Kovac And Liska: Prior Bad Acts Part 34

Years before, when he was new to Homicide, he'd come across a case of a missing woman who was found only after her body had begun to decompose. Her boyfriend had bludgeoned her to death with a claw hammer and stuffed her body under her mother's bed.

Kovac carefully lifted the bed skirt and looked. No body. A couple of long plastic storage containers full of shoes and clothes.

Down the hall, in Carey's bedroom, the crime scene unit was going over every square inch. But as with the nanny's room, the carpet had been vacuumed. The linens had been stripped from the bed. If they were lucky, they might find the sheets in the laundry. If not, their bad guy might have taken them to dispose of them so there would be no chance to get hair, fiber, bodily fluids, to put a name to their perp.

Kovac stood in the doorway of the welcoming, elegant room where he had helped Carey Moore to bed just two nights prior. Now the room gave a different feeling entirely.

Though he would never have admitted it to anyone, sometimes he thought he could feel the echo of raw emotions at the scene of a violent crime. Terror, anger, panic, intent.

He looked at the bed and pictured the scene in his mind--the room dark, Carey sleeping with her back to the door. He imagined the crime from the point of view of the perpetrator, never the victim. He could see Carey kicking and flailing as she was dragged backward from the bed. In the struggle, the heavy alabaster lamp was knocked over and fell to the floor. The framed photographs on the night table tipped over.

But as he looked at the room before him, the lamp was undisturbed, and there were no picture frames, on the stand or on the floor.

Kovac called to a squat woman plucking a piece of something off the carpet with a tweezers. "Where'd the pictures go?"

She put the fiber in a small clear plastic tube and placed a numbered evidence marker on the floor. "What pictures?"

"You didn't find any framed photographs on this nightstand or on the floor?"

She shook her head.

"No black-and-white eight-by-ten graduation photo? No baby photo in a silver frame?"

"Nope."

"You've looked under the bed?"

"Nothing under there."

Kovac looked across the room at Carey's dresser. Perfectly neat and tidy.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

"You need booties," the woman said.

Kovac pulled a pair of blue paper booties on over his shoes so that he wouldn't track in anything that would contaminate the scene. The forensics team had enough to do a.n.a.lyzing the legitimate evidence.

Avoiding evidence markers on the floor, Kovac crossed the room to the dresser and opened a drawer, and then another and another. All with items neatly folded.

He went to the large walk-in closet that held the rest of Carey's clothes, and looked around at the racks that held business suits, blouses, slacks, dresses. Nothing appeared disturbed.

At the back of the closet, a collection of matching luggage was neatly lined up, except that one piece seemed to be missing, leaving an empty spot in the row.

That bothered him. Of course, the piece could have been lost, or out for repair.

He looked around the closet again more closely, scrutinizing every inch of hanging s.p.a.ce. A small gap here, a small gap there. Things might have been missing, or not.

But that missing suitcase . . .

If someone had packed a bag, that person had not been Carey Moore. No way she would have left this house voluntarily and left her daughter behind.

What the h.e.l.l kind of kidnapper took a change of clothes for his victim?

Kovac could only hope that if that missing suitcase was in the possession of the kidnapper, it meant whoever had taken Carey meant to keep her alive.

He tried not to think about why.

43.

CAREY FELT DIZZYand nauseated. The oily scent of exhaust was inescapable.

She had to hope the secret destination was near, or she would die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Then again, what lay in store for her at the end of this ride would be nothing good. She would probably wish she had succ.u.mbed during the ride.

She had moved her hands around the cramped trunk, feeling for anything she could use as a weapon--a tire iron, a wrench, anything. But she found nothing.

As she turned onto her right side, something rectangular pressed against her hip bone. She felt it with her fingertips and a quick burst of hope shot through her.

Cell phone.

She remembered sticking it in the pocket of her jeans after speaking to Kovac the night before. David had just stormed out of the house. She had called Kovac to tell him. He had been standing right outside her house, ready to come to her rescue.

When she had finally gone up to bed, she had been too exhausted to bother undressing. Or maybe it had been that she already felt too exposed and vulnerable.

Hands shaking, she fished the phone out of her pocket and punched a b.u.t.ton to light it up.

911.

Fingers fumbled as she pressed the numbers. Misdialed. Tried again.

Her heart was banging against her ribs like a fist.

The only sound the telephone made was a series of beeps, then nothing. The lighted screen showed the message "No Service."

No service.

No signal.

No help.

44.

KOVAC CALLED AHEADto the Edina police to send a unit to Ginnie Bird's condo and not let her leave the premises, hoping to h.e.l.l that that hadn't already happened. Since arriving at his house, David Moore hadn't been alone two seconds to make a call to his girlfriend. But whomever he had called for a lawyer--Edmund Ivors, Kovac suspected--could have given the Bird woman the heads-up to get out of Dodge.

Ginnie Bird had to be cut off from the pack. If he could get her alone, Kovac knew he would get her to talk. She wouldn't know what to do without Moore or Ivors there to put words in her mouth. She didn't have the backbone to stand up to him.

She was standing on the curb in front of her building when he pulled up, looking very unhappy to be facing two uniforms.

Kovac walked up to them. "Ms. Bird. Are these guys bothering you?"

"They won't let me leave," she said, anxious. "They can't do that . . . can they?"

"Well, that would be my fault," Kovac said. "I asked them to detain you until I could get here."

Ginnie Bird looked up at him, suspicious. "I don't have anything to say to you. I don't know anything about what happened to David's wife."

"You knew he had a wife," Kovac said. "That tells me right there that you make bad choices, Ginnie. I mean, bad enough to hook up with a jerk like Moore if he was single. Why go to all the trouble of having an affair with a guy like that? A sneaky, spineless, petulant liar--"

"I love him!" she said emphatically. "You don't know anything about him."

Kovac shook his head. "Honey, I know all about the David Moores of the world. Why don't we go inside?" he suggested, gesturing toward her building. "I'm sure you'd rather not have your neighbors taking all this in."

"Am I under arrest?" she asked.

"No. Should you be?" Kovac arched a brow. "Do you have something to hide?"

"No!" she insisted. She glanced surrept.i.tiously at her building, checking to see who might be peering out their windows.

"Fine," she said. "We'll go inside."

She liked her illusion of legitimacy. It was important to her that people around her believed she belonged in this tony part of town.

"No," Kovac said.

Ginnie Bird had already started to go back to the building. She turned around and looked at him, puzzled.

"No," he said again. "You know what? I don't have time for this bulls.h.i.+t."

"But--"

"There's a woman missing. I think you know something," Kovac said aggressively, stepping a little too close to her, his voice getting louder. "And you'd better spit it out, or we'll be talking about this in an eight-by-ten room downtown."

"I don't know anything," she insisted, but kept her voice down.

"You know who the blond guy was that met you in the bar Friday night," Kovac said. "I want a name."

"I don't know his name!"

"Maybe you don't know your own name, Ms. Bird," Kovac said. "If I were to run your prints through the system, who would you turn out to be?"

Big tears filled her eyes, and her face tightened into an unattractive expression. She turned one way and then the other, not knowing what to do or say next.

"I want a name," Kovac said again.

She put her hands over her face and started to cry.

"n.o.body feels sorry for you," Kovac said harshly. "You're a junkie wh.o.r.e s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the husband of a missing judge. Do you know what that sounds like? That sounds like motive. You couldn't have what you wanted as long as Carey Moore was in the way. I have no doubt you know plenty of lowlifes who could do the dirty work for you."

Ginnie Bird made a sound like a siren, her face still in her hands.

Kovac held his hands up and took a step back. "That's it. I've had enough of this c.r.a.p."

He turned to the uniforms. "She's going in, guys."

"Donny," she sobbed. "Donny Bergen."

"How do you know him?" Kovac demanded.

She sobbed but didn't answer.

Kovac got in her face. "How do you know him!"

"He's my brother."

45.