Prior Bad Acts

“We have to look at him, Sam, and you have to be the one to do it,” Liska said. “You know him. He’s old- school. He’ll take it better from you.”

Kovac heaved a sigh, pushing himself up out of his chair. “All right. But you get Mutt and Jeff and their alibi. Looks to me like they both need a mother figure anyway.”

Liska rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’s me. Mother Earth packing heat. I’m a B movie from the fifties.”

She got up from her chair and stretched, her sweater rising up above the waistband of her slacks to show the Glock 9mm she wore on a belt holster. “I’m outta here, Kojak. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“It already is morning.”

“Don’t tell me that. I’m gone.”

Kovac prowled around the office for a while after she’d gone. He was always restless on the front end of a case. He wanted to work around the clock. Get on it. Get after it.

Homicide cops in the Minneapolis PD had a window of about three days on a murder before the next murder or assault case came along and the last one got shuffled to a back burner. Or maybe he was that way because there was no need for him to be any other way. The job was his life. He had nothing to go home for.

He put his coat on and walked out of the building to stand on the wide front steps that led up the big Gothic stone building that was the color of raw liver. He wanted a smoke, but he didn’t take it. The one he’d had on the Haas front porch had been for effect.

The streets were mostly empty on this end of downtown. All the Friday-night excitement would be at the other end, where bars and clubs crowded around the Target Center, home of the NBA Timberwolves. Night life. There was a concept.

Kovac walked down to the parking ramp where he left his car every day. The facility had been named for a cop who had been murdered back in the late eighties for no other reason than that he wore the uniform. Sitting in a pizza parlor, the guy had been minding his own business, probably thinking about the fact that he was about to retire, when some gang punk pulled a piece and shot him dead in front of a dozen witnesses.

The guy had lived with the potential and real dangers of being a cop every day he was on the job, survived to retirement, only to be gunned down, off duty, having a pizza.

No one planned on becoming a victim.

Marlene Haas hadn’t gotten up on that fateful day thinking of the horrors that would take place in her home in a matter of hours.

Carey Moore had been headed home, thinking of her little daughter, maybe thinking of the absentee husband, maybe thinking about the shitstorm she had just unleashed with her decision on Karl Dahl’s prior bad acts. And bam, out of nowhere, some mutt knocked her flat and beat the crap out of her.

Kovac scowled at the bent his thoughts were taking-poor Carey Moore. He didn’t want to think of her as a person with problems and issues and emotions. Still, when he drove out of the ramp onto the street, he didn’t head for home. He turned the opposite direction and drove toward Lake of the Isles.

12

CAREY LAY IN BED, half-awake, desperately longing to sleep, pain keeping her from shutting down. It hurt to take more than a shallow breath, because of her ribs. Her head was pounding and felt swollen to the point that she wished she could open her skull and let the pressure out. She was still dressed, having refused to let Anka help her out of the gray pin-striped suit, not because of modesty but because the least movement set off waves of dizziness and nausea. Her slacks were torn at one knee. A shoulder seam had split on the jacket during the struggle, a button was missing, and one elbow was ripped out.

She concentrated on these things-the damage to her clothing and the fact that it was one of her favorite suits and she was angry to have to trash it-because in truth none of it was important. She didn’t want to think about the fact that someone had attacked her, had possibly meant to kill her. She didn’t want to think about what that would have meant, never seeing her daughter again, not being there for her father as his life drew to a close.

Guilt gnawed at her for not having included her husband in the list of people she would miss. She didn’t hate him. He wasn’t a bad guy. He was a wonderful father, when he was home, which had been less and less over the last year. It was just that what had been good between them had worn away. All they had now were pretense and tension.

Carey had realized their marriage was over a long while ago. David knew it too. He was as miserable as she was, but they both preferred to ignore the situation. Their marriage had become the elephant in the room that nobody wanted to talk about. If they talked about it, they would have to deal with it, and with the fallout that would rain down on their child.

Instead, they each stayed busy with their work. Carey had a full load with the Dahl trial looming. David, who had been a promising young documentary filmmaker at the start of their marriage, continued trying to drum up support for his latest project idea. He spent much of his time wining and dining, bowing and scraping to the kinds of people who could get films made. Unfortunately, the backing never seemed to come through, and he had had to lower himself to making the occasional local TV commercial.

Carey knew that he resented her success, and his lack thereof. He had become touchy and snappish on the subject of his career. She had tried to be supportive and patient, knowing that his self-esteem had taken a beating. But David had grown too comfortable with playing the victim, with making her walk on eggshells around his ego. She was tired of it, and her own resentments toward him had begun to grow like warts on the ends of her nerves.

If he knew how many times she had bitten her tongue to cut him a break, to give him the opportunity to be a man… and how many times he had failed…

The pressure of the tears behind her eyes made her head throb all the harder. Carey tried to blink them back. If she was going to cry, she would end up having to blow her nose, which would probably be so painful she would pass out.

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea.

The numbers 1:13 glowed green on the alarm clock that squatted on her night table. Still no sign of David.

Potential backers, my ass, she thought. She suspected he was having an affair, and was almost relieved at the idea. He hadn’t touched her in months. She hadn’t wanted him to. His touch only made her feel impatient and irritated. At the same time, the idea of his cheating on her pissed her off no end, because she could too easily imagine him doing it out of spite.

She brought her hands up to her face, wanting to rub her cheeks and forehead, sucking her breath in as her fingers brushed ever so slightly over an abrasion, wincing at the pain in her ribs from taking too deep and too sudden a breath.

Anka tapped softly on the bedroom door and let herself in.

“The detective told me to check on you,” she said quietly.

“I’m fine, Anka.”

“You don’t look so fine.”

“No, I suppose not,” Carey said. “Has Mr. Moore called?”

“No. I heard your cell phone ringing a while ago. Of course, I didn’t answer it.”

“Would you bring it to me, please?”

The nanny frowned. “You should be sleeping.”

“You just came to wake me up,” Carey pointed out. “I only want to check my messages.”

Looking unhappy, muttering something unpleasant in Swedish, the girl went away, and came back with the phone.

“Thanks,” Carey said. “Go to bed. Get some sleep. I promise not to lapse into a coma.”

Anka sniffed her disapproval at her employer’s sense of humor but left the room.

Carey touched the key to retrieve her voice mail, entered her password, and closed her eyes as the messages played through.

A call from Ted Sabin, Hennepin County ’s version of a district attorney and her former boss, expressing his