Kovac And Liska: Prior Bad Acts Part 31

He knocked on the door to the nanny's room. No answer. He pushed the door open. No one. The bed was unmade. He checked the closet. No one.

"Carey! Anka!" he shouted.

The uniforms stood at the top of the stairs. Kovac ran past them, down the hall to Carey's bedroom. The door was open; the bed had been stripped to the mattress. Carey was gone.

"Check the bas.e.m.e.nt," he shouted at the officers.

He thought of Kenny Scott bound to a chair, the wordGUILTY branded into his forehead. He thought of the Haas family, of the two children left hanging in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Lucy.

Oh, Jesus.

A feeling washed over him he so rarely experienced that it took him a moment to name it.

Panic.

The little painted fairy on Lucy's door smiled at him. The things that Stan Dempsey had said on the video played through his head.

"I wonder how differently she would feel if her daughter were raped and sodomized and hung up from the ceiling like a slaughtered lamb. . . ."

Kovac felt like he was going to puke. He braced himself for the worst and pushed the door open.

Lucy's bed was empty, the covers messy. No blood. That registered right away. There was no blood. There was no body.

"Lucy?" Kovac called. "Lucy, are you in here? It's me, Detective Sam."

He went to the closet and opened the door. Nothing.

He got down on his hands and knees, lifted the ruffled bed skirt, and peered under the bed, his heart breaking at the sight of the little girl. She was shaking and crying and trying very hard not to make a sound.

"Come on, sweetheart," Kovac said gently. "You can come out now. You're safe. I won't let anything bad happen to you."

Slowly she inched her way toward him, crying openly now, her breath hitching, her nose running. Kovac reached out to help her, and her little hand grabbed hold of his fingers and squeezed for dear life.

When she popped out from under the bed, she threw herself into his arms, threw her whole small trembling body against him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and sobbed, "Where's my mommy?"

Kovac held her tight and thought,I wish I knew.

39.

CAREY DIDN'T KNOWhow long she had been unconscious. She came out of it layer by layer, first becoming aware that she was breathing, then moving an arm, a leg. Still, she wasn't sure that she wasn't dead. She lay curled in a fetal position, disoriented, dizzy. Then she opened her eyes and saw nothing but blackness.

Panic hit instantly.

Was she blind?

She brought her hands up to her face to feel for a blindfold, even though she knew there wasn't one.

Her heart was racing. Her breathing was too quick and too shallow. She felt as if she wasn't getting any air at all.

Raw fear raked through her.

Instinctively she lashed out, pushed her hands out in front of her, and hit something solid. She tried to straighten her legs, but there wasn't enough s.p.a.ce.

She turned onto her back and did the same thing again, with the same result.

Her first thought was that she was inside a coffin.

Memories of old horror stories flashed through her brain. Stories of people being buried alive.

As a prosecutor, she had once worked a case where a woman had been left for dead, buried in a shallow grave. She had been stabbed multiple times, but when the ME determined cause of death, it was asphyxia. The woman had breathed in dirt particles after she had been buried. Her nose and mouth had been full of freshly turned earth.

Carey tried frantically to push at the lid of her coffin. It didn't move.

She called for help, the sound seeming to come back at her instead of traveling beyond her small, dark prison. Even so, she cried out again and again, until her throat was raw.

No one came.

Tears trailed from the outer corners of her eyes into her hair as she lay on her back, wondering, waiting. Time lost all meaning.

Periodically, she kicked at the lid of her box. Realizing she had no water and that her mouth was already dry, she stopped trying to call out.

The power of fear was like an animal inside her, trying to escape.

She couldn't breathe.

She felt faint.

If she hadn't already, she was going to die.

Lucy.

She had to keep thinking of Lucy.

Was she nearby? Had the abductor taken her daughter as well?

Carey thought about what Kovac had told her. About Stan Dempsey, about what he had said on his videotape.

"I wonder how differently she would feel if her daughter were raped and sodomized and hung up from the ceiling like a slaughtered lamb."

Tears filled her eyes once more. The idea of someone's hurting Lucy, torturing Lucy, hanging her by the neck, made Carey's stomach turn and her heart feel as if it were being torn from her chest.

She had seen the photos from the Haas murders. She had been as horrified as anyone--more so, considering she had a child of her own and considering that the fate of the man accused of committing those crimes hung in the balance in her own courtroom.

Was that going to be her fate, the fate of her daughter? To die as Marlene Haas and her foster children had died? Or had Lucy already been killed? Was she lying in her bed at home with her throat slit to prevent her from identifying the perpetrator?

And what about Anka? An innocent in the dramas that Carey found herself in. Whatever someone might have had against her, Carey hated to think that one of the few loyal, trustworthy people she knew would be made to pay for her imagined sins.

The voice on the phone late Friday night echoed in her mind over and over:"I'm coming to get you, b.i.t.c.h."

A man's voice.

Stan Dempsey's voice. Or Wayne Haas's voice. Or the voice of any one of the thousands of people who hated her for having ruled against the admission of Karl Dahl's prior bad acts as evidence in the case against him.

Or the voice of a man twenty-five thousand dollars richer, courtesy of her husband.

The sound of a door closing startled her from her speculation. Someone who might rescue her? Or her captor?

"Help me!" she called. "Help me!"

Another door slammed, closer. The box dipped down slightly, and an engine started.

She was in the trunk of a car, and the car was backing up.

Whoever sat behind the wheel of this car probably meant to kill her. She had to do whatever she could to prevent that from happening.

She needed a plan.

She needed to focus.

She needed to live.

40.

"HOW THEf.u.c.kcould this happen?" Kovac shouted at the uniforms. They stood in the Moores' study, out of the way of the crime scene team.

Kovac looked from one of the officers to the other.

"I don't know," the older one, MacGowan, said. "We never saw anybody go into the house. Neither did the guys ahead of us. We walked the perimeter every half hour. There weren't any signs of trouble."

Holding on to his head as if it might break in half, Kovac stalked away from them, turned, and stalked back. "You said you saw the nanny drive out."

"She waved out the car window and called out 'Coffee,'" the younger officer, Bloom, said. "She's the nanny. What were we supposed to do?"

"You're sure it was her?"

"A blond woman driving a Saab."

"You didn't stop her," Kovac said.

"Why would we?" MacGowan said irritably, getting in Kovac's face. "She had a pa.s.s--she was family. No one said to stop family. So get the f.u.c.k outta my face, Kovac. You're in a suit, so you think you're Jesus f.u.c.king Christ--"

"f.u.c.k yourself, MacGowan!" Kovac shouted. "You lost a judge. You let some mutt waltz out of here with the one person you're supposed to be protecting! You're gonna be a f.u.c.king crossing guard when this is over!"

"Gentlemen?" Lieutenant Dawes walked into the room. Her voice was calm, and such a contrast to Kovac's that everyone took notice immediately. "Officers, wait in the hall, please. I'll deal with you later."

Bloom couldn't get out fast enough. MacGowan lingered, giving Kovac att.i.tude.

Kovac shook his head. "Go sharpen your pencil, a.s.shole. You'll be writing up jaywalkers till your teeth fall out."

MacGowan made an angry gesture and walked away.

"Detective Kovac?" Dawes said.

Kovac continued huffing and puffing, pacing back and forth. "I can't f.u.c.king believe this!"

"Sam, get ahold of yourself." Dawes put herself in his path so that he had to pull up.

When he spoke, he lowered his voice to just below a shout. "How the h.e.l.l could this happen? Cops here around the clock. The place locked down like a fortress. And someone just drives out of here with Carey Moore? Is this a f.u.c.king joke?"

"I don't think anyone is laughing," Dawes said. "And we should all get out our umbrellas, because there is going to be a s.h.i.tstorm raining down on us from on high soon enough. I've already had a call from a.s.sistant Chief Harding. There's a mob of media outside. In the meantime, we need to get our ducks in a row and figure out what's really happened here."

Kovac rubbed his hands over his face and sighed, trying to will his blood pressure down. "I was here until about nine last night."

"Doing what?"

He looked away, looked back, uncomfortable. "She told me she was going to ask her husband for a divorce. I wanted to be here in case the jerk flipped."

Dawes lifted a brow. "How very chivalrous of you."

"The guy is a creep, leading some kind of a double life," Kovac said, scowling. "I didn't want to take the chance."

"Where did you go from here?"