Prior Bad Acts

by Tami Hoag

  Kovac and Logan walked down the hall, each closed off in his own mind, forming a plan for how this interview would go. When they stepped into the den, David Moore looked up from where he sat in one of the armchairs, nursing a drink. It was not yet noon.

  “I’m not talking to you, Kovac.”

  Kovac arched a brow. “Was it something I said?”

  Moore looked at Logan and said, “I’m not talking to him.”

  “That’s your right, David,” Logan said, matter-of-fact as he took a seat on the arm of the leather love seat.

  Kovac sat back against Moore ’s desk and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Should I have a lawyer present?” Moore asked.

  “I don’t know why you would want one,” Logan said. “You’re not under arrest for anything.”

  Moore ’s eyes darted from Logan to Kovac, Kovac to Logan, like a mouse sizing up his odds against a pair of tomcats.

  “I had nothing to do with Carey’s disappearance,” he said.

  Logan ignored him. “How long has your nanny been with the family?”

  “Uh, three years.”

  “She had good references when she came to you?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you called those references and spoke with her former employers?”

  “Carey did. Why? You can’t possibly think Anka has anything to do with this.”

  Kovac raised his brows as if he was surprised by the stupidity of Moore ’s statement. “Well, let’s look at the facts. The nanny is missing, the nanny’s car is missing, and your wife is missing.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Moore said. “Anka would never-”

  “Just how close is Anka with the family?” Logan asked.

  “She’s wonderful. She loves Lucy.”

  “What about with you?”

  “What about with me?” Moore looked confused, then disgusted. “Anka is my daughter’s nanny. That’s it.”

  “She’s a beautiful girl,” Kovac said. “Young, hot. She seemed very… devoted… to you.”

  Moore got up from his chair. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” Logan asked. “If I go upstairs and look through her things, I’m not going to find any photographs of you, of you and her?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been in her room.”

  “Oh, come on, David,” Kovac said. “You’re leading a double life. You’ve stashed one girlfriend in an apartment-we’re supposed to find it so hard to believe that you wouldn’t go for a little Swedish meatball?”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Why? You seem to have the moral backbone of a leech,” Logan said. “Why wouldn’t you be trying to screw the nanny?”

  “That’s it!” Moore shouted. “Get out! You can address any more questions you might have to my attorney.”

  “Your choice, David,” Logan said, calm again. “But if you take that route, I can’t play nice anymore.”

  “Nice?” Moore shouted, incredulous.

  “Hey, Logan?” Kovac asked. “He lawyers up, do I get my warrants?”

  “What do you want, Detective?”

  “Search and inventory the house, starting with the room we’re in; his financials-”

  “Follow the money,” Logan said.

  “Why aren’t you out trying to find my wife, instead of harassing me?” Moore asked.

  He was as pissed off as Kovac had seen him. And scared. There was panic in his eyes. He moved like a caged animal, back and forth, back and forth.

  “As we both know, she isn’t going to be your wife much longer,” Kovac said. “She was getting ready to toss you off the gravy train, Sport.”

  Red faced, Moore went around behind his desk and picked up the phone. The guy from the BCA looked at Kovac and Logan in disbelief. Moore was using the house phone when he was supposed to be waiting on pins and needles for a ransom call.

  “It’s David Moore,” he said. “I need an attorney. Now.”

  42

  KOVAC WALKED OUT of the den and up the stairs, leaving Logan to deal with David Moore. As soon as Moore invoked his right to counsel, that was it. The interview was over, from Kovac’s point of view. Anything incriminating Moore might say-if he was stupid enough to say anything at all-would be argued to be out of bounds by his attorney. And any evidence against him discovered as a result of such a statement would be out as well.

  Despite Liska’s statement to the contrary, Kovac wasn’t stupid enough to push that line. As badly as he wanted to beat an admission of guilt out of Carey’s husband, he turned and walked away.

  The crime scene team had finished processing the nanny’s bedroom. Kovac stood at the open door for a moment, looking in, trying to imagine what had gone on here.

  The bed, which looked as if no one had slept in it, had been stripped and the sheets taken away to be processed for fibers and bodily fluids. The carpet had been recently vacuumed.

  A lot could have happened here between the time of Kovac’s last conversation with Carey and the time the nanny’s car had pulled out of the driveway that morning. He couldn’t help but imagine the possibilities. He’d dealt with too many violent crimes and too many violent criminals.

  There had been no obvious signs of blood or semen in either bed. But murder could be committed without bloodshed. A rape could be concealed with a condom.

  If David Moore had hired out the apparent kidnapping, returning the victim wasn’t part of the deal. His objective was presumably to get rid of his wife, get her out of his way, and get his hands on her money. And as soon as the job had been handed over to the contractor, whatever else happened was out of Moore ’s control. Carey and the nanny, provided the nanny wasn’t part of the scheme, would have been entirely at the mercy of a cold-blooded killer.

  Kovac stepped into the room, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and started poking around for any sign that the Swedish girl might have had an inappropriate connection to her employer.

  The dresser was clutter-free. A small lamp on either end. A jewelry box. He lifted the lid. A couple of necklaces, earrings, nothing expensive.

  Three small framed photographs smudged with fingerprint dust sat on the nightstand beside the bed. Anka and a couple of friends on a hiking trip; Anka and her family, half a dozen identical blond Swedes of various ages from teens to fifties; Lucy Moore and Anka bundled in winter coats, beaming smiles, kneeling beside a snowman. David Moore crouched down behind them, one hand resting on Anka Jorgenson’s shoulder. Happy family. There were no photographs of the nanny with Carey Moore.

  The drawer of the nightstand held the kinds of things women everywhere kept in their nightstands-a nail file, hand lotion, lip balm, a couple of pens, an address book, a journal.

  Kovac lifted the journal and opened the cover, half expecting to read: Dear Diary, I think I’m in love with David Moore. What he found was a whole lot of Swedish. The big revelation, if there was to be one, would have to wait until they could get someone to translate. Luckily, in a state full of Scandinavian descendants, that wouldn’t take very long.

  Small comfort, he thought, considering they had no idea how much time they had. It could already be too late.

  He went to the closet and opened the door, looking for obvious signs that the nanny had packed a bag before she vanished. But there was no telltale block of empty hangers. The closet was neat as a pin. A roll-on suitcase and a duffel bag were tucked into one corner.

  Kovac closed the closet door, turned around, and surveyed the room again. No one had left this room in a hurry. No one had been forced to leave this room. No struggle had taken place here.

  Years before, when he was new to Homicide, he’d come across a case of a missing woman who was found only after her body had begun to decompose. Her boyfriend had bludgeoned her to death with a claw hammer and stuffed her body under her mother’s bed.

  Kovac carefully lifted the bed skirt and looked. No body. A couple of long plastic storage containers full of shoes and clothe
s.

  Down the hall, in Carey’s bedroom, the crime scene unit was going over every square inch. But as with the nanny’s room, the carpet had been vacuumed. The linens had been stripped from the bed. If they were lucky, they might find the sheets in the laundry. If not, their bad guy might have taken them to dispose of them so there would be no chance to get hair, fiber, bodily fluids, to put a name to their perp.

  Kovac stood in the doorway of the welcoming, elegant room where he had helped Carey Moore to bed just two nights prior. Now the room gave a different feeling entirely.

  Though he would never have admitted it to anyone, sometimes he thought he could feel the echo of raw emotions at the scene of a violent crime. Terror, anger, panic, intent.

  He looked at the bed and pictured the scene in his mind-the room dark, Carey sleeping with her back to the door. He imagined the crime from the point of view of the perpetrator, never the victim. He could see Carey kicking and flailing as she was dragged backward from the bed. In the struggle, the heavy alabaster lamp was knocked over and fell to the floor. The framed photographs on the night table tipped over.

  But as he looked at the room before him, the lamp was undisturbed, and there were no picture frames, on the stand or on the floor.

  Kovac called to a squat woman plucking a piece of something off the carpet with a tweezers. “Where’d the pictures go?”

  She put the fiber in a small clear plastic tube and placed a numbered evidence marker on the floor. “What pictures?”

  “You didn’t find any framed photographs on this nightstand or on the floor?”

  She shook her head.

  “No black-and-white eight-by-ten graduation photo? No baby photo in a silver frame?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’ve looked under the bed?”

  “Nothing under there.”

  Kovac looked across the room at Carey’s dresser. Perfectly neat and tidy.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  “You need booties,” the woman said.

  Kovac pulled a pair of blue paper booties on over his shoes so that he wouldn’t track in anything that would contaminate the scene. The forensics team had enough to do analyzing the legitimate evidence.

  Avoiding evidence markers on the floor, Kovac crossed the room to the dresser and opened a drawer, and then another and another. All with items neatly folded.

  He went to the large walk-in closet that held the rest of Carey’s clothes, and looked around at the racks that held business suits, blouses, slacks, dresses. Nothing appeared disturbed.

  At the back of the closet, a collection of matching luggage was neatly lined up, except that one piece seemed to be missing, leaving an empty spot in the row.

  That bothered him. Of course, the piece could have been lost, or out for repair.

  He looked around the closet again more closely, scrutinizing every inch of hanging space. A small gap here, a small gap there. Things might have been missing, or not.

  But that missing suitcase…

  If someone had packed a bag, that person had not been Carey Moore. No way she would have left this house voluntarily and left her daughter behind.

  What the hell kind of kidnapper took a change of clothes for his victim?

  Kovac could only hope that if that missing suitcase was in the possession of the kidnapper, it meant whoever had taken Carey meant to keep her alive.

  He tried not to think about why.

  43

  CAREY FELT DIZZY and nauseated. The oily scent of exhaust was inescapable.

  She had to hope the secret destination was near, or she would die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Then again, what lay in store for her at the end of this ride would be nothing good. She would probably wish she had succumbed during the ride.

  She had moved her hands around the cramped trunk, feeling for anything she could use as a weapon-a tire iron, a wrench, anything. But she found nothing.

  As she turned onto her right side, something rectangular pressed against her hip bone. She felt it with her fingertips and a quick burst of hope shot through her.

  Cell phone.

  She remembered sticking it in the pocket of her jeans after speaking to Kovac the night before. David had just stormed out of the house. She had called Kovac to tell him. He had been standing right outside her house, ready to come to her rescue.

  When she had finally gone up to bed, she had been too exhausted to bother undressing. Or maybe it had been that she already felt too exposed and vulnerable.

  Hands shaking, she fished the phone out of her pocket and punched a button to light it up.

  911.

  Fingers fumbled as she pressed the numbers. Misdialed. Tried again.

  Her heart was banging against her ribs like a fist.

  The only sound the telephone made was a series of beeps, then nothing. The lighted screen showed the message “No Service.”

  No service.

  No signal.

  No help.

  44

  KOVAC CALLED AHEAD to the Edina police to send a unit to Ginnie Bird’s condo and not let her leave the premises, hoping to hell that that hadn’t already happened. Since arriving at his house, David Moore hadn’t been alone two seconds to make a call to his girlfriend. But whomever he had called for a lawyer-Edmund Ivors, Kovac suspected-could have given the Bird woman the heads-up to get out of Dodge.

  Ginnie Bird had to be cut off from the pack. If he could get her alone, Kovac knew he would get her to talk. She wouldn’t know what to do without Moore or Ivors there to put words in her mouth. She didn’t have the backbone to stand up to him.

  She was standing on the curb in front of her building when he pulled up, looking very unhappy to be facing two uniforms.

  Kovac walked up to them. “Ms. Bird. Are these guys bothering you?”

  “They won’t let me leave,” she said, anxious. “They can’t do that… can they?”

  “Well, that would be my fault,” Kovac said. “I asked them to detain you until I could get here.”

  Ginnie Bird looked up at him, suspicious. “I don’t have anything to say to you. I don’t know anything about what happened to David’s wife.”

  “You knew he had a wife,” Kovac said. “That tells me right there that you make bad choices, Ginnie. I mean, bad enough to hook up with a jerk like Moore if he was single. Why go to all the trouble of having an affair with a guy like that? A sneaky, spineless, petulant liar-”

  “I love him!” she said emphatically. “You don’t know anything about him.”

  Kovac shook his head. “Honey, I know all about the David Moores of the world. Why don’t we go inside?” he suggested, gesturing toward her building. “I’m sure you’d rather not have your neighbors taking all this in.”

  “Am I under arrest?” she asked.

  “No. Should you be?” Kovac arched a brow. “Do you have something to hide?”

  “No!” she insisted. She glanced surreptitiously at her building, checking to see who might be peering out their windows.

  “Fine,” she said. “We’ll go inside.”

  She liked her illusion of legitimacy. It was important to her that people around her believed she belonged in this tony part of town.

  “No,” Kovac said.

  Ginnie Bird had already started to go back to the building. She turned around and looked at him, puzzled.

  “No,” he said again. “You know what? I don’t have time for this bullshit.”

  “But-”

  “There’s a woman missing. I think you know something,” Kovac said aggressively, stepping a little too close to her, his voice getting louder. “And you’d better spit it out, or we’ll be talking about this in an eight-by-ten room downtown.”

  “I don’t know anything,” she insisted, but kept her voice down.

  “You know who the blond guy was that met you in the bar Friday night,” Kovac said. “I want a name.”

  “I don’t know his name!”

  “Maybe you don’
t know your own name, Ms. Bird,” Kovac said. “If I were to run your prints through the system, who would you turn out to be?”

  Big tears filled her eyes, and her face tightened into an unattractive expression. She turned one way and then the other, not knowing what to do or say next.

  “I want a name,” Kovac said again.

  She put her hands over her face and started to cry.

  “Nobody feels sorry for you,” Kovac said harshly. “You’re a junkie whore screwing the husband of a missing judge. Do you know what that sounds like? That sounds like motive. You couldn’t have what you wanted as long as Carey Moore was in the way. I have no doubt you know plenty of lowlifes who could do the dirty work for you.”

  Ginnie Bird made a sound like a siren, her face still in her hands.

  Kovac held his hands up and took a step back. “That’s it. I’ve had enough of this crap.”

  He turned to the uniforms. “She’s going in, guys.”

  “Donny,” she sobbed. “Donny Bergen.”

  “How do you know him?” Kovac demanded.

  She sobbed but didn’t answer.

  Kovac got in her face. “How do you know him!”

  “He’s my brother.”

  45

  LISKA HAD MANAGED to ferret out of the department computers the incident report from the death of Rebecca Rose Haas. Short and sweet. A detective named Rothenberg had gone through the motions of an investigation. He had retired six months later and moved to Idaho. She remembered his retirement party at Patrick’s, a cop bar strategically located halfway between the Minneapolis Police Department and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office.

  The situation seemed cut-and-dried. Rebecca Haas hadn’t had an enemy in the world. She had simply been one of many people who died accidental deaths in their own homes every year.

  According to Rothenberg, a neighbor had spoken to her around two o’clock in the afternoon. Mrs. Haas had been excited at the prospect of taking in another foster child. Marcella Otis from Children and Family Services had been there earlier that week to go over some details.