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selfish or scared or blind.
    “Down about what?”
    Pierce made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. Work. Or maybe his family. I know there’d been some strain between him and his dad.”
    “What about other relationships?” Liska asked. “Was he involved with anyone?”
    “No.”
    “How can you be sure?” Kovac asked. “You weren’t living here. You weren’t seeing each other. You just got together for the occasional cup o’ joe.”
    “We were friends.”
    “Yet you don’t really know what was bothering him. You don’t really know how depressed he might have been.”
    “I knew Andy. He would
not
have killed himself,” Pierce insisted, his patience wearing thin.
    “Aside from the door being unlocked,” Liska said, “did anything seem to be missing or out of place?”
    “Not that I noticed. I wasn’t looking, though. I came to find Andy.”
    “Steve, did you ever know Andy to practice any unusual sexual rituals?” Kovac asked.
    Pierce shot up out of his chair, sending it skidding backward. “You people are
unbelievable
!” He jerked around as if scanning the kitchen for a witness or a weapon.
    Kovac remembered the knives on the island and the rage in Pierce’s face as he’d pounded Ogden. He got up and put himself between Pierce and the knife block.
    “This isn’t personal, Steve. It’s our job,” he said. “We need the clearest picture we can get.”
    “You’re a bunch of fucking sadists!” Pierce shouted. “My friend is
dead
and—”
    “And I didn’t know him from Adam,” Kovac said reasonably. “And I don’t know
you
from Adam. For all I know, you might have killed him yourself.”
    “That’s absurd!”
    “And you know what?” Kovac went on. “I find a dead guy hanging naked, watching himself in a mirror . . . Call me a prude, but that strikes me odd. You know, I gotta think maybe this guy was into something a little out of the ordinary. But maybe you’re into that too. Maybe you don’t bat an eye at shit like that. What do I know? Maybe you choke yourself to get off every other day. Maybe you play spank the monkey with a cattle prod. If you do, if you and Fallon were involved in something like that together, you’re better off telling us now, Steve.”
    Pierce was crying now, tears streaming, the muscles in his face straining as if he was fighting to hold in all the raw emotions ripping through him. “No.”
    “No, you weren’t involved in that kind of thing, or no, you won’t tell us?” Kovac prodded.
    Pierce closed his eyes and hung his head. “God, I can’t believe this is happening.” The burden of it all suddenly too much, he sank down to the floor on his knees and curled forward, his head in his hands. “Why is this happening?”
    Kovac watched him, a feeling of weary, familiar remorse coming over him. He squatted down beside Steve Pierce and put a hand on his shoulder.
    “That’s what we want to find out, Steve,” he said softly. “You may not always like the way we do it. And you may not like what we find. But in the end, that’s all we want—the truth.”
    Even as he said it, Kovac knew that when they found the truth, no one was going to want it. There simply wasn’t going to be a good reason for Andy Fallon to be dead.

5
                                                                                                                                                                                        
CHAPTER
    MIKE FALLON’S HOUSE looked somehow more alone in the cold gray light of day. Night had a way of enveloping a neighborhood; homes seemed to huddle together like a flock with only slips of velvet darkness between them. By day, they were separated and isolated by light and driveways and fences and snow.
    Kovac looked up at the house and wondered if Mike already