Free Dust to Dust by Tami Hoag Page B

thin black frames.
    They went into a den with dark blue walls and fat leather armchairs the color of a fielder’s glove. Pierce went to a small wet bar in one corner and freshened his glass from a bottle of Macallan. Fifty bucks a bottle. Kovac knew because he had been asked to kick in a few so the department could buy a bottle for the last lieutenant when he left. He’d personally never paid more than twenty dollars for a bottle of booze in his life.
    “Andy’s brother told me Andy stopped by about a month ago to come out of the closet,” Kovac said, leaning a hip against the bar. Pierce frowned at that and made a task of wiping imaginary condensation off the soapstone counter. “I guess it didn’t go well with the old man, huh?”
    “What was the point of telling him?” Pierce’s voice tightened with anger he was trying hard to camouflage. “Sure, Dad, I’m still the same son who made you so proud in all those ball games,” he said with heavy sarcasm to the room at large. “I just like it up the ass, that’s all.”
    He tipped back the scotch and drank it like apple juice. “Jesus, what did he expect? He should have just let well enough alone. Let the old man see what he wanted to see. That’s all people really want anyway.”
    “How long had you known Andy was gay?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t mark it on the calendar,” Pierce said, walking away.
    “A month? A year? Ten years?”
    “A while.” Impatient. “What difference does it make?”
    “Coming out—was that something he’d saved for his family? Everyone else in his life knew? His friends, his coworkers?”
    “It wasn’t like he was a queen or something,” Pierce snapped. “It wasn’t anybody’s business unless Andy wanted it to be. We roomed together in college. He told me then. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. More chicks for me, right? Major competition out of the dating pool.”
    “Why’d he tell them now?” Kovac asked. “His father, his brother? What brought that on? People don’t just up and spill their guts. Something pushes them to it.”
    “Is there a point to this? Because if there’s not, I’d sooner just sit here alone and drink myself into unconsciousness.”
    “You don’t strike me as someone wanting to sit down, Steve,” Kovac said. He pushed away from the bar to lean against one of the fat leather chairs. It smelled like a fielder’s mitt too. That probably cost extra.
    Pierce held himself stiff before Kovac’s scrutiny. People even lied with their body language—or tried to. That was seldom as successful as the verbal variety.
    “Your friend took a big step coming out,” Kovac said. “And he landed on his chin, at least with his father. That kind of rejection might push a person. A person like Andy, close to his dad, wanting to please him—”
    “No.”
    “He wrote an apology on the mirror. Why would he do that if he was just playing around, just getting himself off?”
    “I don’t know. He just wouldn’t have killed himself, that’s all.”
    “Or maybe the note on the mirror wasn’t Andy’s,” Kovac suggested. “Maybe Andy had a boyfriend over. Maybe they were having a little game, something went wrong. . . . The boyfriend got scared. . . . Do you happen to know the names of any of his partners?”
    “No.”
    “None? You being best pals and all? That seems strange.”
    “I wasn’t interested in his sex life. It didn’t have anything to do with me.” He took a drink of the scotch and stared sullenly at an electrical outlet on the other side of the room.
    “This morning you told me he wasn’t seeing anybody. Like maybe you
were
interested.”
    “Which reminds me,” Pierce said. “We’ve had this conversation before, Detective. I don’t care to relive the experience.”
    Kovac spread his hands. “Hey, you seem like a man with something he wants to get off his chest, Steve. I’m just giving you an outlet here, you know what I mean?”
    “I know that I don’t have