Prior Bad Acts

by Tami Hoag

  “I’ve been looking for any record of Stan Dempsey owning property other than his house,” Elwood said. “Nothing. But I did discover there are forty-one land-owning Dempseys in the metro area. One of them might be a relative. I’ve got people making those calls right now.”

  “Did we locate his ex?” Liska asked.

  “In a cemetery,” the lieutenant said. “She passed away last year. Brain tumor.

  “And I’ve heard nothing from the daughter,” Dawes went on. “I reached out to the Portland PD to ask them to locate her if they can.”

  “Did anyone warn Kenny Scott about Stan?” Kovac asked. “As Dahl’s defense attorney, he’s a prime target.”

  “I called him,” Dawes said. “Got his machine. I’ve dispatched a radio car to go over there and sit on his house until he shows up. Hopefully, he got out of town for the weekend.”

  “He might want to think of making that a permanent move,” Tippen said. “If his address goes public, he’s going to have angry villagers with their pitchforks and torches on his front lawn.”

  “He’s court appointed,” Dawes said. “He didn’t choose to represent Karl Dahl.”

  “No,” Tippen conceded, “but he chose to represent him with zeal.”

  “Minnesotans hate zeal,” Elwood said. “Zeal is right up there on the list of suspicious emotional behaviors like joy and despair.”

  “Always err on the side of blandness,” Tippen advised.

  Dawes turned to Kovac. “Sam, what have you got?”

  “A headache,” he said. “I don’t like the husband’s alibi witnesses. One is too slick; the other is a hooker. Moore checked into the Marquette around three yesterday. Moore and the hooker were in the lobby bar from six, six-fifteen on. In between time he was banging the hooker, not beating his wife’s head in. The slick one, Edmund Ivors, joined them around seven.”

  “Edmund Ivors?” Tippen repeated. “I know that name from somewhere.”

  “He’s some kind of multiplex movie mogul,” Kovac said. “The most interesting part is that they were joined briefly by a third guy. Neither Moore nor Ivors mentioned a third man when I questioned them. The bartender described the guy as thirtyish, blond, dark jeans, black jacket, black T-shirt. Was there for maybe ten minutes.”

  “Long enough to say, ‘Hey, I tried to kill your wife. I got run off. I want my money,’” said Dawes.

  “That’s what it looks like to me. We’ll need paperwork to get the hotel to hand over the surveillance video.”

  “Did the bartender see them make an exchange of some kind?”

  Kovac shook his head. “She was busy. She saw the guy talking with them; then she didn’t see him. Dickhead Moore, Slick, and the Bird woman then went off to dinner and Christ knows what else. The bartender said Ivors struck her as the kind of slimebag who likes to watch.”

  Liska crinkled her nose. “Eeewww!”

  “What’s Moore ’s motive?” Elwood asked. “Besides that he’s an asshole.”

  “Money,” Kovac said. “She divorces him, he gets half. He has her killed, he gets it all.”

  “Is she divorcing him?” Liska asked, watching him with particular scrutiny.

  “The handwriting is on the wall,” Kovac said, avoiding her eyes. He wouldn’t betray Carey’s trust. No one needed to know the famous final scene was still hours away, least of all Liska. “That clown’s been living off her for a while now, I’d say. He hasn’t made a film in years. He’s out running with the dogs while she’s in the hospital with a concussion. You can cut the tension between them with a knife.”

  “She’s got money?” Dawes asked.

  “Family money,” Tippen said. “The Greers of old were in the lumber business. Huge fortunes were amassed on the backs of immigrant lumberjacks. Alec Greer’s father branched out to mining taconite when that was still lucrative, and got out while the getting was good. Judge Greer is well off. Unless he leaves it all to charity, his daughter should inherit a bundle.”

  Dawes raised her eyebrows. “Thank you, Mr. History Channel.”

  “I’m a Renaissance man,” Tippen said. “A bon vivant. A raconteur.”

  “You’re full of crap,” Liska said, tossing a ballpoint pen at him.

  Tippen fired back a chocolate-covered coffee bean. Liska squealed as it hit her in the forehead.

  Dawes assumed the role of mother. “Tippen, do I have to take those away from you before you put someone’s eye out?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Is Judge Moore’s father healthy?” she asked Kovac.

  “No. On his way out. Carey is his only child-”

  Liska burned a look into him and mouthedCarey?

  “If she’s out of the picture, then the old man’s money would pass to his only grandchild, her daughter, Lucy. Lucy’s five years old. Moore would have control of whatever she inherited.”

  “This is all a neat theory,” Dawes said. “What do you have to back it up?”

  “My years of experience and wisdom,” Kovac said. “Get me a warrant and I’ll prove it. A search warrant for the house and a warrant for Dickhead’s financials.”

  “And what are you going to use to get a warrant, Detective?” Dawes asked. “Your good looks?”

  “And charming personality.”

  Dawes rolled her eyes. “What have you got, Nikki?”

  “Nothing much. I haven’t been able to confirm Bobby Haas’s alibi or to break it. One strange thing: When I was talking to him today, he told me that Marlene Haas was his stepmother, and his real mother died of cancer. But when I spoke to the caseworker from social services, she told me the kid’s adopted, that his birth mother committed suicide, and Wayne Haas’s first wife died from a broken neck when she fell down the basement stairs with a basket of laundry.”

  “So nobody had cancer?” Elwood said.

  Liska shook her head. “No. That’s a pretty weird thing to lie about, wouldn’t you say?”

  “How old is this kid?” Tippen asked.

  “Seventeen.”

  “And he’s had that much violent tragedy in his life?” Dawes asked. “Maybe he just wanted to eliminate one of them. How would a kid feel, having all of that in his background? The only thing my fifteen-year-old son wants is to be exactly like everybody else his age.

  “This boy probably feels like people think he’s some kind of a freak. At least saying his mother died of cancer is something other kids have a frame of reference for.”

  Liska looked at Kovac. He knew her well enough to see all the subtle signs that something about this kid was bothering her.

  He shrugged. “You can’t arrest the kid for saying his mother died of cancer when she didn’t. And if you can’t get a witness to put him at the parking ramp, you can’t pin the assault on him.

  “I’m putting my money on the future ex.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Liska said.

  Kovac lowered his eyebrows.

  “I’m taking Dempsey,” Tippen said. “He’s openly crazy. He’s made threats. What’s beating a woman with a club to a guy who might be willing to torture someone with an electric carving knife?”

  “No wagering in my presence, please,” Dawes announced. “Let’s all get back to it. We’ve got to make something happen.”

  “Any word on Karl Dahl?” Kovac asked as he rose from his seat.

  She shook her head. “The man has vanished. The dogs never got on a scent. No one credible has seen him. We’re getting the usual tips from psychics and religious fanatics and people who just call because they’re lonely and they want someone to talk to. And lots of dead ends. I’ve got uniforms running all over town, chasing down bald-headed men.”

  “He’s the kind of guy who lives off the radar,” Tippen said. “A shadow figure on society’s fringes.”

  “I thought that was you,” Liska said, standing up.

  Tippen gave her a mean look. “You’re very short and perky.”

  “Fuck you.”

  As they all moved tow
ard the door, Dawes nodded for Kovac to hang behind.

  “You have that strong a feeling about Judge Moore’s husband?”

  “You’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg of my hatred for this jerk.”

  “I’ll make sure we get the security video from the hotel bar ASAP. Maybe we can get a line on this mystery man. We can at least compare the video to the one from the parking ramp. See if it could be the same guy.”

  “If I could get Moore ’s financials, maybe I could find evidence of payoffs for the hit.”

  “I don’t see a judge giving us a warrant based on what we have, Sam. Do you think Judge Moore would swear out a complaint on him?”

  “For what? If being a lousy husband was against the law, I’d be doing twenty-five to life,” Kovac said. “Besides, I don’t think she would do it. She has her daughter to consider. And her reputation. I don’t see her filing a complaint on some half-baked accusation just to get the Dickhead in our box so we can break him.”

  Dawes sighed. “Do you have any excuse to bring him in for questioning?”

  Kovac thought of the file folder he’d locked in the trunk of his car. He’d only glimpsed through it, but he knew there was plenty of evidence of Moore ’s infidelity. But if he brought David Moore in for that, then he tipped Carey’s hand.

  Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  “I could ask him to come in for a noncustodial interview,” he said.

  “Will he cooperate?”

  “No,” he conceded. “He won’t cooperate. The first thing he’ll do is squeal for a lawyer, and then we’re fucked.”

  He looked away and sighed. “I don’t know what to say, Boss. I’d throw the jerk into a snake pit if I could, but if we bring him in on what I’ve got, that just gives him time to circle the wagons, tip off the doer.”

  Dawes nodded. “All right. We can put a tail on him.”

  “You can get the overtime for that?”

  “Already blessed from on high. The brass wants this doer’s head on a silver platter.”

  “I mean to make that happen,” Kovac said. “I’ll even stick an apple in his mouth for the ceremony.”

  31

  THE TRIAL WAS over. It hadn’t come out well for Kenny Scott, Esquire, but justice had been done. Swift and terrible.

  Stan was shaking, sweating, exhilarated. There was still a small part of his brain that was horrified and terrified of the other emotions roaring through him. But that part was smaller and smaller, weaker and weaker. With justice came strength. Might with right.

  Stan’s justice was pure and simple. There were no games, no loopholes, no getting off on a technicality. There was only right and wrong.

  For the first time in his life, Stan Dempsey felt powerful.

  To any casual observer going down the street, Kenny Scott simply wasn’t at home. Stan had turned off the television before he left. He had taken Kenny Scott’s car and parked it a block away, then walked back to his truck.

  If his former colleagues discovered Kenny Scott too quickly, they would have a target area to look for him, and the intensity of the search would be fierce. Stan couldn’t have them find him before his job was done.

  He calmly drove to another neighborhood and parked his uncle’s truck. In the back, under the camper shell, he ate a couple of bologna sandwiches with slices of midget gherkins in them and drank some coffee from his thermos.

  He didn’t think about what he had just done. He didn’t try to recall the panic in the lawyer’s eyes, the screams the man had to swallow behind the duct tape that covered his mouth.

  The rush the memory of meting out punishment gave was a thing unique to criminals, to serial killers, to men like Karl Dahl. That reaction belonged to the criminals who indulged in cruelty because it excited them. For those men, the memories were as important as the crime itself. They would relive their exploits over and over in their minds.

  Stan didn’t think of himself as a criminal. He was just doing a necessary job no one else would do.

  He finished his lunch and cleaned his hands off with a wet wipe. It was time for him to move on to the next name on his list.

  Carey Moore.

  32

  IT SEEMED TO take days for the hours to pass. Carey spent the rest of the afternoon in her bedroom with Lucy, playing nurse, taking her temperature with a toy thermometer, and giving her “medicine”-M amp;M’s.

  They napped, though Carey couldn’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. The tension was exhausting. She passed the time second-guessing herself.

  Maybe this wasn’t the time to confront David. Maybe she should wait until the rest of this nightmare was over. Except that she didn’t know her husband wasn’t a part of it. She didn’t want to stay under the same roof with a man who might have arranged to have her killed. She didn’t want her daughter in the same house as him.

  She worried about Lucy, who was already feeling insecure and clingy. But was there ever a good time for a child’s parents to end their marriage? No.

  She thought about sending Lucy to Kate and John Quinn’s home for the night. Lucy loved sleepovers and was friends with the Quinns’ daughter Haley. But Carey didn’t want her daughter out of her control, or out of her sight, for that matter. Things were too uncertain. And she didn’t want to potentially put John and Kate in harm’s way if Stan Dempsey had decided to go after her daughter to make her pay for Carey’s sins. He could have been watching the house, for all she knew. He could follow her to the Quinns’.

  She would wait to speak to David until after Lucy was asleep. Anka would make sure Lucy didn’t go downstairs in the event she woke up. Carey was very thankful the nanny had insisted on staying the weekend, even though Saturday and Sunday were usually her days off. Anka wouldn’t hear of leaving. Her responsibility was to the family.

  What a sad thing, Carey thought, that she could trust her nanny more than she could trust her husband.

  David ordered Chinese for dinner. Lucy was a big fan of moo goo gai pan. David’s appetite was as healthy as ever. Carey picked at her egg-fried rice, continuously rearranging it on her plate but eating only a few grains. She rested an elbow on the table and her head in her hand and stared down at the bright bits of peas and carrots dotting the rice like confetti.

  “How’s your moo goo, Lucy Goosie?” David asked, smiling at his daughter.

  “I’m Fairy Princess Lucy now, Daddy! Detective Sam said so.”

  “Detective Sam?” He looked at Carey.

  “He was at the courthouse, Daddy,” Lucy went on. “He was my pretend giant, and he carried me all the way to the car. Isn’t that nice?”

  “Yes, very,” David said. “Why was he at the courthouse?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucy said with a big shrug, going back to her dinner.

  “I’m his case,” Carey said. “He was keeping tabs on me.”

  “You should have stayed in the hospital,” David said for the tenth time.

  “So I could not eat there?” she said too sharply. “So they could force-feed me Jell-O?”

  “I like Jell-O,” Lucy piped up. “I like green Jell-O best. My friend Kelly’s mom puts pieces of carrots in her green Jell-O. Isn’t that weird?”

  Carey smiled at her daughter.

  “I like pineapple in mine,” Lucy said. “It’s pretty.”

  “You look ready to collapse, Carey,” David said. “And you’re out running around like you think you’re fine. You’ve exhausted yourself.”

  He actually looked concerned for her, and she wondered if any of that look was genuine. A part of her hoped so, even though her practical side told her no. If David cared about her, he wouldn’t have been doing what he’d been doing. The more likely explanation was that he wanted her out of his hair so he could do whatever he wanted to do over the weekend. What had Kovac said her name was? Ginnie.

  “Did you get your paperwork?” he asked. “I didn’t see you bring anything in from the car.”

  “I forgot it was
in my briefcase, which was stolen.”

  “So you went down there for nothing.”

  “Do I need to pay you back for the gas I used?” Carey asked with a fine edge of sarcasm.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  He went to say something more but stopped himself, held up his hands in surrender, and pushed back from the table. “Excuse me, ladies. I have work to do. I’m applying for a grant for the film.”

  Carey didn’t comment. Before this day, she would have encouraged him, tried to be supportive, even though she had long since tired of that game. The time for being David’s cheerleader had passed. The time to move on had arrived.

  The evening was passed with Lucy, painting toenails and reading stories. After she had tucked her daughter in bed and sat with her until she’d gone to sleep, Carey showered and dressed in a loose pair of jeans and an oversized black button-down shirt. It was one of her father’s old shirts. Wrapping herself in it was like wrapping herself in the memory of her father’s strength.

  It was important to her to feel as strong and secure as she could. Confronting David in pajamas wouldn’t do that.

  Lucy had been in bed nearly an hour. Once she was sound asleep, it was rare for her to wake up before morning. The sleep of the innocent, Carey thought. She envied her daughter that.

  David sat at his desk, staring at the computer screen and nursing a drink.

  Carey stood outside the den, watching him for a moment before he looked up.

  “I thought you went to bed.”

  She took a deep breath and walked into the room. “We need to talk.”

  The four most ominous words with which to open a conversation.

  David just sat there for a moment, then clicked his mouse to make his screen go dark. The top-secret grant application. My ass, Carey thought. He was probably having virtual sex with one of his prostitute friends. He didn’t get up, keeping the solid mass of the desk like a shield between them.

  “I want a divorce,” she said bluntly.