Prior Bad Acts

by Tami Hoag

  The four-star Marquette Hotel had been designed as part of the central complex of the IDS Center, a soaring fifty-plus dramatic stories of dark glass. The hotel connected to the main office tower via the Crystal Court-a glass-enclosed 23,000-square-foot urban park with a glass ceiling 121 feet above the ground and a 105-foot cascading water fountain at its center.

  The complex connected to the rest of the city by the skyway system-enclosed second-story sidewalks that linked most of the major buildings downtown. The skyways allowed you to travel by foot all over downtown without ever setting a toe outdoors, a great thing when winter temperatures dropped well below zero and the winds howled through the concrete canyons of the city.

  At the front desk, Kovac showed his badge to a young clerk, who immediately went and fetched the manager, a rail-thin red-haired man with a very serious face. Brendan Whitman, his name tag said. Kovac went through the introduction business again, then showed Whitman the photograph of David Moore he had printed from the Web site.

  “Mr. Whitman, do you recognize the man in this picture?”

  “Yes. That’s Mr. Greer,” he said without hesitation.

  Mr. Greer. David Moore had chosen his father-in-law’s name to use when checking into hotels to cheat on his namesake’s daughter. Passive-aggressive prick.

  “Can you tell me if Mr. Greer was checked into the hotel yesterday?”

  Whitman looked at him, suspicious. “What’s this about?”

  “This is about a police investigation into an assault last night. I’m sure you wouldn’t want the good name of your hotel to be associated with an assault if there was no need.”

  “Of course not.”

  “So let’s try this again. Did Mr. Greer check into the hotel yesterday?”

  “Yes. I checked him in myself.”

  “What time was that?”

  Whitman thought about it. “Around three in the afternoon, as usual.”

  “He’s a regular?”

  “Every other week. He’s from Los Angeles. Does something in the movie industry. Was Mr. Greer injured in the assault?”

  “Not yet,” Kovac muttered under his breath. “Is he usually with a lady when he comes in?”

  “No. Always by himself.”

  “Have you ever seen him here with a woman?”

  “Yes. I’ve seen him several times with a woman in the bar.”

  “What did she look like?”

  Whitman squinted as he thought about it. “Ummm… medium height, slender, blond.”

  “Do you keep records on your guests?” Kovac asked. “Could you, say, type Mr. Greer’s name into your computer and bring up a list of his stays at the hotel?”

  “Yes, but you’ll need a warrant for that,” Whitman said. “If we just gave out that kind of information, it would open the hotel to lawsuits. If we can show we were compelled by the authorities to give over the information…”

  “I understand,” Kovac said, though he didn’t like it.

  There was no chance of his getting a warrant for David Moore’s hotel records, or for his financials, which Kovac would have loved to get his hands on. To get a warrant, he had to show reasonable cause for the specific items or information he wanted. As he had been told by more than one prosecutor, Carey Moore among them, if what he wanted was a fishing license, he would have to get it from the state Department of Natural Resources.

  Moore ’s hotel stays would be pertinent in divorce court, not criminal court. The investigation was about Carey Moore’s assault, and David Moore’s alibi held. Unless Kovac could come up with something that connected Moore to the actual perpetrator of the crime, he was out of luck.

  Liska would have been all over him if she’d known he was even asking the questions he had asked Brendan Whitman. She already thought the warning flags were up, which irritated him. For Christ’s sake, couldn’t he feel sorry for Carey Moore without falling in love with her overnight? He couldn’t simply dislike her husband for cheating on her?

  It wasn’t like he fell for women at the drop of a hat. For the most part, he’d sworn off relationships. They never worked out for him. He wasn’t exactly sure why. He was a decent guy, treated women with respect. He knew the job had taken its toll on his marriages. The hours, the grimness, the stress. His better qualities apparently weren’t enough to offset that.

  He was a cop. It wasn’t what he did; it was who he was. He could no more change that than he could change the color of his eyes, so he just didn’t think about it… most of the time. The one woman he’d fallen for who would have understood that, because she had been a cop herself, had committed suicide right in front of him.

  He still thought about her, still felt pain at the loss. He still second-guessed himself sometimes late at night when the nightmare of that scene woke him. If only he’d known the depth of her pain… If only he had unraveled the mystery of her an hour sooner… If only he could have reached her before she fired the gun…

  Pointless to think about it, he knew. What happened, happened. No one could change that. It hadn’t been in the cards for him to save Amanda Savard.

  “She’s another damsel in distress who needs rescuing… ”Liska’s words whispered in his ear. Kovac shut them out and closed the door on the whole topic.

  The lobby bar was empty except for the bartender, who was busy checking bottles. Kovac pulled out a stool and sat down.

  “Sorry, sir,” the bartender said. “We don’t open till four.”

  “Good. I’ll be out of here before I’m tempted to drink on duty.”

  The bartender looked over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow at the badge. She was a little thing, but tough as nails. He could see it in the fine lines around her eyes, the set of her mouth. Forty-something, he figured, dark hair scraped back into a ponytail for convenience, not cuteness. Patty, according to her name tag.

  “I can make an exception for a badge,” she said in a two-pack-a-day voice.

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  He put the picture of David Moore down on the bar.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What’s he wanted for? Have they finally made being an asshole a crime?”

  “We’d have to build jails on the moon,” Kovac said.

  Patty laughed at that, a harsh cackle that would have been more at home in some American Legion post bar than in a swank hotel.

  “You see a lot of him?” Kovac asked.

  “Enough to know he’s a cheap son of a bitch. Buys himself a label, buys the working girl house booze.”

  “Working girl?”

  “Skirt up to her ass, neckline down to her navel ring? She ain’t no schoolgirl, unless the guy pays extra, if you know what I’m talking about.”

  “Medium height, blond, thin?”

  “Expensive tits? That’s the one.”

  “They were in here last night?”

  “They were in here around six, six-fifteen. I was trying to watch the news,” Patty complained. “Hey, what’s up with that psycho Dahl? Have you caught him?”

  “I don’t know,” Kovac said. “Not my case.”

  “What kind of retards do they have running that jail? Jesus.”

  Kovac let the question ride. “So they were in here, just the two of them?”

  “For a while,” Patty said. “She’s all over him. The postgame cozies, if you know what I mean. If I didn’t think he paid for it, I’d say she’s in love with the clown. She’s got the big cow eyes. She’s all ‘Oh, David’ this and ‘Oh, David’ that,” she said in a higher, breathier voice, batting her eyelashes. In the next second, she made a face like she’d tasted something rotten.

  “Made me wanna puke,” she said. “Then, around seven, this older guy comes in and joins them. Real neat, kind of prissy-looking. Expensive suit, little beard trimmed just so.”

  She curled her lip and shook her head, disgusted. “He had that look like maybe he likes to watch, if you get my drift. At least he was a good tipper.”

  Patty poured
two fingers of Johnnie Walker Red and set it in front of him.

  “On the house,” she confided. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll overcharge the next big asshole.”

  Kovac thanked her and took a long sip of the scotch and savored the smooth warmth as it went down. Just one moment of quiet pleasure. Now, if he had a smoke…

  “And then this other guy came and joined them,” Patty said, helping herself to one of the nut dishes. “But he didn’t stay long.”

  Kovac’s alarm bells went off. “Another guy?”

  “Yeah. Thirty. On the small side. Longish blond hair. Kind of foxy-looking. Wiry, sharp features, narrow eyes.”

  “How was he dressed?”

  “Dark jeans, black jacket, black T-shirt.”

  “And he didn’t stay long,” Kovac said.

  “Ten, fifteen minutes. I couldn’t say for sure. It had started getting pretty busy in here. Predinner crowd. But I know he wasn’t here as long as they were.”

  Long enough to say the job was done, Kovac thought. Long enough to pick up his payoff.

  David Moore, you son of a bitch.

  A rush of electricity went through him, the way it always did when a piece of the puzzle fell into place. He wanted to run right out and haul Moore downtown for questioning, but he knew he wasn’t quite there, didn’t quite have enough. He needed to put a name to the foxy-faced guy dressed in black. The guy who had shown up here between seven and seven-thirty, a time frame that easily could have allowed him to be in that parking ramp when Carey Moore was being attacked.

  To get that name, he needed to go back to the weakest link in the trio, Ginnie Bird. If he could get her alone, she’d break fast.

  The fantasy was cut short by the ringing of his cell phone.

  “Kovac.”

  “Detective. Judge Moore is leaving her house. We thought you’d want to know.”

  28

  “I’M GOING TO the courthouse,” Carey said.

  She stood in the hall at the front door, not even wanting to go the few extra feet to the den, where David had been sitting at his computer all day. She didn’t want to see him, she didn’t want to speak to him, she didn’t want to hear his voice.

  He looked out at her, perturbed. “Why? You’re supposed to stay here.”

  “I’ll take a police officer with me,” she said. “I won’t be going back to work for a while. I can at least do some reading and paperwork.”

  “Call your clerk. Have him bring it to the house.”

  Carey said nothing to that. Of course she could have had her clerk do it. Of course she should have. She felt terrible, and she needed to rest. The truth was that she just didn’t want to be in the house with her husband. She hadn’t decided yet what to do, whether she should confront him with what she knew, or wait and gather more evidence against him, or tell Kovac everything.

  She didn’t want to believe the worst-that the man she had loved and married could hate her enough to pay someone to kill her. But the David she had discovered that morning was not that same man. This David had a whole other life going on that she didn’t know anything about. This David was a stranger. She had no idea what he might be capable of.

  “I won’t be long,” she said.

  Lucy came racing down the stairs, wearing a pink fairy costume and clutching her favorite toy, a stuffed dog she had named Marvin. “Mommy, I want to go! I want to go with you! Please.”

  Carey caught her daughter and hugged her tighter than the occasion called for. “Sweetie, I’m just going and coming right back.”

  “I want to go with you,” Lucy insisted, tears filling her eyes.

  She was afraid. Afraid her mother might get hurt again, afraid she might never come home. Lucy was a bright and perceptive child. She knew something bad had happened, something worse than just her mother falling down. Carey knew she could also sense the tension between her mommy and daddy. They never argued in front of her, but the negative energy between them vibrated subtly in the air around them. Lucy picked up on that. She was probably feeling very insecure.

  “Okay,” Carey said. “You can come along.”

  An instant, beaming smile lit up her daughter’s face. “Do we get to ride in a police car?”

  “No. The officer will drive us in Daddy’s car.”

  “My car?” David said. “Why my car?”

  “Because mine is at the police impound yard, being processed for evidence,” Carey said. “Were you planning on going somewhere?”

  “No,” he said, obviously scrambling mentally for a logical reason he didn’t want her in his car. “I just need to get some paperwork out of it before you go.”

  “We’ll be gone twenty minutes. Your paperwork has been out there all day, and suddenly you can’t wait twenty minutes for it. What’s that about?”

  “It’s not about anything,” he snapped, getting out of his chair. “I just realized I need it.”

  “Then get it,” Carey said.

  She wanted to add that he should be sure and get out any of his girlfriend’s stray lingerie while he was at it, but she didn’t.

  “Fine,” David said in a huff. “I’ll get it.”

  He stomped down the hall to the kitchen and out to the garage.

  Carey glanced down at her daughter. Lucy was watching her with a somber face.

  “You need to have a coat on, Miss Sugar-Plum Fairy,” Carey said, and turned to the hall closet to get one out.

  The officer, Paul Young, parked the car at the curb in front of a “No Parking” sign and escorted them into the government center and to Carey’s chambers. After looking through the offices to make certain there were no bad surprises waiting for her, he stationed himself in the hall outside to wait.

  Lucy ran around behind the desk and climbed up in Carey’s chair, wide-eyed with excitement at the prospect of all the fun she might have with the stuff on the desk.

  “Mommy, can I play on your computer?”

  “No, sweetheart. This is where I work. The computer isn’t for playing with,” Carey said as she took the copies of the phone bills, the credit card receipts, the list of escort agencies out of the tote bag she’d brought with her. She pulled an empty file folder from a cupboard, put the papers in it, and put the folder in the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk. The evidence could stay there until she decided what to do with it.

  “Mommy? This was Grandpa Greer’s hammer, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s called a gavel,” Carey said. “Yes, that belonged to Grandpa Greer.”

  Lucy held the gavel with both hands. It was almost as long as her arm, and an incongruent accessory to her pink fairy costume. An impish smile curved her mouth. So precious. The one good thing to come out of her marriage: her daughter.

  Carey brushed a hand over Lucy’s unruly dark hair. Tears burned the backs of her eyes.

  “I wish Grandpa Greer could remember me,” Lucy said.

  “I wish that too, sweetie.”

  God, I wish that too.

  All her life she had been able to go to her father with anything, for any reason, day or night, 24/7. He was the Rock of Gibraltar, her foundation, her anchor.

  He had never really liked David. She knew that because he had told her when she had announced her engagement to him. Not in a harsh way, but with concern for her. Was she sure that was what she wanted? Was she sure David was the one?

  She had been upset with him at the time. She had wanted him to be happy for her, to be supportive of her, to approve.

  David had been a different person then, confident from the success of his work and the accolades of critics. But even then her father had sensed a lack of foundation in him. And he had said to her that if this was what she truly wanted, he would give her his blessing but that she needed to know that she would always have to be the strong one in the marriage, that when the chips were down the only person she would be able to rely on was herself. He felt that David’s strength would always rise and fall with the opinions of other people.

>   Her father had walked down the aisle with her and handed her over to the man who would be her husband. And he had never spoken of his opinion of David again.

  “Don’t cry, Mommy,” Lucy said. She put the gavel down on the desk and stood up on the seat of the chair and hugged her mother.

  Carey winced at the pain in her ribs, but she didn’t tell Lucy to let go. She wanted to feel the security of being held by someone who loved her, even if that someone was only five years old.

  A sharp knock at the door startled her. Before she could ask who was there, Kovac walked in with a stormy expression. He stopped short to take in the scene. He had wanted to come in with a big temper to throw at her for leaving the house, but seeing her with Lucy, seeing her with tears in her eyes, knocked the wind out of his sails.

  Embarrassed, Carey touched gently beneath her eyes to wipe away the tears. She could probably have counted on one hand the number of people who had ever caught her crying. Kovac had managed to do it twice in one day.

  “By all means, come in, Detective Kovac,” she said with an edge of sarcasm ruined by the weakness of her voice.

  Kovac looked from Carey to Lucy.

  “How did you know we would be here?” Lucy asked, bright-eyed with curiosity.

  “I’m a detective,” Kovac said. “That’s what I do. I find out where people are. I find out who committed crimes.”

  “My mommy’s a judge,” Lucy said proudly.

  “I know.”

  “She puts bad people in jail.”

  Kovac glanced at Carey, biting his tongue on some smart remark, she thought.

  “Hey, Princess Lucy,” Kovac said. “I need to speak with your mom in private. Why don’t you go out in the hall with Officer Young, and he’ll show you all the cool stuff on his belt. He’ll show you how handcuffs work.”

  “I’m a fairy now, not a princess,” Lucy informed him. She turned. “Can I, Mommy?”

  “Sure, honey.”

  Lucy climbed down from the chair and went around the desk to Kovac and offered him her hand. By the look on his face, she could have been offering him a live snake.

  “I’m not allowed to go places alone,” Lucy said. “You have to take me.”