Prior Bad Acts (30 page)

54

CAREY STARED AT
Karl Dahl—the bald head, bruised and scabbed over on one side where he appeared to have been struck with something; the garish makeup; the jagged edge of the bleeding wound in his cheek, moving in and out as he breathed through his mouth. The whites of his eyes were bloodred. He was dressed as a woman, in a calf-length brown skirt and low-heeled boots.

Behind him, maybe twenty yards behind him and off to his right, was a huge old burned-out brick building. Two stories high, charred black, it looked to have been abandoned for a very long time. All the windows were dark, gaping holes. She could see sunlight inside where sections of the roof had either burned through or fallen in.

Karl Dahl meant to drag her inside that building. Carey pulled back, but he held fast to her arm, his grip tight and hard.

“You don’t need to be afraid of me, Carey,” he said calmly.

The way he said her name was like the stroke of a lover’s hand. She didn’t like it.

“You should call me Judge Moore, Karl,” she said, her voice almost unrecognizable to her. A dry, hoarse rasping from her aching throat. Her larynx felt the size of a fist. She had wanted to sound strong and calm as she tried to establish herself in his mind as a person to be respected.

He smiled and shook his head. “No. We’re past that. You’re the only one’s been kind to me. You understand them things I did before wasn’t bad, really.”

Karl Dahl’s criminal record showed arrests and time served for a variety of crimes—criminal trespass, window peeping, indecent exposure, breaking and entering. Nothing violent. No kidnap, no assault, no rape, no—

But he was on trial for the brutal murders of a woman and two children from a family who had been nothing but kind to him.

Chris Logan’s words from Friday afternoon came back to her.

“It’s an escalating pattern of behavior. That’s what these pervs do. They start small and work their way up.”

He was right. Carey knew as much about the Karl Dahls of the world as Logan did. The Boston Strangler had started out as a Peeping Tom.

As a prosecutor she had been able to knit a defendant’s criminal life together that way when preparing for trial, bridging one step up to the next on the criminal evolutionary scale. And she would try like hell to get it all past the presiding judge.

Now she was the judge. And as a judge, she had to adhere to a different standard.

“I don’t know very much about you, Karl,” she said, her breath hitching in her throat.

She looked past his left shoulder and saw the car. Anka’s car. Panic stabbed through her. She had spoken to Anka as the girl had gone out Saturday night to get a movie. Lost in thought, she hadn’t paid any attention when Anka came home. She vaguely remembered hearing the kitchen door open. In her peripheral vision she had been aware of a blonde walking through the hall and going up the stairs.

That the blonde might have been Karl Dahl made her skin crawl. How long had he been in her home? What had he done there while she had been in the den, discovering the depravity to which her husband had lowered himself? Had he been upstairs when she had come up and fallen onto her bed without bothering to undress? Had he been in her room? Had he been in Lucy’s room?

For the briefest of seconds, the crime scene photo of the Haas foster children flashed through her head.

“Oh, me,” Karl said shyly, “there ain’t that much to know.”

“Sure there is,” Carey said, her voice shaking. “Everybody has a story.”

“I’d sure like to hear yours,” he said. “Let’s go inside. I have everything ready for you.”

“What does that mean, Karl?”

He smiled a secretive smile made sinister by the clownish makeup and the still-bleeding gash in his face, which he seemed not to notice. “You’ll see soon enough.”

He started toward the building, pulling Carey in tow. Everything in her told her not to go into the building with him. At least if they were outside, someone might drive by, and she would have a chance to escape. The odds of that happening diminished with every step he dragged her.

“C-can’t we just s-stay out here for a while, Karl?” she asked. “I’m not f-feeling very well. Could I just have some fresh air for a while?”

It wasn’t a lie. Even as she said it, she felt her stomach twist, and she dropped down on her knees again and vomited in the weeds. Karl held on to her hand like a lover would to comfort her.

“You need to lie down is what you need,” he said gently, squatting down beside her. “You’ve just got yourself all stirred up.”

“N-no. Could we please j-just sit here for a minute? I’m very dizzy.”

“That’s from that person beating on you in that parking garage, isn’t it?” he asked. “On account of me. I seen all about it on television this morning. And I read about it in the
Star Tribune
. I like a good newspaper. You get more of the story.

“I’m sorry for what that man done to you,” he said. “I seen that story, and I knew right then you was my angel.”

Carey shivered as she sat back on her heels. “I’m not an angel, Karl. I’m a person. I have a family. I h-have a l-little girl. I’m a judge. I was just doing my job.”

“You’re cold,” Karl declared. “Let’s go inside. I’ve made a fire.”

He hooked an arm under hers and lifted her with him when he stood.

“What is this place?” she asked. “Where are we?”

“My secret place. I’ve stayed here many times, and no one ever bothers me.”

“I mean the building,” Carey said, trying not to dwell on what he had just told her. “Where are we? What did it used to be?”

“It used to be a munitions dump back in the war times. WW Two. There’s still some parts of shells and stuff in there, but don’t nobody seem to care about it. You think they would take it away what with the terrorists and all. You know one of them Nine-Eleven boys was learning to fly a jet airplane right here in Minneapolis.”

Carey was at a loss for words. The surrealism of the scene was too much for her. She had been abducted by a triple murderer, and he was calmly going on about Homeland Security.

As she stared at him, the putrid smell of sulfur came on the breeze. A refinery. She couldn’t see it, but it was nearby.

“Watch your step here, Carey,” he said, helping her up the worn, crumbling concrete steps and into the building.

It was a ruin. There was no ceiling, only partial walls here and there. He took her down what might have been a hallway once, turning here and turning there, working their way farther and farther from the door they had come in.

The floors were filthy and strewn with garbage and debris—broken bottles, beer cans, discarded fast-food wrappers. Bits and pieces of grit and crumbled brick bit into the soles of her bare feet.

“Where are we going, Karl?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” he said, a strange, boyish excitement creeping into his voice. “I’m real proud of it.”

He led her around the corner of a brick wall and into his hiding place, where no one had ever bothered him.

There was more roof over this part of the building. And no windows. No sunlight. Karl had made up for the darkness by lighting candles all around.

In the flickering yellow light, Carey saw what Karl was so proud of, and a chill washed over her like a wave.

Karl Dahl had created a little nest with pillows and blankets. A small fire burned in a hibachi grill. Overturned fruit crates served as tables. There was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, wineglasses standing to one side. He even had framed photographs of someone’s family.

Carey’s gaze lingered on the photographs, realization dawning slowly. An eight-by-ten black-and-white photo from a graduation. A silver-framed photo of a baby.

Photographs of a family.

Her
family.

55

“WHERE IS HE?”
Kovac demanded, striding into the war room.

“Interview three,” Dawes said. “You can watch through the glass.”

“Fuck that. He’s my suspect,” Kovac said.

“Lose the attitude, Detective Sergeant Sam Kovac, unless you really want to go back to wearing a uniform,” Dawes said, getting in his face. “That first word can be very easily detached from your rank. That’s what’s going to happen if you pull another stunt like you did with David Moore.”

“I won’t.”

Dawes arched a brow. “This is a high-profile case, Sam. Every newsie, every politico in the city, is watching this one. I’ve got the chief of detectives, the deputy chief, and the chief of police breathing down my neck. I can’t risk you jeopardizing this interview by intimidating the suspect—”

“He kidnapped a judge!” Kovac shouted. “For Christ’s sake! What are we supposed to fucking do? Serve him tea and crumpets?”

“You get to watch or you get to leave.”

“Didn’t his second wife say that to him on their honeymoon?” Tippen said, to break the tension.

Kovac kept his focus on Dawes and tried to check the storm of emotions tearing through him. He wanted to get into the interview room with Donny Bergen. Bergen had been picked up at his downtown apartment, interrupted by Tippen and friends while packing a couple of duffel bags, ready to catch a plane to St. Kitts.

“Look, LT,” Kovac said, lowering his voice several decibels. “I’m the one talked to the sister. She will have warned him about me. I’m the one on top of Dickhead Moore. I’ve put half a dozen calls in to Ivors to rattle his cage. He’s part of this too.

“I’m the one who’s been dogging these creeps,” he said. “You go in there, it’s a whole new ball game to them.”

Dawes stared at him, weighing the pros and cons. She didn’t look happy. Kovac hoped that that was a good sign. He didn’t know her well enough yet to be able to predict her. This was their first high-profile case together.

She was probably considering all the things the brass had told her about him when she had taken the job. Someone had no doubt told her about Amanda Savard’s having killed herself in front of him. How it had taken him months to get himself together after that. Now she saw him losing his cool over Carey Moore.

Kovac held his hands out to his sides in a gesture of surrender. “Let me go in with you. Bring a gun. If I get out of line, you can shoot me.”

“Why has he never made that offer to me?” Liska asked.

“Because you’d do it,” Elwood said.

“There is that possibility.”

Dawes gave a long-suffering sigh. “Do you have another career to fall back on?” she asked irritably.

In the background, Tippen said, “If Donny Bergen goes up the river, there’ll be a void in the porn industry.”

Liska hit him in the arm. “Yuck!”

“I’ve been told I can flip a mean hamburger,” Kovac said.

The lieutenant looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. “Lord help me. All right, Detective. We go in together. But if you put one toe over the line, you’d better go get yourself a hairnet and a spatula, ’cause you’ll be working under the golden arches come Monday.”

Long Donny Bergen sat at one side of the table, kicked back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, his legs stretched out and spread a little. A studied pose to suggest arrogance and to show off his most famous attribute, bulging in his jeans.

He was otherwise not a big guy. Slim and wiry, he could have passed for a woman if he wore a skirt. He looked a lot like his sister—the narrow face, the pallor, the perpetually red tip of the nose.

Kovac wanted to ask him if he and Ginnie got a family rate from their dealer. He wanted to walk around behind him and yank the chair out from under him. He did neither.

“Mr. Bergen, I’m Lieutenant Dawes. This is Detective Sergeant Kovac. Thank you for meeting with us.”

Dawes took the seat nearest Bergen, also sitting sideways to the table. Casual, legs crossed, one arm on the tabletop. Kovac took the seat across from Bergen. He didn’t smile; he didn’t speak. He just stared at the guy.

Bergen laughed. “I didn’t have a lot of choice, did I? The goon squad came calling.”

Dawes looked surprised. “Oh, but you’re not under arrest, Mr. Bergen. I’m sorry if you got that impression.”

Confusion crept in under the asshole bravado. He sat up and leaned toward the lieutenant. “I’m not under arrest?”

“No. We just wanted to have a talk with you about this business with David Moore. Apparently, you know him quite well. We thought you might be able to help us uncover something about his wife’s disappearance.”

Bergen looked suspicious. “I’m not under arrest.”

“This is what’s known as a noncustodial interview.”

“So I don’t have to say anything. I don’t need a lawyer.”

“You don’t need a lawyer for this.”

“So I can leave?” Bergen said. He stood up, adjusted himself, and started for the door, giving a little wave. “It’s been real.”

Kovac tensed, waiting for Dawes to do something. The guy he believed had assaulted Carey—at the very least—was reaching out for the doorknob.

“No,” Dawes said calmly. “It doesn’t really work that way. Please come have a seat, Mr. Bergen.”

“Or what?” Bergen challenged.

“Or I have you held as a material witness and you can meet some new and interesting people in jail.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Not at all,” Dawes said, rising from her seat. “I’m just telling you how it is, Donny,” she said, drifting over to the door. “The powers that be in this city are very upset about the abduction of one of our leading jurists.”

“I thought she was a judge,” Bergen said impatiently. “I don’t know anything about it anyway.”

“Perhaps not,” Dawes said. Then, just with the slightest changes of posture and expression, she was no longer the cordial hostess. Her voice took on an edge. “But you’re going to go back to that table, put your tight little ass in that chair, and tell us everything you
do
know, or you’re gonna need that lawyer for a whole lot of unpleasant reasons.”

Kovac rubbed a hand across his mouth while he grinned to himself. She was good.

“Better listen to her, Junior,” he said. “You know how big a big shot you think you are? The people she’s talking about pick their teeth with little pricks like you.”

Bergen’s look went from Kovac to Dawes. “Does he have to be here?”

“It’s his case. What’s the matter, Donny? You think Detective Kovac maybe knows a little too much about your family matters?”

Bergen shook a finger at Kovac. “My sister said he pushed her around. She’s gonna sue the city.”

“That’s cute,” Kovac said. “A junkie whore takes on City Hall. I can’t wait to see what she wears to the press conference.”

Bergen leaned a little toward him across the safe distance of the table width. “Ginnie has friends, asshole.”

“Lots of them, I’m sure,” Kovac said. “Her dealer, her johns, a pimp or two . . .”

“She’s not a prostitute.”

“Not anymore,” Kovac said. “Why fuck a hundred guys for a few bucks a pop when she can just latch on to one fat tick like David Moore? She gets his wife out of the picture, she’s got it made. Nice house on Lake of the Isles, rich husband. Too bad money can’t buy acceptance. To the people in that neighborhood, she’ll always be a junkie whore.”

Bergen was getting red in the face. “Stop calling her that!”

“Have a seat, Mr. Bergen,” Dawes said, back to being Miss Manners. “Clear this up for us. If you haven’t done anything wrong, there shouldn’t be any problem doing that.”

Bergen sat down, hooking the heel of one cowboy boot over the rung of the chair. He leaned an elbow on his knee and looked away, nibbling on his thumbnail like a rat grooming itself.

“Can you tell us where you were Friday evening?” Dawes asked.

“I thought I wasn’t a suspect.”

“We’re trying to corroborate the statements of a third party.”

“I was out,” he said. “On the town. Like always when I’m here.”

“You’re not a permanent resident of the city?”

“It’s too fucking cold.”

“Where do you live?”

“L.A. Encino.”

The San Fernando Valley. Smut capital of America. Kovac had read it in a magazine. Hard-core porn movies were routinely made in rented houses in otherwise normal family neighborhoods.

Picturing Long Donny Bergen there brought a whole new meaning to “boy next door.”

“Yeah, look,” Kovac said. “This is all nice and chatty, and I’m sure you’d be an interesting person to talk to, if I didn’t happen to think you’re a maggot on the asshole of life. But let’s cut to the chase, Junior.

“We know you popped into the lobby bar at the Marquette Friday night to meet up with Sis and the gang. What was that about?”

“It wasn’t about anything,” Bergen said, belligerent. “So I stopped to have a drink with my sister. So what?”

“Where were you before that?”

“At my apartment, getting ready to go out.”

“Was anyone there with you?”

Bergen turned to the lieutenant again. “How is this supposed to square someone else’s story? I think it sounds like you’re trying to pin something on me.”

“Knowing if a particular someone was with you will be important to that other person,” Dawes explained. It was a lie, of course, but that didn’t matter. They were under no obligation to tell the truth during the course of an interview; only the interviewee risked a penalty for lying.

Bergen narrowed his eyes. “Who?”

Dumb as a post, this kid,
Kovac thought. Good thing for him he had other talents.

“We can’t tell you that, Donny,” Kovac said. “If we tell you, you’ll decide what story you want to tell, depending if you like this person or hate them.”

Bergen turned that puzzle over and over in his narrow little head.

“That means you have to tell us the truth,” Dawes said.

He frowned at that, clearly thinking he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

“What’s the matter?” Kovac asked. “Did you have some underage girl there with you?”

“No! I don’t need to do underage girls.”

Kovac gave his crocodile smile. “That’s not about need, though, is it, Junior?”

“I was alone.”

“Between six and seven,” Dawes specified. “You were home alone.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Did anybody see you leave the building?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“You live in California,” Kovac said, “but you keep an apartment here. You must be here a lot.”

“My manager says it’s a good investment.”

“What do you do with it when you’re not around? Rent it out?”

“What’s the difference?”

Kovac shrugged. “Just curious.”

“Did you speak with your sister on the phone Friday afternoon?” Dawes asked.

“Yeah. Three, three-thirty. She asked me if I wanted to stop by the hotel for a drink.”

“Do you happen to know if David Moore was with her at the time?”

“I guess he was.”

“How well do you know him?” Kovac asked.

“We don’t hang out. Except for the fact this one has bucks, I usually don’t like my sister’s taste in men.”

“How did you meet him?”

“Through Eddie. A year, year and a half ago.”

“Eddie?” Dawes asked.

“Yeah. Eddie Ivors. I know Eddie through the business. He introduced me to Dave.”

“Through the triple-X movie business?” Kovac said.

“Yeah.” Bergen gave a little laugh and a smirk. “Everybody thinks Eddie made his money with theaters. Eddie made his money in porn and used the money to buy the theaters. Mr. Respectable Businessman.”

“And David Moore? How was he connected to Ivors?” Kovac asked, his blood pressure rising again. David Moore, the critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker. Kovac knew what Bergen was going to say before he said it.

“He’s into it. He’s directed some stuff for Eddie. Hard-core.”

Kovac shoved his chair back from the table so fast, it tipped over as he stood up. Donny Bergen cringed and cowered. Lieutenant Dawes jumped and twisted around to give him her full attention. Kovac was barely aware of either of them.

That piece-of-shit, rat bastard.

He could see David Moore’s photograph from his Web site, the smug, superior artiste. He wasn’t any better than a pimp, no, worse than a pimp. He sopped up money making filth, and still lived off his wife.

That meant he had bank accounts no one knew about. Greedy fool. He had money of his own, but he paid for his mistress out of the family funds. Un-fucking-believable.

Kovac started to rub his temples and pace back and forth in front of the door.

Dawes looked at him cautiously. “Are you all right, Detective? Do you need to step out?”

Before Kovac could answer, someone banged on the door. Elwood stuck his head into the room.

He directed himself to Kovac in a hushed voice. “I think I might have found Stan Dempsey’s hidey-hole.”