Prior Bad Acts

42

KOVAC WALKED OUT of the den and up the stairs, leaving Logan to deal with David Moore. As soon as Moore invoked his right to counsel, that was it. The interview was over, from Kovac’s point of view. Anything incriminating Moore might say-if he was stupid enough to say anything at all-would be argued to be out of bounds by his attorney. And any evidence against him discovered as a result of such a statement would be out as well.

Despite Liska’s statement to the contrary, Kovac wasn’t stupid enough to push that line. As badly as he wanted to beat an admission of guilt out of Carey’s husband, he turned and walked away.

The crime scene team had finished processing the nanny’s bedroom. Kovac stood at the open door for a moment, looking in, trying to imagine what had gone on here.

The bed, which looked as if no one had slept in it, had been stripped and the sheets taken away to be processed for fibers and bodily fluids. The carpet had been recently vacuumed.

A lot could have happened here between the time of Kovac’s last conversation with Carey and the time the nanny’s car had pulled out of the driveway that morning. He couldn’t help but imagine the possibilities. He’d dealt with too many violent crimes and too many violent criminals.

There had been no obvious signs of blood or semen in either bed. But murder could be committed without bloodshed. A rape could be concealed with a condom.

If David Moore had hired out the apparent kidnapping, returning the victim wasn’t part of the deal. His objective was presumably to get rid of his wife, get her out of his way, and get his hands on her money. And as soon as the job had been handed over to the contractor, whatever else happened was out of Moore ’s control. Carey and the nanny, provided the nanny wasn’t part of the scheme, would have been entirely at the mercy of a cold-blooded killer.

Kovac stepped into the room, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and started poking around for any sign that the Swedish girl might have had an inappropriate connection to her employer.

The dresser was clutter-free. A small lamp on either end. A jewelry box. He lifted the lid. A couple of necklaces, earrings, nothing expensive.

Three small framed photographs smudged with fingerprint dust sat on the nightstand beside the bed. Anka and a couple of friends on a hiking trip; Anka and her family, half a dozen identical blond Swedes of various ages from teens to fifties; Lucy Moore and Anka bundled in winter coats, beaming smiles, kneeling beside a snowman. David Moore crouched down behind them, one hand resting on Anka Jorgenson’s shoulder. Happy family. There were no photographs of the nanny with Carey Moore.

The drawer of the nightstand held the kinds of things women everywhere kept in their nightstands-a nail file, hand lotion, lip balm, a couple of pens, an address book, a journal.

Kovac lifted the journal and opened the cover, half expecting to read: Dear Diary, I think I’m in love with David Moore. What he found was a whole lot of Swedish. The big revelation, if there was to be one, would have to wait until they could get someone to translate. Luckily, in a state full of Scandinavian descendants, that wouldn’t take very long.

Small comfort, he thought, considering they had no idea how much time they had. It could already be too late.

He went to the closet and opened the door, looking for obvious signs that the nanny had packed a bag before she vanished. But there was no telltale block of empty hangers. The closet was neat as a pin. A roll-on suitcase and a duffel bag were tucked into one corner.

Kovac closed the closet door, turned around, and surveyed the room again. No one had left this room in a hurry. No one had been forced to leave this room. No struggle had taken place here.

Years before, when he was new to Homicide, he’d come across a case of a missing woman who was found only after her body had begun to decompose. Her boyfriend had bludgeoned her to death with a claw hammer and stuffed her body under her mother’s bed.

Kovac carefully lifted the bed skirt and looked. No body. A couple of long plastic storage containers full of shoes and clothes.

Down the hall, in Carey’s bedroom, the crime scene unit was going over every square inch. But as with the nanny’s room, the carpet had been vacuumed. The linens had been stripped from the bed. If they were lucky, they might find the sheets in the laundry. If not, their bad guy might have taken them to dispose of them so there would be no chance to get hair, fiber, bodily fluids, to put a name to their perp.

Kovac stood in the doorway of the welcoming, elegant room where he had helped Carey Moore to bed just two nights prior. Now the room gave a different feeling entirely.

Though he would never have admitted it to anyone, sometimes he thought he could feel the echo of raw emotions at the scene of a violent crime. Terror, anger, panic, intent.

He looked at the bed and pictured the scene in his mind-the room dark, Carey sleeping with her back to the door. He imagined the crime from the point of view of the perpetrator, never the victim. He could see Carey kicking and flailing as she was dragged backward from the bed. In the struggle, the heavy alabaster lamp was knocked over and fell to the floor. The framed photographs on the night table tipped over.

But as he looked at the room before him, the lamp was undisturbed, and there were no picture frames, on the stand or on the floor.

Kovac called to a squat woman plucking a piece of something off the carpet with a tweezers. “Where’d the pictures go?”

She put the fiber in a small clear plastic tube and placed a numbered evidence marker on the floor. “What pictures?”

“You didn’t find any framed photographs on this nightstand or on the floor?”

She shook her head.

“No black-and-white eight-by-ten graduation photo? No baby photo in a silver frame?”

“Nope.”

“You’ve looked under the bed?”

“Nothing under there.”

Kovac looked across the room at Carey’s dresser. Perfectly neat and tidy.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“You need booties,” the woman said.

Kovac pulled a pair of blue paper booties on over his shoes so that he wouldn’t track in anything that would contaminate the scene. The forensics team had enough to do analyzing the legitimate evidence.

Avoiding evidence markers on the floor, Kovac crossed the room to the dresser and opened a drawer, and then another and another. All with items neatly folded.

He went to the large walk-in closet that held the rest of Carey’s clothes, and looked around at the racks that held business suits, blouses, slacks, dresses. Nothing appeared disturbed.

At the back of the closet, a collection of matching luggage was neatly lined up, except that one piece seemed to be missing, leaving an empty spot in the row.

That bothered him. Of course, the piece could have been lost, or out for repair.

He looked around the closet again more closely, scrutinizing every inch of hanging space. A small gap here, a small gap there. Things might have been missing, or not.

But that missing suitcase…

If someone had packed a bag, that person had not been Carey Moore. No way she would have left this house voluntarily and left her daughter behind.

What the hell kind of kidnapper took a change of clothes for his victim?

Kovac could only hope that if that missing suitcase was in the possession of the kidnapper, it meant whoever had taken Carey meant to keep her alive.

He tried not to think about why.