Or maybe it was just that Kovac had taken an instant hatred to her because he had it in his head that this was the woman David Moore had been screwing while his wife was lying in a hospital bed.
“Detective Kovac,” Ivors said, “this is Ginnie Bird. Ginnie was there last night.”
“Ms. Bird.”
The woman didn’t move other than to offer Kovac a limp hand when he reached out to her. She didn’t want to be here, and she certainly didn’t want anything to do with a police detective.
The end of her nose was red as if she had a cold or had been crying.
Junkie, Kovac thought. The pallor, the thinness… That was it, he thought. She looked like a junkie whore someone had tried to pass off as something better, something legitimate.
“So the three of you were out on the town until two in the morning,” Kovac said. “That’s a long evening.”
“We were talking about David’s new project,” Ivors said, walking over to a credenza to pour himself a glass of water from a clear pitcher with a dozen lemon slices floating inside. “He’s putting together a documentary juxtaposing-”
“I don’t care what it’s about,” Kovac said bluntly. “Are you backing it?”
“Yes.”
“And, Ms. Bird, what’s your part in all of this?”
She looked startled to have him turn his attention on her. As she opened her mouth to answer, Ivors said, “Ginnie is a casting director. She’ll be casting the actors for the reenactment segments of the film.”
“And this gets you in on the deal making?” Kovac asked, openly dubious.
“Ginnie’s very talented, great instincts. I wanted her insights on the project.”
Kovac stared directly at the woman. “Do her talents include the ability to speak?”
Ivors laughed, the jovial host. “I’m sorry, Ginnie. My wife always tells me I won’t let anyone else get a word in sideways. I’m afraid I can’t help myself.”
“Try,” Kovac said, unamused. He turned back to the Bird woman. “Are you new to the area, Ms. Bird?”
“No,” she said, brow knitting. Her voice was as strong as her handshake.
“Newly married?”
“No. Why?”
“Well, you know, I was looking you up this morning, trying to find a phone number for you, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. The State of Minnesota doesn’t seem to know you exist.”
“I’m from Wisconsin,” she said quickly. “I live in Hudson.”
Just across the St. Croix River from the easternmost commuter towns to the Twin Cities.
“Really?” Kovac said. “Nice place. I have a buddy in Hudson. Ray Farmer. He’s chief of police there. Maybe you know him?”
“No, I don’t,” Ginnie Bird said, glancing at Ivors. “I haven’t lived there very long.”
And yet she wasn’t new to the area. Whatever else she was, she was a poor liar.
“Where are you from originally?”
“ Illinois.”
Kovac raised his brows as if he thought people from Illinois to be particularly suspect.
“You know, I checked with the restaurant,” he said. “They told me they close at eleven-thirty Friday nights.”
“Yes,” Ivors said. “We took our conversation to their bar.”
“So if I ask someone working in the bar, they’ll tell me the three of you were there until closing?”
Ivors’s gracious mood was starting to fray around the edges. “And why would you do that, Detective? Did we break a law I don’t know about? I thought you were interested in where David Moore was at the time of his wife’s attack. What does it matter to you that we were sitting in a bar until two o’clock?”
“Just covering all my bases, Mr. Ivors,” Kovac said. “Let’s say-hypothetically-that someone paid someone else to attack Judge Moore. The first guy might meet the second guy later on to pay him off.”
“David would never do that.” Ginnie spoke up, angry on Moore ’s behalf.
Kovac gave her the eye. “You know him that well?”
“He’s just not that kind of person.”
“I’ve been a cop a long time, Ms. Bird. I can tell you, I’ve seen people do the goddamnedest things. People you would never imagine. Someone gets pushed far enough, gets backed into a corner, you can’t say what they might do. Some guys, they see someone standing between them and freedom, or them and a lot of money, they’ll take the shortest route between two points and to hell with who’s standing in the way.”
“You’re talking about David like he’s a criminal,” she said, incensed.
“I don’t know that he’s not,” Kovac said. “I don’t know that you’re not. That’s the whole point of an investigation, isn’t it? To pry open the closet door and take a look at the skeletons. Everybody has at least one.”
“This is ridiculous,” Ivors said, openly irritated. “Carey Moore was mugged in a parking ramp. Her husband was with us from seven o’clock on. That’s what you needed to know, Detective Kovac?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Now you know it.”
“I guess I’m being asked to leave,” Kovac said.
“There’s a triple murderer running loose in the streets,” Ivors said. “I’m sure you have better things to do than stand around asking pointless questions.”
Kovac smiled a little as he backed toward the door. “But you see, Mr. Ivors, that’s the beauty of my job. No question is ever pointless.
“Thank you for your time,” he said, and gave a little nod toward the Bird woman. “You’ve been very helpful.”
25
KARL HAD NO DIFFICULTY finding Judge Moore’s house. He recognized it from what he’d seen on the news. It was a fine redbrick house with white trim and black shutters. The kind of house where well-off, respectable folk would want to raise their families and host dinner parties.
He could imagine what it would look like at the holidays, like something from a Hallmark Christmas card. There would be candles in all the windows, a big wreath on the shiny black front door, evergreen garland wound around the pair of white columns. Inside there would be a very tall, noble fir hung with colored lights and every kind of ornament.
Now it was the perfect picture of fall, with big maple trees shedding their leaves onto the lawn. Pumpkins on the front step.
This was exactly the kind of house he would have imagined for Carey Moore. A fine house for a fine lady.
Karl drove past in the Volvo, noting the police car sitting at the curb in front of the house. He drove around the block, looking for more cops, but he didn’t see any. No radio cars, no unmarked cars with men sitting in them, pretending to be waiting for someone.
There was an alley, but he didn’t dare go down it. There could have been police sitting in Carey Moore’s backyard. Maybe when it got dark he would park the Volvo on the street and slip down the alley on foot.
For now Karl drove to the parking lot on the north end of Lake Calhoun, which was connected to Lake of the Isles by a canal. Lake Calhoun was bobbing with sailboats, bright white against the gleaming blue water. Calhoun was huge, hundreds of acres wide between its shores. Lake of the Isles was much smaller, but very scenic, with its small islands and abundance of waterfowl, which cartwheeled in the sky above and used the lake’s glassy surface as a landing pad.
Karl walked north along the paved path that followed the shoreline. Minnesotans had spilled out of their homes in droves to take in the warm sun and blue skies. The walking path was busy with people of all ages, from babies in strollers to white-haired elderly men and women. Bikers and people on in-line skates whizzed past on the outer paved path.