Prior Bad Acts

38

KOVAC WOKE TO a pounding he thought was inside his head.

He had a vague memory of having had exactly that thought before. He’d gotten five, maybe six hours of sleep, but his body told him it needed more.

The pounding didn’t stop.

“Tylenol,” he murmured, trying to wake himself.

It took all his willpower to sit up and drop his legs over the side of the bed. He could hardly open his eyes to look at the clock. Quarter past eight.

The pounding continued.

Kovac went to the chair at the foot of his bed, pulled on a pair of wrinkled pants and a wrinkled shirt, and went downstairs. He slipped into a pair of shoes he’d left by the front door, and went outside.

Another bright Technicolor blue fall morning greeted him with undue cheerfulness. He shuffled over to his neighbor’s yard, his eyelids still at half-mast. The neighbor watched him suspiciously from his perch on the roof, hammer in hand.

The old man called down at him, “Hey, what are you doing?”

Kovac didn’t answer him. He went straight to the aluminum ladder that leaned against the side of the house and took the thing away, letting it fall to the side and crash in the yard. Squirrels ran for their lives in all directions. Then he turned and went back to his own house.

The old man was screaming blue murder. “Get back here! Get back here and put that ladder back!”

Ignoring him, Kovac went back inside, made a pot of coffee, carried a cup upstairs with him. He went into the bathroom, took a leak, had a long, hot shower, shaved, brushed his teeth, put on a fresh nicotine patch.

When he went back into his bedroom, the old man was still shouting at him. The red of his face matched the red of his plaid flannel shirt.

Kovac opened the window. “You want me to come put that ladder back?”

“You’d darn well better!”

“Now is not the time to be pissy with me,” Kovac said. “You’ll give yourself a stroke and die up there. Not that I would give a rat’s ass.”

The old man sputtered and spat and called him some names.

Kovac waited for the tirade to end.

“I’ll come put the ladder back,” he said. “But if you get up on that roof tomorrow morning while I’m sleeping, I’ll come back and take it down and leave you there at the mercy of passersby. You’re an inconsiderate son of a bitch, and you think just because you’re too goddamned mean to die, you ought to be able to make the rest of us as miserable as you are.”

The old man scowled at him.

Kovac went to his closet and dressed for the day. The task force was meeting at nine. He wanted to swing past and check on Carey before he went downtown.

Outside, he struggled with the unwieldy ladder to get it back up against the house. The old man scrambled down it like a monkey and got right in Kovac’s face.

“I’m going to report you!”

Kovac walked away. The weatherman was promising thunderstorms later in the day. Maybe lightning would strike the old fart and fry him while he was attaching colored lights to his television antenna.

I live in hope…

Everything at the Moore house appeared the same as it had the night before. The media had decamped Saturday when it had become clear they weren’t going to get anything interesting. Today they were probably swarming all over the street where Kenny Scott lived. Next victim, please.

Kovac went to the window of the cruiser parked at the curb.

“Anything I need to know about?”

The cop at the wheel shook his head. “All quiet. The guys from last night said the only thing that happened after you went after the husband was the nanny going to the 7-Eleven and coming back. She drove out again a while ago. Waved. Going to Starbucks.”

Kovac yawned, straightened away from the car, and went up to Carey Moore’s front door. He rang the bell and waited. It was still early for a Sunday morning. After the night she’d had, she was probably sleeping in.

He rang the bell again and waited.

There were no sounds coming from the house. No radio or television. No voices in conversation.

He rang the bell a third time. A fourth time.

Now his cop sense began to itch and tremble through him. He didn’t like it. Something was wrong.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called the Moores ’ house number.

The phone rang unanswered until the machine picked up.

He called Carey’s cell number. The call went straight to voice mail.

Kovac walked around the house, peering in the windows for any sign of life, or death. He checked the doors. All locked.

His heart was beating faster.

He went around to the front yard and motioned for the uniforms to come.

The side door on the garage seemed the easiest place to get in. The officers rounded the corner. Kovac looked to the larger of the two, a strapping twenty-something guy.

“Kick it in.”

“Shouldn’t we have a warrant?” the young guy asked.

“We’ve got exigent circumstances,” Kovac said. “Kick it in!”

The officer put his shoe to the door once, twice. On the third kick, the frame splintered and the door swung in, carrying the entire dead bolt mechanism with it.

The house alarm began to shriek.

The door into the laundry room was unlocked. Kovac went through into the kitchen and began calling.

“Carey? Judge Moore? Are you here? Is anyone here?”

Silence.

Kovac drew his weapon and went through the downstairs, calling, looking, finding nothing.

A sick feeling churned in his gut as he went up the stairs.

“Carey? Judge Moore?”

He knocked on the door to the nanny’s room. No answer. He pushed the door open. No one. The bed was unmade. He checked the closet. No one.

“Carey! Anka!” he shouted.

The uniforms stood at the top of the stairs. Kovac ran past them, down the hall to Carey’s bedroom. The door was open; the bed had been stripped to the mattress. Carey was gone.

“Check the basement,” he shouted at the officers.

He thought of Kenny Scott bound to a chair, the word GUILTY branded into his forehead. He thought of the Haas family, of the two children left hanging in the basement.

Lucy.

Oh, Jesus.

A feeling washed over him he so rarely experienced that it took him a moment to name it.

Panic.

The little painted fairy on Lucy’s door smiled at him. The things that Stan Dempsey had said on the video played through his head.

“I wonder how differently she would feel if her daughter were raped and sodomized and hung up from the ceiling like a slaughtered lamb…”

Kovac felt like he was going to puke. He braced himself for the worst and pushed the door open.

Lucy’s bed was empty, the covers messy. No blood. That registered right away. There was no blood. There was no body.

“Lucy?” Kovac called. “Lucy, are you in here? It’s me, Detective Sam.”

He went to the closet and opened the door. Nothing.

He got down on his hands and knees, lifted the ruffled bed skirt, and peered under the bed, his heart breaking at the sight of the little girl. She was shaking and crying and trying very hard not to make a sound.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Kovac said gently. “You can come out now. You’re safe. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

Slowly she inched her way toward him, crying openly now, her breath hitching, her nose running. Kovac reached out to help her, and her little hand grabbed hold of his fingers and squeezed for dear life.

When she popped out from under the bed, she threw herself into his arms, threw her whole small trembling body against him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and sobbed, “Where’s my mommy?”

Kovac held her tight and thought, I wish I knew.