Prior Bad Acts (21 page)

31

THE TRIAL WAS
over. It hadn’t come out well for Kenny Scott, Esquire, but justice had been done. Swift and terrible.

Stan was shaking, sweating, exhilarated. There was still a small part of his brain that was horrified and terrified of the other emotions roaring through him. But that part was smaller and smaller, weaker and weaker. With justice came strength. Might with right.

Stan’s justice was pure and simple. There were no games, no loopholes, no getting off on a technicality. There was only right and wrong.

For the first time in his life, Stan Dempsey felt powerful.

To any casual observer going down the street, Kenny Scott simply wasn’t at home. Stan had turned off the television before he left. He had taken Kenny Scott’s car and parked it a block away, then walked back to his truck.

If his former colleagues discovered Kenny Scott too quickly, they would have a target area to look for him, and the intensity of the search would be fierce. Stan couldn’t have them find him before his job was done.

He calmly drove to another neighborhood and parked his uncle’s truck. In the back, under the camper shell, he ate a couple of bologna sandwiches with slices of midget gherkins in them and drank some coffee from his thermos.

He didn’t think about what he had just done. He didn’t try to recall the panic in the lawyer’s eyes, the screams the man had to swallow behind the duct tape that covered his mouth.

The rush the memory of meting out punishment gave was a thing unique to criminals, to serial killers, to men like Karl Dahl. That reaction belonged to the criminals who indulged in cruelty because it excited them. For those men, the memories were as important as the crime itself. They would relive their exploits over and over in their minds.

Stan didn’t think of himself as a criminal. He was just doing a necessary job no one else would do.

He finished his lunch and cleaned his hands off with a wet wipe. It was time for him to move on to the next name on his list.

Carey Moore.

32

IT SEEMED TO
take days for the hours to pass. Carey spent the rest of the afternoon in her bedroom with Lucy, playing nurse, taking her temperature with a toy thermometer, and giving her “medicine”—M&M’s.

They napped, though Carey couldn’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. The tension was exhausting. She passed the time second-guessing herself.

Maybe this wasn’t the time to confront David. Maybe she should wait until the rest of this nightmare was over. Except that she didn’t know her husband wasn’t a part of it. She didn’t want to stay under the same roof with a man who might have arranged to have her killed. She didn’t want her daughter in the same house as him.

She worried about Lucy, who was already feeling insecure and clingy. But was there ever a good time for a child’s parents to end their marriage? No.

She thought about sending Lucy to Kate and John Quinn’s home for the night. Lucy loved sleepovers and was friends with the Quinns’ daughter Haley. But Carey didn’t want her daughter out of her control, or out of her sight, for that matter. Things were too uncertain. And she didn’t want to potentially put John and Kate in harm’s way if Stan Dempsey had decided to go after her daughter to make her pay for Carey’s sins. He could have been watching the house, for all she knew. He could follow her to the Quinns’.

She would wait to speak to David until after Lucy was asleep. Anka would make sure Lucy didn’t go downstairs in the event she woke up. Carey was very thankful the nanny had insisted on staying the weekend, even though Saturday and Sunday were usually her days off. Anka wouldn’t hear of leaving. Her responsibility was to the family.

What a sad thing, Carey thought, that she could trust her nanny more than she could trust her husband.

David ordered Chinese for dinner. Lucy was a big fan of moo goo gai pan. David’s appetite was as healthy as ever. Carey picked at her egg-fried rice, continuously rearranging it on her plate but eating only a few grains. She rested an elbow on the table and her head in her hand and stared down at the bright bits of peas and carrots dotting the rice like confetti.

“How’s your moo goo, Lucy Goosie?” David asked, smiling at his daughter.

“I’m Fairy Princess Lucy now, Daddy! Detective Sam said so.”

“Detective Sam?” He looked at Carey.

“He was at the courthouse, Daddy,” Lucy went on. “He was my pretend giant, and he carried me all the way to the car. Isn’t that nice?”

“Yes, very,” David said. “Why was he at the courthouse?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said with a big shrug, going back to her dinner.

“I’m his case,” Carey said. “He was keeping tabs on me.”

“You should have stayed in the hospital,” David said for the tenth time.

“So I could not eat there?” she said too sharply. “So they could force-feed me Jell-O?”

“I like Jell-O,” Lucy piped up. “I like green Jell-O best. My friend Kelly’s mom puts pieces of carrots in her green Jell-O. Isn’t that weird?”

Carey smiled at her daughter.

“I like pineapple in mine,” Lucy said. “It’s pretty.”

“You look ready to collapse, Carey,” David said. “And you’re out running around like you think you’re fine. You’ve exhausted yourself.”

He actually looked concerned for her, and she wondered if any of that look was genuine. A part of her hoped so, even though her practical side told her no. If David cared about her, he wouldn’t have been doing what he’d been doing. The more likely explanation was that he wanted her out of his hair so he could do whatever he wanted to do over the weekend. What had Kovac said her name was? Ginnie.

“Did you get your paperwork?” he asked. “I didn’t see you bring anything in from the car.”

“I forgot it was in my briefcase, which was stolen.”

“So you went down there for nothing.”

“Do I need to pay you back for the gas I used?” Carey asked with a fine edge of sarcasm.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

He went to say something more but stopped himself, held up his hands in surrender, and pushed back from the table. “Excuse me, ladies. I have work to do. I’m applying for a grant for the film.”

Carey didn’t comment. Before this day, she would have encouraged him, tried to be supportive, even though she had long since tired of that game. The time for being David’s cheerleader had passed. The time to move on had arrived.

The evening was passed with Lucy, painting toenails and reading stories. After she had tucked her daughter in bed and sat with her until she’d gone to sleep, Carey showered and dressed in a loose pair of jeans and an oversized black button-down shirt. It was one of her father’s old shirts. Wrapping herself in it was like wrapping herself in the memory of her father’s strength.

It was important to her to feel as strong and secure as she could. Confronting David in pajamas wouldn’t do that.

Lucy had been in bed nearly an hour. Once she was sound asleep, it was rare for her to wake up before morning. The sleep of the innocent, Carey thought. She envied her daughter that.

David sat at his desk, staring at the computer screen and nursing a drink.

Carey stood outside the den, watching him for a moment before he looked up.

“I thought you went to bed.”

She took a deep breath and walked into the room. “We need to talk.”

The four most ominous words with which to open a conversation.

David just sat there for a moment, then clicked his mouse to make his screen go dark. The top-secret grant application.
My ass,
Carey thought. He was probably having virtual sex with one of his prostitute friends. He didn’t get up, keeping the solid mass of the desk like a shield between them.

“I want a divorce,” she said bluntly.

“What?” He looked more nervous than surprised. “Why?”

“Don’t pretend to be shocked, David. You don’t want to be married to me. I don’t want to be married to you. I don’t even know who you are anymore. But I do know all about your extracurricular activities with the prostitutes.”

He was actually stupid enough to try to correct her. “Escorts.”

“They’re women you pay for sex,” she snapped. “A whore is a whore, David. No euphemism is going to put a pretty face on that.

“How could you?” she asked. “How dare you.”

He rubbed a hand over his face and got up from the desk.

“It was just . . . business,” he said. “A transaction for a service. When was the last time you and I had sex, Carey?”

“When was the last time you were an equal partner in this marriage?”

He laughed without humor and shook his head. “And you’re wondering why I would go outside our marriage for attention.”

“Oh, poor, poor David,” she said bitterly. “You’re the victim. You’ve spent the last how many years contributing not one goddamn thing to this relationship—”

“So it’s about my failure to make money,” he said, moving a step closer to her. “Is that it?”

“Don’t try to make this about money. You haven’t been plugged in emotionally for years, you don’t care about anyone’s needs but your own—”

“I’m selfish?”

“Yes.”

“And how many years were you working eighty-hour weeks, Carey, never home, always too tired—”

“We were supposed to be partners,” Carey said. “Yes, I had a career. You had one too, once upon a time. And you can’t tell me I haven’t been supportive of that. I’ve been your biggest cheerleader. Even in the last few years, when you couldn’t get arrested, let alone get a film made, have I even once tried to discourage you?”

He looked away.

“Do you have any idea how exhausting that’s been, David? To have to carry your fragile ego around like the world on my shoulders?”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m so sorry to have been such a burden on you!”

Carey looked away from him and crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t want to argue with you, David. There’s no point in it. We’re done. It’s over.”

“Oh, Her Honor the Judge has spoken and passed sentence,” he said sarcastically. “I don’t even get to mount a defense.”

“How could you possibly defend what you’ve done?” Carey said, incredulous. “Fucking prostitutes every time I turn my back. How do you defend that? Paying out thousands of dollars a month for sex, for flowers and gifts, for four-star hotel rooms and an apartment I don’t even want to know what for, or who for. What can you say that could make any of that okay?”

He looked at her with narrow-eyed suspicion. “How do you know all of that?”

“I looked it up. For God’s sake, David, I’m surprised you didn’t dedicate a file folder just to your deviant secret life.”

“You went in my file drawers?”

“To look at
our
financial records. Am I supposed to have to get a warrant for that? You didn’t even bother to try to hide any of it. Your list of favorite escort agencies was in the drawer where we keep checkbooks and stamps. You had to know I would go into that drawer. You probably wanted it to happen, wanted me to find you out, because you obviously don’t have the balls to tell me yourself.”

He held his hands up in front of himself. “I don’t need this. I don’t need to be lectured by you, Ms. Perfect. Perfect daughter, perfect mother, perfect lawyer, perfect everything. What a fucking hypocrite! You think I don’t know you slept with someone else too?”

Carey took a step back as if he’d slapped her.

“Yeah,” David said with malicious glee. “You’re not so perfect after all. So don’t stand there and look down your nose at me.”

“Once,” she said. “Once. Because I was overworked, overstressed, and all I was getting from you was a shitload of whining that I wasn’t here to serve your every need.”

“Right. It’s my fault when you’re unfaithful, but it’s not your fault when I am?”

“There’s no comparison,” Carey said. “One night I turned to a man I knew and trusted because I needed comfort. You open the yellow pages and pick a number. And you say it’s just a
business transaction
. That’s beyond sleazy.

“Can you at least tell me you used protection?” she asked. “That you didn’t put me at risk? That you wouldn’t put your daughter at risk if she needed a transfusion or a kidney?”

“No,” he said with a smug look. “I didn’t. I wanted my money’s worth.”

Carey slapped him across the face as hard as she could. She’d never struck another human being in her life.

“You son of a bitch,” she said, glaring at him. “Get out. Get out of this house. Get out of my life. Just go!” she shouted, pointing toward the door.

“It’s my house too.”

“The hell it is. And if you think for one minute you’re getting anything out of this divorce, you are sadly mistaken.”

“Yeah,” David sneered. “It’s all for you.”

“For me and for Lucy.”

“You can’t keep me from seeing my daughter,” he said.

“You don’t think so? A Family Court judge is not going to be impressed with your hobbies, David.”

“I have been a very good father to Lucy,” he said, his voice trembling, tears coming to his eyes. “Whatever I have or haven’t been to you, Carey, you can’t say I don’t love my daughter, or that she doesn’t love me.”

Carey closed her eyes and sighed. “No, I can’t say that.”

“You can’t possibly believe I would ever do anything to hurt Lucy in any way. You can’t just cut me out of her life.”

“No,” Carey said with resignation. “I won’t do that.”

She didn’t really know what she would or wouldn’t do. Thinking about David’s having been with prostitutes made her want to never let him touch Lucy as long as he lived. Her misgivings about the twenty-five thousand dollars made her want him to be out of both of their lives forever. But now was not the time to say any of that.

In all the years she had known him, she had never known David to be violent in any way. But she didn’t know this man in front of her. He wasn’t the man she had married. He wasn’t even the man she thought she had been living with.

She thought of Kovac. Despite what she had told him, he was probably standing in the shrubbery, ready to smash the window in if he so much as imagined anything going wrong.

“I can be there before you hang up the phone.”

She thought of the two officers in the squad car out front.

Lucy was her ace. David wouldn’t do anything to her here and now, because he couldn’t get away and because he would never see his daughter again if he went to prison. Lucy’s guardians were Kate and John Quinn, a victim advocate and one of the country’s leading experts on the criminal mind. They would never allow David to be a part of Lucy’s life again.

And that knowledge only gave credence to the notion of her husband’s having paid someone else to do the dirty work for him.

“I guess I loved you once,” he said quietly. “I don’t know how we got here.”

“Please go now, David,” Carey said, surprised by how much what he had just said hurt her.
“I guess I loved you once. . . .”

“I could just stay in the guest room,” he said. “I don’t want Lucy to wake up and have me just be gone.”

“I’ll tell her you had to go away on business. I can’t have you here, David. I don’t trust you.”