Prior Bad Acts

5

FRIDAY NIGHT IN the Hennepin County Medical Center ER could resemble a violent punk rock Halloween party, but the evening was young. The ghouls and gangbangers were still home, primping their nose rings and polishing their tattoos.

“Sam Kovac! Fuck me sideways!”

“He can do that?” Liska asked. “A man of hidden talents, our Sam.”

Kathleen Casey, trauma nurse and ER pit bull, waved a hand in dismissal as she marched up to them. “The hell if I know. But I’d rather find out than deal with these people.”

She rolled her eyes toward the waiting area, where reporters and camera crews were perched on the furniture like a flock of vultures. “God save us from the media. Give me your average street scum any night.”

As if on cue, several of them spotted Kovac and started toward him.

“Kovac!”

“Detective!”

“Do you have any leads-”

“Do you know what prompted the attack-”

“Did this have anything to do with the ruling on the Dahl case?”

The usual cacophony. Rapid-fire questions they knew damn well he wouldn’t answer. Kovac held up a hand to ward them off. “No comment.”

Casey took an aggressive step toward them and shooed them with her hands. “Back to the chairs with you before I break out my Taser.”

Casey had been through the wars. Kovac called her the Iron Leprechaun. Five feet nothing, with a hedge of maroon hair and a sweet-Irish-mother kind of a face that drew people to her so they could confide in her, then implode in some spectacular way.

Kovac had known her forever. She was a longtime veteran of HCMC, with a brief stint at a small-town ER in the Minnesota hinterland, also known by Kovac as Outer Mongolia. He tried never to venture south of the airport, east of the river, west of the 494 freeway, or north of downtown.

“So what’s the story with our vic?” he asked as they started down a side hall at a quick clip.

“Resident Pain-in-the-Ass will want to fill you in ad nauseam,” she said. “Quick and dirty: Someone beat the ever-living-crap out of her.”

“Sexual assault?” Liska asked.

“No.”

“She’s conscious?”

“Yes, but she hasn’t had a lot to say.”

“I wish we could have said that earlier in the day,” Kovac muttered.

They had all heard about Judge Moore’s ruling on Karl Dahl’s past criminal record. Carey Moore had been a kick-ass prosecutor, but on the bench she had earned the motto “ Moore is less,” giving perps a benefit of the doubt no cop in town believed they deserved, and they felt betrayed because of it.

The resident making notes in Judge Moore’s chart looked like she had probably been the president of the science club in high school-last year. Drowning in her lab coat, stringy brown hair scraped back into a ponytail, and black plastic rectangular glasses.

Liska shoved a badge in her face and got aggressive. “So? Spill it, sweetie. I want to get home before menopause sets in.”

It was always fun to set young doctors back on their heels before their egos could metastasize and take over their humanity.

This one used a lot of fifty-dollar words to explain that their victim had a mild concussion, a couple of cracked ribs, and a lot of nasty bruises and abrasions.

The uniformed cop who had answered the initial 911 call had filled in Kovac and Liska on the details of the assault as they had walked the crime scene. Moore had been on her way to her car in the parking ramp adjacent to the government center. The assailant had hit her from behind, knocked her down, smacked her around. Apparent motive: robbery. If anything more had been on the agenda, there hadn’t been time. Moore ’s car alarm had gone off, and the mutt had run away with her wallet.

Kovac looked over the top of the doctor’s head and into the examination room. Carey Moore was propped up on a hospital bed, looking like she’d gone five rounds with one big, badass dude. The bruises hadn’t turned blue yet, but Kovac had seen more than enough victims of beatings to read the damage and predict what would greet the vic in the mirror the next morning. There was a contusion on her forehead crowning a lump the size of a golf ball. One eye, the flesh around it already swollen, was going to turn black.

A short line of stitches crawled over her swollen lower lip like a black ant. She had a cell phone pressed to one ear. Alerting the scavengers out in the waiting room, or complaining to the mayor how people weren’t safe on the streets, no thanks to her.

He moved past the doctor without acknowledging her, walked up to Judge Moore, took the phone out of her hand, and clicked it off.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“I’ll need your undivided attention, Judge Moore. That is, if you want your assailant caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. You might care about that more now than you did a couple of hours ago.”

She snatched the phone back from him and turned it on, never taking her glare off his face. “I was on the line with my nanny, letting her know I’m going to be late and not to let my daughter see any news on television. I don’t want her to find out from strangers that her mother has been attacked.

“I don’t care what you need, Detective Kovac,” she said. “You aren’t more important than my child.”

Kovac arched a brow and took a step back. So much for her weakened physical state. She looked like a tigress ready to tear his throat out. “My mistake.”

“Yes, it is.”

She looked down then, touched a hand to her forehead, and winced as her fingers brushed against the angry red abrasion. Flesh v. Concrete.

“I’m sorry, Anka. We got cut off. Please get Lucy in her pajamas and put a movie on for her.” She was silent for a moment, listening to the nanny. “Yes, all right. Put her on… Hi, sweet pea,” she said softly, tears welling in her eyes.

Kovac turned a little away from her in order to look like he wasn’t eavesdropping, even though he was.

“No, honey, I won’t be home before you go to bed. I’m sorry… I know I promised, but I had an accident and fell down, and I’m at the doctor now…”

She closed her eyes, and a couple of tears squeezed out from between her lashes. “No, honey, I don’t know what time Daddy will get home… Why don’t you have a slumber party with Anka?”

She touched a knuckle beneath the blackening eye to discreetly wipe away the tears.

Kovac scowled and turned away completely. He didn’t want to feel sorry for Carey Moore. She was no friend to him, certainly no friend to Stan Dempsey, who would never be right again after working the Haas murders. He couldn’t even imagine what Wayne Haas and his son were feeling after hearing about the judge’s ruling against the prosecution. The last thing Kovac wanted was to feel sorry for her.

“I’ll see you in the morning, sweetheart… I love you more…” Her voice strained, she said good night and ended the call.

Kovac waited. Liska joined him.

“Did you make her cry?” she whispered, accusatory.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“And you wonder why you’re single.”

“I know why I’m single,” he grumbled. “And I know why I’m going to stay that way.”

“Let’s get this over with.” Judge Moore had her voice and her composure back.

Kovac shrugged. Liska gave him a look of womanly disgust and pushed past him.

“Judge Moore, I’m Detective Liska-”

“I know who you are,” the judge said. “Can we cut to the chase, Detective? I want to go home.”

The resident piped up then. “No, I’m sorry, Judge Moore. You have a concussion. We’ll need to admit you overnight for observation.”

Carey Moore raised her chin and gave the young doctor a glimpse of the steely look she had leveled at many a difficult witness in her days as a prosecutor. “I’m going home to my daughter. I’ll sign a release. Why don’t you get that process started?”

The science club president looked like she didn’t know whether she should be offended or afraid. She disappeared into the hall.

“You might want to reconsider that, Judge Moore,” Liska said. “Someone attacked you.”

“I was mugged. It’s over.”

“With all due respect, you don’t know that.”

Kovac watched her set her jaw as best she could, considering the split lip. She wanted to believe what she wanted to believe.

“You managed to piss off a lot of people today, Judge,” he said. “Maybe someone decided they needed to express themselves in person.”

“He stole my wallet.”

“Bonus.”

“He?” Liska said. “Did you see him?”

“No. He was behind me. The voice was male.”

“Young, old? Black, white?”

“Angry. That’s what I remember. Angry. Full of rage.”

“What did he say?”

“‘You fucking bitch. You fucking cunt,’” the judge said without emotion.

“Did he use your name?” Kovac asked.

“No.”

“You didn’t recognize the voice.”

“No. Of course not.”

“So, he knocked you down, grabbed your purse. That was it?” Kovac said, knowing that that wasn’t so.

She closed her eyes briefly, started to sigh, winced again, and tried to cover that up. Tough cookie, he thought. The mutt had done a number on her. She had to be in a considerable amount of pain, and he knew from experience docs didn’t dole out the good narcotics to people with concussions. They had probably given her some Tylenol. Big deal. Like putting a Band-Aid on a shark bite. She had to have one mother of a headache.

“I was going to my car-”

“Did you see anyone in the parking ramp?” Kovac asked.

“No.”

“In the skyway?”

“No. I went to pull my keys out of my purse-”

“You should have had them out before you left the government center.”

She flicked an annoyed look at him. “I dropped my Palm Pilot, bent to pick it up, he hit me from behind, hard across the back, with some kind of club. He kept hitting me, cursing me. I was trying to grab my car keys.”

“Where was your wallet?”

“I dropped my purse when he knocked me down. Everything spilled out of it.”

Kovac and Liska exchanged a glance.

“And he was calling you names, hitting you?” Liska said.

“Yes.”

“‘You fucking bitch, you fucking cunt,’” Kovac said.

“Yes.”

“And when did he go for your wallet?”

“I don’t know. I hit the alarm on my car key. He slammed my head down. I lost consciousness.”

“He took your wallet as he left,” Kovac said.

“I guess.”

Then the wallet hadn’t been his first objective. Purse snatchers snatched purses. Muggers hit and ran. This guy had been focused on his victim, personalized the attack by calling her names, prolonged the attack, grabbed the wallet as an afterthought as he took off.

“He knocked you down from behind and he kept hitting you?” Kovac said. “Where was he? Standing over you?”

“No. Closer. I remember he grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. I felt his weight on me.”

“So he was on his knees? Maybe straddling you?”

She knew where he was going, and she didn’t want to hear it. Carey Moore had prosecuted more than her share of violent crimes-assaults, rapes, murders. She didn’t want to admit that someone might have tried to rape her, kill her.

“Was your driver’s license in your wallet?” Liska asked.

“Yes.”

“Is the address on the license your home address?”

“No. I’ve known better than that for a long time, Detective.”

“Was there anything in your purse that might have had your home address on it?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, staring down at her hands, which had been scraped badly on the concrete. Several fingernails were broken and jagged.

“No. I don’t think so,” she said at last, the strength in her voice draining away. “I’m very tired. I want to go home. I didn’t see the man who attacked me. I can’t tell you anything that will be of any use to you. Can we wrap this up?”

“Did you have anything with you besides your purse?” Liska asked.

“My briefcase. Did someone pick it up? I have work to do over the weekend.”

“No one at the scene said anything about a briefcase,” Kovac said. “They have your purse and the stuff that came out of it. What was in the briefcase?”

He could see a little panic creeping in around the edges of her composure. “Briefs, reports, letters regarding sentencing recommendations.”

“Something every mugger would want,” Kovac commented with sarcasm.

Carey Moore ignored him. “The briefcase was my father’s. It’s important to me.”

“Any paper in it regarding The State v. Karl Dahl?”

She refused to look at him, pissed off because he was proving her wrong in her assumption the attack was random. He couldn’t really blame her. Nobody wanted to think of themselves as a specific target of violence.

“Yes.”

“We’ll also need to know what other cases you’ve presided over in the recent past,” Liska said. “Who might have a grudge. Who’s up for a stiff sentence. Cons you sent up who’ve been recently released. Anything.”

“Yes,” said the judge in a voice that was barely a whisper. The adrenaline had burned off, and she was headed for the lowest of lows, Kovac knew. He’d seen it a thousand times. He’d been a victim of it himself once or twice.

“Can your husband come and get you, Judge Moore?” Liska asked. “You can’t drive yourself.”

“I’ll call a car service.”

“You don’t seem in any shape to go anywhere,” Kovac said, wondering where the hell this husband was. His wife had been assaulted. There was a better-than-even chance that the attack could have been an attempt on her life. “He’s out of town, your husband?”

“He’s at a business dinner. I can manage.”

“Does he know you’re here? Have you called him?”

“He’s at dinner. He turned his phone off.”

The jaw was tightening again. She didn’t want to talk about the absent husband. She would rather scrape herself out of a hospital bed, deal with a concussion, some cracked ribs, and an emotional trauma by herself, than try to find the one person who should have made it to the hospital before Kovac and Liska had.

“Where’s the dinner?” Kovac asked. “If you’re going home, you need someone to be there with you. We can call the restaurant, or send a couple of uniforms to tell him.”

“I don’t know where the dinner is,” she said curtly. “There’s no need to interrupt him. My nanny lives in.”

Kovac glanced at Liska and raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll drive you home, Judge Moore,” he said. “As soon as you’ve signed your way out of here.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

“Well, I believe that it is, and that’s what’s going to happen,” he said flatly. “You’re a target, and you’re smart enough to know it. I’ll take you home, see that your house is secure.”

Carey Moore said nothing, her gaze fixed stubbornly on her hands. Kovac took her silence as acquiescence.

“Good to know you haven’t lost all your common sense,” he grumbled.

“We can’t say the same thing about you, Detective, or you wouldn’t be treating me like this,” she said.

Kovac sniffed. “Like what? I’m not treating you any differently than I treat anyone.”

“I guess that explains your lack of advancement in the department.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “But unlike some people, my career isn’t about ambition. It’s about catching bad guys.”