“An old, burned-out munitions plant or dump near a refinery,” he called out.
Tippen grabbed his coat off the back of a chair. “I know it. Let’s go.”
They ran out the door of the building and down the stone steps. Colors and sounds of the media people on the stairs and sidewalk registered only dimly in Kovac’s mind. A blur. White noise.
He had parked his car in the loading zone, along with Dawes’s car and Liska’s car and the cars of the entire task force. But he didn’t go for his car. He ran up to a uniform sitting back against the hood of a squad car, watching the show.
“Gimme your keys.”
The officer straightened. “What the hell…?”
“Gimme your goddamn keys!” Kovac shouted.
“Detectives, Homicide,” Tippen said, showing his badge. “Give him the fucking keys!”
Kovac yanked the keys out of the guy’s hand, rounded the hood, climbed in the car. He gunned the engine, threw the shift into reverse as soon as Tippen’s ass hit the other seat. Cars blasted their horns as Kovac shot the squad car backward into their paths. He shifted into drive and peeled out, leaving rubber smoking on the pavement.
He hadn’t driven a squad car in years, but he still knew where the switches were for lights and sirens.
“Where are we going?” he shouted at Tippen.
“Thirty-five W south. I’ll give directions as we go.”
The speedometer swung to ninety as they came off the ramp onto the freeway. Tippen buckled in and braced himself.
“What the fuck is this traffic?” Kovac demanded as he tried to weave through without losing too much speed.
Ahead, all he could see across the lanes of traffic were taillights. Cars were trying to pull out of his way but had nowhere to go. He hit the brakes and held the wheel against a skid, and the car rocked to a halt.
“Vikings-Packers game,” Tippen said.
Kovac looked at him, wild eyed. “Don’t tell me this is a pack of fucking Cheeseheads going back to Wisconsin!”
He didn’t expect an answer or want one.
Tippen got on the sound system, and his voice blasted out of the speaker mounted on the car.
“Move aside! This is a police emergency! Move aside!”
Drivers all around were staring at them like deer in headlights.
Kovac grabbed the handset and shouted,“Get the fuck out of the way!!”
Cars gave an inch here, a foot there, as he tried to wedge the squad car to the right, going for the shoulder. A sickening crunch sounded as he clipped the front end of an SUV, then the rear end of another.
When he hit the shoulder, he floored the accelerator, and the big car lunged forward, flying past the traffic at a frightening speed.
“Exit here!” Tippen shouted pointing. “Cut across. We’ll get on Fifty-five!”
Kovac touched the brakes, once, twice, took the exit too fast, just missed two cars at the bottom.
By the grace of God he wouldn’t kill anybody.
And he wouldn’t be too late.
61
CAREY LAY AS still as she possibly could as she listened to Karl moving around the room.
Come on, Sam…
He said nothing, maybe out of courtesy so she could sleep, as crazy as that sounded. He wanted her to get her rest.
The sounds of movement stopped. Near her. She could feel him watching her. She held her breath and kept her fingertips on the grip of the knife.
He touched her left hand, which lay on top of the blanket. It took everything in her not to jerk it away.
“You can wake up now, Judge.”
The voice was not Karl’s. It was lower, a gravelly monotone with an odd, slow cadence.
Carey opened her eyes and looked up, her heart stopping as she saw the craggy, homely face dark with beard stubble, the rubbery-looking too-red lips.
Stan Dempsey.
“Your good friend Karl Dahl isn’t coming back in.”
“He’s not my friend,” Carey said.
“Not anymore. You can’t help him anymore.”
“I never wanted to help him in the first place.”
“You just don’t get it, do you? You’re supposed to hand out justice. The guilty have to pay. Actions have consequences.”
Carey knew better than to argue or try to explain.
“Is he dead?” she asked.
“I have special plans for him,” Dempsey said cryptically.
“How did you find this place?”
“Simple police work: I followed the car,” he said.
“You were watching my house.”
“Have been off and on for some time now. I haven’t had much else to do with myself this past year,” he said. “I know a lot about your life, Judge Moore. Where you live, what your schedule is, where your little girl goes to school.
“I know who comes and goes from your house, and what cars they drive. When that car came past me this morning, I knew that wasn’t your nanny driving.”
“Did you know it was Dahl?” Carey asked.
“We’ve talked enough now. Get up,” he said, pulling on her arm. “Judge Moore, you’re under arrest for crimes against humanity. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you…”
62
“I DON’T THINK I can stand up,” Carey said. “I’m tied to some kind of weight.”
Dempsey huffed his impatience, snatched at the gold chenille throw that covered her feet, and tossed the end farther up her legs. He kept the gun in his right hand, and with his left he pulled a hunting knife with a wide, vicious-looking serrated blade from a leather sleeve on his belt. With two flicks of his wrist the cable ties were history. He holstered the knife.
“Now, get up.”
The throw crumpled around Carey as she sat up. But with the fingers of her right hand, she managed to hold on to a piece of it to cover the knife.
“What are you going to do to me?” she asked as she pushed herself up to her knees.
“You’ll have a trial. I’ll pronounce sentence and determine your punishment. Same as I did with that lawyer.”
He sounded perfectly sane as he said it. He had decided that this was his job, and he was going to do it, and that was that.
“Kenny Scott?”
“Yeah, him. He got exactly what he deserved. So will you.”
Carey had no idea what he might have done to Karl Dahl’s attorney, but she didn’t ask. She would find out soon enough, if Stan Dempsey had his way.
“You’re a cop,” she said. “You’re a good cop. You’ve worked your whole life to protect and serve. How can you do this?”
He looked at her as if he couldn’t believe she didn’t know. “Because somebody has to.”
Come on, Sam…
“But you’re breaking the law,” Carey said. “How can you do that and talk about justice?”
“I don’t see it that way,” Dempsey said, the gun still trained on her in an almost casual way.
“You’ll go to prison, Detective,” she said, hoping in vain that using his rank might jar something in his conscience.
“No, I won’t.”
Carey weighed the idea of telling him Kovac was on his way. But she didn’t think the information would change his course of action, except that he might feel compelled to kill her sooner rather than later.
“How long have you been a cop?” she asked. “Twenty years? More? None of it will mean anything if you do this. This is how you’ll be remembered, how you’ll be judged.”
His wide mouth curled in a sneer. “You don’t know anything. You sit up on the bench in your robes,” he said with disdain. “It’s just a big game with the lawyers, and you’re a referee. The victims don’t mean anything to you people.”
“That’s not true.”
“Look how you treated Marlene Haas. She was a decent woman just trying to raise a family. Do you want to know the kind of hell Karl Dahl put her through?”