Dust to Dust by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online Page B

the shattered frame, flinging broken glass across the room. “Damn you!”
    Kovac thought the curses might be for him at this point as he grabbed Mike Fallon’s wrist. The picture frame flew across the room like a Frisbee, crashing against the wall and falling to the hardwood floor. Fallon continued to fight, the strength in his upper body amazing for a man his age. His free arm flailed across the top of the dresser, sending more picture frames to the floor. Kovac got behind the wheelchair, bending at an awkward angle to try to restrain the man. Wailing, Fallon threw his head back and butted him hard on the bridge of the nose. Blood came in an instant gush.
    “Dammit, Mike, stop it!” The blood ran down his chin and onto Fallon’s shoulder, his ear, his hair.
    Sobbing, the old man flung himself against the dresser top, then back. Back and forth, back and forth. The energy ran out of him little by little with each motion, until he laid his face on the dresser amid the shards of glass, and moved only his hands. Pounding, pounding, slapping, slapping, tapping, tapping.
    Kovac stepped back, wiping his bloody nose on his coat sleeve as he fumbled for a handkerchief. He went over to where the first of the destroyed frames had landed and tried to nudge it over with his foot. His shoes and the bottoms of his pants legs were soaked from stomping through the snow, but the cold only began to register now that he’d seen the evidence. He couldn’t feel his toes inside his shoes.
    Handkerchief crammed against his nostrils to stem the flow of blood, he squatted down and picked up the picture with his free hand. Andy Fallon’s academy graduation. Andy beaming, Mike beside him in the wheelchair, a jagged line now cutting between them like a lightning bolt.
    He shook off the last of the glass and tried to bend the frame back into shape.
    “Mike,” he said quietly. “Last night you said Andy was dead to you. What did you mean by that?”
    Fallon kept his head on the dresser, his gaze on nothing, empty. He didn’t answer. Kovac had to stare at him a moment to be certain the old man hadn’t just died on him. That would have been the cap on the damn day—and it wasn’t even two o’clock yet.
    “The two of you were having problems?” he prompted.
    “I loved that kid,” Fallon said weakly, still not moving. “I loved him. He was my legs. He was my heart. He was everything I couldn’t be.”
    But
. . .
    The word hung in the air, unspoken. Kovac had a feeling he knew where it would lead. He looked around at the scattered photographs of Andy Fallon. Handsome and athletic. And gay.
    A hard-ass old-timer like Mike wouldn’t have taken it well. Hell, Kovac didn’t know how well
he
would have taken it if it had been his kid.
    “I loved him,” Mike murmured. “He ruined everything. He’s ruined everything.”
    His face pinched tight as he looked inward, seeing the pain in its brightest light. He flushed red with the effort to hold the tears back—or maybe to push them out. Hard to say which would have been more difficult for a man like Iron Mike.
    Kovac dabbed absently at his nose, then stuffed the handkerchief in his coat pocket. Quietly, he picked up all the photographs and stacked them on the dresser so they would be there when the anger subsided and the need for memories set in.
    The questions were there, lined up in the front of his mind, automatic, orderly, routine.
When was the last time you spoke to Andy? Did he talk to you about what he was working on? What was his mental state the last time you saw him? Did he ever talk about suicide? Had he been depressed? Did you know his friends, his lovers?
    None of those questions made it to his lips. Later.
    “Is there anyone you’d like me to call, Mike?”
    Fallon didn’t respond. The grief had surrounded him like a force field. He wasn’t hearing anything but the voice of regret in his head, wasn’t feeling any pain but that in the deepest part of his soul. He was