oblivious to everything external, including the bits of glass that cut into his cheek.
Kovac let out a long, slow breath, his gaze falling on one photograph that still lay on the floor, half under the dresser. He pulled it out and looked at a past that seemed as far away as Mars. The Fallons all together before one tragedy after another had torn them apart. Mike and his wife and their two boys.
“I’ll call your other son, if you want,” he offered.
“I don’t have another son,” Mike Fallon said. “One shut me out years ago, and I shut out the other. Helluva deal, huh, Kojak?”
Kovac looked at the photograph for another moment, then set it on top of the others. Fallon’s admission left him feeling hollow inside, an echo of the old man’s emotions. Or maybe the emotions were his own. He was no less alone in his life than Mike Fallon.
“Yeah, Mikey. It’s a helluva deal.”
LISKA STOOD IN the hall, staring at the door to Room 126. Internal Affairs. The name conjured up images of interrogation rooms with bare lightbulbs and SS officers with narrowed eyes and rubber truncheons.
The Rat Squad. She’d had little cause to associate with them in her career, had never been investigated by them. She knew the job of IA was to root out bad cops, not to persecute the good ones. But the fear and loathing were instinctive things for most cops. Cops hung together, protected one another. IA turned on their own. Like cannibals.
For Liska, the aversion went deeper.
In the Minneapolis PD, IA was for fast-track, brownnose, brass types. People destined for management. People born to be hated by their peers. The kind who had regularly gotten pushed down on the playground as kids, and ran to the teacher every time. The kind of people who inspired neither admiration nor loyalty.
Liska thought of Andy Fallon hanging in his bedroom, and wondered who might have turned on him.
She went into the IA offices before she could balk again. There were no human heads mounted on pikes. No manacles bolted to the wall. At least not in the reception area.
“Liska, homicide,” she said, badging the receptionist. “I’m here to see Lieutenant Savard.”
She made the receptionist for early fifties. Plump and unsmiling, the woman asked no questions, which was likely a requirement of the job. She buzzed the lieutenant.
There were three offices off the reception area—one dark, one closed and lit, one open and lit. Looking in the last one, she could see a thin suit-and-tie standing behind the desk and frowning, deep in conversation with a short guy with chopped platinum hair and a neon-green parka.
“. . . don’t appreciate being passed around,” Neon whined, his voice just high enough to irritate. “This has been a nightmare from the start. Now you’re telling me the case is being reassigned.”
“In point of fact, the case is closed. I’ll be your contact should you need one. That’s purely out of courtesy on the part of the department. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about the change in personnel,” the suit explained. “The circumstances are beyond our control. Sergeant Fallon is no longer with us.”
The suit caught Liska’s gaze then. He frowned harder, came around the desk, and closed the door.
“Lieutenant Savard is expecting you,” the receptionist said in the hushed tone of a funeral director.
Savard’s office was immaculate. None of the usual cop clutter. A place for everything and everything in its place. The same could be said of the lieutenant. She stood behind her perfectly neat desk in a perfectly tailored black pantsuit. Forty or thereabouts, with perfectly symmetrical features and perfect porcelain skin. Her ash-blond hair was perfectly coiffed in chin-length waves ingeniously cut to appear careless, but likely requiring a cosmetology degree to style every day.
Liska resisted the self-conscious urge to reach up and touch her own boy-short crop.
“Liska, homicide,” she
Kovac let out a long, slow breath, his gaze falling on one photograph that still lay on the floor, half under the dresser. He pulled it out and looked at a past that seemed as far away as Mars. The Fallons all together before one tragedy after another had torn them apart. Mike and his wife and their two boys.
“I’ll call your other son, if you want,” he offered.
“I don’t have another son,” Mike Fallon said. “One shut me out years ago, and I shut out the other. Helluva deal, huh, Kojak?”
Kovac looked at the photograph for another moment, then set it on top of the others. Fallon’s admission left him feeling hollow inside, an echo of the old man’s emotions. Or maybe the emotions were his own. He was no less alone in his life than Mike Fallon.
“Yeah, Mikey. It’s a helluva deal.”
LISKA STOOD IN the hall, staring at the door to Room 126. Internal Affairs. The name conjured up images of interrogation rooms with bare lightbulbs and SS officers with narrowed eyes and rubber truncheons.
The Rat Squad. She’d had little cause to associate with them in her career, had never been investigated by them. She knew the job of IA was to root out bad cops, not to persecute the good ones. But the fear and loathing were instinctive things for most cops. Cops hung together, protected one another. IA turned on their own. Like cannibals.
For Liska, the aversion went deeper.
In the Minneapolis PD, IA was for fast-track, brownnose, brass types. People destined for management. People born to be hated by their peers. The kind who had regularly gotten pushed down on the playground as kids, and ran to the teacher every time. The kind of people who inspired neither admiration nor loyalty.
Liska thought of Andy Fallon hanging in his bedroom, and wondered who might have turned on him.
She went into the IA offices before she could balk again. There were no human heads mounted on pikes. No manacles bolted to the wall. At least not in the reception area.
“Liska, homicide,” she said, badging the receptionist. “I’m here to see Lieutenant Savard.”
She made the receptionist for early fifties. Plump and unsmiling, the woman asked no questions, which was likely a requirement of the job. She buzzed the lieutenant.
There were three offices off the reception area—one dark, one closed and lit, one open and lit. Looking in the last one, she could see a thin suit-and-tie standing behind the desk and frowning, deep in conversation with a short guy with chopped platinum hair and a neon-green parka.
“. . . don’t appreciate being passed around,” Neon whined, his voice just high enough to irritate. “This has been a nightmare from the start. Now you’re telling me the case is being reassigned.”
“In point of fact, the case is closed. I’ll be your contact should you need one. That’s purely out of courtesy on the part of the department. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about the change in personnel,” the suit explained. “The circumstances are beyond our control. Sergeant Fallon is no longer with us.”
The suit caught Liska’s gaze then. He frowned harder, came around the desk, and closed the door.
“Lieutenant Savard is expecting you,” the receptionist said in the hushed tone of a funeral director.
Savard’s office was immaculate. None of the usual cop clutter. A place for everything and everything in its place. The same could be said of the lieutenant. She stood behind her perfectly neat desk in a perfectly tailored black pantsuit. Forty or thereabouts, with perfectly symmetrical features and perfect porcelain skin. Her ash-blond hair was perfectly coiffed in chin-length waves ingeniously cut to appear careless, but likely requiring a cosmetology degree to style every day.
Liska resisted the self-conscious urge to reach up and touch her own boy-short crop.
“Liska, homicide,” she
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