Tami Hoag - Prior Bad Acts

She shook her head. “No. I want to go home.”

“Carey, lie down,” Kovac said more forcefully. “You’re bleeding.”

She looked at her hand, confused.

“It’s not mine,” she said, but she sounded disoriented, maybe delusional.

“Goddammit, Carey, lie down, or I’m putting a knee into your chest and holding you down!”

Still confused, she sank back down. Kovac grabbed the lower part of the man’s shirt she wore and tore it open. His hands came away bloody from the shirt, but he could find no wound on her belly.

“It’s not mine,” she said again, sitting up. “I killed him.”

Clutching Kovac’s arms, she fell against him, sobbing.

Kovac put his arms around her and held her tight while she cried, telling her again and again, “It’s all right. It’s over now. It’s over.”

He knew that that wasn’t true. It wasn’t over. Carey Moore couldn’t just go home and walk back into her life as if nothing had ever happened. She would have to be interviewed, would have to recount and relive what had happened to her here. She would have to be checked over by a doctor for injuries. If she had been sexually assaulted, she would have to endure the rape exam.

God, he hoped that that wasn’t the case. She’d had enough trauma without adding “rape survivor” to the list.

Tippen came around the back of the car. “Is she all right?”

Kovac didn’t know quite how to respond, so he didn’t. “What’s going on? Where’s Dahl? Where’s Dempsey?”

“Dead and dead. Dahl was shot in the face. Looks like Dempsey has a single stab wound.”

“I killed him,” Carey said, still crying against Kovac’s shoulder. “I killed him. I killed a man.”

Kovac stroked his hand over her wet hair. It had begun to rain in earnest. Thunder rumbled overhead. In the near distance he could hear the sirens approaching.

“Shhh… It’s over,” he said quietly. “It’s over. You’re safe now. That’s all that matters.”

THE CHAOS OF what had happened after Kovac had arrived at the scene was a jumbled blur of color and activity in Carey’s mind. She remembered the police and sheriff’s cars arriving. The noise of men arguing over jurisdiction. The carnival quality of the lights from the cars and the ambulance. A paramedic had given her something to calm her down. It made her feel numb. All things considered, that was a good thing.

Instead of letting all of it swirl around and around inside her head, she tried to focus on the sense of relief and of being safe as Sam Kovac had sat there in the pouring rain and held her. That was what she wanted now: to feel safe, to feel there was someone right there to hold her if she needed it.

But that feeling also brought sadness as she realized she hadn’t had that kind of support in a very long time. When her father had been healthy, he had been her Rock of Gibraltar. David had never quite filled that place. He had tried to in the first years of their marriage but had gradually stepped out of that role. And she had gradually stopped wanting him to try harder.

The red-haired nurse from Friday night bustled into the room to check her IV and make notes in a chart.

“You know,” she said, giving Carey a stern look completely betrayed by the kindness in her eyes,“we’re getting pretty sick and tired of seeing you around this place.”

“I promise this is my last time,” Carey said.

“How are you feeling?”

“Numb.”

“Good for you! Nothing like a little happy pill to take the edge off. I’m proposing the hospital put a gum ball machine in the nurses’ lounge and keep it filled with Valium. Everyone would be so much happier to do their jobs.”

Kovac peeked in the door.

“Is Casey giving you a hard time?” he asked, letting himself in.

The nurse gave him an innocent look. “Who, me?”

“The last time I was in her ER,” he said, coming to stand beside the nurse, “she stapled my forehead together with an actual staple gun.”

“I did not!” Casey protested, then gave him a mischievous grin. “And if I did, I’m sure you had it coming.”

“I can still see her leaning over me. She came at me with that gun, and she said, ‘There’s no other way to put it. This is gonna hurt.’ I still have nightmares.”

Casey sniffed. “You should be so lucky to dream about me.”

She turned back to Carey. “The doctor will be back to check in on you again later. Probably right after you’ve managed to fall asleep.”

As she headed for the door, Kovac said, “That’s Casey. I call her the Iron Leprechaun.”

“But not when I’m close enough to hit him,” Casey said as she left the room.

Hair wet and sticking up in all directions, Kovac stepped up to the side of the bed. He had traded his wet dress shirt for the top from a set of surgical scrubs.

“How are you feeling?”

“Dr. Kovac.” She tried to smile but couldn’t quite pull it off. “I don’t know. I’m sure that sounds stupid.”

He shook his head. “You’ve gone through something horrible, Carey. It’ll take a while for you to process it all. And you can’t do that alone. I’ve already been on the phone with Kate. If she wasn’t looking after Lucy, she would have been down here at the speed of light.”

Carey took a shaky breath. “Lucy. How is she? Is she all right?”

“She wants her mom back. She’s scared.”

“So was I,” Carey admitted. “I was so afraid he’d done something to her, that she was hurt or-”

Kovac put a hand on her shoulder. “She’s fine. Don’t upset yourself thinking about what didn’t happen. You’ve got plenty of real shit to deal with.”

“You have a way with words, Detective,” she said, trying again to find some small part of a smile. It was gone in the next instant. “He killed Anka, didn’t he?”

Kovac nodded. “I’m sorry.”

A profound sadness weighed on her. “I’ll have to call her family in Sweden. How do I tell her parents their daughter is dead because of me?”

“You don’t,” he said. “She’s not dead because of you. She’s dead because Karl Dahl killed her.”

Carey said nothing. It wasn’t going to be that easy for her to let herself off the hook.

“So where was David through all this?” she asked.

Kovac frowned. “He was at the house when I last saw him. With his lawyer.”

“His lawyer?”

“It’s a long story.”

“He didn’t have anything to do with this,” Carey said.

“He didn’t have anything to do with Karl Dahl taking you,” Kovac specified. “We’re still looking into the assault.”

Carey watched him. He was looking everywhere but at her.

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“We might have found the twenty-five-thousand-dollar man,” he said. “We don’t need to talk about it now.”

“You’ve just told me you’ve found the man you think my husband paid to have me killed,” she said. “I need to talk about that. Who is he? Can you connect him to a payoff?”

“He’s the girlfriend’s brother. A porn actor by the name of Donny Bergen.” He hesitated, took a deep breath, let it out. “Carey, your husband is into some pretty ugly stuff.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I came across some of it on his computer last night. It made me sick. I don’t know who he is,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Kovac said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. You don’t need anything more on your mind tonight. You need to get some rest. I just came in to make sure you’re okay before I go.”

“You have to go?” Carey asked him, feeling a little panicked at the thought. She didn’t want to be alone with the memories of the things that had happened.