It would be impossible now for him to try to leave the city. The police would be all over the bus stations, the train depots, the truck stops. They might set up roadblocks and checkpoints. They would be expecting him to run. His picture would be everywhere, a picture of him clean-shaven and bareheaded. But he would no longer be that man, and no one would catch him running.
In fact, it seemed to Karl the best thing for him to do right now was stay put. The cops had already been down this alley. They had already been told about the homeless guy living under these stairs. He couldn’t say for certain, but he imagined the police had checked out the spot on their way down the alley. They had maybe even spoken with the ragman long enough to know that he communicated regularly with Pope Clement.
Knowing he was in as safe a place as any, Karl crawled back under the stairs and stretched out beside the dead man’s still-warm body to catch some sleep.
11
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT by the time they had interviewed Jerome “Stench” Walden. The kid’s mother had come to the door, drunk and smoking a cigarillo. A charming woman.
Jerome had looked embarrassed that he was stuck in a crappy house that smelled of sour beer and fried onions and cheap tobacco. In a clean set of gray sweats, the T-shirt bearing the initials
Kovac didn’t believe them, but then he rarely believed anyone. He was too accustomed to being lied to. Everybody lied to the cops, even the innocent. He wouldn’t have believed his own grandmother without a corroborating witness.
The security videotape from the government center parking ramp was on Kovac’s desk when they arrived back at the CID offices. They went into a conference room, watched the oft-copied-over tape, and drank some bad coffee.
They had run out of desire for conversation on their way in but had been partners long enough that they were comfortable with their silences. Neither of them said a word as they watched the tape through the first time.
The tape was so grainy that if Kovac hadn’t known they were looking at Carey Moore, he couldn’t have positively ID’d her. She walked into the camera frame, proceeding toward her car, a black 5-series BMW sedan. She was carrying a handbag slung over one shoulder, and a large briefcase that looked heavy. Her father’s briefcase.
She stuck her hand into the purse to dig out car keys and dropped a couple of objects on the floor. Stopping, she set the briefcase down and bent to pick up what she had dropped.
At that moment the assailant came from the left of the screen. Difficult to make out size, due to the angle of the camera, which was pointed down from above them. Dressed in jeans and a dark coat with the hood up. Impossible to make out a face.
He hit her hard across the back with some kind of a club or baton, maybe a small baseball bat. The attack was fast and violent, and it looked to Kovac that the assailant was more interested in hurting her than in taking anything.
They knew from what Judge Moore had told them that she had managed to set off her car alarm, at which point the perpetrator got off her, took the time to kick her hard in the side, then grabbed up her wallet. He spun around and snatched the briefcase she had set down, and ran out of the frame, going for a staircase, Kovac assumed. According to the garage attendant sitting in the pay booth on street level, no car had come squealing down the ramp at the time of the assault in a big hurry to leave.
Liska rewound the tape and hit the play button. “This sucks.”
“Yeah. What’s the point in having these cameras if they’re going to use the tapes so many times we might as well be trying to watch cartoons from the moon?”
“They need to go digital.”
“Costs money.”
“Yeah? Well, if I had to park in that ramp all day every day, I’d have to take a second mortgage on my house. I think they can afford it.”
In the morning one of them would drop the tape with the video geek in the lab and see if she could enhance the images to the point of being useful, but Kovac doubted that would happen.
He tossed out the question to get their brains rolling. “Who do we look at besides Leopold and Loeb?”
“They seem like decent kids.”
“So did the aforementioned,” Kovac pointed out. “So did Ted Bundy.”
Liska shrugged. “It’ll be hard to corroborate their story. Who would notice either one of them? They’re too normal. And there was only one guy on the video. Where’s the sidekick?”
“I want the tapes from the entrances to the garage, see if either of their cars rolls in sometime before six- thirty. They could have left a vehicle there, taken a staircase down to the street, then come back after all the hoopla to get the car. Make sure the uniform who took down all the tag numbers runs them through the DMV.”
“They could have parked anywhere downtown,” Liska said. “It would have been stupid to park in that ramp.”
“They’re a couple of seventeen-year-old boys. Forethought is not a big priority at that age.”
“Thanks for the tip. I’m going to go home and lock my eldest in his room for the next ten years or so.”
“I think we can rule out Wayne Haas,” Kovac said. “He’s too big to be the guy on the tape, and he doesn’t look built for speed either. He’s got plenty of motive to hate Judge Moore, but I don’t like him for this.”
“Me neither. Could be an ex-con with a grudge,” Liska said. “Could be any nutjob following the Dahl case.”
“What do we know about the parents of the foster kids?” Kovac asked, frowning as that train of thought slipped into his head.
“The mother’s in jail on a narcotics charge. Dad’s got a sheet too, assault being the big prizewinner for us.”
“Is he running around loose?”
“He is.”
Most crime was simple and straightforward. A killed B because B had something of value, or B cheated A in a drug deal, or B did A’s girlfriend while A was out of town. The obvious suspects almost always turned out to be the perps. Twisted conspiracies were the stuff of novels and movies.
“We’ll need to talk to Dempsey.”
“He’ll be a good source.”
“He’s a pretty good suspect too,” Liska said.
Kovac gave her a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Sam. Dempsey has a lot riding on convicting Karl Dahl. You know the department has just been trying to keep a lid on him until it’s over. They won’t fire him and give the defense more ammunition than they already have against him. But as soon as that trial is over, it’s
Kovac chewed on a thumbnail, scowling at the possibilities. He could hear the allegations. The lead detective was obsessed. Dempsey couldn’t be in the field, because he’d had a breakdown. He wanted Dahl to be his guy; Judge Moore’s ruling was a slap in the face of his investigation…
All that would be fodder anyway. The department hadn’t fired Stan Dempsey because they would have looked bad in the media and because they were afraid Dempsey would sue. Poor old Stan was screwed no matter what.
“Jesus,” Kovac muttered, rubbing his hands over his face and back through his hair. “I don’t like it.”
“Since when is this job about what we like?” Liska asked.
“I mean, talk to him, yes. Nobody knows the players in the Dahl case better than Stan.”
