“So he was on his knees? Maybe straddling you?”
She knew where he was going, and she didn’t want to hear it. Carey Moore had prosecuted more than her share of violent crimes-assaults, rapes, murders. She didn’t want to admit that someone might have tried to rape her, kill her.
“Was your driver’s license in your wallet?” Liska asked.
“Yes.”
“Is the address on the license your home address?”
“No. I’ve known better than that for a long time, Detective.”
“Was there anything in your purse that might have had your home address on it?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, staring down at her hands, which had been scraped badly on the concrete. Several fingernails were broken and jagged.
“No. I don’t think so,” she said at last, the strength in her voice draining away. “I’m very tired. I want to go home. I didn’t see the man who attacked me. I can’t tell you anything that will be of any use to you. Can we wrap this up?”
“Did you have anything with you besides your purse?” Liska asked.
“My briefcase. Did someone pick it up? I have work to do over the weekend.”
“No one at the scene said anything about a briefcase,” Kovac said. “They have your purse and the stuff that came out of it. What was in the briefcase?”
He could see a little panic creeping in around the edges of her composure. “Briefs, reports, letters regarding sentencing recommendations.”
“Something every mugger would want,” Kovac commented with sarcasm.
Carey Moore ignored him. “The briefcase was my father’s. It’s important to me.”
“Any paper in it regarding
She refused to look at him, pissed off because he was proving her wrong in her assumption the attack was random. He couldn’t really blame her. Nobody wanted to think of themselves as a specific target of violence.
“Yes.”
“We’ll also need to know what other cases you’ve presided over in the recent past,” Liska said. “Who might have a grudge. Who’s up for a stiff sentence. Cons you sent up who’ve been recently released. Anything.”
“Yes,” said the judge in a voice that was barely a whisper. The adrenaline had burned off, and she was headed for the lowest of lows, Kovac knew. He’d seen it a thousand times. He’d been a victim of it himself once or twice.
“Can your husband come and get you, Judge Moore?” Liska asked. “You can’t drive yourself.”
“I’ll call a car service.”
“You don’t seem in any shape to go anywhere,” Kovac said, wondering where the hell this husband was. His wife had been assaulted. There was a better-than-even chance that the attack could have been an attempt on her life. “He’s out of town, your husband?”
“He’s at a business dinner. I can manage.”
“Does he know you’re here? Have you called him?”
“He’s at dinner. He turned his phone off.”
The jaw was tightening again. She didn’t want to talk about the absent husband. She would rather scrape herself out of a hospital bed, deal with a concussion, some cracked ribs, and an emotional trauma by herself, than try to find the one person who should have made it to the hospital before Kovac and Liska had.
“Where’s the dinner?” Kovac asked. “If you’re going home, you need someone to be there with you. We can call the restaurant, or send a couple of uniforms to tell him.”
“I don’t know where the dinner is,” she said curtly. “There’s no need to interrupt him. My nanny lives in.”
Kovac glanced at Liska and raised an eyebrow.
“I’ll drive you home, Judge Moore,” he said. “As soon as you’ve signed your way out of here.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“Well, I believe that it is, and that’s what’s going to happen,” he said flatly. “You’re a target, and you’re smart enough to know it. I’ll take you home, see that your house is secure.”
Carey Moore said nothing, her gaze fixed stubbornly on her hands. Kovac took her silence as acquiescence.
“Good to know you haven’t lost all your common sense,” he grumbled.
“We can’t say the same thing about you, Detective, or you wouldn’t be treating me like this,” she said.
Kovac sniffed. “Like what? I’m not treating you any differently than I treat anyone.”
“I guess that explains your lack of advancement in the department.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But unlike some people, my career isn’t about ambition. It’s about catching bad guys.”
6
LISKA DISTRACTED THE press in the waiting room with a brief statement and a lot of “No comment” and “I can’t speak to that at this point in the investigation.”
Kovac rolled Carey Moore in a wheelchair through a warren of halls to a little-used side exit, where an orderly had brought Kovac’s car around. The judge had nothing to say as he helped her into the passenger seat and drove out onto the city streets.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
She gave the address in the same short, clipped tone she might use with an anonymous cabdriver. Her home was a short distance and a world away from downtown Minneapolis, in an area of large, stately houses overlooking Lake of the Isles. He had ten minutes-fifteen tops-to get something useful out of her.
“You’ll have one hell of a headache tomorrow,” he said.
She stared straight ahead. “I have a hell of a headache right now.”
“You don’t think that the attack seemed personal?”
“By definition, a physical assault is personal, wouldn’t you say?”
“You know what I mean. Leave the lawyer bullshit on the side, Judge. You’ve been in the system long enough to know better.”
“Oh? You don’t believe lawyers are too obtuse and egomaniacal to pick up on the fact that not all cops are mentally challenged?”
Kovac shot a glance at her. Every time they passed a streetlight, the harsh white light swept over her face, pale as a ghost.
“I think there wasn’t enough time between news of my ruling and my departure from the building for a disgruntled citizen to formulate a plan to kill me,” she said.
“Never underestimate the capabilities of a really determined scumbag.”
“I’ll stitch that on a sampler while I’m recuperating over the weekend.”
“People knew you were going to rule on Dahl’s past record today. Maybe someone anticipated the worst. I know I did.”
“So where were you between six-thirty and seven, Detective Kovac?”
“Doing a bunch of bullshit paperwork on an assault case you’ll probably dismiss next week.”
“I will if you haven’t done your job properly,” she said.
“Are you saying Stan Dempsey didn’t dot all his i’s and cross all his t’s on the Haas murders?”
“I’m saying my job is more complicated than you choose to believe. I don’t make rulings based on whim. Being a judge is not being a rubber stamp for the police department or for the county attorney’s office. I don’t have the luxury of bias anymore.”
Her temper was bubbling just under the surface. He could hear it in her voice. He’d been in the courtroom to testify when she had been a prosecutor. Cool, controlled, but with a sharp edge and an aggressive streak beneath the veneer of calm, she had been fun to watch. Exciting, even. And the fact that she was attractive hadn’t hurt anything, either.
