Tami Hoag - Prior Bad Acts

“Who are you, Jamal? King of the damn world? Boss kick your ass, givin’ away shit.”

“That’s okay, fellas. We’ve got to keep moving. Thanks anyway.”

The Dumpster lid lowered.

“You see this guy, call 911.”

“Damn straight.”

Karl didn’t breathe right until he heard the cruiser continue its way down the alley. And then still he didn’t move.

“Man, that’s one bad dude, that Dahl,” Jamal said. “Killed them kids. Cut that woman.”

“Crazy motherfucker.”

There was silence for a moment while they finished their smokes, then went back into the diner.

Still Karl waited before he dared to poke his head out and look down the alley. The cruiser was gone. There was no one in sight.

Careful not to make a sound, he climbed out of his hiding spot and made his way down the alley under the cover of shadows. Toward the end of the block on the left-hand side, he could see a broad landing and steps leading down from the back door of a business.

If the homeless man the restaurant workers had spoken about slept under those stairs regularly, there was a good chance he kept his stuff stashed under there.

Karl slipped across the alley. He could see a grocery cart loaded down with the stuff homeless people keep-soda cans and beer cans they gathered for the recycling money, filthy blankets and clothes.

He needed to get rid of the jail jumpsuit and into a disguise. No one looked twice at street people if they could help it.

The owner of the cart was nowhere in sight. Like as not, he was still working his alleys, or panhandling on the street in front of restaurants with no valet. The night was young.

Karl began to dig through the stuff in the shopping cart. A garbage sack full of cans. Another with beer and liquor bottles. Wedged down into the folds of an old blanket, he found a bottle of bourbon with two fingers’ worth in the bottom and helped himself to it, hoping it would numb his pounding head and aching throat.

“Hey! That’s my stuff!” The indignant voice came from beneath the stairs, under a pile of discarded upholstery fabric. The fabric rustled and moved, and a dark lump of rags and matted hair emerged.

“You can’t have it! Pope Clement gave that to me!”

The man came at Karl, arms flailing, mouth tearing wide to shout. Without hesitation, Karl swung the bourbon bottle downward and hit the man in the head as hard as he could.

Without a sound, the ragman dropped straight to his knees, his momentum carrying him into Karl and knocking Karl backward. Regaining his balance, Karl was on him in an instant, hitting him again and again, feeling bone give way and splinter beneath the heavy glass of the bottle. He kept pounding away, as if the bottle were a hammer, over and over until there was no skull left to break.

Spent, he sat back on his heels, trying not to wheeze. He was sweating and shaking and dizzy. He wiped a hand over his face, and it came away sticky with the ragman’s blood and brain matter.

Karl pulled the carcass back under the steps, stumbling over another bottle, this one with something clear in it. Karl opened it and sniffed. Grain alcohol. He used it to wash the blood off his face and hands, then drank the last swallow.

Methodically, he pulled off the dead man’s coat and shirt and T-shirt. He stripped off his own jail jumpsuit and dressed in the dead man’s clothes, which reeked of body odor, bourbon, urine, and feces.

The man had stashed his money down the front of his undershorts, taped against his scrotum. Karl took it, still warm from the body heat of his victim, peeled off a couple of bills to put in his pocket, then stashed the rest the same way the dead man had.

Hiding the jumpsuit beneath it, he covered the body over with the musty remnants of upholstery fabric that had made the man’s nest, then went back to dig through the shopping cart for anything else he might be able to use.

He found a steak knife with a good blade and slipped it in the coat pocket. He found a knit cap and pulled it on, wincing as the wool settled onto his wounds. The idea that it was probably infested with lice made his skin crawl, but he had no choice. He had no choice about anything if he wanted to stay alive.

He rubbed his hands on the filthy pavement, then rubbed them over his face, working in the grime. Hide in plain sight. He knew how to do that. He knew how to be invisible. He was an unremarkable man with a forgettable face devoid of expression. It was easy for people to look right through him.

It would be impossible now for him to try to leave the city. The police would be all over the bus stations, the train depots, the truck stops. They might set up roadblocks and checkpoints. They would be expecting him to run. His picture would be everywhere, a picture of him clean-shaven and bareheaded. But he would no longer be that man, and no one would catch him running.

In fact, it seemed to Karl the best thing for him to do right now was stay put. The cops had already been down this alley. They had already been told about the homeless guy living under these stairs. He couldn’t say for certain, but he imagined the police had checked out the spot on their way down the alley. They had maybe even spoken with the ragman long enough to know that he communicated regularly with Pope Clement.

Knowing he was in as safe a place as any, Karl crawled back under the stairs and stretched out beside the dead man’s still-warm body to catch some sleep.

IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT by the time they had interviewed Jerome “Stench” Walden. The kid’s mother had come to the door, drunk and smoking a cigarillo. A charming woman.

Jerome had looked embarrassed that he was stuck in a crappy house that smelled of sour beer and fried onions and cheap tobacco. In a clean set of gray sweats, the T-shirt bearing the initials USC in maroon block letters, he looked as incongruous in his setting as Bobby Haas had looked kneeling at his father’s feet, trying to comfort him. Not surprisingly, Jerome’s story of the after-school and evening adventures matched Bobby Haas’s version of events.

Kovac didn’t believe them, but then he rarely believed anyone. He was too accustomed to being lied to. Everybody lied to the cops, even the innocent. He wouldn’t have believed his own grandmother without a corroborating witness.

The security videotape from the government center parking ramp was on Kovac’s desk when they arrived back at the CID offices. They went into a conference room, watched the oft-copied-over tape, and drank some bad coffee.

They had run out of desire for conversation on their way in but had been partners long enough that they were comfortable with their silences. Neither of them said a word as they watched the tape through the first time.

The tape was so grainy that if Kovac hadn’t known they were looking at Carey Moore, he couldn’t have positively ID’d her. She walked into the camera frame, proceeding toward her car, a black 5-series BMW sedan. She was carrying a handbag slung over one shoulder, and a large briefcase that looked heavy. Her father’s briefcase.

She stuck her hand into the purse to dig out car keys and dropped a couple of objects on the floor. Stopping, she set the briefcase down and bent to pick up what she had dropped.

At that moment the assailant came from the left of the screen. Difficult to make out size, due to the angle of the camera, which was pointed down from above them. Dressed in jeans and a dark coat with the hood up. Impossible to make out a face.

He hit her hard across the back with some kind of a club or baton, maybe a small baseball bat. The attack was fast and violent, and it looked to Kovac that the assailant was more interested in hurting her than in taking anything.