointing out the marks. "And you found him hanging.We know he was hung. However, I also see what looks to be some shadows of a straight-line bruise around the neck here."

"You think he was strangled, then hung?"

"The bruising isn't clear. Anyone looking at this case with a foregone conclusion of suicide wouldn't even notice it. But I feel that it's there. If I'm right, I suspect the killer might have put protective padding between the ligature and the victim's neck. If we're lucky and the funeral home did a pooriob of preparing the body, I may still be able to get some fibers off the throat. And, if the bruising is there, I'll bet there's more at the back of the neck."

She sat back, made two fists, and held them out in front of her to demonstrate. "If the killer tightens the ligature with his hands, the knuckles press into the back of the neck, leaving several bruises.

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If you're looking at a garrote, then the pressure at the point where the ligature crosses and tightens creates a significant single bruise." "There aren't any photographs of the back of his neck?"

"No. I admit this wasn't the most thorough of autopsies. But it came in looking like a slam-dunk suicide, and apparently there were calls from your end of things to move it through quickly for the family's sake."

"Didn't come from me," Kovac corrected her, frowning as he looked at the photographs. He stared at the barely discernible bruises on Andy Fallon's throat, just below the vivid marks the noose had made. The nerves in his stomach came to life like a tangled pile of worms. "I'm on the ass-end on my end of things. That pressure came from higher up the food chain."

That pressure had come from Ace Wyatt.

K 0 V A C L E A N E D 0 V E R the counter and caught Russell Turvey sitting back in the corner paging through Hustler.

"Jesus, Russell. Do me a favor and don't offer to shake my hand." Turvey barked and growled, his chest sounding like thunder in the distance. "Kojak! J. Christ! You'd be back here too, if you got the chance."

"Not with you."

Turvey laughed again, tossing the magazine under his chair. He grabbed hold of the counter and rolled himself into position without getting up.

"I hear Springer bought it," he said, fixing his squint eye on Kovac. The other one looked off to the left. "I never liked him."

Like that had made Cal Springer's demise inevitable. "You were there too,"Turvey said.

"I swear I didn't pull the trigger. Liska can vouch for me."

"Ha! Argh ... Liskal" he purred, his expression a postcard for the word lascivious. "Is she a dyke?"

"No!" " Not even . . ." He waggled a hand.

"No," Kovac said emphatically. "Can we move on, please? I came down here for a reason."

Turvey waved a hand at him. "What?"

"I need to look at an old file. The Thorne murder. I don't have a case number but I've got the dates-"

"Don't matter," Turvey said. "It's not here." "You're sure?"

"I'm here every goddamn day.You think I don't know the place?" "But-"

"I know it's gone because someone from IA came down and asked for it a couple of months ago. Mike Fallon's kid. It wasn't here then. It ain't here now."

"And you don't know where it is?" "Nope."

Kovac sighed and started to turn away, wondering who might have it or have a copy.

"Funny you should ask for that onel"Turvey said. "Why is that?"

"'Cause I found that badge number you asked for the other day. It belonged to Bin Thorne."

A M A N D A S A V A R D H A D Bill Thorne's badge sitting on her desk in her home.

Kovac just stood there, trying to get his brain around that idea.

"I remember Bill Thorne," Turvey said, rubbing his knobby chin. "I rode patrol in the Third Precinct back then. He was the meanest son of a bitch I ever knew."

"You're sure?" Kovac asked.

Turvey's brows went up. "Sure? I once saw him knock a prostitute's teeth out for lying to him."

"You're sure it's Thorne's badge?" "Yeah. I'm sure."

Kovac walked away, Russell Turvey's words blurring into white noise.

Amanda Savard had Bill Thorne's badge on her desk.

He went into the men's room, ran the cold water and splashed his face, then stood there with his hands braced on the sink, staring into the mirror.

His mind scanned back over the days, flashing on images of her, of the two of them. He thought back to Saturday night. They'd made

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love on his couch. And when she was getting ready to leave, she'd looked down at the coffee table and had seen the articles he had gathered at the library.

Mate this?

ne Thorne murder. Mike Fallon
shooting. Andy was looking at it. I'm just turning over rocks, see what crawls out.

Life turns on a dime, he'd said. And gives back change.

He went to the first floor, where traffic was heavier than usual, the hall busy with cops and with reporters looking for scraps on the Rubel manhunt. No one seemed to see him. He stood at the edge of the scene, looking past the crowd, toward Room 126.

She was likely in her office. IA would be busy digging up dirt on Rubel and Ogden, going through any reports of prior problems with either of them. Savard would likely be called on the carpet by a captain who would demand to know why the investigation into Ogden and the Curtis murder had died out. Why hadn't any mention been made of Rubel at the time?

If he went down there right now, he might catch her between calls. And ... what? Confront her like some cheated husband? He could see the scene in his mind. He could feel the humiliation. No.

One of the reporters spotted him, and life snapped back into fastforward mode.

"Hey, Kovac," the guy said, coming over, trying to keep his voice down so as not to tip off his competition. "I hear you were on the scene Saturday night.What happened?"

Kovac held up a hand and turned away. "No comment,

He ducked into the anteroom, pushed past the crowd
trying to circumvent the receptionist, and keyed his way into the main office. Liska was gone. Donna from the phone company had come through with Andy Fallon's phone records for the past three months. Distraction. He could do this while his brain tripped and stumbled over the subject of Amanda. He turned on his computer, brought a reverse phone directory up on-line, and started in.

Too many of the numbers were unlisted. Nowadays, everyone wanted anonyrnlity-and to avoid telemarketers. Those numbers that were listed were not of much interest. Mike, Neil, take-out restaurants. There were several calls to something called the Hazelwood Home. Kovac looked it up in the on-line Yellow Pages and

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found the place discreetly described as a "care facility" Care of what? A rest home for Mike, maybe? Though Mike Fallon hadn't really seemed in need of anything like that. A housekeeper, yes. A nursing home? No.

When he had gone through the list with the reverse directory, Kovac started with the cold calls, dialing the unlisted numbers and, for the most part, getting answering machines.

One of the machines belonged to Amanda Savard. Fallon had called her at home several times in the last few days of his life.

Andy Fallon had been looking into the Thorne murder. Amanda Savard had Bill Thorne's badge on her desk.

She had very coolly demi ed Andy's mentioning his private investigation into the Thorne case.

God damn! If only he had Fallon's notes. There had to be files somewhere ... and his laptop ...

Or he could walk down the hall and ask Amanda point-blank about Thorne's badge.

His gut told him not to ask.

Or maybe it wasn't his gut at all.

She had Bill Thorne's badge. She had seen Andy Fallon on the night of his death. She had been to his house. Andy had phoned her house frequently just before he died.

I love a puzzle, he thought, a vicious feeling cracking through him like a whip.

Amanda Savard had gone to bed with him. Twice. He was poking around in the death of Andy Fallon. Andy Fallon had been poking around in the death of Bill Thorne. Amanda had Bill Thorne's badge.

He grabbed the telephone receiver and punched in the number for the Hazelwood Home.

The Hazelwood Home was a psychiatric care facility. Kovac grabbed his coat and hat and bolted.

T H E W I N D S K I M M E D over the snow, lifting a fine powder into the air so that, from the end of the driveway, the Hazelwood Home appeared shrouded in mist. A former private residence, the home was a sprawling, overdone homage to Frank Lloyd Wright. Long, low, horizontal lines gave the impression that the building was crouching into the ground. Huge old trees studded the snow-covered lawn.

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Beyond the grounds, the landscape looked open and marshy, which was much of the landscape west of Minneapolis.

Kovac parked under the carport at the entrance and went in past dueling holiday displays. Christmas on one side of the foyer, Hanukkah on the other.The overwhelming impression of the entry hall was darkness. A low beamed ceiling seemed too close overhead.