Kovac And Liska: Prior Bad Acts Part 37

"Looks like. Has to be how he hooked up with these people. Ginnie Bird, the brother. Ivors is involved in the movie business. Moore is in Ivors's pocket. f.u.c.king creep. Doc.u.mentary films my a.s.s."

He stared at the floor and blew out a breath. His heart was still pounding like a trip-hammer. It was all he could do to keep himself seated on the steps.

"You've had worse cases than this," Logan said.

Kovac looked at him sharply. "So?"

"So what's with the big blowup? You know Carey that well?"

"I know she's my vic," Kovac said defensively. "I know she's my responsibility. And I'm pretty d.a.m.n sure that a.s.shole in the other room made her disappear. Do I need something more than that? I'm supposed to care less because Carey Moore hasn't been raped and eviscerated and set on fire yet?"

Logan held up his hands. "No. I just . . .

"Never mind," he said, turning toward Lieutenant Dawes as she came back from her phone call. Her face was grave as she looked from one of them to the other.

"We've found the nanny."

49.

HER BODY HAD BEENfolded into the trunk of a late-model dark blue Volvo. She looked like a broken doll lying there, legs bent, her eyes wide-open, her head turned at an odd angle.

She was wearing a brown velour Juicy Couture tracksuit and a pair of pink Puma running shoes. Dressed for a Sat.u.r.day night at home, kicking back to watch a movie and eat some popcorn.

"I--I didn't have anything to do with that."

Kovac looked at the guy, annoyed.

Bruce Green. Twenty-seven. Pasty white wimp with a mop of blond frizz that looked like he'd stolen it off the dead body of Harpo Marx. Bell-bottoms and a black and yellow rugby shirt. He dabbed a b.l.o.o.d.y handkerchief under his nose. His forehead was growing a big goose egg.

"I--I just glanced down," Green went on nervously. "I--I dropped my BlackBerry, and--and when I reached for it, I knocked over my latte, and--and it spilled--"

"Shut up," Kovac said sharply. He turned back to the uniform who had been first on the scene, Hovney, a woman built like the corner mailbox, with a face like the flat side of an anvil.

"He rear-ended the Volvo," she said, "which was parked here at the curb. The trunk popped. The rest is history."

Green's car, a b.u.t.t-ugly pea green square box Honda something-or-other, had suffered front-end damage. Pieces made from plastic had shattered and lay on the street.

The street had been cordoned off. Half a dozen squad cars sat at angles on either end of the accident scene.

Kovac pulled on a pair of gloves and tried to turn the nanny's head. The body was in rigor. The second-shift surveillance team had reported the girl had left the Moore house around ten-thirty. She hadn't lived long past that time. Rigor mortis would have begun to set in two to four hours after death. Full rigor was achieved eight to twelve hours after death.

The car was parked on the side street around the corner from the 7-Eleven, where Anka had supposedly gone to pick out a movie and buy some snacks, just past the alley that ran behind the store. The killer had probably initially parked in the alley, out of view. He had nabbed the girl, pulled her into the alley, killed her, put the body in the trunk, driven out of the alley, and parked at the curb. Then he had gotten behind the wheel of the nanny's Saab and calmly driven back to the Moore house.

The car would have been equipped with a garage door opener. The keys to the house were probably on the same key ring as the keys to the Saab. He could have forced the nanny to give up the security code to the house system before he killed her. Or, as Kovac had speculated earlier, David Moore had simply given it to him, along with the twenty-five thousand dollars.

"I guess we can rule out the nanny as a suspect," Liska said.

Hovney went on. "The plates come back to a Saab--"

"He swapped the plates," Kovac said. Which meant the call that had gone out to be on the lookout for the nanny's car had included the wrong plate numbers. "Whose car is this?"

"The VIN number connects the car to a Christine Neal," Dawes said.

"Has anyone tried to contact this woman?" Kovac asked.

"No answer," Dawes said. "I've sent a unit to her home."

Kovac shook his head, p.i.s.sed off at the unnecessary loss of life. If Anka hadn't been involved in the plan against Carey--which she clearly hadn't been--she had been nothing more than collateral damage, just one more person to get out of the way so the plan to nab Carey could go forward as planned.

If Donny Bergen was the doer, it didn't make sense that he would kill someone to get a car. Too risky. He wouldn't have used his own vehicle, for the obvious reasons. But it wasn't that difficult to boost a car without bothering a soul.

"Was the car reported as stolen?" he asked.

"No."

Kovac nodded. "Well, let's hope Ms. Neal is on vacation."

50.

THE CAR SLOWEDdown and turned. Gravel crunched beneath the tires, and Carey's heart began to pound hard at the base of her throat. No one was ever taken to a remote area against their will for any good reason.

She tried the phone again, but still she had no signal, and her battery was starting to run low. The case of the phone had cracked when she had broken the plastic light cover. Hands shaking, she turned it off and stuck it into the front pocket of her jeans once more. The tail of her shirt would hide the outline of it . . . as long as she was wearing a shirt.

The car rolled to a halt.

She had no weapon. Her physical strength, even with adrenaline fueling it, would be no match for a man bent on harming her. The car rocked as the driver got out.

Her breath held tight in her lungs as she waited for the trunk to unlock, waited for the sudden blinding light as the lid opened, waited to finally see the face of her captor.

But the trunk didn't open.

A car door opened again, but no one got in.

Carey wondered where the h.e.l.l she was. There was no traffic noise at all. No sound of human voices. All she could hear was the very faint squawking of geese flying south for the winter. She wished for their freedom, and thanked G.o.d that at least she wasn't hearing the sound of a shovel digging a shallow grave.

51.

CHRISTINE NEAL'S COTTAGEwould have looked just as at home if it had been found somewhere on Nantucket Island. The small garage was empty. The front door of the house was locked, but a little hand-painted sign bade visitors welcome and announced, "Grandma Lives Here."

The uniformed officers had rung the doorbell and looked in the windows but had seen no sign of Christine Neal.

Dawes gave the signal. "Break it in."

The house was quiet and smelled fresh, as if it had just been cleaned.

"Well, this is weird right off the bat," Liska said.

"What?" Kovac asked.

"Look at this place," she said. "It's so--so--neat."

At Kovac's request, she had met them at the Neal home. They were both good detectives in their own right, but Kovac liked the way they worked a scene together. They complemented each other in the way they saw things, in the feelings they picked up, in the way they processed what they took in.

"Not everyone shares your enlightened view of organization," Kovac said as they walked around the living room, looking for any sign of something wrong.

He had sent one of the uniforms to the backyard and one to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Dawes stood just inside the front door, deep in conversation with the chief of detectives, trying to explain the debacle at the Moore house.

"Not everyone has two boys and a homicide cop in the family," Liska said. "Look at the pattern in this carpet. Freshly vacuumed. I'm lucky I cansee my carpet."

"Mmmm . . . You should tell Speed he can work off some of his delinquent child support tidying your house once a week."

"Ha. Two boys, a homicide cop, and an a.s.shole. I would have the same house, but it would smell like sweat socks, cigarettes, and bad Mexican food."

They went into the kitchen, finding it equally immaculate.

"The boys with him this weekend?" Kovac asked.

"Yeah. I can't wait to find out what useful skill he's taught them this time," Liska said. "The last time they were with him, he taught them how to pat down a hype without getting stuck with a dirty needle."

Kovac looked out the window over the sink, into the fenced backyard. A happy scarecrow hung on a post in a vegetable garden studded with orange pumpkins.

"That's Speed, always the model father," he said.

"He's the only one they've got," Liska said. "Hey, look at this. She's a breast cancer survivor."

She stood in front of the refrigerator, looking at a collage of photographs. The life and times of Christine Neal.

"I hope to G.o.d she's visiting those grandkids," Kovac said.

The officer came up from the bas.e.m.e.nt and said, "Nothing down there but wet laundry in the washing machine."

Kovac turned down the hall, checked out the bathroom--spotless--and continued on to what he thought might be a bedroom.

The vacuum had been run in this room as well, right up to the white eyelet dust ruffle of the queen-sized bed.

Kovac looked around the room. Nothing had been overturned or disturbed.

He went down on one knee beside the bed and lifted the fabric.

Christine Neal stared at him with sightless eyes.

52.

"I DON'T GET IT,"Kovac said. "Why kill this woman? Just to take her car?"

"Maybe he knew her," Liska suggested. "Maybe she could ID him."

"You think Christine Neal was into p.o.r.n? Is there a whole over-fifty p.o.r.n movie industry out there I don't know about?"

"I don't want to know. I'm still reeling from Tippen."