Kovac And Liska: Prior Bad Acts Part 11

A tear rolled over her lashes onto her cheek. She caught it with a sc.r.a.ped knuckle and swept it away. "I only know how to fight. Go on the offensive. Make something happen."

"There's nothing wrong with that," Kovac said. He wondered if part of the reason she wasn't able to accept she'd been victimized was that she had no one to fall back on, no one to take the offensive for her.

"There isn't a good time to tell you this, so I'm just going to do it," Kovac said. "Karl Dahl escaped custody tonight."

Carey Moore stared at him for so long without saying anything that Kovac began to wonder if she'd understood a word he'd said. Head injuries could have some pretty weird effects on people.

Finally, she said, "Escaped?What do you meanhe escaped ? How could he escape?"

"There was some kind of fight at the jail. Things got out of hand. Prisoners and jailers had to be taken to the hospital. Someone f.u.c.ked up royally. Didn't cuff Dahl to the gurney. He basically just got up and left when n.o.body was looking."

"Oh, my G.o.d," she said with the same kind of anger and disgust every cop in town was feeling.

A triple murderer was loose on the streets because some d.i.c.khead in a uniform had blown it. Kovac knew from experience it wouldn't matter who the d.i.c.khead was specifically, and it wouldn't matter which agency he worked for. Every cop, every deputy sheriff in Minneapolis, would take heat for it from the public, from the media, from department bra.s.s.

"The public will love it," Kovac said with his usual sarcasm. "Now they have two branches of the justice system not to trust."

Carey Moore closed her eyes but didn't succeed in blocking out anything but the light. "Has someone told Wayne Haas?"

"I had that pleasure."

"How did he take it?"

"How do you think?"

She didn't answer him. Both her question and his had been rhetorical.

As they sat there in the Moores' beautiful den, it was so quiet in the house that the sound of a key unlocking the front door seemed as loud as a gunshot. Kovac had a direct view of the entry. He rose from his chair, at attention, and waited, feeling a strange mix of curiosity and aggression.

David Moore walked in, his tie askew, shirt collar undone. He was a good-enough-looking guy, Kovac supposed. Medium height, blondish conservative haircut. He might have been the athletic type once, but he was going soft, and his face and neck had a slight doughy quality that suggested indulgence. He wore a rumpled brown suit and a petulant expression.

In other words, in Kovac's vernacular: a.s.shole.

Kovac took an instant dislike to Carey Moore's husband before one word came out of his mouth.

"Carey? What's going on?" the husband demanded, coming into the den. "What happened to you?"

Not said with loving concern, but almost as if he was offended that she looked the way she did.

"I was mugged in the parking ramp."

"Oh, my G.o.d."

"Your wife was attacked, Mr. Moore," Kovac said. "We believe it may have been an attempt on her life."

David Moore just stood there like a moron, looking from his battered wife to Kovac. "Who are you?"

Kovac showed him his badge. "Kovac. I'm a detective with the Homicide division."

"Homicide?"

"We also handle a.s.saults. a.s.saults are the homicides of tomorrow," he said with a hint of sarcasm he knew David Moore wouldn't get. It was an inside joke. It always seemed like the department was more keen on solving the a.s.saults, because there were more of them, and clearing them kept the violent-crime stats down.

Moore dismissed him, tossed his jacket on a chair, and finally went to his wife.

"Are you all right?"

"Does she look all right?"

Carey Moore gave Kovac the skunk eye.

The husband sat down on the love seat. "My G.o.d, Carey. Why didn't you call me?"

"Why don't you check your messages?" she said with an edge in her voice. "I did call you. I called you from the emergency roomsix hours ago ."

Moore had the sense to look guilty. "Oh, s.h.i.t. My battery must be dead."

"Or something," Kovac muttered.

The husband looked at him. "Excuse me?"

"I have to ask you some questions, Mr. Moore. It's just routine. Where were you between the hours of six and seven o'clock tonight?"

The judge glared at him. "Detective, this isn't necessary."

David Moore stood up, outraged. "Are you implying I might have attacked my own wife?"

"I'm not implying anything," Kovac said calmly. "I'm asking you a question. Do you have some problem with giving me a straight answer?"

"I don't like your att.i.tude, Detective."

"n.o.body does. Lucky for me, I don't give a rat's a.s.s."

Moore flushed an unhealthy shade of red. He jammed his hands at his waist. "My wife is a respected member of the bar--"

"I know who your wife is, Mr. Moore," Kovac said. "Who areyou ? That's what I need to know. And so far, just from observation, I'm not coming up with a lot of flattering adjectives here."

Moore drew breath for another diatribe of indignation. His wife cut him off.

"David, stop it. For G.o.d's sake, just answer the man's questions. He's doing his job."

The husband clearly didn't like being chastened. He went a darker shade of red with embarra.s.sment or anger, or both.

"Carey, he's not being respectful of you."

She looked away from him and shook her head with anI'm so sick of you sigh.

"I'm not trying to be a hard-a.s.s here, Mr. Moore," Kovac lied. "But it's going on two o'clock in the morning. Your wife has been beaten, and she's received two threatening phone calls since. I don't have the patience to tiptoe around your ego.

"So let's try this again. Where have you been this evening?"

Moore clearly wanted to turn on his heel and storm out of the room. The big, dramatic exit for the put-upon hero of his own story.

The bruising and swelling was coming out in his wife's face. She was beginning to look like something that might live under a bridge in a horror movie. One eye was nearly swollen shut. The lump on her forehead looked like a horrible deformity. Her lower lip was twice its normal size. The st.i.tches had pulled, and the split was beginning to bleed again.

David Moore hadn't so much as offered her a rea.s.suring touch. He'd asked for no details of her attack, had made no comment on Kovac's suggestion it might have been an attempt on her life. He hadn't even inquired if she might have been raped.

"I had a business dinner," Moore said.

"Where?"

"That new place in the IDS Tower next to the Marquette Hotel, Buffalo Grill."

"What time was your reservation?"

"Seven-thirty, but we met for drinks first."

"When was that, and where?"

Moore looked away. "Why don't I just give the name of the business a.s.sociate I was meeting? You'll want that anyway, won't you?"

Kovac gave him the flat cop eyes. "Why don't you just answer the question I asked you?"

"Gentlemen?" the judge said abruptly. "I'm not feeling well. I'd really like to go lie down now. Feel free to continue without me."

She started to get off the love seat under her own steam. The husband finally moved to help her, taking hold of one elbow to steady her.

"I'll help you upstairs."

She didn't thank him.

Kovac watched them go, trying to read their body language. The judge was stiff and limping, but forcing her back as straight as she could. She kept her chin up, and she didn't lean on her husband, even though he was now trying to appear as solicitous as possible.

Kovac would have loved to hear the conversation between them as they went up the stairs, but they kept their voices to themselves. Instead, he took the opportunity to prowl around the den, looking for hints of who these people were, but there were more signs of who their decorator was than what made the Moore family tick.

The room seemed to belong predominantly to the husband. A lot of electronic toys--big plasma screen TV on the wall above the fireplace, stereo equipment, satellite radio setup. A couple of framed award certificates with Moore's name on them.

Kovac found the lack of family photographs and incidental personal touches telling. No one was in the middle of reading a novel or knitting a sweater. There were no toys or storybooks that would have belonged to Princess Lucy. A pricey, large flat-screen computer monitor sat in the middle of an immaculate desk. The bookcase behind the desk held books about the film industry, biographies of people Kovac had heard of and more he had not. A lot of videotape cases.

"They should have kept her in the hospital," David Moore complained as he came back into the room.

"She wouldn't stay," Kovac said, pulling a videotape off a shelf and pretending to study its t.i.tle. "She wanted to come home, be with her family, except for you, of course."

"What the h.e.l.l--?"

"She knew you weren't here," Kovac went on. "And she didn't want us tracking you down. Why do you think that is?"

"I don't think I told her where the dinner was," Moore said. "We're both very busy people. The details sometimes get lost."

"What are you so busy with, Mr. Moore? These business a.s.sociates you were with--what kind of business are they in?"

"I'm a doc.u.mentary filmmaker. The people I was with are potential financial backers for a film I want to make juxtaposing the gangsters of the thirties with street gangs of today."

"And why didn't you want to talk about these people in front of your wife?" Kovac asked, ambling closer to Carey Moore's husband. "Why didn't she want to stick around for the rest of this conversation?"

Moore tried to look confused. "I don't know what you mean, Detective. I was just trying to be helpful. I knew you would want their names--"

"But you didn't want to say where you met them for drinks?"

"I never said that."

"Uh-huh."

Fl.u.s.tered, Moore huffed a sigh. "We met in the lobby bar of the Marquette. Nothing suspicious about that, is there?"

Kovac shrugged. "Depends. Who are these cohorts of yours?"

"Edmund Ivors," Moore said without hesitation. "He's a businessman. He made his fortune in multiplex theaters and likes to give back to the industry by helping talented filmmakers."

"Like yourself."

"Yes."

"Should I have heard of you?" Kovac asked, deliberately rude.

A muscle flexed in David Moore's jaw. "I'd be surprised if you had," he said tightly. "You don't strike me as the intellectual type."

Kovac raised his brows, amused. "Whoa. Go easy there, Sport. I'm not as dumb as I look. You really don't want to poke a stick at me, Dave," he said, smiling like a crocodile. "I'll feed it to you the hard way. But hey, points for showing some b.a.l.l.s. Who else was at your little soiree?"

Moore sulked. "An a.s.sociate of Mr. Ivors. Ms. Bird, uh, Ginnie Bird."

"a.s.sociate?"Kovac arched a brow. "Is that anything like being hisniece ?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Moore said impatiently.

"You don't know what a euphemism is?" Kovac said. "I'll be blunt, then: Is Ms. Bird about work, or is Ms. Bird about f.u.c.king somebody?"

Moore glared at him. "Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are, speaking that way--"

Kovac got in his face and backed him off a step. "I'm the homicide d.i.c.k who's half-past sick of your att.i.tude, pal. I think you didn't want to say in front of your wife that one of the people you spent the last six hours with, having the longest business dinner in recorded history, was a woman. And I think the reason that is, is that your wife doesn't trust you, and you know it."

Moore breathed heavily in and out of his nose, furious. Kovac figured the guy wanted to lay him out flat right there and then but didn't have the guts or the muscle to do the job.

"This conversation is over, Detective," Moore said, his jaw set tight. "I won't be treated like a criminal in my own home. You'll leave now. And in the morning, I'll be making phone calls to people who will make your life unpleasant."

A nasty smile curved Kovac's mouth. "Is that a threat, Mr. Moore?" he questioned softly. "Are you threatening me? You know people who'll do that kind of job for you? That would send you straight to the head of my s.h.i.t list of suspects."

"My wife is a very well-connected woman," Moore said. "Connected to people who have the power to pull your strings."