She touched a knuckle beneath the blackening eye to discreetly wipe away the tears.
Kovac scowled and turned away completely. He didn’t want to feel sorry for Carey Moore. She was no friend to him, certainly no friend to Stan Dempsey, who would never be right again after working the Haas murders. He couldn’t even imagine what Wayne Haas and his son were feeling after hearing about the judge’s ruling against the prosecution. The last thing Kovac wanted was to feel sorry for her.
“I’ll see you in the morning, sweetheart… I love you more…” Her voice strained, she said good night and ended the call.
Kovac waited. Liska joined him.
“Did you make her cry?” she whispered, accusatory.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“And you wonder why you’re single.”
“I know why I’m single,” he grumbled. “And I know why I’m going to stay that way.”
“Let’s get this over with.” Judge Moore had her voice and her composure back.
Kovac shrugged. Liska gave him a look of womanly disgust and pushed past him.
“Judge Moore, I’m Detective Liska-”
“I know who you are,” the judge said. “Can we cut to the chase, Detective? I want to go home.”
The resident piped up then. “No, I’m sorry, Judge Moore. You have a concussion. We’ll need to admit you overnight for observation.”
Carey Moore raised her chin and gave the young doctor a glimpse of the steely look she had leveled at many a difficult witness in her days as a prosecutor. “I’m going home to my daughter. I’ll sign a release. Why don’t you get that process started?”
The science club president looked like she didn’t know whether she should be offended or afraid. She disappeared into the hall.
“You might want to reconsider that, Judge Moore,” Liska said. “Someone attacked you.”
“I was mugged. It’s over.”
“With all due respect, you don’t know that.”
Kovac watched her set her jaw as best she could, considering the split lip. She wanted to believe what she wanted to believe.
“You managed to piss off a lot of people today, Judge,” he said. “Maybe someone decided they needed to express themselves in person.”
“He stole my wallet.”
“Bonus.”
“He?” Liska said. “Did you see him?”
“No. He was behind me. The voice was male.”
“Young, old? Black, white?”
“Angry. That’s what I remember. Angry. Full of rage.”
“What did he say?”
“‘You fucking bitch. You fucking cunt,’” the judge said without emotion.
“Did he use your name?” Kovac asked.
“No.”
“You didn’t recognize the voice.”
“No. Of course not.”
“So, he knocked you down, grabbed your purse. That was it?” Kovac said, knowing that that wasn’t so.
She closed her eyes briefly, started to sigh, winced again, and tried to cover that up. Tough cookie, he thought. The mutt had done a number on her. She had to be in a considerable amount of pain, and he knew from experience docs didn’t dole out the good narcotics to people with concussions. They had probably given her some Tylenol. Big deal. Like putting a Band-Aid on a shark bite. She had to have one mother of a headache.
“I was going to my car-”
“Did you see anyone in the parking ramp?” Kovac asked.
“No.”
“In the skyway?”
“No. I went to pull my keys out of my purse-”
“You should have had them out before you left the government center.”
She flicked an annoyed look at him. “I dropped my Palm Pilot, bent to pick it up, he hit me from behind, hard across the back, with some kind of club. He kept hitting me, cursing me. I was trying to grab my car keys.”
“Where was your wallet?”
“I dropped my purse when he knocked me down. Everything spilled out of it.”
Kovac and Liska exchanged a glance.
“And he was calling you names, hitting you?” Liska said.
“Yes.”
“‘You fucking bitch, you fucking cunt,’” Kovac said.
“Yes.”
“And when did he go for your wallet?”
“I don’t know. I hit the alarm on my car key. He slammed my head down. I lost consciousness.”
“He took your wallet as he left,” Kovac said.
“I guess.”
Then the wallet hadn’t been his first objective. Purse snatchers snatched purses. Muggers hit and ran. This guy had been focused on his victim, personalized the attack by calling her names, prolonged the attack, grabbed the wallet as an afterthought as he took off.
“He knocked you down from behind and he kept hitting you?” Kovac said. “Where was he? Standing over you?”
“No. Closer. I remember he grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. I felt his weight on me.”
“So he was on his knees? Maybe straddling you?”
She knew where he was going, and she didn’t want to hear it. Carey Moore had prosecuted more than her share of violent crimes-assaults, rapes, murders. She didn’t want to admit that someone might have tried to rape her, kill her.
“Was your driver’s license in your wallet?” Liska asked.
“Yes.”
“Is the address on the license your home address?”
“No. I’ve known better than that for a long time, Detective.”
“Was there anything in your purse that might have had your home address on it?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, staring down at her hands, which had been scraped badly on the concrete. Several fingernails were broken and jagged.
“No. I don’t think so,” she said at last, the strength in her voice draining away. “I’m very tired. I want to go home. I didn’t see the man who attacked me. I can’t tell you anything that will be of any use to you. Can we wrap this up?”
“Did you have anything with you besides your purse?” Liska asked.
“My briefcase. Did someone pick it up? I have work to do over the weekend.”
“No one at the scene said anything about a briefcase,” Kovac said. “They have your purse and the stuff that came out of it. What was in the briefcase?”
He could see a little panic creeping in around the edges of her composure. “Briefs, reports, letters regarding sentencing recommendations.”
“Something every mugger would want,” Kovac commented with sarcasm.
Carey Moore ignored him. “The briefcase was my father’s. It’s important to me.”
“Any paper in it regarding The State v. Karl Dahl?”
She refused to look at him, pissed off because he was proving her wrong in her assumption the attack was random. He couldn’t really blame her. Nobody wanted to think of themselves as a specific target of violence.
“Yes.”
“We’ll also need to know what other cases you’ve presided over in the recent past,” Liska said. “Who might have a grudge. Who’s up for a stiff sentence. Cons you sent up who’ve been recently released. Anything.”
“Yes,” said the judge in a voice that was barely a whisper. The adrenaline had burned off, and she was headed for the lowest of lows, Kovac knew. He’d seen it a thousand times. He’d been a victim of it himself once or twice.
“Can your husband come and get you, Judge Moore?” Liska asked. “You can’t drive yourself.”
“I’ll call a car service.”
“You don’t seem in any shape to go anywhere,” Kovac said, wondering where the hell this husband was. His wife had been assaulted. There was a better-than-even chance that the attack could have been an attempt on her life. “He’s out of town, your husband?”
“He’s at a business dinner. I can manage.”
“Does he know you’re here? Have you called him?”
“He’s at dinner. He turned his phone off.”
The jaw was tightening again. She didn’t want to talk about the absent husband. She would rather scrape herself out of a hospital bed, deal with a concussion, some cracked ribs, and an emotional trauma by herself, than try to find the one person who should have made it to the hospital before Kovac and Liska had.