Prior Bad Acts (4 page)

“Can your husband come and get you, Judge Moore?” Liska asked. “You can’t drive yourself.”

“I’ll call a car service.”

“You don’t seem in any shape to go anywhere,” Kovac said, wondering where the hell this husband was. His wife had been assaulted. There was a better-than-even chance that the attack could have been an attempt on her life. “He’s out of town, your husband?”

“He’s at a business dinner. I can manage.”

“Does he know you’re here? Have you called him?”

“He’s at dinner. He turned his phone off.”

The jaw was tightening again. She didn’t want to talk about the absent husband. She would rather scrape herself out of a hospital bed, deal with a concussion, some cracked ribs, and an emotional trauma by herself, than try to find the one person who should have made it to the hospital before Kovac and Liska had.

“Where’s the dinner?” Kovac asked. “If you’re going home, you need someone to be there with you. We can call the restaurant, or send a couple of uniforms to tell him.”

“I don’t know where the dinner is,” she said curtly. “There’s no need to interrupt him. My nanny lives in.”

Kovac glanced at Liska and raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll drive you home, Judge Moore,” he said. “As soon as you’ve signed your way out of here.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

“Well, I believe that it is, and that’s what’s going to happen,” he said flatly. “You’re a target, and you’re smart enough to know it. I’ll take you home, see that your house is secure.”

Carey Moore said nothing, her gaze fixed stubbornly on her hands. Kovac took her silence as acquiescence.

“Good to know you haven’t lost all your common sense,” he grumbled.

“We can’t say the same thing about you, Detective, or you wouldn’t be treating me like this,” she said.

Kovac sniffed. “Like what? I’m not treating you any differently than I treat anyone.”

“I guess that explains your lack of advancement in the department.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “But unlike some people, my career isn’t about ambition. It’s about catching bad guys.”

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.