Free Dust to Dust by Tami Hoag Page A

fancy, not flashy. Not in the flamboyant way Ace Wyatt had been, grabbing headlines and sticking out his granite jaw for any passing camera. But good in the way that counted.
    “Stick with what you do best,” he muttered, then turned his back on his dinner, grabbed his coat, and left.
             
    STEVE PIERCE LIVED in a brick duplex on a drab street too close to the freeway in Lowry Hill. The neighborhood was full of yuppies and artsy types with money to renovate the old brownstones. But this portion had been chopped up into odd little angles when the major traffic arteries of Hennepin and Lyndale had been widened years ago, and it remained fragmented not only physically but psychologically as well.
    Steve Pierce’s neighbors had no gaudy Christmas displays draining the Northern States Power supply. Everything was tasteful and moderate. A wreath here. A swag there. As much as Kovac hated his neighbor, he thought he liked this even less. The street had the feel of a place where the inhabitants were not connected in any way, not even by animosity.
    He fit right in tonight.
    He sat in his car, parked across and down the street from Pierce’s, waiting, thinking. Thinking Andy Fallon probably didn’t leave his doors unlocked. Thinking Steve Pierce seemed to know a lot and yet nothing about his old buddy. Thinking there was more to that story and Steve Pierce didn’t want to tell it.
    People lied to the cops all the time. Not just bad guys or the guilty. Lying was an equal opportunity activity. Innocent people lied. Mothers of small children lied. Pencil-neck paper pushers lied. Blue-haired grannies lied. Everyone lied to the cops. It seemed to be embedded in the human genetic code.
    Steve Pierce was lying. Kovac had no doubt about that. He just had to narrow the field of possible lies and decide if any of them were significant to Andy Fallon’s death.
    He pulled a pack of Salems out from under the passenger’s seat, held it under his nose, and breathed deeply, then put the cigarettes back and got out of the car.
    Pierce answered the door in sweatpants and a U of M hockey jersey, the smell of good scotch hovering around him like cologne, and a cigarette dangling from his lip. In the hours since his discovery of Andy Fallon’s corpse, his physical appearance had degraded to the look of a man who had been battling a terminal illness for a very long time. Gaunt, ashen, red-eyed. One corner of his mouth curled up in a sneer as he pulled the cigarette and exhaled.
    “Oh, look. It’s the Ghost of Christmas Present. Did you bring your rubber truncheon this time? ’Cause, you know, I don’t feel like I’ve been abused enough for one day. I find my best friend dead, get in a fight with Hulk Hogan in a cop uniform, and get harassed by a dickhead detective. The list just doesn’t go on long enough. I could go for a little torture.”
    He made his eyes and mouth round with feigned shock. “Oops! My secret is out now! S and M. Shit!”
    “Look,” Kovac said. “This hasn’t been my favorite day either. I got to go tell a man I used to look up to that his son probably killed himself.”
    “Did he even listen?” Pierce asked.
    “What?”
    “Mike Fallon. Did he even listen when you told him about Andy?”
    Kovac’s brow creased. “He didn’t have much choice.”
    Pierce stared past him at the dark street, as if some part of him still clung to a tattered scrap of fantasy that Andy Fallon would materialize from the gloom and come up the walk. The weight of reality defeated him. He flicked the cigarette butt out the door.
    “I need a drink,” he said, and he turned and walked away from the open door.
    Kovac followed him, taking the place in with a glance. Dramatic colors and oak furniture of some retro style he couldn’t have named on a bet. What he knew about decorating wouldn’t dot an
i,
but he recognized quality and big price tags. The walls of the hall were a patchwork of artsy photographs in white mats and