Carey stared at him. “I don’t know you at all. I don’t know who you are. The man I married would never have done any of the things you’ve done. I have no idea who you are.”
“So that’s what you think of the man I am now?” he asked aggressively. “That I would pay someone to kill you? That I might kill you in your sleep myself? Jesus Christ, Carey.”
“You have to go now, David,” she said. “I can’t have you here. I don’t want you here. Don’t make me call the officers in from their car to remove you. It’s not like you don’t have someplace else to go.”
“You are un-fucking-believable!” he shouted.
“Please keep your voice down. Your daughter is asleep upstairs.”
Muttering curses under his breath, David grabbed the external hard drive from his computer and stormed out of the room and up the stairs.
Carey followed him, afraid she had pushed him too far. Her heart in her throat as David approached Lucy’s bedroom, she was struck by a fear that David might try to take Lucy with him. But when he stopped at the door to the room, it was only to look in on their sleeping child.
He was red in the face, fighting tears, breathing hard as he turned away and stalked down the hall into the bedroom they had shared. He jerked a suitcase out of his closet, tossed it on the bed, and began throwing clothes at it.
Ten minutes later he was gone.
Carey stood at the kitchen door to the garage and listened as his car started and backed out. She hadn’t known how she would feel after the big scene. She hadn’t known if she would cry or be angry or feel sick. She didn’t feel anything. She was numb. She had spent all her emotions confronting him.
Going back to the den, she walked back and forth across the room, physically holding herself together. She needed to call Kovac. She had told him not to come, but he was almost certainly there, if not in the front yard, then sitting in his car down the street. It touched her that he was concerned about her. She felt less alone.
Being a cop, Kovac was unshockable. Carey couldn’t even picture herself telling anyone else what David had been up to all this time. Not even her best friend. She felt stupid and embarrassed talking about it. Kovac hadn’t batted an eye. He had dealt with far worse than a cheating spouse.
Sitting down in David’s desk chair, she used her cell phone to call him. She had put his number on speed dial. He answered before the first ring finished.
“Kovac.”
“It’s Carey. I’m all right. David is gone.”
“You don’t sound all right.”
“I’m very tired,” she said, appalled at how weak her voice sounded.
“Do you want to talk about it? Do you want me to come over? I’m not that far away.”
“You’re in my front yard, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. You can tell me what to do,” he said. “But I’ll do whatever I want.”
She managed to smile a little at that-her own words tossed back at her. “Touché,” she said. “I really just want to go to bed. But thank you for offering, Sam.”
“I’m here to protect and serve.”
“I know.”
An awkward silence hung between them for a moment. Carey had the feeling he wanted to say something more, but finally he just said, “I’ll call you in the morning.”
Carey turned off her phone and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans, and sighed, hoping morning would come soon.
33
KOVAC FLICKED ON the dash strobe as he drove through the streets, trying to catch up to David Moore. He was betting Moore would go straight to the apartment he had been paying for. Even money said Ginnie Bird lived there.
He caught a look at the big Mercedes sedan sitting at the next stoplight and killed the strobe.
Moore went through the intersection and turned onto the ramp to the freeway. Kovac followed him, then stepped on the gas and blew past him, two lanes over. Moore didn’t know his car and wouldn’t be looking for him anyway. His head would still be in the scene that had just played out between himself and his wife, and on what he was going to do next.
Kovac exited the freeway and drove straight to the apartment building. It was a nice place in a pricey neighborhood. Fairly new building, landscaping, a gated underground garage. No doorman, though, no concierge.
He parked across the street, got out, and walked over to the entrance.
The tenant list was on a brass buzzer pad beside the door to the small lobby. Kovac went down the names.
Bird, V. Apartment 309.
As he debated whether or not to ring the buzzer, a white Lexus turned in at the drive. The garage gate groaned and rattled as it began to rise.
Kovac moved away from the building entrance, went back down the sidewalk, nonchalant, going for a stroll. The Lexus rolled down into the garage. He waited until the car had turned to the right in search of a parking spot, then walked down into the garage, ducking under the descending gate.
It was as simple as that to get into a building where residents believed they were secure. He checked the ceiling for cameras, but there were none.
He didn’t bother to hide, but walked over to the elevator as if he lived there, and pushed the button to go up. Ten seconds later he was joined by the driver of the Lexus, a tired-looking guy with a red, runny nose and a plastic bag from Snyder Drug.
“You got that bug that’s going around?” Kovac said.
The guy rolled his eyes. “I wish I was dead.”
“Drink whisky.”
“That helps?”
The elevator arrived and they got on. Kovac pushed the button for the third floor and glanced up at the ceiling of the car. No security camera.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “After you’ve had a couple, you won’t give a shit.”
“Good point.”
“Where you going?”
“Four. Thanks.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence and nodded to each other when Kovac got off on the third floor.
He didn’t go down the hall to Ginnie Bird’s apartment but stood there outside the elevator, waiting for the car to go back down and come back up, and the doors to open on David Moore. The hall was empty. Someone had taped a bright orange sign on the wall beside the elevator, inviting all residents to the October meeting of the renters’ association.
VOTING ON THE ISSUE OF CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS ON THE BUILDING EXTERIOR.
WE NEED A QUORUM! PLEASE COME!
Kovac considered writing his neighbor’s name and phone number on the poster as a source of expertise on the subject.
Maybe five minutes passed before the elevator rumbled as it descended, then rose out of the parking garage. Kovac stood in front of the doors so that when they opened, David Moore stepped right into him.
“Hey!” Moore barked, annoyed at the obstacle, then realizing the obstacle was Kovac. The look in his eyes went from annoyance to confusion to suspicion in a split second.
Kovac hit him hard in the chest with the heels of both hands, knocked him back into the elevator car, into the back wall, and followed him in.
“What the hell?” Moore said, trying to get his feet back under him.
Kovac grabbed him by the front of his shirt and shoved him into the corner.
“Listen, you sorry piece of shit. I know all about you and your girlfriend,” Kovac said. “I know all about your little tête-à-têtes at the Marquette every other week.
“What are you? One of those pervs that gets off on taking the chance of being caught?
“That’d be you, all right,” Kovac sneered. “You don’t have the balls to stand up to your wife. You want somebody else to tell her you’re out on the town with some fifty-bucks-a-blowjob skirt. You fucking coward.”
Moore pressed himself back into the corner, raised up on his toes like that would somehow make him a bigger man than the worm that he was.