“You know that?”
“I know when a guy’s lying about it. And she’s trying to pretend it’s not happening or that somehow it doesn’t matter to her. I don’t get that.”
“She’s embarrassed,” Liska said quietly. “It’s no fun to be the butt of the joke. Especially if you’re supposed to be tough and strong and the rest of that type-A-woman crap.
“This is the voice of experience talking,” she said.
Kovac pulled his glasses off and looked at her. She’d been married to a narcotics detective from the St. Paul PD long enough to have had two kids with him. They had come up through the ranks together, marrying when they were both still in uniform. The ex-husband-everybody called him Speed-was one of those bad-boy types women always wanted to reform. Liska had believed herself above that, believed she knew exactly what Speed was all about. But she hadn’t counted on his not being able to handle her success.
Nikki was a good cop, and ambitious. She had a drawerful of commendations from the department. She worked high-profile cases, got her picture in the paper every once in a while. Speed was a cowboy, reckless, always living on the edge undercover, the nature of his work keeping him out of the limelight. He had cheated on her over and over. A cruel kind of revenge for not being able to outshine her.
Kovac hated the guy. Always had.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Good thing you didn’t take the judge home. You would have taken one look at the husband and castrated him on the spot. He’s a bastard, and she puts up with it because… I don’t know. They have a daughter; she’s got a lot on her plate being a judge… Maybe she just doesn’t have the energy to deal with him.”
Liska narrowed her eyes. “You like her.”
Kovac scowled. “I feel sorry for her.”
“No. You like her,” she said, dead serious, pointing a finger at him. “She’s another damsel in distress who needs rescuing. Be careful with that, Sam. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Jesus,” he grumbled, putting his glasses back on so he could avoid her laser gaze. “There’s no evidence to support your theory.”
“The hell there isn’t. I know you. I know your track record.”
“Prior bad acts,” Kovac grumbled. “Inadmissible.”
“Shows a pattern of behavior,” Liska argued.
“I barely know the woman.”
Liska sighed and just looked at him with a familiar mix of concern and frustration. He could tell she wanted to say more, but she bit her tongue on it.
“I have to go,” Kovac said, getting up from his chair. “What’s next on your agenda?”
“Follow-up on Bobby Haas. Unless I get an eyewitness who can put him or his buddy at the scene, I can’t connect him to the assault. I figured I would go and be supportive of him and his dad. See how they’re doing. Update them on Karl Dahl, not that there’s anything to report. Show Bobby what a kind, warm, and motherly person I am.”
“So you can break him down and feed him into the wheels of justice?”
“Exactly.”
Kovac patted her shoulder. “That’s my girl.”
23
BOBBY HAAS WAS in the front yard, raking leaves, when Liska pulled up to the curb in front of the Haas home. Just parking in the driveway made the skin on the back of her neck prickle, so she didn’t.
She felt a little sheepish being so weird about this place. During the course of her career, she’d been to literally hundreds of death scenes, had gone back to them, had spent time in them to try to imagine the crime as it was taking place. But this place… She wished she had worn a religious medal.
The boy looked up as soon as Liska got out of the car. He had an expression that told her he had received too much bad news in his young life and was bracing himself for more.
“Hey, Bobby. How’s your dad doing?”
“He’s not feeling very good.”
“Should he be going to a doctor?” she asked. “I’ll try to help you with him. I know he doesn’t want to go, but if he’s sick…”
Bobby Haas looked back at the house as if he were seeking permission. When he turned back to her, he sighed. “No, thanks. He’s got his medication from his regular doctor. And he’s really no worse than he ever gets. He just needs to rest. I can take care of him. I don’t mind.”
“He’s a proud man, your dad,” Liska said, though she knew nothing of the sort. “You know, when something really catastrophic happens, sometimes the strongest people get hit the hardest.”
“He feels responsible,” Bobby said. “Like he could have prevented it. But he couldn’t have. Not without being psychic. Maybe I could have stopped it from happening too, if I’d known it was going to happen.”
Liska nodded. “But you didn’t know. No one knew. No one could ever imagine something that evil, except the Karl Dahls of the world.”
“He’s still loose, isn’t he?”
“Everything possible is being done to find him,” Liska said. She nodded toward the front porch. “Can we sit down for a minute?”
He looked suspicious but went with her as she started toward the porch, suggesting he didn’t really have an option.
Liska took a spot on the top step. Bobby sat two steps down, leaning his rake against the side of the stairs. The brilliant fall sun cast a glow around him as if he were an angel.
Pretty, she thought. That was how to describe him, not as a handsome young man but beautiful. He had to have taken after his mother. She tried to remember what Marlene Haas had looked like, but the only picture she held in her mind was the garish, horrific crime scene photo showing Marlene Haas propped up on the sofa in the TV room, her face lifeless, daisies sprouting out of her chest.
“You know, Bobby, I’m sure you’ve heard this so often you don’t want to hear it anymore, but I really am sorry for your loss. I’m sorry for what you and your dad have had to go through. Especially what you had to go through, finding your mother’s body, finding the kids in the basement. I can’t even begin to imagine what that must have felt like. Were you and your mom close?”
The boy squinted across the yard as if his mother might be standing over by the garage. “Marlene was my stepmother. But yeah, I liked her. She was a nice person. Really kind. She liked to bake. The house always smelled like cookies.”
“Is your mother in the area?”
“She died when I was thirteen.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. What happened?”
“Cancer.”
“Wow, that sucks,” Liska said. “You’ve had a really tough go of it, haven’t you?”
He shrugged a little. “I’m okay. My dad and I have each other.”
“You two are pretty tight, huh?”
“We used to do a lot of stuff together. Go to ball games, go fishing, stuff like that. He used to coach my youth hockey team. He taught me how to drive a car.”
“You don’t do so much of that since the murders.”
“He hasn’t been up to it. He took a leave from work when it happened, but he could only be gone for three weeks. I told him he should’ve quit. Retire.”
He sighed heavily, the weight of his world bearing down on him. “I thought we could’ve moved somewhere, like Arizona, and just started over. Here, all he can think about is what happened. But we have to stay in this creepy house. He won’t do anything about it.”
“It’s a pretty tough sell, Bobby,” Nikki said. “Unless your dad is a lot better off than I am, he can’t buy a house without selling a house.”
“But we wouldn’t need a house,” the boy said. “We could just get an apartment or something. I don’t get it. I mean, what happened was horrible, but we have to go on with our lives.”
Frighteningly well-adjusted, this kid, Liska thought. He had dealt with his own grief, put it away, and moved on. In many ways, he was now the adult in the family, while painful memories and grief incapacitated his father. And yet he was still a boy, and he just wanted his dad back.