Prior Bad Acts

by Tami Hoag

  “That’s scary,” she admitted, then changed direction out of self-preservation. “What happened to Dahl? Is he dead?”

  “Yeah. Stan Dempsey’s last act: He shot and killed Karl Dahl. When I heard the shot, I thought he was shooting at you, but he shot Dahl. Made sure he’ll never escape justice again.”

  “And Kenny Scott? Dempsey told me he would do to me what he did to Kenny. What did he do? Is Kenny dead?”

  “No,” Kovac said. “Dempsey roughed him up, tied him in a chair, and branded the word GUILTY across his forehead with a wood-burning tool.”

  He rattled that off so matter-of-factly. As if it were something he saw every day of the week. Of course, he’d seen far worse than that. So had she.

  “He told me he wouldn’t have killed me,” she said softly. “Dempsey. After I… he said to me, ‘You killed me. I wouldn’t have killed you.’”

  Kovac put a big hand over hers. “You couldn’t have known that, Carey. You were in fear for your life. You did what you had to do to save yourself. For all you knew, Dempsey was gonna take you back to his nest and torture you the way Marlene Haas was tortured. I’d lay odds that’s what he had planned for Dahl. He had a whole duffel bag full of stuff-a hacksaw, an electric knife, hammers, a meat fork, knives. He had all that with him for a reason.”

  Carey looked down at his hand on hers. Having just that much connection made her feel calmer.

  “Have you ever had to kill anyone?” she asked.

  “Once,” he said. “I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have a choice. Neither did you.”

  Somehow that didn’t make her feel any better.

  “Does he have any family?” she asked, dreading the answer. She didn’t want to know that he had been a father, a grandfather, a beloved husband…

  Kovac shook his head. “Not close-in any sense of the word. A grown daughter in Portland, Oregon, who hasn’t bothered to return any of the lieutenant’s calls. An elderly uncle in very poor health in a rest home. The uncle owns a cabin out on one of the smaller lakes.

  “Looks like that’s where Stan based himself after he split town. The property and the pickup were registered to Walter Dempsey, the uncle.”

  What a sad, strange little man Stan Dempsey had been. Alone. Invisible to most people, even to those who should have been close to him.

  “The job was all he had, wasn’t it?” she said.

  “Honey, the job is all I have, but I don’t go around disfiguring people,” Kovac said. “Could someone have reached out to Stan over the years, tried to bring him out of his shell? I suppose so. Hell, I could have tried, and I didn’t. But he was a grown man. His life was what he made it. Right down to how it ended.”

  “He didn’t put the knife in my hand,” Carey said softly.

  Kovac hooked a finger beneath her chin and made her look up at him.

  “No. He put you in a situation where you had to use it,” he said quietly.

  He stared into her eyes, his face the portrait of a good and honorable man. “Carey, I would give anything if I could turn the clock back. If I could have gotten to the scene five minutes sooner and spared you having to wrestle with this. ’Cause I’ll tell you what: If I’d seen him threatening you, I would have blown his ass off the planet. And I wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep over it.”

  Carey gave a little half laugh. “I don’t know what this says about me, but that’s the sweetest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”

  He smiled back at her, touched her cheek, and said, “My pleasure. I’m going to leave you alone now and let you get some rest. And don’t argue with me-you’re staying overnight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He didn’t move from the bed. He didn’t take his eyes off her. He shook his head a little. “I owe you an apology.”

  “For what?”

  “For the way I behaved at the beginning of this. I was a jerk. I was judging you without having all the facts, making assumptions. I’m sorry.”

  “Not so easy being the judge, is it?” she said.

  “No. Turned out I was very wrong about you,” he said. “You are one brave lady, Carey Moore.”

  “No,” Carey said. “I was terrified.”

  “I should hope so. If you weren’t, I’d be scared of you,” he said. “But that’s what bravery is: to be afraid and do what you have to do anyway. You can’t have courage without fear.”

  The door swung open and the doctor walked in. Kovac eased away from the bed.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “But if you need me, call me. I’ll be here before you can hang up the phone.”

  “You’re a good man, Sam Kovac,” Carey said.

  A good man, a strong man, a man of his word. The world could have done with a few more Sam Kovacs in it.

  He blushed a little at the compliment, his mouth crooking up on one side, then slipped out the door.

  65

  “I’M NOT GOING to go through the motions and reprimand you for being a couple of cowboys, Detective Kovac, Detective Tippen.”

  Lieutenant Dawes stood at the head of the table in the war room. It was past nine o’clock, but she had gathered the task force to recap the events of the day and reassess what still needed to be done.

  “I know all too well the both of you are selectively deaf anyway.”

  Tippen cupped a hand to one ear. “Did someone say something?”

  “Instead,” she said, “I’m going to ask everyone to raise their coffee cups in a salute to a job well done.”

  The “Hear, hears” were loud.

  “Where’s the beer?” Kovac complained.

  “We’ll get to that,” Dawes said. “Work before play.”

  They went over the details of everything that had happened that day. Two murders discovered and cleared, an abduction with a happy ending. Happy for everyone but Stan Dempsey.

  “Did his daughter ever call back?” Liska asked.

  Dawes shook her head. “Not yet. The Portland PD made contact with her yesterday. I’ve called her directly and left messages. I’ll try again later this evening. Obviously, she and her father weren’t close.”

  “That’s beyond ‘not close,’” Liska said. “That’s downright cold.”

  “It’s sad,” Elwood said. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful child.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Shakespeare,” Tippen said dryly. “I’m personally not interested in Stan’s family dynamics at the moment. Let’s move on. I’m hungry.

  “So we have to assume he had the Moores ’ house under surveillance,” he went on. “But what would have made him follow the nanny’s car? Dahl was dressed as a woman.”

  “I guess we’ll never know that,” Dawes said. “Maybe he was in a position to see something going on in the garage. He could have seen through the windows from the neighbor’s yard.”

  “You’re saying he would have watched Dahl put the judge in the trunk and done nothing?” Liska said.

  “Why not?” Tippen said. “He gets his next two victims in a package, conveniently delivered to a remote location, no less.”

  “We still don’t know who attacked the judge in the parking ramp,” Liska pointed out. “Or are we pinning that on Dempsey too?”

  “It makes sense,” Elwood said. “News of her ruling on Dahl’s prior bad acts had broken. Stan would have been in proximity. He was working Friday.”

  “And what?” Liska asked. “He’d brought his all-black mugger outfit to change into at the end of the day, just in case?”

  “What did Porn Boy have to say for himself?” Kovac asked.

  “Nothing,” Dawes said. “He denied any knowledge of the assault. But he doesn’t have anyone to corroborate his story, and I have no doubt that he’s lying as to his whereabouts that night at the time of the attack.”

  “So he’s still on the board,” Kovac said.

  “Why would he risk it?” Tippen asked. “The guy is a major star in his genre.”

  Li
ska rolled her eyes. “Let’s not go over that ground again. I haven’t recovered from the initial horror.”

  “O, ye of narrow mind,” Tippen said. “And frankly I can’t believe you haven’t indulged yourself.”

  “That’s not the point. It’s the mental image ofyou indulging yourself that will send me into therapy.”

  “So I should be congratulated for doing a public service.”

  Liska snagged one of his chocolate-covered coffee beans and bounced it off his forehead.

  “Ginnie Bird is Bergen ’s sister,” Kovac said. “Maybe he’s actually devoted to her. Little Sis cries on his shoulder that her boyfriend isn’t going to leave his wife. Boo-hoo, can’t you do something, Donny? And this is what the boy genius comes up with.

  “I still like him for it. When the unis knocked on his door, he was packing and had a ticket to St. Kitts.”

  “Is he smart enough to know the U.S. has no extradition treaty with St. Kitts?” Elwood asked.

  Kovac shrugged. “Even the dumbest criminals who flunked out of nursery school seem to find a way to know every angle how to get away with something.

  “I had a mutt once who was so stupid he couldn’t find his dick in a dark room. But this clown knew every way there was to create a false identity and evade the cops.”

  “Can we keep Bergen in town?” Elwood asked.

  “Chris Logan is trying to help us out with that,” Dawes said.

  “Has anyone notified Wayne Haas of Dahl’s death?” Liska asked.

  “You have a connection with him now, Nikki,” Dawes said. “I think you should take care of that.”

  Liska nodded and made a note to herself.

  “All right, people,” Dawes said. “Let’s call it a night. I’m starving. Burgers and beers at Patrick’s on me.”

  A cheer went up, and chairs were vacated immediately. While the rest of the pack went for the door, Kovac and Liska hung back.

  “Jeez, Kojak, you broke one without me,” Liska said, pouting. “I’m hurt. You cheated on me with Tippen.”

  Kovac smiled and put an arm around her. “Sorry, Tinks. You would have gotten sick on the car ride anyway.”

  “You were driving?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Let’s go to Patrick’s,” Kovac said. “I’ll let you steal my french fries.”

  “Nah,” she said, patting the flat of his belly. “You can have the burger I would have eaten. You’re a healthy, active boy, after all.

  “I’m going home. Speed’s bringing the boys back tonight. I want to spend some time with them like a normal mom.”

  “Okay,” Kovac said. “Give Speed a kick in the balls for me.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “You parked out front?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” he said.

  Liska gave him a little hug. “You’re a good man, Sam Kovac.”

  He smiled a crooked smile. “So I hear.”

  66

  LISKA PULLED UPin front of the Haas house. It was only a small detour on her way home to St. Paul. She felt like she owed them the visit to tell them Karl Dahl would never hurt anyone again. She could give them good news for once, instead of bad news, excuses, and accusations. She could take ten minutes out of her life for that.

  There were lights on downstairs and in the detached garage. Wayne Haas’s car was in the driveway. She went first to the garage, thinking father and son might be there together, working on some project. Hoping for both of them that that would be the case.

  A radio was playing hip-hop, something she heard enough around her own house to have learned to thoroughly hate it. A sure sign of going over the hill.

  “Mr. Haas? Bobby?” she called out as she neared the side door.

  The rain had stopped, but the grass was wet, and she could feel it soaking into the leather of her shoes.No good deed goes unpunished.

  She knocked, looking into the garage through the glass panes of the old side door. The usual assortment of junk-lawn mowers, bikes, yard tools, paint cans.

  Bobby Haas was sitting on a stool at the workbench that ran from wall to wall across the end of the building. He looked up from a book, slipped off the stool, and came to the door.

  “Detective Liska? What are you doing here?”

  “Can I come in? It’s getting really cold out here.”

  He stepped back from the door to let her in. Liska automatically took in her surroundings at a glance-garden tools hanging on the garage walls, fishing rods that hadn’t been out in a long time. Bobby moved toward the long workbench.

  “I came with some good news for a change,” she said. “Is your dad around?”

  Bobby frowned. “He went to bed early. He wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Is he okay? Does he need to go to a doctor?”

  “No. I think he’s mostly just worn-out,” the boy said, looking sad. “He’s always worn-out.”

  “You want things to be the way they were before,” Liska said.

  “He doesn’t even want to try. He couldn’t care less about me.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true, Bobby. Your dad’s in a bad place. He feels ashamed that you’ve had to be the strong one in the family, when he should be strong for you.”

  None of this impressed the boy. He had run out of patience. Like every boy, he wanted to be the center of his father’s world. There was no greater disappointment than for a son to find out that he wasn’t.

  “Yeah, well,” Bobby said, tears glazing his eyes, “I wish he would just get over it. It’s been more than a year and every day he still gets up depressed over what happened, and every day he comes home from work depressed over what happened. It’s like I’m not even there. He’s supposed to be my dad. What about me? What about what I need?”

  Liska put a hand on his back and patted, offering the same silent comfort she had given her oldest boy the many times his father had disappointed him. Bobby Haas was trembling against the raw emotions rising up inside him. He was at an age when those emotions were suddenly bigger and stronger than he knew what to do with.

  He stepped away from her and walked in a small circle, his hands on his hips. “He’s supposed to love me, not a bunch of dead people he can’t do anything about!”

  Struggling to bat the tears back, to take the feelings that had burst free and shove them back inside, he walked his small circle, breathing hard.

  Liska wondered what must have happened to spark all of this. A fight with Wayne? Or Wayne not having it in him to fight? The truth of it was, Wayne Haas was a broken man, and she really didn’t think he would ever pull out of it. It looked like Bobby had come to that realization as well.

  The boy swiped at his eyes, embarrassed he had lost his composure in front of her.

  “So what are you doing out here?” Nikki asked, trying for a more upbeat tone as she walked toward the workbench, where textbooks and notebooks were spread out beneath the fluorescent work light.

  “Studying,” Bobby said. “I can have the radio on out here and it doesn’t bother my dad.”

  “I’ll have to pass this idea on to my boys,” she said, checking out his books. Advanced biology, chemistry, psychology. “Looks like you’re thinking of becoming a doctor.”

  “I want to be a forensic pathologist.”

  “Smart choice.” Creepy choice, all things considered, but it was better than having him say he wanted to spend his life digging graves, she supposed. With the kinds of tragedies he’d had in his young life, it made a certain kind of sense. “Your patients can never sue you for malpractice. They’re already dead.”

  “Right,” he said, managing a little smile.

  “You’ve made yourself quite the office out here.”

  He had converted some of the shelves above the workbench into bookshelves. On the work surface, he had put down a number of twelve-by-twelve marble tiles to spread his work over. Pens and pencils were neatly organized in mism
atched cups and water glasses. A couple of stacking trays held notebooks and file folders. The level of organization was frightening to a woman whose filing system consisted of stacking piles of paper all over her dining room table.

  Bobby moved between her and the bench as if he was worried she might try to steal his chemistry notes.

  Liska considered it a triumph that she had gotten Kyle and R.J. to keep a path open on the floor of their bedroom so they could escape in the event of a fire. This kid kept his paper clips sorted by size.

  “I should have you come and organize my kitchen,” she said. “But then I might be expected to cook.”

  He had “in” and “out” trays labeled for bills and family finances.

  “You pay the bills?” she asked.

  “If I leave it to Dad, it doesn’t get done.”

  Even as debilitated as Wayne Haas seemed to be, she thought it strange that he would give that responsibility to a seventeen-year-old boy.

  “You don’t ever get to just be a kid, do you?”

  Bobby shrugged and looked away from her. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve always had to take care of things myself.”

  There was a bitter, ironic edge to his words.

  “So what’s the good news?” he asked. “You said you have good news.”

  “Karl Dahl was shot and killed this afternoon,” she said. “He won’t be hurting anyone ever again.”

  “Good. So it’s over?”

  Liska helped herself to a seat on an old riding lawn mower. “As far as Karl Dahl goes. We’re still looking into the assault on Judge Moore.”

  “So she’s off the hook for siding with him now, ’cause he’s dead?” Bobby said. “She can go back to her life and do the same thing all over again?”

  “Actually, she’s in the hospital,” Liska said. “Dahl abducted her last night. She’s lucky to be alive.”

  Bobby couldn’t seem to muster up any sympathy. “If she’d just done what she was supposed to do, none of this would have happened.”

  “Judge Moore didn’t let Karl Dahl break jail.”

  “She would have let him walk,” the boy said. “He was supposed to go to prison, like, a long time ago. Maybe my dad could have had some closure and moved on if that had happened.”