Prior Bad Acts

28

“I’M GOING TO the courthouse,” Carey said.

She stood in the hall at the front door, not even wanting to go the few extra feet to the den, where David had been sitting at his computer all day. She didn’t want to see him, she didn’t want to speak to him, she didn’t want to hear his voice.

He looked out at her, perturbed. “Why? You’re supposed to stay here.”

“I’ll take a police officer with me,” she said. “I won’t be going back to work for a while. I can at least do some reading and paperwork.”

“Call your clerk. Have him bring it to the house.”

Carey said nothing to that. Of course she could have had her clerk do it. Of course she should have. She felt terrible, and she needed to rest. The truth was that she just didn’t want to be in the house with her husband. She hadn’t decided yet what to do, whether she should confront him with what she knew, or wait and gather more evidence against him, or tell Kovac everything.

She didn’t want to believe the worst-that the man she had loved and married could hate her enough to pay someone to kill her. But the David she had discovered that morning was not that same man. This David had a whole other life going on that she didn’t know anything about. This David was a stranger. She had no idea what he might be capable of.

“I won’t be long,” she said.

Lucy came racing down the stairs, wearing a pink fairy costume and clutching her favorite toy, a stuffed dog she had named Marvin. “Mommy, I want to go! I want to go with you! Please.”

Carey caught her daughter and hugged her tighter than the occasion called for. “Sweetie, I’m just going and coming right back.”

“I want to go with you,” Lucy insisted, tears filling her eyes.

She was afraid. Afraid her mother might get hurt again, afraid she might never come home. Lucy was a bright and perceptive child. She knew something bad had happened, something worse than just her mother falling down. Carey knew she could also sense the tension between her mommy and daddy. They never argued in front of her, but the negative energy between them vibrated subtly in the air around them. Lucy picked up on that. She was probably feeling very insecure.

“Okay,” Carey said. “You can come along.”

An instant, beaming smile lit up her daughter’s face. “Do we get to ride in a police car?”

“No. The officer will drive us in Daddy’s car.”

“My car?” David said. “Why my car?”

“Because mine is at the police impound yard, being processed for evidence,” Carey said. “Were you planning on going somewhere?”

“No,” he said, obviously scrambling mentally for a logical reason he didn’t want her in his car. “I just need to get some paperwork out of it before you go.”

“We’ll be gone twenty minutes. Your paperwork has been out there all day, and suddenly you can’t wait twenty minutes for it. What’s that about?”

“It’s not about anything,” he snapped, getting out of his chair. “I just realized I need it.”

“Then get it,” Carey said.

She wanted to add that he should be sure and get out any of his girlfriend’s stray lingerie while he was at it, but she didn’t.

“Fine,” David said in a huff. “I’ll get it.”

He stomped down the hall to the kitchen and out to the garage.

Carey glanced down at her daughter. Lucy was watching her with a somber face.

“You need to have a coat on, Miss Sugar-Plum Fairy,” Carey said, and turned to the hall closet to get one out.

The officer, Paul Young, parked the car at the curb in front of a “No Parking” sign and escorted them into the government center and to Carey’s chambers. After looking through the offices to make certain there were no bad surprises waiting for her, he stationed himself in the hall outside to wait.

Lucy ran around behind the desk and climbed up in Carey’s chair, wide-eyed with excitement at the prospect of all the fun she might have with the stuff on the desk.

“Mommy, can I play on your computer?”

“No, sweetheart. This is where I work. The computer isn’t for playing with,” Carey said as she took the copies of the phone bills, the credit card receipts, the list of escort agencies out of the tote bag she’d brought with her. She pulled an empty file folder from a cupboard, put the papers in it, and put the folder in the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk. The evidence could stay there until she decided what to do with it.

“Mommy? This was Grandpa Greer’s hammer, wasn’t it?”

“That’s called a gavel,” Carey said. “Yes, that belonged to Grandpa Greer.”

Lucy held the gavel with both hands. It was almost as long as her arm, and an incongruent accessory to her pink fairy costume. An impish smile curved her mouth. So precious. The one good thing to come out of her marriage: her daughter.

Carey brushed a hand over Lucy’s unruly dark hair. Tears burned the backs of her eyes.

“I wish Grandpa Greer could remember me,” Lucy said.

“I wish that too, sweetie.”

God, I wish that too.

All her life she had been able to go to her father with anything, for any reason, day or night, 24/7. He was the Rock of Gibraltar, her foundation, her anchor.

He had never really liked David. She knew that because he had told her when she had announced her engagement to him. Not in a harsh way, but with concern for her. Was she sure that was what she wanted? Was she sure David was the one?

She had been upset with him at the time. She had wanted him to be happy for her, to be supportive of her, to approve.

David had been a different person then, confident from the success of his work and the accolades of critics. But even then her father had sensed a lack of foundation in him. And he had said to her that if this was what she truly wanted, he would give her his blessing but that she needed to know that she would always have to be the strong one in the marriage, that when the chips were down the only person she would be able to rely on was herself. He felt that David’s strength would always rise and fall with the opinions of other people.

Her father had walked down the aisle with her and handed her over to the man who would be her husband. And he had never spoken of his opinion of David again.

“Don’t cry, Mommy,” Lucy said. She put the gavel down on the desk and stood up on the seat of the chair and hugged her mother.

Carey winced at the pain in her ribs, but she didn’t tell Lucy to let go. She wanted to feel the security of being held by someone who loved her, even if that someone was only five years old.

A sharp knock at the door startled her. Before she could ask who was there, Kovac walked in with a stormy expression. He stopped short to take in the scene. He had wanted to come in with a big temper to throw at her for leaving the house, but seeing her with Lucy, seeing her with tears in her eyes, knocked the wind out of his sails.

Embarrassed, Carey touched gently beneath her eyes to wipe away the tears. She could probably have counted on one hand the number of people who had ever caught her crying. Kovac had managed to do it twice in one day.

“By all means, come in, Detective Kovac,” she said with an edge of sarcasm ruined by the weakness of her voice.

Kovac looked from Carey to Lucy.

“How did you know we would be here?” Lucy asked, bright-eyed with curiosity.

“I’m a detective,” Kovac said. “That’s what I do. I find out where people are. I find out who committed crimes.”

“My mommy’s a judge,” Lucy said proudly.

“I know.”

“She puts bad people in jail.”

Kovac glanced at Carey, biting his tongue on some smart remark, she thought.

“Hey, Princess Lucy,” Kovac said. “I need to speak with your mom in private. Why don’t you go out in the hall with Officer Young, and he’ll show you all the cool stuff on his belt. He’ll show you how handcuffs work.”

“I’m a fairy now, not a princess,” Lucy informed him. She turned. “Can I, Mommy?”

“Sure, honey.”

Lucy climbed down from the chair and went around the desk to Kovac and offered him her hand. By the look on his face, she could have been offering him a live snake.

“I’m not allowed to go places alone,” Lucy said. “You have to take me.”

Carey motioned to the door when Kovac looked to her.

“Uh… okay,” he stammered, taking her small hand. He walked her out to hand her over to the care of Officer Young.

When he came back, he looked a little rattled, as if he didn’t know what to do with the emotions Lucy had evoked in him. Murderers he could deal with. A five-year-old child undid him.

“Do you have children, Detective?”

He hesitated a beat before he answered. “No. I’m not married.”

Not that one necessarily had anything to do with the other. Like eighty percent of the cops she knew, Kovac had probably been married and divorced at least once.

“She’s a doll,” he said.

“Thank you.”

An awkward silence hung in the air for a moment.

“I suppose you want to scold me for leaving my house,” Carey said.

“I believe I did tell you to stay put.”

“You can tell me anything you want.”

“And you’ll do whatever you damn well please.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

He thought about that; then one corner of his mouth crooked up. “Point taken. You should sit down, though. You look a little pale.”

“I look like something from a zombie movie.”

“Well… yeah,” Kovac conceded.

Carey eased herself down into her desk chair, glad for the soft padded leather. “So is this bad news, or are you just going to lecture me?”

Kovac sat in the chair on the other side of the desk and let go a sigh. “Well, yeah, I was gonna lecture you, but… what’s the point?”

“I wouldn’t have come here alone,” Carey said. “I’m not that stupid woman in every suspense movie who has to go investigate the strange sounds in the basement.”

Once again he gave that little quarter of a smile that only touched one side of his mouth. He let his gaze wander around the room, seeming to not want to make eye contact with her unless he had the cop face on.

“This is a lot nicer than what the prosecutors get,” he said. “You kicked ass back then. Do you ever miss it?”

“Yes, sometimes,” she admitted. “But this was what I always wanted to do.”

“Because of your old man?”

“Yes. My idol,” she said, looking away as the emotion threatened to surface again.

“He was a good judge. What’s he doing in his retirement? Golfing in Arizona?”

“He’s dying,” she said. “He has Alzheimer’s, and… he’s dying.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Kovac muttered. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“I never miss an opportunity to stick my foot in it.”

“You didn’t know,” Carey said. “Have there been any leads tracking down Stan Dempsey?”

Kovac shook his head. “No sign of him. No sign of his car.”

“Has anyone called Kenny Scott? He has to be up there on Dempsey’s hit list.”

“That’s supposed to be happening.”

“You didn’t call him yourself?”

“Kenny Scott is not my priority,” Kovac said. “I’ve got all I can handle with you.”

Carey smiled a little and realized that she never made eye contact with him either in those moments when her guard slipped.

“Am I being difficult?”

He didn’t answer right away. He studied her. She could feel his gaze on her. Finally, he said, “I think you’re too brave for your own good. Why did you have to come here?”

“I wanted to get some paperwork to look at while I’m convalescing.”

His sharp eyes swept over the desktop. “So where is it?”

“I forgot it’s in my briefcase,” she lied.

“You know, you’re good,” Kovac said. “But I’m better. Let’s try this again, and maybe you can tell me the truth this time. Why did you have to come here?”

Carey looked down at the desk drawer where she had stashed her file on David’s hobbies. She should probably have given it to him. But what was really in it? Evidence that her husband was unfaithful. Kovac already knew that. And the note-$25,000-could have been anything. Maybe David was thinking of buying a boat. Maybe twenty-five thousand dollars was the lottery prize that day. Maybe he was putting a down payment on a house for another one of his hooker girlfriends or for himself. Maybe he was thinking of moving out.

“I spoke with your husband’s business associates,” Kovac said. “The people he had dinner with last night. A man named Edmund Ivors. Do you know him?”

“No. David doesn’t include me in his business dealings.”Or anything else, she thought.

“Does the name Ginnie Bird mean anything to you?”

“No. Why?”

“I think your husband is sleeping with her,” he said bluntly. “Actually, I’m pretty sure of it.”

Carey didn’t say anything for a moment. Kovac let her process the information.

“I’m telling him I want a divorce,” she said at last.

Kovac raised his brows. “Just like that? No ‘Let’s work this out’? No ‘Let’s go to counseling’?”

“Our marriage has been dying a slow death for a long time. There isn’t anything left to work out except visitation rights.”

“I’m sorry.”

She almost laughed. “Why? You hate my husband. You can’t believe I ever married him in the first place, let alone that I stayed with him all these years.”

“I’m sorry for you,” Kovac said softly. “I’m sorry you have to go through it. I’m sorry I had to tell you about the girlfriend.”

Carey shook her head. “No. Don’t be.”

She stared down at the desk drawer, then finally pulled it open and took out the file. She handed it across the desk.

“What’s this?”

“Evidence. I’ll be using it in court.”

Kovac paged through the contents. “How long have you been saving this up?”

“Since this morning. I did a little detective work of my own. He wasn’t even bothering to hide it.”

“That rotten, rat bastard son of a bitch,” Kovac growled half under his breath as he looked at the hotel receipts and florist bills. He picked out the list of escort agencies and turned red with anger. If David had been there, Carey had little doubt that Kovac would have punched him in the face.

He pulled out a copy of several canceled checks made out to the property management company. “What are these for?”

“He’s paying for an apartment,” she said, and recited the address to him. “For himself or for one of his little playmates. I called the company this morning, pretending to be David’s new accountant. I needed information. The last accountant left things in a terrible mess. Couldn’t they help me out? All I needed was the address of the property.”

“And they gave it up,” Kovac said.

Carey nodded.

Kovac picked up the copy of the note regarding twenty-five thousand dollars. “What’s this?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “It was in his wastebasket this morning.”

“It’s a payoff,” he said.

“You don’t know that. It could mean anything. A debt. Something related to his business. He’s talked about buying a boat.”

Everything she said sounded like an excuse. If she had been sitting in Kovac’s place, she knew what she would have been thinking.

“In October?” Kovac said. “Who buys a boat right before winter?”

Carey didn’t answer him.

“Carey…”

“David is a lot of things,” she said softly, looking down at the desk. “But I can’t believe he would do what you’re suggesting.”

“Before you found this stuff, would you have believed he was living a secret life? That he was cheating on you with prostitutes every time you turned your back? That he would use your maiden name as his alias?”

She looked up at him, startled and hurt.

“You didn’t know that part,” Kovac said gently. “What else don’t you know about him?”

What could she say? She was married to a stranger.

“Things weren’t always like this between us,” she said at last, feeling the need to justify having stayed in the marriage. “We were in love once. The last couple of years, we’ve grown apart. He’s slowly become this bitter, unhappy person. I wanted just to gloss over it, to think he was frustrated with his lack of success. I didn’t want to come down on him, because I knew his ego was fragile and my career was going so well.”

She brushed a thumb beneath her eyes. “And there was Lucy. She loves her daddy. If nothing else, he’s been a good father. He adores Lucy. The sun rises and sets on her.

“I didn’t care that he didn’t love me anymore. I had my career, my daughter. I could make that be enough.”

She felt weak, was trembling ever so slightly. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so defeated in her life. Kovac just sat there quietly, watching her with sympathy in his world-weary face.

“I’d like to go home now,” Carey announced, pushing herself to her feet. “I need to rest up for the big scene.”

“You’re telling him tonight?” Kovac said, rising from his chair. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Why wait? I’ve waited too long as it is.”

Kovac gently caught her by the arm as she came around the desk, headed for the door. His touch surprised her.

“I can be right there for you,” he said, looking her straight in the eye.

And he meant it, Carey thought. This hardened street cop, who didn’t even like her, would help her through this if she asked. And she had no doubt that he would follow through. That was who Sam Kovac was-blunt, honest, reliable-and not for any reason other than he simply believed that that was the right thing to do.

“I really don’t want an audience,” she said.

“I’ll stay outside.”

Carey shook her head. “I already have two officers sitting out front. David is as aware of them as I am. He wouldn’t risk touching me. He has a whole other life to live for. I can guarantee you prison isn’t on his agenda.”

“I don’t want you to be alone,” Kovac said.

“Well, that’s what I’ll want to be-alone. Despite all recent evidence to the contrary, I prefer to cry in private.”

He didn’t like the idea at all. He wanted to protect her. What a lovely thought, someone looking out for her, someone to lean on, someone volunteering to shoulder the burden for her.

“I appreciate the thought,” she said. “I really do.”

“I don’t trust him, Carey.”

“Don’t worry. David is far too passive-aggressive to hurt me himself.”

“I want you to call me after,” Kovac said. He still had hold of her arm and stood close enough that she could feel his breath on her cheek. Peppermint… and the faintest hint of scotch.

She arched a brow. “Drinking on the job, Detective?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, that little tug of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “You drove me to it.”

“Well, then, I guess your secret should be safe with me.”

She took a step away from him, and he let go of her arm.

His expression turned serious. “Be careful. And call me. And remember: I can be there before you hang up the phone.”

Carey nodded. “Thank you… Sam. Thank you.”

She wanted to put her arms around him and hug him for being kind. Or because she wanted to feel strong arms around her, supporting her, protecting her. She felt so alone.

Instead, she thanked him again and went to the door. Lucy’s face lit up.

“Mommy, I learned how to arrest somebody.”

Officer Young smiled at her. “What do you say to the bad guys?”

Lucy put her hands on her hips and made her best mean face. “Assume the position!”

Carey chuckled. “We have to go now, sweetie. Thank Officer Young and Detective Kovac.”

Lucy said her thanks to the officer, then went to Kovac’s feet and looked up at him. “Thank you for holding my hand, Detective Kovac.”

Kovac leaned down and shook her hand formally. “You’re welcome, Fairy Princess Lucy. You can call me Sam.”

The little girl smiled, delighted. “I like you, Detective Sam. Will you carry me?”

“Lucy!” Carey exclaimed.

Kovac looked uncomfortable and slightly terrified. He glanced up at Carey.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

But when he looked back at Lucy, he couldn’t seem to say no. Lucy put her arms around his neck and sat in the crook of his arm, looking pleased as punch with herself.

“I’m going to pretend you’re a giant,” she said. She jabbered at him all the way to the car.

When he put her down on the sidewalk, he turned to Carey, his expression dead serious. “You call me, I’m there. Be careful.”

Carey nodded and slipped into the backseat of the Mercedes. All the way home, she thought of how much her father would have liked Sam Kovac.