Prior Bad Acts

51

CHRISTINE NEAL’S COTTAGE would have looked just as at home if it had been found somewhere on Nantucket Island. The small garage was empty. The front door of the house was locked, but a little hand-painted sign bade visitors welcome and announced, “Grandma Lives Here.”

The uniformed officers had rung the doorbell and looked in the windows but had seen no sign of Christine Neal.

Dawes gave the signal. “Break it in.”

The house was quiet and smelled fresh, as if it had just been cleaned.

“Well, this is weird right off the bat,” Liska said.

“What?” Kovac asked.

“Look at this place,” she said. “It’s so-so-neat.”

At Kovac’s request, she had met them at the Neal home. They were both good detectives in their own right, but Kovac liked the way they worked a scene together. They complemented each other in the way they saw things, in the feelings they picked up, in the way they processed what they took in.

“Not everyone shares your enlightened view of organization,” Kovac said as they walked around the living room, looking for any sign of something wrong.

He had sent one of the uniforms to the backyard and one to the basement. Dawes stood just inside the front door, deep in conversation with the chief of detectives, trying to explain the debacle at the Moore house.

“Not everyone has two boys and a homicide cop in the family,” Liska said. “Look at the pattern in this carpet. Freshly vacuumed. I’m lucky I cansee my carpet.”

“Mmmm… You should tell Speed he can work off some of his delinquent child support tidying your house once a week.”

“Ha. Two boys, a homicide cop, and an asshole. I would have the same house, but it would smell like sweat socks, cigarettes, and bad Mexican food.”

They went into the kitchen, finding it equally immaculate.

“The boys with him this weekend?” Kovac asked.

“Yeah. I can’t wait to find out what useful skill he’s taught them this time,” Liska said. “The last time they were with him, he taught them how to pat down a hype without getting stuck with a dirty needle.”

Kovac looked out the window over the sink, into the fenced backyard. A happy scarecrow hung on a post in a vegetable garden studded with orange pumpkins.

“That’s Speed, always the model father,” he said.

“He’s the only one they’ve got,” Liska said. “Hey, look at this. She’s a breast cancer survivor.”

She stood in front of the refrigerator, looking at a collage of photographs. The life and times of Christine Neal.

“I hope to God she’s visiting those grandkids,” Kovac said.

The officer came up from the basement and said, “Nothing down there but wet laundry in the washing machine.”

Kovac turned down the hall, checked out the bathroom-spotless-and continued on to what he thought might be a bedroom.

The vacuum had been run in this room as well, right up to the white eyelet dust ruffle of the queen-sized bed.

Kovac looked around the room. Nothing had been overturned or disturbed.

He went down on one knee beside the bed and lifted the fabric.

Christine Neal stared at him with sightless eyes.