Kovac felt sick.
The screen turned to snow.
Stan Dempsey was gone.
16
CAREY WAS SURPRISED when she woke Saturday morning, because she didn’t believe she had slept all night. She had hovered in the strange twilight between consciousness and unconsciousness, denied the rest of sleep, still subjected to the nightmares. She had felt as if she were underwater on a moonlit night, being held under by a hidden force. Dark images of violence had drifted before her, and she had fought to free herself from them, breaking the surface into consciousness, gasping for air, only to be pulled back under moments later.
David had not come to bed. When he had walked her upstairs, he’d told her he would stay in the guest room so she could have the bed to herself and not be disturbed by him moving around. Carey thought he had probably been as relieved as she not to be sharing the bed. As much as she would have liked someone to comfort her, that someone was not her husband. David wasn’t good at taking the role of defender-protector. She was supposed to be strong and self-reliant so he didn’t have to be.
Slowly, carefully, painfully, Carey eased herself up to sit for a moment with her feet over the side of the bed. A little dizziness buzzed around her brain, but not as bad as she had thought it would be. The next step was to stand, and she managed that. Both knees were sore from landing on the concrete when her assailant had knocked her down. She walked like a ninety-year-old woman, shuffling her way into her bathroom.
The face that greeted her in the mirror was a horror. Black eye, bruised swollen knot on her forehead, stitches crawling over her lip like a centipede. Most adults would be startled to see her. The idea of her daughter seeing her this way for the first time upset Carey more than seeing herself had.
Lucy was only five. She didn’t need to be told anything more than that someone had knocked Mommy down. If she had been a little older, Carey would have worried about what the kids at school might say to her, having overheard their parents’ comments. But at five, children were still mostly interested in innocent things that existed in their immediate orbit.
An overwhelming sense of protectiveness rushed through her, and Carey wanted to take Lucy in her arms and hold her tight and not let anything bad come into her life. The things Carey had seen over the years, as a prosecutor, as a judge… The horrible things she knew one human could do to another for no reason at all… She wanted to shield her daughter from all of it.
She thought of the two foster children found hanging in the basement of the Haas home and wondered if their mother had ever had the same desire.
Moving in slow motion, Carey undressed, dropping the torn slacks and ruined silk blouse on the floor to be discarded later. She took a warm shower, wincing as the water droplets touched the torn skin of her knuckles and her knees. She supposed she should have called Anka to help her, but she was too private a person. David should have been there. Even if he thought she didn’t want him there, he should have been there to offer help and sympathy and comfort.
She wondered what Kovac had made of the scene last night. He was a good cop, and a good cop was a quick study of people and the dynamics between them. He had taken an instant dislike to David; that much had been clear. He had all but accused her husband of having been with another woman when he should have been with her. The fact that that was probably true had been more than Carey wanted to deal with. And she knew Kovac hadn’t missed that either.
She pulled on an old pair of baggy gray sweatpants and a favorite black cashmere cardigan sweater that had been washed and worn so many times it felt like a child’s security blanket wrapped around her.
A quick peek out the front window told her the media had not given up interest in her. Vans from all the local TV stations were parked across the street, their dish antennae standing at attention.
The radio car Kovac had promised sat at the curb in front of the house like a very large guard dog. This wasn’t the first time in her career Carey had needed police protection. Her life had been threatened more than once when she had been prosecuting gang murders. Going head-to-head with gang criminals and their sleazy attorneys was not about winning friends.
Sitting on the bench was no different. A criminal trial always ended with one side unhappy, angry, bitter. The judge was considered a friend only by the winning team.
Turning away from the window, Carey noticed for the first time that the house was silent. No TV blasting Saturday-morning cartoons. No sounds of people having breakfast. It was early, but Anka was an early riser, and Lucy was never far behind her, even on the weekend.
She opened the bedroom door and listened. She could smell coffee, but it was so quiet she could hear the downstairs hall clock ticking. The door to Lucy’s bedroom was open. She could see a corner of the bed, already made. The door to Anka’s room was closed. Carey knocked softly but got no answer.
She checked in the guest room, expecting the bed to be torn asunder. David had never made a bed in his life, or picked up a shirt or a sock. He left a room looking like it had been ransacked by thieves. There was no sign of his having been in the room at all.
“Hello?” she called down the stairs.
The house was empty. Everyone had gone, just left her without a word, probably assuming she would want to sleep in.
Even knowing that was the logical explanation, Carey felt apprehension and anxiety swell inside. Residual effects of the attack. Irrational fear even while in a safe environment. The sense of dread that the people she loved were in danger and would be hurt. The fear that she was alone and her attacker would come back.
The memory of that low, menacing voice was like a finger tracing down the back of her neck.
Carey shook off the sensation and slowly, carefully, painfully descended the stairs to the first floor.
In the den she found evidence of David. He had spent the night on the love seat. A gold chenille throw was lying on the floor. A heavy crystal tumbler-empty, save for a desiccated wedge of lime-sat on the end table without benefit of a coaster to protect the antique that had belonged to her father.
Carey picked up the glass and rubbed a thumb over the damp stain it had left. The glass had held gin. The slightly sour, astringent smell lingered.
She was the one who had been beaten and threatened, and he was the one drinking.
Exhausted from what little she’d done, Carey sat down in the leather executive’s chair behind David’s desk. The silence of the room rang in her ears, and dizziness swooped back in and around her head like a flock of sparrows. She waited it out, focusing on the items on the desk-the IBM flat-screen monitor, the telephone, the notepad.
During one of her wakeful moments in the night, she had thought she heard David talking to someone. The memory came back to her now, and she wondered if it had really happened or if his voice had been part of a dream. Who would he have been having a conversation with at three in the morning? Had Kovac stayed that long? She didn’t recall his voice. Only her husband’s.
She looked more closely at the notepad on the desk. David was a nervous doodler when he was on the phone. The top sheet of the pad was clean, but with some indentation marks. She couldn’t make out any words. But lying on top of the garbage in the leather trash container beside the desk was a wadded-up piece of the same paper.
There was no hesitation. Carey felt no twinge of guilt. She reached into the trash and retrieved the note,
