Prior Bad Acts by Tami Hoag Page A

eyes filled with tears as she looked back and forth from Kovac to her boss. “Do you think this man who hurt you will come here? Who is Marlene?”
    “Just being cautious,” Kovac said. “Don’t open the door to anyone you don’t know. I don’t care if they tell you their mother is lying bleeding to death in the street.”
    “You’re scaring me,” Anka said, sounding almost angry or resentful.
    Kovac nodded. “Good. Does this phone have caller ID?”
    “Yes,” Anka said. She picked up the handheld off the hall table, scrolled through the caller list, and held it out to Kovac.
    “Can you write the number down for me?” he asked. “I’m going to help Judge Moore upstairs.”
    “I can manage,” she said, using the table to help herself to her feet.
    Kovac put an arm around her shoulders and guided her toward the staircase. “Stop being such a goddamn pain in the ass. I’m helping you, and that’s the end of it. You fall and break your neck on my watch, my head goes on the block.”
    He wanted to pick her up, toss her over his shoulder, and carry her like a sack of potatoes, but he didn’t want to have to explain the complaint that that would bring to his lieutenant.
    “Don’t even think of saying the word ‘coincidence,’” he warned as they slowly went up the stairs. “Marlene isn’t that common a name, and even if it was, the odds of someone calling here by mistake and asking for someone with the same name as the victim in a case you’re trying have to be astronomical.”
    She didn’t say anything at all, but she stopped in the bathroom at the top of the hall, dropped to her knees in front of the toilet, and vomited again.
    Kovac dampened a hand towel and gave it to her. She accepted it in silence and sat there on the floor for several moments with her face buried in it.
    “Can I assume you have an unlisted phone number?” Kovac asked, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub.
    “Yes, of course.”
    “We’ll need to set up a trap on your line. This won’t be the only call you’ll get.”
    “Why do you think that?”
    “Because the call came after the attack. If we’re talking about the same mutt, then he’s in this for more than your wallet.”
    She didn’t look at him. She was staring at nothing, her expression bleak.
    “You should lie down,” Kovac said, reaching out once again to help her to her feet.
    She paid no attention to him and stopped at the door to her daughter’s room, which was adorned with a fanciful painted fairy touching a magic wand to a sign that read: “Princess Lucy’s Room.” Leaning against the doorjamb, she turned the knob carefully and peeked inside. Kovac looked in over her head.
    Princess Lucy was sleeping the sleep of the innocent in a bed with pale pink sheets and a confection of white quilts and comforters and bed skirts. Cute kid. Maybe four or five, with a mop of wavy dark hair and a mouth like a rosebud. A small lamp with a ruffled lavender shade glowed softly on a table across from the bed.
    Carey Moore watched her daughter sleep for a moment, her cheek pressed to the frame of the door, one hand pressed across her mouth. Kovac imagined she was realizing the decision she had made in her chambers today had ramifications that were rippling out far beyond the government center and beyond herself. Someone had reached out over a phone line and invaded her home, the place she should have felt most safe, the place her daughter should have been safe.
    People never had a clue what an illusion their sense of safety was. A security system could be gone with the snip of a wire. A security building with a twenty-four-hour doorman still had a garage with a gate that stayed up long enough for a stranger to drive in behind a resident. A perimeter wall could always be scaled. Every e-mail ever sent could be retrieved with a couple of mouse clicks. One wrong set of eyes glancing at a social security number on a form, and an identity became a commodity for sale. One