Prior Bad Acts

by Tami Hoag

  “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 p
erson 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.”

  7

  KARL DAHL WAS a watcher. He never had much to say. He never had any friends. People didn’t notice him, as a rule. He had learned long ago to melt into the background.

  Over the years different people had given him the nickname “Ghost.” He had always been pale, with a sort of a strange gray cast to him. His eyes were gray. His skin had a certain grayness to it.

  Different people in his growing-up years had suggested he had maybe gotten lead poisoning or mercury poisoning or some other kind of poisoning. Karl had always figured none of that was the case, else he would have been dead or sickly.

  He’d been in jail before. A few times. Jail was not a place to draw attention. Especially not for men with certain proclivities. After his first brutal experience, he had managed to more or less stay out of harm’s way the next time, and the next. But he couldn’t be anonymous this time.

  This time everyone in the jail knew who he was and what he had been accused of doing. Everyone in the place hated him. Guards and hardened criminals alike hated him enough to want to hurt him, kill him. Other inmates spat at him when they got the chance. Some shouted threats. It had been made clear that if he fell into the hands of the general population, he wouldn’t come out alive.

  Today had been worse than most. Judge Moore had ruled on his “prior bad acts,” as the lawyers called them. News of her ruling had gone through the place like wildfire. The prosecution wouldn’t be allowed to talk about anything he’d been accused or convicted of prior to the Haas murders. That would be a good thing for him, except he didn’t believe a jury would acquit him, no matter what. One of the guards called him Dead Man Walking, and Karl figured that was about right if he stayed in jail.