Moore ’s hotel stays would be pertinent in divorce court, not criminal court. The investigation was about Carey Moore’s assault, and David Moore’s alibi held. Unless Kovac could come up with something that connected Moore to the actual perpetrator of the crime, he was out of luck.
Liska would have been all over him if she’d known he was even asking the questions he had asked Brendan Whitman. She already thought the warning flags were up, which irritated him. For Christ’s sake, couldn’t he feel sorry for Carey Moore without falling in love with her overnight? He couldn’t simply dislike her husband for cheating on her?
It wasn’t like he fell for women at the drop of a hat. For the most part, he’d sworn off relationships. They never worked out for him. He wasn’t exactly sure why. He was a decent guy, treated women with respect. He knew the job had taken its toll on his marriages. The hours, the grimness, the stress. His better qualities apparently weren’t enough to offset that.
He was a cop. It wasn’t what he did; it was who he was. He could no more change that than he could change the color of his eyes, so he just didn’t think about it… most of the time. The one woman he’d fallen for who would have understood that, because she had been a cop herself, had committed suicide right in front of him.
He still thought about her, still felt pain at the loss. He still second-guessed himself sometimes late at night when the nightmare of that scene woke him. If only he’d known the depth of her pain… If only he had unraveled the mystery of her an hour sooner… If only he could have reached her before she fired the gun…
Pointless to think about it, he knew. What happened, happened. No one could change that. It hadn’t been in the cards for him to save Amanda Savard.
“She’s another damsel in distress who needs rescuing… ”Liska’s words whispered in his ear. Kovac shut them out and closed the door on the whole topic.
The lobby bar was empty except for the bartender, who was busy checking bottles. Kovac pulled out a stool and sat down.
“Sorry, sir,” the bartender said. “We don’t open till four.”
“Good. I’ll be out of here before I’m tempted to drink on duty.”
The bartender looked over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow at the badge. She was a little thing, but tough as nails. He could see it in the fine lines around her eyes, the set of her mouth. Forty-something, he figured, dark hair scraped back into a ponytail for convenience, not cuteness. Patty, according to her name tag.
“I can make an exception for a badge,” she said in a two-pack-a-day voice.
“Don’t tempt me.”
He put the picture of David Moore down on the bar.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What’s he wanted for? Have they finally made being an asshole a crime?”
“We’d have to build jails on the moon,” Kovac said.
Patty laughed at that, a harsh cackle that would have been more at home in some American Legion post bar than in a swank hotel.
“You see a lot of him?” Kovac asked.
“Enough to know he’s a cheap son of a bitch. Buys himself a label, buys the working girl house booze.”
“Working girl?”
“Skirt up to her ass, neckline down to her navel ring? She ain’t no schoolgirl, unless the guy pays extra, if you know what I’m talking about.”
“Medium height, blond, thin?”
“Expensive tits? That’s the one.”
“They were in here last night?”
“They were in here around six, six-fifteen. I was trying to watch the news,” Patty complained. “Hey, what’s up with that psycho Dahl? Have you caught him?”
“I don’t know,” Kovac said. “Not my case.”
“What kind of retards do they have running that jail? Jesus.”
Kovac let the question ride. “So they were in here, just the two of them?”
“For a while,” Patty said. “She’s all over him. The postgame cozies, if you know what I mean. If I didn’t think he paid for it, I’d say she’s in love with the clown. She’s got the big cow eyes. She’s all ‘Oh, David’ this and ‘Oh, David’ that,” she said in a higher, breathier voice, batting her eyelashes. In the next second, she made a face like she’d tasted something rotten.
“Made me wanna puke,” she said. “Then, around seven, this older guy comes in and joins them. Real neat, kind of prissy-looking. Expensive suit, little beard trimmed just so.”
She curled her lip and shook her head, disgusted. “He had that look like maybe he likes to watch, if you get my drift. At least he was a good tipper.”
Patty poured two fingers of Johnnie Walker Red and set it in front of him.
“On the house,” she confided. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll overcharge the next big asshole.”
Kovac thanked her and took a long sip of the scotch and savored the smooth warmth as it went down. Just one moment of quiet pleasure. Now, if he had a smoke…
“And then this other guy came and joined them,” Patty said, helping herself to one of the nut dishes. “But he didn’t stay long.”
Kovac’s alarm bells went off. “Another guy?”
“Yeah. Thirty. On the small side. Longish blond hair. Kind of foxy-looking. Wiry, sharp features, narrow eyes.”
“How was he dressed?”
“Dark jeans, black jacket, black T-shirt.”
“And he didn’t stay long,” Kovac said.
“Ten, fifteen minutes. I couldn’t say for sure. It had started getting pretty busy in here. Predinner crowd. But I know he wasn’t here as long as they were.”
Long enough to say the job was done, Kovac thought. Long enough to pick up his payoff.
David Moore, you son of a bitch.
A rush of electricity went through him, the way it always did when a piece of the puzzle fell into place. He wanted to run right out and haul Moore downtown for questioning, but he knew he wasn’t quite there, didn’t quite have enough. He needed to put a name to the foxy-faced guy dressed in black. The guy who had shown up here between seven and seven-thirty, a time frame that easily could have allowed him to be in that parking ramp when Carey Moore was being attacked.
To get that name, he needed to go back to the weakest link in the trio, Ginnie Bird. If he could get her alone, she’d break fast.
The fantasy was cut short by the ringing of his cell phone.
“Kovac.”
“Detective. Judge Moore is leaving her house. We thought you’d want to know.”
28
“I’M GOING TO the courthouse,” Carey said.
She stood in the hall at the front door, not even wanting to go the few extra feet to the den, where David had been sitting at his computer all day. She didn’t want to see him, she didn’t want to speak to him, she didn’t want to hear his voice.
He looked out at her, perturbed. “Why? You’re supposed to stay here.”
“I’ll take a police officer with me,” she said. “I won’t be going back to work for a while. I can at least do some reading and paperwork.”
“Call your clerk. Have him bring it to the house.”
Carey said nothing to that. Of course she could have had her clerk do it. Of course she should have. She felt terrible, and she needed to rest. The truth was that she just didn’t want to be in the house with her husband. She hadn’t decided yet what to do, whether she should confront him with what she knew, or wait and gather more evidence against him, or tell Kovac everything.
She didn’t want to believe the worst-that the man she had loved and married could hate her enough to pay someone to kill her. But the David she had discovered that morning was not that same man. This David had a whole other life going on that she didn’t know anything about. This David was a stranger. She had no idea what he might be capable of.