Prior Bad Acts (8 page)

11

IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT
by the time they had interviewed Jerome “Stench” Walden. The kid’s mother had come to the door, drunk and smoking a cigarillo. A charming woman.

Jerome had looked embarrassed that he was stuck in a crappy house that smelled of sour beer and fried onions and cheap tobacco. In a clean set of gray sweats, the T-shirt bearing the initials
USC
in maroon block letters, he looked as incongruous in his setting as Bobby Haas had looked kneeling at his father’s feet, trying to comfort him. Not surprisingly, Jerome’s story of the after-school and evening adventures matched Bobby Haas’s version of events.

Kovac didn’t believe them, but then he rarely believed anyone. He was too accustomed to being lied to. Everybody lied to the cops, even the innocent. He wouldn’t have believed his own grandmother without a corroborating witness.

The security videotape from the government center parking ramp was on Kovac’s desk when they arrived back at the CID offices. They went into a conference room, watched the oft-copied-over tape, and drank some bad coffee.

They had run out of desire for conversation on their way in but had been partners long enough that they were comfortable with their silences. Neither of them said a word as they watched the tape through the first time.

The tape was so grainy that if Kovac hadn’t known they were looking at Carey Moore, he couldn’t have positively ID’d her. She walked into the camera frame, proceeding toward her car, a black 5-series BMW sedan. She was carrying a handbag slung over one shoulder, and a large briefcase that looked heavy. Her father’s briefcase.

She stuck her hand into the purse to dig out car keys and dropped a couple of objects on the floor. Stopping, she set the briefcase down and bent to pick up what she had dropped.

At that moment the assailant came from the left of the screen. Difficult to make out size, due to the angle of the camera, which was pointed down from above them. Dressed in jeans and a dark coat with the hood up. Impossible to make out a face.

He hit her hard across the back with some kind of a club or baton, maybe a small baseball bat. The attack was fast and violent, and it looked to Kovac that the assailant was more interested in hurting her than in taking anything.

They knew from what Judge Moore had told them that she had managed to set off her car alarm, at which point the perpetrator got off her, took the time to kick her hard in the side, then grabbed up her wallet. He spun around and snatched the briefcase she had set down, and ran out of the frame, going for a staircase, Kovac assumed. According to the garage attendant sitting in the pay booth on street level, no car had come squealing down the ramp at the time of the assault in a big hurry to leave.

Liska rewound the tape and hit the play button. “This sucks.”

“Yeah. What’s the point in having these cameras if they’re going to use the tapes so many times we might as well be trying to watch cartoons from the moon?”

“They need to go digital.”

“Costs money.”

“Yeah? Well, if I had to park in that ramp all day every day, I’d have to take a second mortgage on my house. I think they can afford it.”

In the morning one of them would drop the tape with the video geek in the lab and see if she could enhance the images to the point of being useful, but Kovac doubted that would happen.

He tossed out the question to get their brains rolling. “Who do we look at besides Leopold and Loeb?”

“They seem like decent kids.”

“So did the aforementioned,” Kovac pointed out. “So did Ted Bundy.”

Liska shrugged. “It’ll be hard to corroborate their story. Who would notice either one of them? They’re too normal. And there was only one guy on the video. Where’s the sidekick?”

“I want the tapes from the entrances to the garage, see if either of their cars rolls in sometime before six-thirty. They could have left a vehicle there, taken a staircase down to the street, then come back after all the hoopla to get the car. Make sure the uniform who took down all the tag numbers runs them through the DMV.”

“They could have parked anywhere downtown,” Liska said. “It would have been stupid to park in that ramp.”

“They’re a couple of seventeen-year-old boys. Forethought is not a big priority at that age.”

“Thanks for the tip. I’m going to go home and lock my eldest in his room for the next ten years or so.”

“I think we can rule out Wayne Haas,” Kovac said. “He’s too big to be the guy on the tape, and he doesn’t look built for speed either. He’s got plenty of motive to hate Judge Moore, but I don’t like him for this.”

“Me neither. Could be an ex-con with a grudge,” Liska said. “Could be any nutjob following the Dahl case.”

“What do we know about the parents of the foster kids?” Kovac asked, frowning as that train of thought slipped into his head.

“The mother’s in jail on a narcotics charge. Dad’s got a sheet too, assault being the big prizewinner for us.”

“Is he running around loose?”

“He is.”

Most crime was simple and straightforward. A killed B because B had something of value, or B cheated A in a drug deal, or B did A’s girlfriend while A was out of town. The obvious suspects almost always turned out to be the perps. Twisted conspiracies were the stuff of novels and movies.

“We’ll need to talk to Dempsey.”

“He’ll be a good source.”

“He’s a pretty good suspect too,” Liska said.

Kovac gave her a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, Sam. Dempsey has a lot riding on convicting Karl Dahl. You know the department has just been trying to keep a lid on him until it’s over. They won’t fire him and give the defense more ammunition than they already have against him. But as soon as that trial is over, it’s
adios
Stan. He can’t be the president of the Carey Moore fan club.”

Kovac chewed on a thumbnail, scowling at the possibilities. He could hear the allegations. The lead detective was obsessed. Dempsey couldn’t be in the field, because he’d had a breakdown. He wanted Dahl to be his guy; Judge Moore’s ruling was a slap in the face of his investigation . . .

All that would be fodder anyway. The department hadn’t fired Stan Dempsey because they would have looked bad in the media and because they were afraid Dempsey would sue. Poor old Stan was screwed no matter what.

“Jesus,” Kovac muttered, rubbing his hands over his face and back through his hair. “I don’t like it.”

“Since when is this job about what we like?” Liska asked.

“I mean, talk to him, yes. Nobody knows the players in the Dahl case better than Stan.”

“We have to look at him, Sam, and you have to be the one to do it,” Liska said. “You know him. He’s old-school. He’ll take it better from you.”

Kovac heaved a sigh, pushing himself up out of his chair. “All right. But you get Mutt and Jeff and their alibi. Looks to me like they both need a mother figure anyway.”

Liska rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’s me. Mother Earth packing heat. I’m a B movie from the fifties.”

She got up from her chair and stretched, her sweater rising up above the waistband of her slacks to show the Glock 9mm she wore on a belt holster. “I’m outta here, Kojak. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“It already is morning.”

“Don’t tell me that. I’m gone.”

Kovac prowled around the office for a while after she’d gone. He was always restless on the front end of a case. He wanted to work around the clock. Get on it. Get after it.

Homicide cops in the Minneapolis PD had a window of about three days on a murder before the next murder or assault case came along and the last one got shuffled to a back burner. Or maybe he was that way because there was no need for him to be any other way. The job was his life. He had nothing to go home for.

He put his coat on and walked out of the building to stand on the wide front steps that led up the big Gothic stone building that was the color of raw liver. He wanted a smoke, but he didn’t take it. The one he’d had on the Haas front porch had been for effect.

The streets were mostly empty on this end of downtown. All the Friday-night excitement would be at the other end, where bars and clubs crowded around the Target Center, home of the NBA Timberwolves. Night life. There was a concept.

Kovac walked down to the parking ramp where he left his car every day. The facility had been named for a cop who had been murdered back in the late eighties for no other reason than that he wore the uniform. Sitting in a pizza parlor, the guy had been minding his own business, probably thinking about the fact that he was about to retire, when some gang punk pulled a piece and shot him dead in front of a dozen witnesses.

The guy had lived with the potential and real dangers of being a cop every day he was on the job, survived to retirement, only to be gunned down, off duty, having a pizza.

No one planned on becoming a victim.

Marlene Haas hadn’t gotten up on that fateful day thinking of the horrors that would take place in her home in a matter of hours.

Carey Moore had been headed home, thinking of her little daughter, maybe thinking of the absentee husband, maybe thinking about the shitstorm she had just unleashed with her decision on Karl Dahl’s prior bad acts. And bam, out of nowhere, some mutt knocked her flat and beat the crap out of her.

Kovac scowled at the bent his thoughts were taking—poor Carey Moore. He didn’t want to think of her as a person with problems and issues and emotions. Still, when he drove out of the ramp onto the street, he didn’t head for home. He turned the opposite direction and drove toward Lake of the Isles.

12

CAREY LAY IN BED,
half-awake, desperately longing to sleep, pain keeping her from shutting down. It hurt to take more than a shallow breath, because of her ribs. Her head was pounding and felt swollen to the point that she wished she could open her skull and let the pressure out. She was still dressed, having refused to let Anka help her out of the gray pin-striped suit, not because of modesty but because the least movement set off waves of dizziness and nausea. Her slacks were torn at one knee. A shoulder seam had split on the jacket during the struggle, a button was missing, and one elbow was ripped out.

She concentrated on these things—the damage to her clothing and the fact that it was one of her favorite suits and she was angry to have to trash it—because in truth none of it was important. She didn’t want to think about the fact that someone had attacked her, had possibly meant to kill her. She didn’t want to think about what that would have meant, never seeing her daughter again, not being there for her father as his life drew to a close.

Guilt gnawed at her for not having included her husband in the list of people she would miss. She didn’t hate him. He wasn’t a bad guy. He was a wonderful father, when he was home, which had been less and less over the last year. It was just that what had been good between them had worn away. All they had now were pretense and tension.

Carey had realized their marriage was over a long while ago. David knew it too. He was as miserable as she was, but they both preferred to ignore the situation. Their marriage had become the elephant in the room that nobody wanted to talk about. If they talked about it, they would have to deal with it, and with the fallout that would rain down on their child.

Instead, they each stayed busy with their work. Carey had a full load with the Dahl trial looming. David, who had been a promising young documentary filmmaker at the start of their marriage, continued trying to drum up support for his latest project idea. He spent much of his time wining and dining, bowing and scraping to the kinds of people who could get films made. Unfortunately, the backing never seemed to come through, and he had had to lower himself to making the occasional local TV commercial.

Carey knew that he resented her success, and his lack thereof. He had become touchy and snappish on the subject of his career. She had tried to be supportive and patient, knowing that his self-esteem had taken a beating. But David had grown too comfortable with playing the victim, with making her walk on eggshells around his ego. She was tired of it, and her own resentments toward him had begun to grow like warts on the ends of her nerves.

If he knew how many times she had bitten her tongue to cut him a break, to give him the opportunity to be a man . . . and how many times he had failed . . .

The pressure of the tears behind her eyes made her head throb all the harder. Carey tried to blink them back. If she was going to cry, she would end up having to blow her nose, which would probably be so painful she would pass out.

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea.

The numbers 1:13 glowed green on the alarm clock that squatted on her night table. Still no sign of David.

Potential backers, my ass,
she thought. She suspected he was having an affair, and was almost relieved at the idea. He hadn’t touched her in months. She hadn’t wanted him to. His touch only made her feel impatient and irritated. At the same time, the idea of his cheating on her pissed her off no end, because she could too easily imagine him doing it out of spite.

She brought her hands up to her face, wanting to rub her cheeks and forehead, sucking her breath in as her fingers brushed ever so slightly over an abrasion, wincing at the pain in her ribs from taking too deep and too sudden a breath.

Anka tapped softly on the bedroom door and let herself in.

“The detective told me to check on you,” she said quietly.

“I’m fine, Anka.”

“You don’t look so fine.”

“No, I suppose not,” Carey said. “Has Mr. Moore called?”

“No. I heard your cell phone ringing a while ago. Of course, I didn’t answer it.”

“Would you bring it to me, please?”

The nanny frowned. “You should be sleeping.”

“You just came to wake me up,” Carey pointed out. “I only want to check my messages.”

Looking unhappy, muttering something unpleasant in Swedish, the girl went away, and came back with the phone.

“Thanks,” Carey said. “Go to bed. Get some sleep. I promise not to lapse into a coma.”

Anka sniffed her disapproval at her employer’s sense of humor but left the room.

Carey touched the key to retrieve her voice mail, entered her password, and closed her eyes as the messages played through.

A call from Ted Sabin, Hennepin County’s version of a district attorney and her former boss, expressing his concern for her, having heard about her attack. He promised to bring the full force of his considerable power to bear in the apprehension and prosecution of her attacker.

A call from Kate Quinn, an old friend from her days in the county attorney’s office, calling for the same reason, telling Carey to call her and she would be there ASAP. Kate had worked as a victim/witness advocate. Carey had never imagined she would ever call on her friend in her professional capacity.

Then Chris Logan’s voice was in her ear, anxious, upset, full of bluster, the usual way he reacted to unpleasant news over which he had no control. “Carey, goddammit, I just heard. Are you all right? Are you in the hospital? Why the hell didn’t you take a deputy to the garage with you? Jesus, I should have walked you out, pissed off or not. Call me.”

She deleted the message and put the phone down beside her on the bed. A feeling she couldn’t quite identify rippled through her. A blend of regret, sadness, loss. It would have been nice to have someone strong and protective to turn to now. Someone she trusted. A shoulder to lean on.

But she didn’t have that. After their one brief interlude, she had never called Logan in search of that kind of support. Not that she hadn’t been tempted. After what he’d said to her in her chambers, she would never want to again. She felt betrayed by him for taking the cheap shot about their one night together, and now she wouldn’t trust him.

She had never really quite trusted him, she admitted. Not absolutely. That was why there had been no other nights shared before or since. Logan was a big package of single-minded ambition. He cared about winning, about seeing justice done, no matter the cost to himself or those around him. They had been friends back in their days working together, but Carey knew he had also seen her as a rival, and that had never sat well with her.

Her father would have been there for her, as strong as the Rock of Gibraltar, as he had been all her life. But for all intents and purposes, her father was dead. His body had yet to get the message, but the essence of him was gone. The shell of him sat in a rest home, waiting to shut down.

Feeling alone and adrift, Carey closed her eyes and fell into a shallow sleep disturbed by menacing dreams. Dreams of her attacker, of who he might be. In the dark theater of her mind, she lay on her back on the cold concrete, struggling against a man she couldn’t see. At first, his face was nothing but black, blank space, and then gradually it became clear.

The images flashed in her mind like lightning, a different face in each blinding burst. Karl Dahl. Wayne Haas. Chris Logan. David. Marlene Haas, her face partially decomposed, dead eyes bulging from their sockets.

Carey jerked awake, crying out, trying to sit up. The pain knocked her back, and she rolled to her side as the nausea crashed over her again. She was sweating, shaking, breathing too quickly.

The cell phone beneath her hand rang, startling her. David, she thought, half hoped, though she wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to say he was coming home or that he wasn’t.

“David?”

There was silence on the other end just long enough to raise the hair on the back of her neck.

When the caller spoke, she didn’t recognize his voice. It was a low, hoarse whisper, the words stretched out, strangely distorted.

“I’m coming to get you, bitch” was all he said.