Prior Bad Acts

67

“I CAN’T LEAVE you alone for a minute,” Kovac crabbed, walking across the lawn to the Haas garage. “You owe me dinner.”

“Excuse me? The Son of Satan just tried to kill me with a hammer!”

“And your point would be…?”

Liska scowled at him. “Don’t make fun of me, Sam. I’ve never been so freaked-out in my life!”

Kovac gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I can see that, Tinks. I just thought a little obnoxious levity might be in order.”

“How would that be different from how you usually are?”

“Smart-ass.”

To have Liska admit to being afraid took a lot. Now she would get pissy, because she had let someone see that she wasn’t really as tough as she pretended to be.

“You should have seen him, Sam. When he turned around and came at me with that hammer…” She shivered and pretended she was cold, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “What I saw in that kid’s eyes… I’ve never seen before. And I don’t want to see it again.”

Bobby Haas had been hauled out on a gurney and taken away in an ambulance. And still she was more shaken than Kovac had ever seen her. She scowled down at the ground, uncomfortable with the uniforms and the forensics team crawling all over the place, lest they see through her act too.

Kovac took off his trench coat and put it around her. She could have drowned in it, she was so little. With an arm around her shoulders, he guided her to the Haases’ front porch, and they sat on the edge of it. She leaned into him.

“Slow it all down, kiddo,” he said. “Slow it all down.”

She took a deep breath and let it out.

“I asked the unis to get Wayne Haas,” she said. “I’m not telling him this. I can’t. You have to.”

“All the lights and sirens, and he hasn’t come out on his own?”

“Bobby told me he went to bed early because he wasn’t feeling well.”

“I should sleep so hard,” Kovac said. “If my neighbor doesn’t stop banging on his roof in the mornings, I’ll take a hammer to him.”

Liska wasn’t listening to him. She looked up at the sky and shook her head. “Oh, God…”

“It’s because he’s a kid,” Kovac said quietly. “That’s too close to home.”

“You know, I really wanted to feel sorry for him,” she said. “I did feel sorry for him. The poor, motherless child.”

“I don’t know if Bobby Haas was ever a child.”

“Maybe that was the problem.”

“And maybe he had three sixes branded on the back of his head,” Kovac said. “Don’t try to figure it out, Tinks. There’s a reason that’s not our job.”

They couldn’t do it. The toll was too heavy emotionally, and emotion took away objectivity, and one thing a detective absolutely had to be was objective.

Hypocrite, he thought.

One of the forensics people stuck her head out of the garage. “Detectives, I think you need to come see this.

“Becker took the stuff out of the briefcase to inventory,” she explained. “This is pretty scary.”

Inside the garage, Kovac looked over the items that had been spread across the workbench-Carey’s files having to do withThe State v. Karl Dahl. The papers she had been taking home to look at over the weekend. All of it was wet and stinking.

“Jesus, he pissed on it!” he said with disgust.

Liska had moved on to the rest of it. “Oh, my God…” she whispered. “Sam…”

All neatly contained in Ziploc bags: a journal; two clear four-pocket plastic sheets holding photos of Bobby with his father-playing catch, fishing, being happy; half a dozen large Ziploc plastic bags with newspaper clippings in them, organized by month.

MINNEAPOLIS MASSACRE

GRUESOME HOMICIDES SHAKE QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD

CRIME SCENE“A BLOODBATH”ACCORDING TO DETECTIVES

DRIFTER ACCUSED IN BRUTAL SLAYINGS

Kovac found the clippings only slightly weird and creepy. It wasn’t unheard of for loved ones of homicide victims to keep track of the case in the media.

Then came the final, smaller plastic bag.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach, and a sudden cold sweat misted his skin.

“Holy God…”

Liska looked over at him. “What is it?”

In a case like the Haas murders, the detectives often kept certain details of the crime secret from the public, details only the killer would know. It helped them weed out the crackpots who always came out of the woodwork to confess to heinous crimes in a sick attempt to gain attention.

Kovac held that secret up to the light.

“Oh, Jesus!”

Perfectly preserved, vacuum sealed on a single sheet together, side by side by side-largest to smallest-the right thumbs of Marlene Haas, and Brittany and Ashton Pratt.

“Jesus H.,” Kovac breathed. “Karl Dahl didn’t do it.”

The irony was bitter. Stan Dempsey had ruined his career and his sanity trying to see Karl Dahl convicted of the Haas homicides. He had been so convinced of Dahl’s guilt. Everyone had. The strange drifter with a record of sexually oriented crimes-relatively minor crimes, but just the same… He’d known the victims. He’d been seen going into the victims’ home on the day of the murders. He’d had no alibi. When he’d been arrested, Karl Dahl had been in possession of a necklace that belonged to Marlene Haas.

It had to be Dahl. No one wanted to think their neighbor or their mailman or their meter reader could be capable of the atrocities committed on Marlene and her foster children. No one would even have considered the boy next door.

The killer had had to be Karl Dahl. Dahl had been arrested, indicted, would likely have been convicted. Case closed.

Instead, Dahl’s arrest had triggered a terrible series of events. Dahl had escaped jail, murdered two women, and abducted a third. Carey Moore had been forced to kill Stan Dempsey out of fear for her life.

Karl Dahl, as it turned out, had indeed been a murderer, but he hadn’t been guilty of the crimes he had been accused of committing.

Kovac put down the vacuum-sealed bag. No one said anything. There was too much-and nothing-to say.

“Detective Liska?” One of the officers Liska had sent into the house filled the doorway.

She didn’t turn her head away from the things laid out in front of them.

“Your guy in the house?” the officer said. “He’s dead. Looks like maybe he had a heart attack.”

“I’m sure it does,” Liska murmured. “I’m sure it does.”