Prior Bad Acts

common folk safe from criminals. On the inside, nobody gave a shit if a man lived or died, especially a man like Karl himself.

At least he had an attorney who was trying to do a good job for him. Knowing his lawyer would come from a pool of public defenders, Karl had expected the worst-to get some bored and bitter underachiever who would so hate the idea of defending him that he would all but hand him over to the Department of Corrections.

Kenny Scott was a decent enough guy. Karl thought Scott almost wanted to believe he was innocent.

A guard with a buzz cut and no neck opened the door to the interview room. “Time’s up, Dahl. Let’s go.”

Karl thanked his attorney, shook his hand, and rose from his chair. Scott had come to fill him in on the particulars of Judge Moore’s ruling and what would happen next.

“Let’s go,” the guard said in a stronger tone.

Karl shuffled out into the hall, his gaze on the floor so as to avoid eye contact. Like wild predators, the guards took eye contact as a sign of aggression and retaliated accordingly.

“You know, it’s not gonna make any difference,” the guard said. “You got lucky pulling Judge Moore, but no jury in this state is gonna let you off.”

Karl said nothing so he couldn’t be accused of giving lip.

“It’s just a damn shame we don’t have the death penalty,” the guard went on. “Bunch of goddamn liberals in the state government. You go outside the Twin Cities and ask the average person on the street, they’re gonna say you should be hanged in public. And you should be tortured first. Let Wayne Haas have an hour with you in a locked room.”

The guard punched a code into a security panel beside the door that led them back into the cells. A loud buzzer sounded. A red light flashed. The steel door unlatched with an audible clank. The guard opened it and Karl walked through ahead of him. The eyes of the inmates were on him instantly.

“Hey, you sick fuck!” one of them shouted.

“Put him in here with us, Bull! We’ll deal with that piece of shit,” said the cell mate, an angry-looking black man with a hundred zigzag braids in his hair. The rolled-up sleeves of his jail-issue jumpsuit revealed numerous gang tattoos up and down his arms.

Another inmate was walking ahead of Karl, being escorted to his cell by another guard. He walked with a swagger, even in shackles his head held high, defiant, arrogant. He was tall and heavy, a white guy with a tattoo of a snake crawling up the back of his bald head. A biker. He glanced back over his shoulder at Karl. A swastika had been inked onto his cheekbone. Prison tat. Aryan Nation.

“Hey, you Nazi limp-dick!” Zigzag called. “Here’s your honey. A chil’ rapist, just like you, you fuckin’ pervert. Master race, my ass! Why don’t y’all just fuck each other!”

Snake looked at the inmate but said nothing. He never even broke stride. In the next step, he swung his hands sideways, caught his guard just under the chin, and clotheslined him, the blow yanking him off his feet and knocking him backward into Bull. Bull stumbled back into the bars of a cell, and a roar went through the place. The inmates were cheering and shouting.

Karl froze for a precious instant as Snake came at him, eyes bugging, chains rattling. Too late, he turned to try to lunge toward the door.

Snake’s clenched fists came down before his eyes, arms closing on either side of his neck. The links of the handcuffs caught Karl just above his Adam’s apple, and he made a raw, retching sound as Snake yanked him backward off his feet.

Black lace crept in on the edge of Karl Dahl’s vision. He couldn’t breathe. As he tried to raise his hands to claw at the hold on his throat, Snake slammed him sideways into the bars of Zigzag’s cell. His temple cracked against the iron once, twice, three times, and blood ran down through his right eye.

The black gangster spat in his face. Karl could no longer hear the shouting, only a loud, whooshing roar inside his head. He seemed to have no command of his arms or legs, flailing like the limbs of a rag doll in the mouth of a rabid dog. His body was nothing but limp weight, hanging him on the bracelets of his killer.

He was vaguely conscious of the red light flashing over the door to the outside hall, the door swinging open.

Snake beat his head against the bars again and again.

The guard called Bull was coming at him, swinging a baton.

Blood sprayed through the air as the baton connected with something- someone.

Karl fell to the floor, tangled in the arms and legs of his attacker, still choking.

The last thing he remembered thinking was that his father would have just stood there and shaken his head and said he should have done it himself years ago.

8

“YOU THINK SOMEBODY tried to kill her?”

“I can’t comment at this time. It’s not my job to speculate.”

Kathleen Casey made a loud raspberry.

Liska looked at the nurse sideways as she took a long drink from a can of Red Bull, raised her free hand, and lazily raised her middle finger.

Casey gave a weary chuckle. The press had cleared out as soon as they had realized they were never going to see or hear from Judge Moore. Liska and Casey had slipped into the lounge for a moment’s solitude.

“I hate the press,” Liska said. “It’s always like trying to explain to a group of four-year-old children why the sky is blue.”

“Because it is,” Casey said.

“But why?”

“Because God made it that way.”

“But why?”

“So he can weed out all the bad children who say ‘But why’ and send them to hell.”

Liska cocked an eyebrow. “Do I have to send Children and Family Services to your house, Casey?”

“Too late. I already got rid of the bodies,” the nurse said, then winced. “Bad joke, all things considered.”

An ambulance siren wailed in the distance.

Liska pushed her drink aside on the table and shook her head. “I think about what that Karl Dahl did to those children, and I can’t help but think of my own boys when they were that age. They were so innocent, so trusting. So vulnerable.”

She still thought of them that way, as far as that went. Kyle, her serious one, was almost thirteen, as he liked to point out every third day of the week. Almost a teenager, which still qualified him as a child, Liska reminded him.

R.J., her youngest, was still a little boy. He had inherited his father’s charming but frustrating Peter Pan qualities. It was a good bet he would be a boy until he was toothless and living in a rest home.

Nikki was fiercely protective of them both. If something were to happen to them…

“I’d go insane,” she said. “Stark raving.”

“Think about Wayne Haas,” Casey said. “How he must have felt hearing about Moore ’s ruling today.”

Wayne Haas would be one of their first calls, Liska thought. Kovac would handle him, mano a mano. He would side with Haas against Judge Moore. Damned liberal judge. He would try to be Wayne Haas’s pal, all in the attempt to get Haas to say something self-incriminating.

Liska would take the son, Bobby, seventeen. She would ask the question “Where were you between six-thirty and seven?” As if they hadn’t been put through enough. Now they would be questioned as possible suspects. They would be angry, feel insulted. Who could blame them?

But it couldn’t matter to her or to Kovac. Carey Moore was their victim. And Wayne Haas and his son had the biggest ax to grind with Carey Moore.

The siren was coming closer.

Liska looked at her watch. Kovac should be calling soon. They still had a long night ahead of them. All she