The Bitter Season (31 page)

“You got home really late last night,”
Kyle said as he got the orange juice out of the refrigerator.

“We had to execute a search warrant,” Nikki said, stirring the eggs. “It couldn’t wait.”

“You said that wouldn’t happen anymore.”

“It won’t happen very often.”

“You missed jiu-jitsu,” R.J. said, putting the plates on the island. “Matt took us.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll be there next week. I promise.”

“No classes next week,” Kyle said. “It’s Thanksgiving. No classes Wednesday or Thursday.”

Thanksgiving? God, how had that happened? Nikki kept the question to herself. She meant for their lives to be on a more normal track now. She didn’t want them thinking she would forget holidays and important things like jiu-jitsu.

“I don’t have wrestling, either, next Tuesday,” R.J. reminded her.

“I get out of school Tuesday,” Kyle added.

“Make sure all of this is on the calendar, please,” Nikki said, dishing up their eggs. She cut a glance across the room to the whiteboard calendar that was awash in a rainbow of colored marker for this school function and that activity.

“You’re not gonna forget to buy a turkey, are you?” R.J. asked.

“No, I’m not gonna forget to buy a turkey.”

Mental note: Order a fresh turkey at Lund’s
.

“You’re a turkey,” Kyle said, flicking scrambled eggs at his brother.

“You’re a dork,” R.J. shot back.

“You’re both going to be late for school,” Nikki said. “Eat up and hit the road.”

*   *   *

S
HE MADE PHONE CALLS
from the car before pulling out of the driveway and heading downtown. Evi Burke: No answer. Jennifer Duffy: No answer. Donald Nilsen: No answer. No surprise.

Wanting to know the minute he came back from wherever he had stormed off to, she had put a unit on Nilsen’s house the night before. She wished she could have put a tail on him the minute he left the property, but Mascherino had nixed the idea. Nilsen’s itchy trigger finger for lawsuits had bought him his freedom for the evening.

She wondered where he’d gone. To a bar? To a girlfriend? She couldn’t begin to imagine that. To a hooker? There was an ugly thought. Donald Nilsen, with his hatred and disdain for women, with his hair trigger for violence, was every prostitute’s worst nightmare.

Immediately Nikki thought of the other Duffy foster child, Penny Williams, found dead in an alley only months after Ted Duffy’s murder. Nikki had the case file on her desk. Had Penny Williams known something about the Nilsens, father or son? There had been no statement from or about her in the Duffy case file. There had been practically nothing in the file about Jeremy Nilsen, or Angie Jeager.

Either I’m a genius or an idiot, she thought as she headed into the office. She believed she was on the right track—the track no one else had gone down. But sometimes the road less traveled was less traveled for a reason—because it led nowhere.

In need of caffeine, and secretly hoping for camaraderie, she went into Kovac’s war room.

He looked up at her from where he sat alone at the table, going through statements. He looked freshly showered and shaved, and not nearly as bleary-eyed as he had the last time she’d seen him.

“Oh my God, did you actually go home last night?” she asked. “You’re getting soft in your old age.”

“What?” he barked. “They don’t have coffee back in the broom closet?”

“Yeah, but it’s not nearly as bad as this,” she said, pouring herself a mug of sludge. “Have you caught your ninja yet?”

“Nope. This case is like a big grab bag full of broken glass and venomous snakes. Yours? Did Herb Peterson have anything for you?”

“Who?”

“Herb Peterson. The retired cop you were so hot to talk to yesterday when you tracked me down at Cheap Charlie’s.” He gave her a knowing look. “Tinks, I think you miss me.”

Scowling, Nikki slid down on the chair across from him. “Of course I miss you. Don’t be an ass about it.”

“It’s what I do best.”

“You’re coming to Thanksgiving,” she said bluntly, absently looking over the writing on the big whiteboard. “It’s next week, in case you’ve forgotten. Who has the neat handwriting?”

“Your boy, Magic Mike.”

“He’s not my boy,” she said as she tried to forget the animal magnetism rolling effortlessly off Taylor as she sat beside him at the diner. He even smelled gorgeous, as she recalled. “I don’t date guys I could have theoretically given birth to.”

“Only if you were a slut in middle school,” Kovac said. “He’s not that much younger than you.”

“He’s not my type.”

Kovac laughed. “Yeah, right, those devastatingly good-looking guys are so not you,” he said sarcastically.

The smart-ass remark was half formed on her tongue when she saw the name. Her whole body jerked like she’d been given an electric shock.

“What?” Kovac asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Why do you have that name up there?” she asked. “Jeremy Nilsen—why is that up there?”

“His ID was found in the room of a robbery suspect, Gordon Krauss. Why?”

“I’m looking for a Jeremy Nilsen. He was a neighbor of Ted Duffy’s back when. Do you have the ID here?”

“No. It’s in Property.”

“Does it match your guy? Is it him?”

“There’s our guy,” Kovac said, pointing to a photograph stuck on the wall.

The suspect’s hair was overgrown, and a beard obscured the lower half of his face.

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t have a recent picture of Nilsen. Every guy in a bushy beard looks the same to me. Have you run his prints?”

“He’s not in the system.”

“Jeremy Nilsen served in the army. His prints have to be in the system.”

“Krauss allegedly served,” Kovac said. “That’s what he told people. But his prints don’t show up as military or anything else. A known associate claims he was some kind of Black Ops assassin or some such bullshit.”

“Do you have him in custody?”

“No. I’ve got every cop in five jurisdictions looking for him.

“Do you think he’s your guy?” he asked. “Krauss could be an alias, but that ID was one of several Tip and Elwood found in his room at a rehab on the North Side. He came there from a shelter downtown as a charity case.”

“Seley from my office has been calling every shelter and soup
kitchen in the Cities looking for Nilsen. He was a psych patient at the VA. But he’s been MIA for a long time. This could be him.”

“Or he could have an answer for you,” Kovac said. “This guy’s crazy like a fox, not crazy like a loon. We don’t know how he came by these IDs. Maybe he bought them off these guys for drug money, maybe he stole them. Hell, he could have killed them for all we know. I might like him for my double homicide. Could be the daughter of my vics hired him to off her parents.”

“Holy shit,” Nikki murmured. That would be the luck. She finally got a lead on Jeremy Nilsen only to discover someone killed him for his ID and his veterans benefits.

“Call me if you bring him in,” she said, getting up.

“Will do.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The booming voice belonged to Gene Grider.

Nikki turned and looked at him as he barged into the room like a charging bull, knocking the door back so hard it bounced off the doorstop and nearly hit him on the rebound.

“I told you to leave the family alone!” he shouted at her.

Nikki stared at him, confused. “What? What are you talking about? What’s wrong with you?”

“He’s in the wrong office, for starters,” Kovac said, getting up. “Get out of my war room, Grider. No one invited you to the party.”

“Butt out, Kojak,” Grider snapped, coming forward, red-faced. He looked like his tie was too tight, choking him. He jabbed a thick finger at Nikki. “I told you to leave the Duffys alone!”

Nikki squared off with him, leaning up toward him on her tiptoes. “And I told you to butt the hell out of my case! You’re not the boss of me, Grider. My case is the murder of Ted Duffy. I’m damn well going to speak to his family and anyone else I want to. It’s called an investigation.”

“Well, great fucking job!” Grider shouted at her. “I hope you got what you needed. Jennifer Duffy tried to kill herself last night.”

*   *   *

“I
HAD A CONVERSATION WITH HER
,” Nikki said, still in a state of disbelief. Her gaze skimmed around the lieutenant’s office, looking for something to focus on. She settled on a picture of Mascherino with a granddaughter about the age Jennifer Duffy was when her father was killed.

“I asked her normal questions. It was very casual. I was persistent, but I didn’t bully her. Is she going to make it? What did she do? Pills?”

“Sleeping pills and antianxiety meds. A neighbor heard her fall in the middle of the night and thought someone was breaking in. They called the police.”

“Oh my God,” Nikki whispered, rubbing her hands over her face, relief and shock and guilt all tumbling through her at once. “Thank God.”

“She’ll recover, hopefully no liver damage,” Mascherino said. “She apparently told her mother over the phone earlier in the evening that you came to the library and she didn’t want to speak to you.”

Nikki rolled her eyes. “I’m a cop. No one wants to speak to me.”

“She said you threatened her.”

“That’s a lie! I did not threaten her. She didn’t want people to know who I was or why I was there, but she left the building with me voluntarily. Ask anyone at the coffee shop—I didn’t have a gun to her head! We had cappuccinos, we talked. When she decided to stop talking, I left her alone. I tried to call her later. I had a few more questions. The call went to voice mail.”

The lieutenant sighed. “Nikki, she was nine years old when her father died—”

“And she knows something, or she saw something,” Nikki insisted. “I’d bet the farm on it. That’s why she went off the deep end—I opened the door to her past, and she didn’t want to look at
what’s on the other side,” she said. “I need to know what she knows.”

“You’re not getting anywhere near her,” Mascherino said. “None of us are getting anywhere near her. The Duffys have circled the wagons.”

“Right,” Nikki muttered. “Barbie Duffy had all the motherly love of a reptile when Jennifer was a kid. Now, all of a sudden, she’s fucking Mother Earth.”

The lieutenant’s face pinched at her language. “Stay away from Jennifer Duffy.”

Nikki heaved a sigh. Now she had to wonder at the sudden show of family solidarity. Maybe she was off the mark. Maybe what Jennifer knew had to do with the family, and Jeremy Nilsen and his father were superfluous to the story.

Grider and Big Duff both had warned her away from the family. Barbie Duffy hadn’t wanted the investigation into her husband’s murder reopened at all.

“This is the strangest murder investigation I’ve ever been a part of,” she said.

“I guess Cold Case isn’t so boring after all.”

“Not so far.”

Her head was buzzing from the possibilities—or from Kovac’s coffee, she wasn’t sure which. What she did know was that unless she could find Jeremy Nilsen, she was now left with one key to the whole thing: Evi Burke.

“How’s my princess?”
Eric asked as he came in the house, sweeping Mia off the floor and twirling her around, to her delight. “Were you a good girl while Daddy was at work?”

“I was
very
good, Daddy!”

Evi watched them with a sickening mix of love and fear. She loved them so much it terrified her. She was still trembling from last night.
It all worked out for you
 . . .

“And how’s my queen?” Eric asked as their daughter scampered away in her pink tutu, twirling her glitter wand. He turned to Evi with a smile that faltered.

“Are you all right?” he asked, slipping his arms around her. “You’re as pale as a ghost.”

“I’m feeling a little off this morning,” she said, forcing a weak smile. “It’s nothing.”

“I hope it’s a little something,” he whispered in her ear, hugging her gently.

Evi closed her eyes against a sudden rush of tears. They had been trying to get pregnant again for a while now—not such an easy feat at her age. They had both been thrilled at the idea of a second child. Now she saw that wonderful dream in her mind falling under a dark cloud. She tried to tell herself she was being ridiculous, but the fear was stronger than logic.

“Todd’s wife had a little boy yesterday,” he said. “Maybe it’s contagious.”

He kissed her forehead and stepped back. “I’ll make you some oatmeal and tea for breakfast. That always settles your stomach. Come sit and tell me how your day was yesterday.”

“Nothing special,” she said, following him.

She spied Detective Liska’s business card on the dining room table, swept it up, and tucked it into the pocket of her sweater. Given her job, it wouldn’t have been unusual to find a cop’s business card lying around, but the word
Homicide
jumped out. She dealt primarily with Sex Crimes detectives in her work with the girls at Chrysalis.

That truth struck her oddly today. Ted Duffy had been a Sex Crimes detective. Her life was running in some kind of weird circle as it turned back to that time.

It all worked out for you . . .

“Pete Heller’s wife said there were a lot of cop cars in the neighborhood last night,” Eric said as he gathered ingredients and pots at the stove. “Did you hear if there was something going on?”

“No,” Evi said, taking a seat on a counter stool. “Oh, well, they’re looking everywhere for a man who might be connected to that horrible murder of that professor and his wife.”

“They didn’t come around knocking on doors, did they?” he asked, looking troubled. “Good thing I’m home for a couple of days. I don’t want you and Mia home alone if the cops think that guy might be in our neighborhood. I’ll call Brad Dunn later. He’ll have the scoop.”

A bolt of panic shot through Evi. Eric knew almost as many patrol cops as he did firefighters. She hadn’t even thought about that when Kate told her she would see that extra patrols came through the neighborhood. Would the officers have been told to keep a special eye on the Burke house? Would they have been told why?

Evi hadn’t wanted to worry Eric over the note when she thought it might be connected to the Anders case. She had no intention of telling him anything about her connection to the reopened investigation of Ted Duffy’s murder. There was no need to burden him with her ancient past . . . unless that past could put her family in jeopardy.

The idea turned her stomach over and over. A vague note and a late night phone call didn’t constitute a threat, she tried to tell herself. That’s what the police would say. What would her husband say if he found out she was keeping these things from him? Would he be hurt? Would he be angry? He had worked so hard to gain her trust over the course of their relationship, and here she was hiding something that could be potentially dangerous to them.

“We’re going to need a bigger house,” he said, setting her tea on the counter in front of her.

Evi looked up, startled.

“You’re a lovely shade of pale green,” he said, with a sweet, soft smile as he came around the counter to wrap her up in his arms. “Looks like morning sickness to me.”

“I hope so,” Evi murmured, fighting tears.

She wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck and buried her face against his shoulder.

It all worked out for you . . .