Read Dust to Dust for Free Online Page A

throat. Distress etched lines beside his mouth. “Will they . . . take him down now?” he asked, his voice closing off on the last words.
    “The medical examiner’s people will do that,” Liska explained.
    He looked at her as if it had only just dawned on him there would have to be an autopsy. His eyes filled again and he looked out the window at the snow in the backyard, trying to compose himself.
    “What do you do for a living, Steve?” Kovac asked.
    “Investments. I’m with Daring-Landis.”
    “Do you live here? In this house?”
    “No.”
    “What brought you here this morning?”
    “Andy was supposed to meet me for coffee at the Uptown Caribou yesterday. He wanted to talk to me about something. He didn’t show. He didn’t answer my calls. I was concerned so I came by.”
    “What was your relationship with Andy Fallon?”
    “We’re friends,” he said. Present tense. “From college. Buddies. You know.”
    “Suppose you tell us,” Kovac said. “What kind of buddies?”
    Pierce’s brow creased. “You know, out for beer and pizza, the occasional basketball game. Get together for
Monday Night Football.
Guy stuff.”
    “Nothing more . . . intimate?”
    Kovac watched his face carefully. Pierce colored from the collar up.
    “What are you suggesting, Detective?”
    “I’m asking if the two of you had a sexual relationship,” Kovac said with calm bluntness.
    Pierce looked as if his head might burst. “I’m straight. Not that it’s any of your business.”
    “There’s a dead body upstairs,” Kovac said. “That makes everything my business. What about Mr. Fallon?”
    “Andy’s gay,” Pierce said, resentment bitter in his eyes. “Does that make it all right that he’s dead?”
    Kovac spread his hands. “Hey, I don’t care who plugs what in where. I just need a frame of reference for my investigation.”
    “You have a real way with words, Detective.”
    “You said Andy wanted to talk something over with you,” Liska prompted, diverting his attention to her. Allowing Kovac to watch every facial tic. “Do you know what?”
    “No. He didn’t say.”
    “When did you last speak with him?” Kovac asked.
    Pierce cut him a sideways look, the resentment lingering.
    “Um, Friday, I guess it was. My fiancée was busy that night so I swung by to see Andy. We hadn’t seen much of each other lately. I came by to suggest we get together for coffee or something. Catch up.”
    “So the two of you were supposed to meet yesterday, but Andy was a no-show.”
    “I called a couple of times, got the machine. He never called back. I decided to swing by. See if everything was all right.”
    “Why wouldn’t you just think he was busy? Maybe he had to go to work early.”
    Pierce glared at him. “Pardon me for being concerned about my friends. I guess I should just be an asshole like you. I could be at my desk now. I could have saved myself the trouble of seeing—”
    He cut himself off as the image rose in his memory again. His face was still red but with a waxy sheen to it now as he looked out the window, as if the sight of the snow, white and serene, might cool and soothe him.
    “How’d you get into the house?” Kovac asked. “You have a key?”
    “The door wasn’t locked.”
    “Had he talked about suicide? Had he seemed depressed?” Liska asked.
    “He had seemed . . . frustrated. A little down, yes, but not to the point that he’d kill himself. I just won’t believe that. He wouldn’t have done something like that without trying to reach out to someone first.”
    That was what the survivors always wanted to think at first. Kovac knew from experience. They always wanted to believe the loved one would have asked for help before taking that fatal step. They never wanted to think they might have missed a sign. If it turned out Andy Fallon
had
committed suicide, at some point Steve Pierce would start wondering if there hadn’t been a dozen signs and he’d missed them all because he was