Tami Hoag - Prior Bad Acts

He put his left hand where the knife had gone into him. Blood ran out over his fingers. In his right hand, he still held the gun, but limply, as if he had forgotten it was there.

“You killed me,” he said in accusation. “I wouldn’t have killed you.”

Carey stood there staring at him, horrified, unable to move.

Without warning, Dempsey lunged at her.

Too slow to react, Carey backpedaled, off balance, then off the landing. Stan Dempsey fell with her, came down on top of her, knocking the wind out of her. She tried to move but couldn’t.

Dempsey groaned and tried to lift himself. Carey could feel his blood, warm and wet, soaking into her shirt.

Hysterical, she scrambled backward like a crab to get out from under him. Dempsey was on his hands and knees. Trying to draw breath, tears blurring her vision, Carey rolled over, got her feet under her, and ran, adrenaline pumping through her like high-octane fuel.

She ran toward the road, feeling out of control, feeling like her body was hurtling forward faster than her mind or her legs could go. Like running down a steep hill.

A gunshot blasted behind her.

She fell as if something caught her ankles from behind and yanked her legs out from under her. She hit the ground hard, bounced twice. Gravel dug into her palms, her elbows, her chin.

She landed in a heap, like a rag doll, and lay there, still.

In the back of her mind it registered very dimly that it had started to rain.

THEY CUT THE LIGHT Sand siren when they neared the road Tippen said would take them to the munitions building. Kovac cut the speed even though it went hard against his sense of urgency. Half an hour had passed since he had taken Carey’s call. A lot of bad shit could happen in half an hour.

“Karl Dahl will go into the annals of criminal psychology,” Tippen said as they crept down the little-used side road. “He kills two women to get to the only woman who’s done him any favors in who knows how long. Digging into the dark labyrinths of his mind for motive will be like spelunking into hell.”

Kovac said nothing. It didn’t matter to him why Karl Dahl would do anything. All that mattered was that he had. He had killed Anka Jorgenson. He had killed Christine Neal. He had killed Marlene Haas and her two foster children. And now he had Carey.

“It’s up here on the left,” Tippen said. “What’s the plan?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Great. What do I tell our backup units and the ambulance?” Tippen asked. “We can’t go in there like the cavalry. Guns a-blazin’.”

That was what Kovac wanted to do. He wanted to go in like a commando. But they couldn’t risk that. If they went in aggressively and Dahl felt cornered, there was no telling what he might do. It then became a hostage situation. If they went in quietly, assessed the situation and considered their options, they had a better chance of taking Dahl by surprise, getting him away from Carey.

“There it is,” Tippen said, pointing off to the left.

Kovac slowed the car. While it had gotten them out here faster than anything else would have, they couldn’t drive past in a police cruiser. He pulled over to where a stand of mostly naked small trees offered some protection, put the car in park, killed the engine.

The building looked like a war ruin. It sat fifty yards or so back off the road in a wide-open patch of weeds. No cover. There was no way to go onto the property without being seen.

“Shit,” he said. He rubbed his face with his hands, took a deep breath, and exhaled, trying to think. “We have to go in on foot. There’s no other way to do it.”

He stared at the building some more, trying not to wonder what might be going on inside even as they sat there, trying to formulate a plan.

“Sam,” Tippen said. “Look up ahead. We’re not alone.”

An old pickup with a camper shell over the bed sat off the road on the access drive into a field down the road, partially obscured from view by another stand of small trees. Someone else who didn’t want to be seen from the building where Dahl held Carey.

“Can you see the plates?”

Tippen gave him a look. “Can you see the plates?”

“Christ, we’re old,” Kovac said. “Bring the shotgun. Let’s go.”

They got out of the cruiser, careful not to make noise doing it. Leaving the doors open, they made a dash for the truck.

“Is this what they use for an undercover car in the sheriff’s department?” Kovac said sarcastically when they stood at the nose of the pickup.

The truck had to be twenty years old. A Ford F-150. The once navy blue paint had faded over the years from sun and weather.

As Tippen called in the plate number on his cell phone, Kovac looked in the window of the cab. There was nothing in it. Not so much as a gum wrapper. He looked in through the windows of the camper shell. A couple of duffel bags, a small Igloo cooler.

He went around and opened the back to get a better look inside. One of the bags was long enough to hold a rifle. A luggage tag hung from one of the handles.

Kovac went cold as he read it.

“The truck belongs to a Walter Dempsey,” Tippen said. “Safe to assume he’s a relative of our man Stan.”

Kovac popped the latch on the tailgate and dropped it open. He reached for the nearest of the duffel bags. It was unzipped. Inside was an assortment of tools-handsaws, screwdrivers, pliers… and a wood-burning tool.

“Great,” Tippen said. “Double your maniacs, double your fun.”

Kovac jammed his hands at his waist and paced around in a little circle. They didn’t know jack shit about what might be going on in that building. There wasn’t time to do reconnaissance, regroup, form a strategy. Carey was in there with two men bent on no good.

“Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s go in.”

As he rounded the front end of the truck, he thought he heard voices in the distance. He walked faster. When he cleared the copse of trees, he broke into a run.

Someone was running toward the road.

A gunshot cracked the air.

The runner was Carey.

She tripped and fell hard.

She didn’t move.

Kovac’s mind was going wild. Had she been shot? Had she been dropped by Dempsey and a hunting rifle?

He didn’t look beyond her to see but barreled down what once had been a driveway. If the shooter had a scope, he was screwed, but he kept running.

“Carey!”

He dropped to his knees as he reached her.

“Carey!”

She lay facedown, crying weakly. Kovac put two fingers against her throat and found her pulse racing wildly.

He bent down close and brushed her hair back. “Carey, it’s me. It’s Sam. Can you hear me? Just lie still.”

Feeling his way gingerly down her back, he expected his hand to come away bloody from the gunshot that had dropped her. But he couldn’t find an entry wound.

Headlights washed over them. Tippen roared in with the squad car, skidding sideways to a stop between them and the building, giving them cover.

“Carey?” Kovac said. “Are you shot? Did he shoot you?”

All she could do was shake, and cry harder.

“I killed him!” she cried. “Oh, my God, I killed him!”

Kovac eased her over onto her side, brushed her hair back from her face. His hand was shaking like an old man’s.

“Shhh… It’s okay, you’re okay,” he said softly.

He pulled his suit coat off and covered her with it.

Where the hell was backup? Where the hell was the ambulance?

She pushed herself up with one arm and tried to wipe her face with a hand that was covered in blood.

“Jesus Christ,” he said under his breath. To Carey he said, “Lie down. Carey, lie down. Just lie down.”