He didn’t look at her. She wanted to think he was too embarrassed by his own behavior, but that probably wasn’t the case. He was regrouping, switching tracks to a wiser course of action. Logan ’s passion for his work was a thing to behold in the courtroom. Defense attorneys of no small caliber were routinely blown out of the water and crushed. But he had never learned to completely control it when he needed to, and so his strongest asset was also his Achilles’ heel.
“You’ve seen the crime scene photographs,” he said quietly. “You know what was done to that woman, to those two little kids, foster kids. They didn’t even belong there, really. It was just the luck of the draw that they ended up at that house.
“I look at those photos every day. Can’t get them out of my head. I dream about them at night. I’ve never had a case affect me the way this one has.”
“Then you should stop looking at the pictures,” Carey said, despite what she had been thinking about the photographs herself. “There’s no point in it. You can’t make a trial be about your own personal obsession, Chris. You’ll lose your perspective; you’ll make mistakes. Like this one. Go. Now.”
He sighed and nodded, then met her gaze with genuine apology in his eyes. “I am sorry.”
Carey said nothing. He turned and walked out, shoving his hands in his pants pockets, the wide shoulders slumping a bit. If this had been a movie, she would have run after him and forgiven him, and they would have ended up in each other’s arms in a mad embrace. But it wasn’t a movie; this was the real world. She had a job to do, she had a husband, she had a child. She couldn’t have Chris Logan, and she knew better than to want him.
What she really wanted was someone strong to hold her, support her, shelter her. But she didn’t have that. As lonely as it was, she’d learned a long time ago to handle her battles and her insecurities on her own.
Carey put her coat on, slung her purse over one shoulder, and picked up the large old leather briefcase her father had carried when he had sat on the bench as a judge in this same building. She wished she could have gone to him for advice, as she had for most of her life. But Alzheimer’s had stolen her father away from her in the last few years. He no longer recognized her, and so all she had of him were things, his gavel, his briefcase, photographs, and memories.
Feeling hollow and beaten, she left the office. The press would still be waiting outside, hoping in vain that she would come out the main doors.
Instead, she took the skyway across the street to the garage where she parked her car. Afraid to lose the impressive background shot of the Hennepin County Government Center, none of the television people had decamped to find her elsewhere. She braced herself for confrontation with a newspaper reporter, but the skyway was empty, and most of the cars were gone from the level where Carey had parked.
She would have to consider a uniformed escort now that the news of her ruling had broken. And she felt even more of a coward for thinking it, because she pictured herself hiding behind a deputy, trying to avoid the fallout of her own decision.
Lost in her thoughts, she fumbled to dig her keys out of her purse, while her Palm Pilot and a lipstick tumbled out. She sighed heavily, set down the briefcase, and bent awkwardly to scoop up the things she had dropped.
As she began to straighten, something hit her hard across the back, stunning her, knocking her breath from her. A second blow sent her sprawling forward.
The rough concrete tore at the palms of her hands. Her knees hit the surface like a pair of hammerheads. She tried to draw breath to scream, but couldn’t. Her purse flew out ahead of her, its contents spewing out, skidding and rolling.
Her assailant swung at her again, just missing her head as Carey shoved herself to the right, one hand outstretched to try to snag her keys. Some kind of club. She couldn’t really see it, was just aware of the sound as it struck the concrete. Her assailant cursed.
“You fucking bitch! You fucking cunt!” Not shouting, but a harsh, hoarse, rasping sound full of venom.
He fell on her, bouncing her head into the floor like a basketball. Did he mean to kill her? Rape her?
Carey flailed at the car keys, breaking a nail, scraping her fingers, catching hold.
Her attacker grabbed her by the hair, yanked her head back.
Did he have a knife? Would he slit her throat?
She fumbled with the key to her BMW, frantically pushing the buttons. The car’s alarm screamed, and the lights began to flash.
The voice behind her swore again. He slammed her head down. What little breath she had regained huffed out of her as he kicked her hard in the side.
Then everything went terrifyingly black.
4
SAM KOVAC STOOD in front of the mirror in the john down the hall from the Criminal Investigative Division offices, his shirt half-off. He needed to go to the gym, except that he hadn’t been in a gym since he’d been in a uniform. A long damn time ago.
Now that he was on the downhill side of forty, he was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t do something about that. But the notion of sweating and making a fool of himself in front of the young hot bods that populated health clubs, an obvious and pathetic display of midlife crisis, was enough to make him leave his jockstrap in the drawer. Nor was he interested in hanging out in the weight room with the muscleheads who wore the Minneapolis PD uniform, the guys who reeked of testosterone and couldn’t buy shirts off the rack. Bunch of freaks. Probably most of them were trying to overcompensate for small dicks, or homosexual tendencies, or the fact that they used to get the snot pounded out of them for their lunch money every day when they were kids.
Kovac assessed himself with a critical eye. He looked like an old tomcat that had taken his share of licks in alley fights and had dished out plenty of his own. A scar here, a scar there, a cranky expression, a twice-broken, high-bridged nose. His hair was equal parts brown and gray and had a tendency to stand up. Partly from his Slovak heritage and partly because he never paid more than ten bucks for a haircut.
But overall, he didn’t think he looked that bad. No beer gut. No hair sprouting out his ears. Women had never run screaming at the sight of him. At least none that weren’t wanted for something.
At his last department-mandated physical, the doctor had preached at him that it wasn’t too late to reverse the damage he had done to himself smoking and drinking and living on a steady diet of sodium, fat, and job stress. Kovac had told the doctor if he had to give up all that, he might as well eat his gun, because he wouldn’t have anything left to live for.
The men’s room door swung in and Nikki Liska stepped inside.
“Jesus, the least you could do is go into a stall,” she said.
Kovac scowled at her. “Very funny. What the hell are you doing in here? This is the men’s room, for Christ’s sake!”
“So where are they?” Liska challenged, crossing her arms over her chest. “The least I could get out of this is a sneak peek at a little throbbing manhood.”
Kovac felt his cheeks heat. Liska had been his partner for enough years that he should have been immune to her mouth, but she never ceased to outdo herself. Her personality was her loudest, largest feature. The rest of her was five-five with big blue eyes and a white-blond pixie haircut. To the unsuspecting, she looked sweet and perky. But the last guy to call her that had gone home from the party with a limp.
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t make a big deal,” Kovac warned.
“You, Sam Kovac, are an optimist.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m a pragmatist.”
“You’re full of shit,” Liska said, marching into the room. She walked right up to him and smacked him on the arm. “The patch!”