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“You’ve had worse cases than this,” Logan said.
Kovac looked at him sharply. “So?”
“So what’s with the big blowup? You know Carey that well?”
“I know she’s my vic,” Kovac said defensively. “I know she’s my responsibility. And I’m pretty damn sure that asshole in the other room made her disappear. Do I need something more than that? I’m supposed to care less because Carey Moore hasn’t been raped and eviscerated and set on fire yet?”
Logan held up his hands. “No. I just…
“Never mind,” he said, turning toward Lieutenant Dawes as she came back from her phone call. Her face was grave as she looked from one of them to the other.
“We’ve found the na
49
HER BODY HAD BEEN folded into the trunk of a late-model dark blue Volvo. She looked like a broken doll lying there, legs bent, her eyes wide-open, her head turned at an odd angle.
She was wearing a brown velour Juicy Couture tracksuit and a pair of pink Puma ru
“I-I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
Kovac looked at the guy, a
Bruce Green. Twenty-seven. Pasty white wimp with a mop of blond frizz that looked like he’d stolen it off the dead body of Harpo Marx. Bell-bottoms and a black and yellow rugby shirt. He dabbed a bloody handkerchief under his nose. His forehead was growing a big goose egg.
“I-I just glanced down,” Green went on nervously. “I-I dropped my BlackBerry, and-and when I reached for it, I knocked over my latte, and-and it spilled-”
“Shut up,” Kovac said sharply. He turned back to the uniform who had been first on the scene, Hovney, a woman built like the corner mailbox, with a face like the flat side of an anvil.
“He rear-ended the Volvo,” she said, “which was parked here at the curb. The trunk popped. The rest is history.”
Green’s car, a butt-ugly pea green square box Honda something-or-other, had suffered front-end damage. Pieces made from plastic had shattered and lay on the street.
The street had been cordoned off. Half a dozen squad cars sat at angles on either end of the accident scene.
Kovac pulled on a pair of gloves and tried to turn the na
The car was parked on the side street around the corner from the 7-Eleven, where Anka had supposedly gone to pick out a movie and buy some snacks, just past the alley that ran behind the store. The killer had probably initially parked in the alley, out of view. He had nabbed the girl, pulled her into the alley, killed her, put the body in the trunk, driven out of the alley, and parked at the curb. Then he had gotten behind the wheel of the na
The car would have been equipped with a garage door opener. The keys to the house were probably on the same key ring as the keys to the Saab. He could have forced the na
“I guess we can rule out the na
Hovney went on. “The plates come back to a Saab-”
“He swapped the plates,” Kovac said. Which meant the call that had gone out to be on the lookout for the na
“The VIN number co
“Has anyone tried to contact this woman?” Kovac asked.
“No answer,” Dawes said. “I’ve sent a unit to her home.”
Kovac shook his head, pissed off at the u
If Do
“Was the car reported as stolen?” he asked.
“No.”
Kovac nodded. “Well, let’s hope Ms. Neal is on vacation.”
50
THE CAR SLOWED down and turned. Gravel crunched beneath the tires, and Carey’s heart began to pound hard at the base of her throat. No one was ever taken to a remote area against their will for any good reason.
She tried the phone again, but still she had no signal, and her battery was starting to run low. The case of the phone had cracked when she had broken the plastic light cover. Hands shaking, she turned it off and stuck it into the front pocket of her jeans once more. The tail of her shirt would hide the outline of it… as long as she was wearing a shirt.
The car rolled to a halt.
She had no weapon. Her physical strength, even with adrenaline fueling it, would be no match for a man bent on harming her. The car rocked as the driver got out.
Her breath held tight in her lungs as she waited for the trunk to unlock, waited for the sudden blinding light as the lid opened, waited to finally see the face of her captor.
But the trunk didn’t open.
A car door opened again, but no one got in.
Carey wondered where the hell she was. There was no traffic noise at all. No sound of human voices. All she could hear was the very faint squawking of geese flying south for the winter. She wished for their freedom, and thanked God that at least she wasn’t hearing the sound of a shovel digging a shallow grave.
51
CHRISTINE NEAL’S COTTAGE would have looked just as at home if it had been found somewhere on Nantucket Island. The small garage was empty. The front door of the house was locked, but a little hand-painted sign bade visitors welcome and a
The uniformed officers had rung the doorbell and looked in the windows but had seen no sign of Christine Neal.
Dawes gave the signal. “Break it in.”
The house was quiet and smelled fresh, as if it had just been cleaned.
“Well, this is weird right off the bat,” Liska said.
“What?” Kovac asked.
“Look at this place,” she said. “It’s so-so-neat.”
At Kovac’s request, she had met them at the Neal home. They were both good detectives in their own right, but Kovac liked the way they worked a scene together. They complemented each other in the way they saw things, in the feelings they picked up, in the way they processed what they took in.
“Not everyone shares your enlightened view of organization,” Kovac said as they walked around the living room, looking for any sign of something wrong.
He had sent one of the uniforms to the backyard and one to the basement. Dawes stood just inside the front door, deep in conversation with the chief of detectives, trying to explain the debacle at the Moore house.
“Not everyone has two boys and a homicide cop in the family,” Liska said. “Look at the pattern in this carpet. Freshly vacuumed. I’m lucky I cansee my carpet.”
“Mmmm… You should tell Speed he can work off some of his delinquent child support tidying your house once a week.”
“Ha. Two boys, a homicide cop, and an asshole. I would have the same house, but it would smell like sweat socks, cigarettes, and bad Mexican food.”