Prior Bad Acts

6

LISKA DISTRACTED THE press in the waiting room with a brief statement and a lot of “No comment” and “I can’t speak to that at this point in the investigation.”

Kovac rolled Carey Moore in a wheelchair through a warren of halls to a little-used side exit, where an orderly had brought Kovac’s car around. The judge had nothing to say as he helped her into the passenger seat and drove out onto the city streets.

“Where do you live?” he asked.

She gave the address in the same short, clipped tone she might use with an anonymous cabdriver. Her home was a short distance and a world away from downtown Minneapolis, in an area of large, stately houses overlooking Lake of the Isles. He had ten minutes-fifteen tops-to get something useful out of her.

“You’ll have one hell of a headache tomorrow,” he said.

She stared straight ahead. “I have a hell of a headache right now.”

“You don’t think that the attack seemed personal?”

“By definition, a physical assault is personal, wouldn’t you say?”

“You know what I mean. Leave the lawyer bullshit on the side, Judge. You’ve been in the system long enough to know better.”

“Oh? You don’t believe lawyers are too obtuse and egomaniacal to pick up on the fact that not all cops are mentally challenged?”

Kovac shot a glance at her. Every time they passed a streetlight, the harsh white light swept over her face, pale as a ghost.

“I think there wasn’t enough time between news of my ruling and my departure from the building for a disgruntled citizen to formulate a plan to kill me,” she said.

“Never underestimate the capabilities of a really determined scumbag.”

“I’ll stitch that on a sampler while I’m recuperating over the weekend.”

“People knew you were going to rule on Dahl’s past record today. Maybe someone anticipated the worst. I know I did.”

“So where were you between six-thirty and seven, Detective Kovac?”

“Doing a bunch of bullshit paperwork on an assault case you’ll probably dismiss next week.”

“I will if you haven’t done your job properly,” she said.

“Are you saying Stan Dempsey didn’t dot all his i’s and cross all his t’s on the Haas murders?”

“I’m saying my job is more complicated than you choose to believe. I don’t make rulings based on whim. Being a judge is not being a rubber stamp for the police department or for the county attorney’s office. I don’t have the luxury of bias anymore.”

Her temper was bubbling just under the surface. He could hear it in her voice. He’d been in the courtroom to testify when she had been a prosecutor. Cool, controlled, but with a sharp edge and an aggressive streak beneath the veneer of calm, she had been fun to watch. Exciting, even. And the fact that she was attractive hadn’t hurt anything, either.

She had known how to use her looks, too, in a way that was subtle, and classy. Many a man in the witness box had fallen for the trap and come away from the experience mentally eviscerated without even quite realizing how it had happened.

“You think I’m not appalled by the murder of Marlene Haas and those two children?” she said. “You think I don’t see those crime scene photos in my sleep? Those children mutilated and hanging by their necks like broken dolls? You think I don’t want their killer to pay? To pay more than this state’s justice system can dole out?”

There were tears in her voice now. She was wrung out, her ability to keep emotions at bay worn away in the aftermath of being attacked.

Kovac pushed at her limits. “Then why don’t you have the guts to do something about it?”

“I should make rulings in favor of the prosecution so they can be immediately overturned on appeal?”

“The buck has to stop somewhere.”

“It does. It stops with me. I want convictions to stand up on their own, not lean against personal prejudices, not be open to debate or attack.”

“So you let defense attorneys just have their way? You let these dirtbag rapists and killers have more rights than the people whose lives they’ve ruined?” Kovac said, his own temper rising.

“I do my job,” she snapped. “I’m going to be sick.”

“Me too.”

“No. I’m going to be sick. Now.”

Kovac glanced over at her. She was leaning forward and breathing too quickly. “Oh! Jesus!”

He swerved the car to the curb and hit the brakes too hard. Carey Moore pushed the door open, turned, and fell out onto the pavement, retching.

Christ, Kovac thought as he shoved the car into park and bolted out the driver’s door, this was all he needed, to be responsible for further injuring a judge. That could go on his record right above insubordination.

She was on her hands and knees, half in the gutter, half on the sidewalk, heaving. Kovac knelt down beside her, not sure if he should touch her.

“Are you all right?” he asked stupidly.

In a stronger moment she would have decapitated him for being an asshole. Now she simply drew herself into a ball, shaking, and, he thought, maybe crying. He began to wish he’d stayed behind with the press and let Liska drive her home. He barely knew how to handle women when they weren’t crying.

Fumbling, he dug a handkerchief out of his hip pocket and held it out to her. He put his other hand on her shoulder.

“It’s clean,” he said. “Let me help you up.”

The judge took a blind swing at him. “Leave me alone!”

She took a couple of shaky breaths and pushed herself up, sitting back against her heels. “Just take me home and leave me the hell alone!”

A little way down the street, a couple of hookers stood outside a tattoo parlor, smoking Christ knew what and staring. The tall one in red took a couple of steps toward them.

“Honey? You need a cop?”

Kovac scowled. “I’m a cop.”

“I wasn’t axing you.” She took a couple of steps closer. NBA tall, with an Adam’s apple the size of a fist. Transvestite. “I’m axing the lady.”

Carey Moore held up a hand. “I’m fine. Thank you. He’s fine. He’s driving me home.”

“Looks like he’s been driving you with a golf club, sugar.”

“She was mugged,” Kovac said.

The transvestite sniffed in disbelief. Kovac dug out his badge and held it out. “You want to get in the car too? I can give you a ride to Booking.”

“For what? Standing up?”

“For pissing me off.”

“Kovac, shut up,” the judge snapped. “I want to go home.”

The transvestite went back to the tattoo parlor as Kovac helped Carey Moore to her feet. As wobbly as a newborn fawn, she tried to steady herself with a hand on the roof of the car, but started to fall again as her knees gave way.

Kovac caught her against him. “Easy. You should have stayed in the hospital. I’m taking you back.”

“You’re taking me home,” she said stubbornly. “I can vomit without a medical professional supervising.”

“You’re dizzy.”

“I have a concussion. Of course I’m dizzy.”

Kovac helped her ease back down into the passenger’s seat and squatted down in front of her so he could see her face in the glow of the streetlight and the neon in the window of the pawnshop behind him. She looked like she might have been an extra in Dawn of the Dead, but there was still a glint of determination in her eyes.

“You’re a hell of a tough cookie, Judge. I’ll say that for you. But that’s not always the smartest thing to be.”

“Just take me home,” she said. “You can come back and visit your girlfriend later.”

Kovac recognized the glow two blocks before they came onto the source. The brilliant white lights the television news people used to create the impression that the sun had crashed to earth.

“Oh, fuck this,” he growled as the vans came into view. It wasn’t going to matter a damn whether the perp had gotten Carey Moore’s address out of her wallet or her briefcase. He could get it now, sitting at home in his underwear, watching the goddamn news. “They double-teamed us.”

He glanced over at the judge. She looked as stunned as she had probably looked when she got hit from behind in that parking ramp.

“Looks like one of your neighbors ratted you out,” Kovac said, just to be cranky. The truth of it was, it isn’t all that hard to find people.The State v. Karl Dahl was a huge case that had garnered national attention. Newspeople could have been trailing Carey Moore since the day the trial was assigned to her. Anyone could have.

A couple of police cruisers were parked cockeyed in the street, the uniforms trying to keep the newsies corralled in a manageable space, a job about as easy as herding cats.

“Oh, my God. This is my home,” the judge said, mostly to herself.

“All’s fair in the news business,” Kovac said. “These people would plant themselves in the devil’s asshole if they thought they could get a jump on the competition.”

“I don’t want them here.”

“Yeah, well, good luck with that. Is there a back way in? An alley?”

“No.”

“Duck down before they see you,” Kovac said. He turned the wheel and glided the car in along the curb, running his window down.

“Hey!” he shouted at a reporter and a cameraman who had snagged a prime spot in the judge’s driveway with a wedge of the house as a backdrop. “Get the fuck out of the driveway! You’re on private property!”

He turned to Carey Moore and lowered his voice. “Let’s hope they were rolling live. Their producers flip out if someone uses the F word.”

Kovac put on his game face, got out of the car, and approached the news crew, holding up his badge. “Pack up your toys and get out in the street with the rest of your kind.”

He recognized the reporter, a perky blonde with too much blush. Mindy. Mandy. Cindy. She stuck a microphone at him. “Detective, Candy Cross, Channel Three News. What can you tell us about Judge Moore’s condition?”

“Nothing. Pack it up and get out of the way.”

“We’re here to speak with Judge Moore-”

“I don’t care if you’re here for the Second Coming, princess,” Kovac said. “You’re on private property, and I can have you removed and charged for that. How would you like your pals out there to roll that film at ten?”

The mob was now moving toward them, handheld lights bobbing up and down, red lights glowing on cameras. They sounded like a pack of dogs at dinnertime, all barking at once, each trying to drown out the others.

“Move it or lose it,” Kovac said, starting back toward the car. “I’m driving up to this garage, and I don’t care if your shit’s in the way.”

The second team, Kovac thought as his gaze scanned over the herd. The stations had sent their first teams to the hospital at the news of Carey Moore’s attack. The second teams had ended up here.

He held up a hand to ward them off. “I got nothing to say. Lieutenant Dawes will have a statement for you tomorrow.”

They went back to shouting questions as if he hadn’t spoken at all. Kovac shook his head and went to the nearest pair of uniforms.

“Get them off this property,” he instructed. “They can go to the other side of the street. I’ve got Judge Moore, and if I see one flashbulb go off in her face as we go into this house, I’m gonna shoot somebody. Got it?”

“They don’t use flashbulbs anymore,” the younger officer said as if that would change everything.

Kovac glowered at him. “Are you brain damaged?” He turned to the older partner. “Is he brain damaged?”

The partner shrugged. “Maybe.”

Kovac shook his head. “Just get them out of here.”

“Will do, Detective.”

As he turned toward his car, Kovac saw no sign of Judge Moore, and had a second’s flash of panic. Then he realized she had slid way down in the seat and covered herself with her coat.

“Stay right there,” he murmured as he slipped into the driver’s seat. “They’ll be out of the way in a minute.”

Carey Moore said nothing. Kovac took a peek under the coat to make sure she hadn’t expired. She hadn’t, but she looked like she might welcome death soon. Her skin was gray, her face pasty with sweat. She looked like she was maybe going to be sick again.

“Hang in there,” Kovac said, his eyes on the reluctant migration of the media. As he waited for the reporters to retreat, he took a moment to check out the judge’s digs.

Her home was a well-lit, impressive redbrick colonial with a couple of white columns flanking the front door. Kovac figured his whole house and garage combined was maybe half the size. The shrubbery was clipped, the leaves had been raked, a trio of uncarved pumpkins sat beside the glossy black front door. A tasteful wrought-iron gate kept the riffraff from going up the walk.

It was the kind of place where a person would want to go in and expect to feel warm and welcome. Kovac would go home to a dark, square box that needed paint.

He put the car in gear, pulled up into the driveway at an angle to minimize the view of the passenger’s side. He went around to open the door and helped Carey Moore out of the car, keeping her coat pulled up high around her face. With an arm around her shoulders to support her, he shielded her as they went through the side gate and up to the front door.

As they stepped up onto the stoop, the judge rang the doorbell and leaned against the sidelight, peering into the house.

“Where are your keys?”

“I don’t know,” she confessed.

“You had them with you before the attack?”

“In my purse.”

“You’ll change these locks tomorrow. First thing.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll have a radio car sitting out front until that happens,” he told her. “What else did you lose that you haven’t told me about?”

“Nothing,” she said, but he knew she was lying. The perp probably had her phone numbers, her mother’s maiden name, and half her credit cards. He would get a list of the cards and alert the credit card companies. If the perp was using them, he was leaving an electronic trail.

The door swung open and a gorgeous blond twenty-something in a pink velour tracksuit looked wide-eyed at the judge. She said something in what Kovac figured was Swedish or Norwegian or something else from one of those Scandinavian places where everyone looks like they’ve been designed by computer as models for the master race.

“Oh, my God, Mrs. Moore!”

“It looks worse than it is,” Carey said quietly. “Please don’t make a fuss, Anka. Is Lucy asleep?”

“Ya. Just a little while ago,” the nanny said.

Kovac helped the judge with her coat, and the nanny took it from him, but she never took her worried eyes off her boss. “But she is worried about you. She didn’t want to go to bed. And she made me leave on the light on the side table.”

The judge slid down onto an antique carved chair and closed her eyes for a moment. Kovac introduced himself to the nanny, Anka Jorgenson.

“You’ve been here all evening?” he asked.

“Ya.”

“Have there been any strange phone calls? Hang-up calls?”

“No. There was a wrong number,” Anka said as an afterthought. “About an hour ago.”

“Who did the person ask for?”

“Marlene. I told him there was no such person here.”

The judge opened her eyes at that and looked at Kovac. If she could have gotten any paler, she would have.

Marlene, as in Marlene Haas? Kovac thought. The woman Karl Dahl had opened up from throat to groin. He had planted fresh-cut daisies in the gaping wound as if she had been some strange and macabre sculpture in a surrealist gallery. Carey Moore was probably thinking the same thing.

“Was the caller a man or a woman?” Kovac asked.

“A man. He was very polite,” the nanny said as if that meant he couldn’t have been a bad person. “He apologized for the mistake.”

“Has anyone come to the door this evening?”

“No.”

“Have you heard any strange noises outside?”

The nanny’s eyes filled with tears as she looked back and forth from Kovac to her boss. “Do you think this man who hurt you will come here? Who is Marlene?”

“Just being cautious,” Kovac said. “Don’t open the door to anyone you don’t know. I don’t care if they tell you their mother is lying bleeding to death in the street.”

“You’re scaring me,” Anka said, sounding almost angry or resentful.

Kovac nodded. “Good. Does this phone have caller ID?”

“Yes,” Anka said. She picked up the handheld off the hall table, scrolled through the caller list, and held it out to Kovac.

“Can you write the number down for me?” he asked. “I’m going to help Judge Moore upstairs.”

“I can manage,” she said, using the table to help herself to her feet.

Kovac put an arm around her shoulders and guided her toward the staircase. “Stop being such a goddamn pain in the ass. I’m helping you, and that’s the end of it. You fall and break your neck on my watch, my head goes on the block.”

He wanted to pick her up, toss her over his shoulder, and carry her like a sack of potatoes, but he didn’t want to have to explain the complaint that that would bring to his lieutenant.

“Don’t even think of saying the word ‘coincidence,’” he warned as they slowly went up the stairs. “Marlene isn’t that common a name, and even if it was, the odds of someone calling here by mistake and asking for someone with the same name as the victim in a case you’re trying have to be astronomical.”

She didn’t say anything at all, but she stopped in the bathroom at the top of the hall, dropped to her knees in front of the toilet, and vomited again.

Kovac dampened a hand towel and gave it to her. She accepted it in silence and sat there on the floor for several moments with her face buried in it.

“Can I assume you have an unlisted phone number?” Kovac asked, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub.

“Yes, of course.”

“We’ll need to set up a trap on your line. This won’t be the only call you’ll get.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because the call came after the attack. If we’re talking about the same mutt, then he’s in this for more than your wallet.”

She didn’t look at him. She was staring at nothing, her expression bleak.

“You should lie down,” Kovac said, reaching out once again to help her to her feet.

She paid no attention to him and stopped at the door to her daughter’s room, which was adorned with a fanciful painted fairy touching a magic wand to a sign that read: “Princess Lucy’s Room.” Leaning against the doorjamb, she turned the knob carefully and peeked inside. Kovac looked in over her head.

Princess Lucy was sleeping the sleep of the innocent in a bed with pale pink sheets and a confection of white quilts and comforters and bed skirts. Cute kid. Maybe four or five, with a mop of wavy dark hair and a mouth like a rosebud. A small lamp with a ruffled lavender shade glowed softly on a table across from the bed.

Carey Moore watched her daughter sleep for a moment, her cheek pressed to the frame of the door, one hand pressed across her mouth. Kovac imagined she was realizing the decision she had made in her chambers today had ramifications that were rippling out far beyond the government center and beyond herself. Someone had reached out over a phone line and invaded her home, the place she should have felt most safe, the place her daughter should have been safe.

People never had a clue what an illusion their sense of safety was. A security system could be gone with the snip of a wire. A security building with a twenty-four-hour doorman still had a garage with a gate that stayed up long enough for a stranger to drive in behind a resident. A perimeter wall could always be scaled. Every e-mail ever sent could be retrieved with a couple of mouse clicks. One wrong set of eyes glancing at a social security number on a form, and an identity became a commodity for sale. One phone call and a sanctuary became a cage.

Kovac reached around the judge and drew the door closed.

“Let’s get you to bed before you fall down,” he murmured.

The Moores ’ master bedroom looked like it belonged in some five-star hotel. Not that Kovac had ever set foot in one. The places he stayed usually had disposable cups, one working lamp, and suspicious stains on the creepy polyester bedspread. He had, however, been known to watch the Travel Channel on occasion.

The room was a cocoon of heavy, expensive fabrics, warm, rich shades of gold and deep red, thick carpet, antiques, and spotlit art. Mementos were clustered on her nightstand-a silver-framed photo of a rosy-cheeked baby; a gold-leafed keepsake box with a top encrusted in tiny, exotic shells and seed pearls; a black-and-white photo of herself in a graduation cap and gown and a tall, handsome, well-dressed man with silver hair. Her dad, Judge Alec Greer. Neither of them could have looked more proud as they gazed at each other.

Kovac placed one of his business cards next to the photograph.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to track down your husband?” Kovac asked as the judge eased herself back against a mountain of elaborate pillows on the bed.

There were no photographs of Carey Moore with her spouse. Not on either night table. There might have been one on the bookcase on the far side of the room, but it couldn’t be seen from the bed.

“There’s no need,” she said quietly.

Kovac shrugged his shoulders. “Suit yourself. I just know if you were my wife and I knew you’d been attacked, I’d damn well be here. I don’t care if I was having dinner with the president.”

“You’ll make some lucky woman a good husband someday, then,” she murmured, closing her eyes, closing him and his opinions out.

“Well, I haven’t so far,” Kovac muttered as he left the room.

He was a two-time loser in the marriage-go-round. And still he knew enough to want to be with his partner if she was hurt and frightened. It was a husband’s job to protect and reassure. Apparently, Carey Moore’s husband didn’t know that.

The nanny was standing at the top of the stairs, wringing her hands, uncertain what to do.

“Has Mr. Moore called at all tonight?” Kovac asked.

“No, he hasn’t.”

“Is that the usual for him? He goes out, doesn’t check in with anybody? Doesn’t call to tell his daughter good night?”

“Mr. Moore is a very busy man,” she said. Defensive, her gaze just grazing his shoulder.

“How often is he gone in the evenings?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You live here, don’t you?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“Well, it is my business,” Kovac said. “Is he gone a lot?”

“A couple of nights a week,” she said grudgingly. “He’s a very-”

“Busy man. I know.”

He handed the girl his card.

“Will you call me when Mr. Moore gets home?” he asked. “No matter what time it is.”

She frowned at the card. Kovac imagined they didn’t have much crime in the Nordic countries. It was too damned cold, and the people were too polite and too damned good-looking. She was probably contemplating the next plane to Stockholm.

“Don’t let Mrs. Moore sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time,” he instructed as he started down the stairs. “She has a concussion. It’s important to wake her up during the night and make sure she knows her name and where she is.”

The nanny was still staring at his card when he turned to look at her from the front door.

“Tell her I sent you,” he suggested. “She’s already pissed off at me.”