Karl looked up at the stars in the clear night sky-what stars a man could see with a city all around him-and thought this might become the most perfect night of his life.
After a while, he got up and straightened his skirt and walked back to the parking lot and Christine Neal’s Volvo.
Stan Dempsey drove through Carey Moore’s neighborhood, but not past her home. He knew the officers in the radio car out front would be making note of the plate numbers of every vehicle that cruised by and immediately running them through the system, looking to get a hit on a possible suspect.
Instead, he cruised up the next block, toward the Moore home, then turned in at the driveway of a dark house near the end of the street and sat there, watching.
A dark sedan backed out of the garage fast and drove toward him in a hurry. Seconds later, an unmarked car followed. Shortly after that, a second unmarked car. As it passed under the streetlight, Stan thought it might be Sam Kovac behind the wheel.
Kovac was a good cop, a straight shooter, probably the best detective on the squad. It would be difficult to pull off anything under Kovac’s nose. But now he had gone from Carey Moore’s house and from her neighborhood, and Stan could see a window of opportunity cracking open.
He didn’t mean to get away with anything. He meant only to finish his job. When his job was finished, he would be honored to have Sam Kovac close the case.
When his job was finished…
35
CAREY SAT ON the love seat in the den for a long time, doing nothing, thinking nothing, staring at nothing. The house was absolutely silent. The tension that had charged the air was gone. She felt drained, empty.
Around ten-thirty, Anka quietly came downstairs and stopped just outside the den.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Moore?”
Carey waved a hand. “No, but there’s nothing to do about it. Are you going out?”
“Only to pick a movie and get some popcorn. Can I bring something for you?”
“No. Thank you, Anka.”
The girl lingered at the doorway a moment longer, seeming like she wanted to say something more. But if she had, she thought better of it.
Carey went back to staring, feeling nothing. She wondered what she would feel the next day, and the day after that. Relief? Anxiety? And she wondered how Lucy would react to her father’s sudden absence.
David was a different person with Lucy. With their daughter, he was the man she had married-sweet, fun, brimming with promise. His relationship with Lucy was pure love, untainted by what the rest of his life had become. With Lucy he had no track record. She only cared that he was her daddy. Her expectations were simple. He had yet to disappoint her.
Carey purposely didn’t wonder what David was feeling or doing. She told herself she didn’t care. She didn’t care. What did that say about her? About their marriage?
Restless, she got up from her seat and walked around the room. She still hurt everywhere, and her head was pounding. A Vicodin and bed sounded like the best plan.
As she walked around behind David’s desk, photos of Lucy caught her eye. David’s screen saver was a slide show of their daughter dressed up in her various costumes-the princess, the fairy, the ballerina.
Carey sat down in the desk chair and watched the images float across the screen. Lucy was the spitting image of herself as a child-impish grin, bright blue eyes, an unruly mop of dark hair that had eventually given up its curls.
Oh, to be that innocent again.
The computer mouse rested on its small green pad beside the keyboard. Only vaguely curious, she moved the mouse and clicked on the AOL icon at the bottom of the screen.
What came up and filled the screen was as far removed from the innocence of a child as anything could have been.
What came on the screen was a scene of such degradation, it made Carey feel ill and dizzy, as if she’d just gotten hit in the head all over again.
A naked woman bound and gagged, hung spread-eagled from chains on her wrists and ankles, blood running down her arms. She was being raped by two men wearing leather hoods to cover their faces, one behind her, one in front of her. She appeared to be terrified.
This was what her husband had been looking at when she had come to tell him she wanted a divorce. Carey began to shake. She moved the cursor to the Web address bar and clicked on the downward arrow, bringing up a listing of every Web site David had looked at for who knew how long. Porn site after porn site.
She clicked on an arrow, and another photograph, equally violent as the first, popped up.
It took a moment for her to recover enough from the shock to process the rest of the page-the title, the graphics. It was a promotion for a movie available on DVD or VHS. The ad promised savage sadism, violent scenes of torture and rape.
The film was by David M. Greer.
36
“WHOSE CLUSTER FUCK is this?” Kovac demanded as he stormed into the ER and made a beeline for Liska. He had been mobbed by the press swarming all over the ambulance bay. Four large uniformed officers were keeping them from rushing the door.
“It’s a fucking feeding frenzy out there,” he snapped.
“I’m taking responsibility for the whole thing, Detective Kovac,” Lieutenant Dawes said, coming away from a coffee vending machine across the room.
Kovac pulled up short and grimaced. “Lieutenant.”
“Way to stick your foot in it, Kojak,” Liska said, rolling her eyes at him.
Dawes didn’t react at all.
“I personally called Mr. Scott this morning to tell him Stan Dempsey was at large, but I only got his voice mail,” she said. “I then dispatched two officers to go to Mr. Scott’s home and tell him in person if he was at home, and to wait if he wasn’t.”
“So what went wrong?” Kovac asked.
“A call went out to all units to respond to a sighting of Karl Dahl not far from where the officers were.”
“They took the priority call,” Kovac said.
“Which turned out to be a false alarm. But in all the confusion of trying to run down the suspect, there was a collision involving the officers’ car and a minivan-”
“And the coppers are still giving their statements and filling out paperwork,” Kovac said.
“One of the officers was killed,” Dawes said soberly.
“Oh, Jesus,” Kovac said. Add that charge to Dahl’s indictment, he thought-another person dead because of that creep.
“And the ball got dropped,” Dawes went on. “By the time I found out and drove to Kenny Scott’s home myself, it was already dark. The basement light was on. If not for that one screwup on Dempsey’s part, Scott would still be bound to a chair.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes,” Dawes said, leading the way down a corridor. “It wasn’t Dempsey’s intent to kill. Turns out he just wanted to make a statement.”
They turned into the room where Kenny Scott had been brought for treatment, and Kovac was instantly taken aback by the putrid smell of burned flesh.
Kenny Scott lay propped up on the hospital bed with an IV dripping something into his arm. His hands and feet were grotesquely swollen. Ligature marks dug deep into his wrists and ankles. But by far the most shocking injury Stan Dempsey had inflicted on Karl Dahl’s lawyer was literally burned across Scott’s forehead.
One word: GUILTY.
37
CAREY SLEPT RESTLESSLY, fitfully, turning from one side to the other, even though she had taken the Vicodin to kill the pain and knock herself out. The drug didn’t seem to reach her subconscious. It couldn’t shut out the disturbing images, the dark dreams that rolled through her mind like thunderstorms. Violent dreams of being chased, of being caught, of being helpless.
Neither would the drugs allow her to come fully awake, to escape the nightmares that seemed so real. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like a small bird trapped behind her ribs, desperately trying to get out.