Kovac And Liska: Prior Bad Acts Part 5

Fumbling, he dug a handkerchief out of his hip pocket and held it out to her. He put his other hand on her shoulder.

"It's clean," he said. "Let me help you up."

The judge took a blind swing at him. "Leave me alone!"

She took a couple of shaky breaths and pushed herself up, sitting back against her heels. "Just take me home and leave me the h.e.l.l alone!"

A little way down the street, a couple of hookers stood outside a tattoo parlor, smoking Christ knew what and staring. The tall one in red took a couple of steps toward them.

"Honey? You need a cop?"

Kovac scowled. "I'm a cop."

"I wasn't axing you." She took a couple of steps closer. NBA tall, with an Adam's apple the size of a fist. Transvest.i.te. "I'm axing the lady."

Carey Moore held up a hand. "I'm fine. Thank you. He's fine. He's driving me home."

"Looks like he's been driving you with a golf club, sugar."

"She was mugged," Kovac said.

The transvest.i.te sniffed in disbelief. Kovac dug out his badge and held it out. "You want to get in the car too? I can give you a ride to Booking."

"For what? Standing up?"

"For p.i.s.sing me off."

"Kovac, shut up," the judge snapped. "I want to go home."

The transvest.i.te went back to the tattoo parlor as Kovac helped Carey Moore to her feet. As wobbly as a newborn fawn, she tried to steady herself with a hand on the roof of the car, but started to fall again as her knees gave way.

Kovac caught her against him. "Easy. You should have stayed in the hospital. I'm taking you back."

"You're taking me home," she said stubbornly. "I can vomit without a medical professional supervising."

"You're dizzy."

"I have a concussion. Of course I'm dizzy."

Kovac helped her ease back down into the pa.s.senger's seat and squatted down in front of her so he could see her face in the glow of the streetlight and the neon in the window of the p.a.w.nshop behind him. She looked like she might have been an extra inDawn of the Dead, but there was still a glint of determination in her eyes.

"You're a h.e.l.l of a tough cookie, Judge. I'll say that for you. But that's not always the smartest thing to be."

"Just take me home," she said. "You can come back and visit your girlfriend later."

Kovac recognized the glow two blocks before they came onto the source. The brilliant white lights the television news people used to create the impression that the sun had crashed to earth.

"Oh, f.u.c.k this," he growled as the vans came into view. It wasn't going to matter a d.a.m.n whether the perp had gotten Carey Moore's address out of her wallet or her briefcase. He could get it now, sitting at home in his underwear, watching the G.o.dd.a.m.n news. "They double-teamed us."

He glanced over at the judge. She looked as stunned as she had probably looked when she got hit from behind in that parking ramp.

"Looks like one of your neighbors ratted you out," Kovac said, just to be cranky. The truth of it was, it isn't all that hard to find people.TheState v. Karl Dahl was a huge case that had garnered national attention. Newspeople could have been trailing Carey Moore since the day the trial was a.s.signed to her. Anyone could have.

A couple of police cruisers were parked c.o.c.keyed in the street, the uniforms trying to keep the newsies corralled in a manageable s.p.a.ce, a job about as easy as herding cats.

"Oh, my G.o.d. This is my home," the judge said, mostly to herself.

"All's fair in the news business," Kovac said. "These people would plant themselves in the devil's a.s.shole if they thought they could get a jump on the compet.i.tion."

"I don't want them here."

"Yeah, well, good luck with that. Is there a back way in? An alley?"

"No."

"Duck down before they see you," Kovac said. He turned the wheel and glided the car in along the curb, running his window down.

"Hey!" he shouted at a reporter and a cameraman who had snagged a prime spot in the judge's driveway with a wedge of the house as a backdrop. "Get the f.u.c.k out of the driveway! You're on private property!"

He turned to Carey Moore and lowered his voice. "Let's hope they were rolling live. Their producers flip out if someone uses the F word."

Kovac put on his game face, got out of the car, and approached the news crew, holding up his badge. "Pack up your toys and get out in the street with the rest of your kind."

He recognized the reporter, a perky blonde with too much blush. Mindy. Mandy. Cindy. She stuck a microphone at him. "Detective, Candy Cross, Channel Three News. What can you tell us about Judge Moore's condition?"

"Nothing. Pack it up and get out of the way."

"We're here to speak with Judge Moore--"

"I don't care if you're here for the Second Coming, princess," Kovac said. "You're on private property, and I can have you removed and charged for that. How would you like your pals out there to roll that film at ten?"

The mob was now moving toward them, handheld lights bobbing up and down, red lights glowing on cameras. They sounded like a pack of dogs at dinnertime, all barking at once, each trying to drown out the others.

"Move it or lose it," Kovac said, starting back toward the car. "I'm driving up to this garage, and I don't care if your s.h.i.+t's in the way."

The second team, Kovac thought as his gaze scanned over the herd. The stations had sent their first teams to the hospital at the news of Carey Moore's attack. The second teams had ended up here.

He held up a hand to ward them off. "I got nothing to say. Lieutenant Dawes will have a statement for you tomorrow."

They went back to shouting questions as if he hadn't spoken at all. Kovac shook his head and went to the nearest pair of uniforms.

"Get them off this property," he instructed. "They can go to the other side of the street. I've got Judge Moore, and if I see one flashbulb go off in her face as we go into this house, I'm gonna shoot somebody. Got it?"

"They don't use flashbulbs anymore," the younger officer said as if that would change everything.

Kovac glowered at him. "Are you brain damaged?" He turned to the older partner. "Is he brain damaged?"

The partner shrugged. "Maybe."

Kovac shook his head. "Just get them out of here."

"Will do, Detective."

As he turned toward his car, Kovac saw no sign of Judge Moore, and had a second's flash of panic. Then he realized she had slid way down in the seat and covered herself with her coat.

"Stay right there," he murmured as he slipped into the driver's seat. "They'll be out of the way in a minute."

Carey Moore said nothing. Kovac took a peek under the coat to make sure she hadn't expired. She hadn't, but she looked like she might welcome death soon. Her skin was gray, her face pasty with sweat. She looked like she was maybe going to be sick again.

"Hang in there," Kovac said, his eyes on the reluctant migration of the media. As he waited for the reporters to retreat, he took a moment to check out the judge's digs.

Her home was a well-lit, impressive redbrick colonial with a couple of white columns flanking the front door. Kovac figured his whole house and garage combined was maybe half the size. The shrubbery was clipped, the leaves had been raked, a trio of uncarved pumpkins sat beside the glossy black front door. A tasteful wrought-iron gate kept the riffraff from going up the walk.

It was the kind of place where a person would want to go in and expect to feel warm and welcome. Kovac would go home to a dark, square box that needed paint.

He put the car in gear, pulled up into the driveway at an angle to minimize the view of the pa.s.senger's side. He went around to open the door and helped Carey Moore out of the car, keeping her coat pulled up high around her face. With an arm around her shoulders to support her, he s.h.i.+elded her as they went through the side gate and up to the front door.

As they stepped up onto the stoop, the judge rang the doorbell and leaned against the sidelight, peering into the house.

"Where are your keys?"

"I don't know," she confessed.

"You had them with you before the attack?"

"In my purse."

"You'll change these locks tomorrow. First thing."

"Yes."

"And you'll have a radio car sitting out front until that happens," he told her. "What else did you lose that you haven't told me about?"

"Nothing," she said, but he knew she was lying. The perp probably had her phone numbers, her mother's maiden name, and half her credit cards. He would get a list of the cards and alert the credit card companies. If the perp was using them, he was leaving an electronic trail.

The door swung open and a gorgeous blond twenty-something in a pink velour tracksuit looked wide-eyed at the judge. She said something in what Kovac figured was Swedish or Norwegian or something else from one of those Scandinavian places where everyone looks like they've been designed by computer as models for the master race.

"Oh, my G.o.d, Mrs. Moore!"

"It looks worse than it is," Carey said quietly. "Please don't make a fuss, Anka. Is Lucy asleep?"

"Ya. Just a little while ago," the nanny said.

Kovac helped the judge with her coat, and the nanny took it from him, but she never took her worried eyes off her boss. "But she is worried about you. She didn't want to go to bed. And she made me leave on the light on the side table."

The judge slid down onto an antique carved chair and closed her eyes for a moment. Kovac introduced himself to the nanny, Anka Jorgenson.

"You've been here all evening?" he asked.

"Ya."

"Have there been any strange phone calls? Hang-up calls?"

"No. There was a wrong number," Anka said as an afterthought. "About an hour ago."

"Who did the person ask for?"

"Marlene. I told him there was no such person here."

The judge opened her eyes at that and looked at Kovac. If she could have gotten any paler, she would have.

Marlene, as in Marlene Haas? Kovac thought. The woman Karl Dahl had opened up from throat to groin. He had planted fresh-cut daisies in the gaping wound as if she had been some strange and macabre sculpture in a surrealist gallery. Carey Moore was probably thinking the same thing.

"Was the caller a man or a woman?" Kovac asked.

"A man. He was very polite," the nanny said as if that meant he couldn't have been a bad person. "He apologized for the mistake."

"Has anyone come to the door this evening?"

"No."

"Have you heard any strange noises outside?"

The nanny's eyes filled with tears as she looked back and forth from Kovac to her boss. "Do you think this man who hurt you will come here? Who is Marlene?"

"Just being cautious," Kovac said. "Don't open the door to anyone you don't know. I don't care if they tell you their mother is lying bleeding to death in the street."

"You're scaring me," Anka said, sounding almost angry or resentful.

Kovac nodded. "Good. Does this phone have caller ID?"

"Yes," Anka said. She picked up the handheld off the hall table, scrolled through the caller list, and held it out to Kovac.

"Can you write the number down for me?" he asked. "I'm going to help Judge Moore upstairs."

"I can manage," she said, using the table to help herself to her feet.

Kovac put an arm around her shoulders and guided her toward the staircase. "Stop being such a G.o.dd.a.m.n pain in the a.s.s. I'm helping you, and that's the end of it. You fall and break your neck on my watch, my head goes on the block."

He wanted to pick her up, toss her over his shoulder, and carry her like a sack of potatoes, but he didn't want to have to explain the complaint that that would bring to his lieutenant.

"Don't even think of saying the word 'coincidence,'" he warned as they slowly went up the stairs. "Marlene isn't that common a name, and even if it was, the odds of someone calling here by mistake and asking for someone with the same name as the victim in a case you're trying have to be astronomical."

She didn't say anything at all, but she stopped in the bathroom at the top of the hall, dropped to her knees in front of the toilet, and vomited again.

Kovac dampened a hand towel and gave it to her. She accepted it in silence and sat there on the floor for several moments with her face buried in it.

"Can I a.s.sume you have an unlisted phone number?" Kovac asked, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub.