Free Dust to Dust by Tami Hoag

Perhaps he hadn’t known his brother as well as Steve Pierce had. Or maybe he’d wished his brother dead in the past and so had less trouble accepting his death by any means.
    “When we were kids, we played cowboys,” he said. “I was always the one that got strung up. I was always the bad guy. Andy always played the sheriff. Funny how things turn out.”
    They said nothing for another few moments. Kovac imagined Fallon was seeing those old memories play out before him. Two little boys, their whole lives ahead of them, in two-dollar cowboy hats, riding on broomsticks. Bright futures stained dark by the jealousies and strains and disappointments of growing up.
    The images of childhood faded into the memory of Andy Fallon hanging naked from a rafter.
    “Mind if I have a belt of that?” he asked, nodding toward the bottle.
    Fallon handed it over. “Aren’t you on duty?”
    “I’m always on duty. It’s all I’ve got,” Kovac admitted. “I won’t tell the brass if you don’t.”
    Fallon turned back toward the lake. “Hey, fuck ’em.”
             
    THE NEIGHBOR WAS in his yard harvesting burned-out Christmas bulbs when Kovac pulled up. Kovac stopped halfway up the walk to watch him as he unscrewed a light from the Virgin Mary’s halo and stuffed it into a garbage bag.
    “Half of them could burn out and it’d still be like living next door to the sun,” Kovac said.
    The neighbor stared at him with a mix of offense and apprehension, clutching the garbage bag to his chest. He was a small man of about seventy with a hard-boiled look and small mean eyes. He wore a red plaid bomber cap with the flaps hanging down like hound’s ears.
    “Where’s your Christmas spirit?” he demanded.
    “I lost it about the fourth night I didn’t get any sleep on account of your fucking lights. Can’t you put that shit on a timer?”
    “Shows what you know,” the neighbor huffed.
    “I know you’re a lunatic.”
    “You want me to cause a power surge? That’s what would happen turning these lights on and off. Power surge. Could black out the whole block.”
    “We should be so lucky,” Kovac said, and went up the sidewalk and into his house.
    He turned the television on for company, radiated some leftover lasagna, sat on the couch, and picked at dinner. He wondered if Mike Fallon was sitting in front of his big-screen television tonight, trying to eat, trying to temporarily hide from his grief in the ruts of routine.
    During the course of his career in homicide, Kovac had watched a lot of people straddle that awkward line between normalcy and the surreal reality of having violent crime disrupt their lives. He never thought much about it, as a rule. He wasn’t a social worker. His job was to solve the crime and move on. But he thought about it tonight because Mike was a cop. And maybe for a few other reasons.
    Abandoning the lasagna and
Dateline,
he went to his desk and rummaged around in a drawer, digging out an address book that hadn’t seen the light of day in half a decade. His ex-wife was listed under her first name. He dialed the number and waited, then hung up when an answering machine picked up. A man’s voice. The second husband.
    What would he have said anyway?
I had a dead body today and it reminded me I have a kid.
    No. It reminded him he didn’t have anyone.
    He wandered back into the living room with the empty fish tank and Stone Phillips on the TV. Too much like old Iron Mike sitting in his massage chair in front of the big screen, alone in the world with nothing but bitter memories and soured hopes. And a dead son.
    Most of the time Kovac believed he was happier without a real life. The job was a safe place. He knew what to expect. He knew who he was. He knew where he fit in. He knew what to do. He’d never been good at any of that without the badge.
    There were worse fates than being a career cop. Most of the time he loved the work, if not the politics that went with it. He was good at it. Not