Prior Bad Acts

It was Saturday. She couldn’t call the bank and ask them. She knew David did a lot of their banking via the computer, but she didn’t know how to access the account.

A car door slammed outside. Carey’s heart tried to jump out of her chest. Her hands were shaking as she shoved the credit card statements and receipts back into their file and put the file back into its place in the drawer.

She stood up too quickly and her head swam. She didn’t care if David found her at his desk. She cared that she might frighten her daughter, looking the way she did. But when she pulled back the drape and looked out the front window, Kovac was coming up the sidewalk to the door.

He looked like an unmade bed, thick hair standing up from a finger combing, rugged face drawn, mouth frowning. Like most street cops Carey knew, Sam Kovac had never been in any great danger of gracing the cover of Gentleman’s Quarterly. He bought his suits cheap, cut his hair cheaper. He was a no-muss, no-fuss kind of a guy. It was a safe bet he had never spent forty-three hundred dollars at Bloomingdale’s on himself or anyone else. And she knew without asking that he held nothing but contempt for the politicians and police brass who ranked above him.

Carey imagined he hadn’t gotten any more sleep than she had. Maybe less. He had a case to run, and with a judge for a victim. The powers that ruled the city would be coming down hard on the police department. Not because any of them cared particularly about her personally but because of the media attention and because they had constituents to answer to.

He didn’t look surprised to see her as she cracked the front door open before he could ring the bell.

“Judge…”

“Detective. I’m guessing you haven’t come for the all-you-can-eat brunch.”

He blinked at her, taken aback that she still had the energy for sarcasm. “No appetite,” he said. “Do you have coffee?”

“Yes.”

“I need some. How about you?”

“Make yourself at home,” Carey said dryly as Kovac brushed past her and went in search of the kitchen.

“Where’s the husband?” he asked, snooping through the cupboards. He found the mugs on the second try. The coffee was already brewed. Half the pot was gone. Two mugs were resting upside down in the drainer rack at the sink. David and Anka. The morning paper had been left spread out on the breakfast table.

“Out.”

Kovac shot a look at her. Carey felt as if he could see past her clothes, past her external self, straight to the part of her that held her secrets. It wasn’t a good feeling.

“You don’t like David,” she said, easing down onto a chair.

Kovac poured the coffee. “No,” he said bluntly. “I don’t. Do you?”

“He’s my husband.”

Again the look, the flat cop eyes. Tigers probably had that same look in their eyes when they faced their prey. He sat down at the kitchen table with her and put one of the steaming mugs in front of her.

“You didn’t answer me.”

“I don’t have any reason to discuss my marriage with you.”

“You don’t want to have any reason to.”

Carey’s mouth pulled at one corner. “As you so graciously pointed out last night: There is no shortage of people who hate me right now. David only resents me. And he has an alibi.”

Kovac didn’t say anything, though Carey knew what he was thinking. The cheating husband gives himself an alibi and pays someone else to do the dirty work. She would have categorically denied the possibility except for one thing.

Twenty-five thousand dollars.

“You have better suspects to look at,” she said.

“I have other suspects.”

His choice of words was not lost on her, but she refused to take the bait.

The kitchen table sat in a nook with a bay window looking out onto the backyard, where the lawn was awash in fallen leaves, and Lucy’s swing set stood as a monument to childhood. Such a normal Saturday-morning kind of thing: sitting, chatting, having coffee.

“He’s cheating on you,” Kovac said.

Carey continued to stare out the window.

“I don’t get it. You’re a strong, independent woman. Why would you put up with that?”

She still didn’t look at him. “You have no direct evidence David is cheating on me… do you?”

“Don’t try to play me, Judge. I’m not stupid, and neither are you.”

Carey was silent for what seemed like a long time. Finally she said in a very soft voice, “Maybe I’m not as strong as you think.”

It was Kovac’s turn to be silent. She could feel him watching her and wondered what he was thinking. That she was in denial? That she was pathetic for staying with a husband who had so little respect for her? She was past denial. On the other count, she pled the Fifth.

“Karl Dahl is still at large?” she asked.

“Yeah. That’s nothing you have to worry about as far as him coming after you,” Kovac said. “He’s got no reason to hurt you. You being his new best friend and all.”

Carey ignored the jab. “Have you been able to enhance the video from the parking ramp?”

“Not yet.”

“Just why are you here, Detective?” she asked, arching a brow. “Not that I don’t enjoy your pleasant company.”

Kovac let go a long sigh and looked at his coffee for a moment. “Stan Dempsey-the lead detective-”

“I know who Stan Dempsey is. What about him?”

“I went to his house this morning. You know, he’s never been right since those murders. I wanted to talk to him about yesterday. He’s got as good a motive as anybody to call you a fucking cunt and try to beat the shit out of you.”

“And?”

“And he wasn’t there,” Kovac said. “He had trashed the place. Shot up the furniture, tipped over tables, smashed stuff. Basically went ape shit, by the look of it. He left a videotape of himself talking about the Haas case, talking about his frustration, his anger. He went on about you, about your rulings. About how he needs to take matters into his own hands and make sure the guilty pay.”

“The guilty,” Carey said. “As in Karl Dahl.”

“And you.”

“Did he threaten me?”

“Not in so many words, but I have reason to believe he could be a danger to you, and possibly to your daughter.”

Carey sat up straight, her pulse quickening. “My daughter? What did he say about my daughter?”

“He’s aware you have a small daughter, and he thinks because of that you should be more sympathetic to the victims, for what they must have gone through,” Kovac said, but he didn’t quite meet her eyes.

Carey slapped a hand down hard on the table. “Don’t treat me like a child, Detective! I’m not some naive little soccer mom. What did he say about my daughter?”

He looked her in the eye then. “He wondered how differently you’d feel toward Karl Dahl if your daughter had been raped and sodomized and hung up from the ceiling like a slaughtered lamb.”

A chill went through Carey like an icicle stabbing her through the back. Tears filled her eyes. The images from the Haas murder scene photos flashed in her head.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

The fear that had shaken her earlier came back. Lucy was gone. David was gone. Anka was gone. She had no idea where they were or what might be happening to them. Lucy was who she lived for, who she would die for. The thought of her being hurt, being tortured…

She got up from the table and rushed across the room for the telephone. Dizzy, sick, shaking, she leaned against the counter and punched David’s cell number into the handset.