The Bitter Season (37 page)

Nikki drove the Crosstown Highway
for the second time that day, hoping she wasn’t making a big mistake. She felt so close to having an answer, just a piece or two away from finishing the puzzle and having the complete picture of the events that had led to Ted Duffy’s murder a quarter of a century past. Evi Burke held those pieces, the weight of them pulling on her, pressing down on her. The strain had been there in her eyes as she had looked out the window that morning.

The questionable alibis of the teenagers were the fine cracks in the time line of that day. Nikki wanted to put pressure there to see if the cracks would deepen and split apart. She had tried earlier to call Evi Burke on her cell phone. The call had gone straight to voice mail. That was fine. She didn’t want to speak to the woman on the telephone. She wanted to see her face-to-face. She wanted to do what she and Sam called “a Columbo”:
Just one more question, ma’am
. Just a little more pressure. Just another quarter turn of the screw that tightened the nerves . . .

And the second she thought it, she saw Jennifer Duffy in her head. She pictured Jennifer Duffy in a hospital bed with a heart monitor beeping.

Evi Burke wasn’t Jennifer Duffy. Evi Burke had fought her way through tougher times than most people could ever imagine in their worst nightmares. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t fragile in her
own way. It was clear she didn’t want her past tainting the life she had now—a career she loved, a husband she loved, a beautiful little family.

It all worked out for you
 . . .

A faceless voice on the telephone had whispered those words, an allusion to the past. Why? It seemed everyone from the time of Ted Duffy’s death wanted those memories left in the shadows where they had been all these years. If the call was related to that part of Evi’s life, then who? Why? Why now?

Nikki turned off the highway and into the Burkes’ quiet neighborhood. With her husband home, Evi would have to feel safer than she had in the last couple of days. All the more reason for Nikki to drop by unannounced. She didn’t want the woman sleeping too soundly. She wanted her thinking about Jeremy Nilsen and the Duffy family, and whatever she knew about Ted Duffy that she had kept to herself all these years. Even if she wouldn’t answer the question tonight, the seed would be planted—but gently, just slipped under the surface; something to worry at, like a sliver just under the skin.

The lights were on in the Burkes’ living room. Softer lights illuminated the second story, glowing through the curtains. Nikki parked at the curb and went to the front door, knocking instead of ringing the doorbell. She expected Eric Burke to answer, as he had that morning. She would have to talk her way past him.

She was there to inform them personally that the suspect who had been at large was now in custody, and they had determined he was not in any way connected to Evi’s case at the Chrysalis Center. That was her in. That was her cover story. Lame, but it would get her in the door.

If anyone ever came to answer the door.

She knocked again, a little harder, and rose up on tiptoe to try to see in through the glass panes arranged in a fan shape at the top of the door. A futile effort. She could hear voices. The television, she
decided as the volume rose with what sounded like a commercial: animated, rapid-fire staccato voices and a quick blast of music.

She knocked again.

They might have gone to the kitchen. They might have gone upstairs to check on their little girl.

She rang the bell and waited. She looked to see if they had a security camera pointed at the front steps. Were they ignoring her because they recognized her and simply didn’t want to deal with her?

She didn’t see a camera.

Unease began to scratch along her nerves. She’d made enough noise that she should have gotten a response of some kind by now. She pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket and called the house number. As the phone rang in her ear, she could hear it ringing in the living room a second later. Six rings, and the call went to voice mail.

Slowly Nikki moved off the steps and onto the grass. She tried to see through the partially open blinds and into the living room. She could see a lamp on an end table, a corner of the sofa, the television sitting on a console.

Around the corner, she could see into the dining room, where a pair of small lamps glowed on an antique sideboard. The soft white under-cabinet lights were on in the kitchen.

Where were Evi and Eric Burke? Why weren’t they answering the phone? Why hadn’t one of them come to the door?

Maybe they were otherwise engaged, Nikki thought again as she made her way to the back of the house. Maybe she was thinking like a cop while the Burkes were thinking like a happily married couple on a Friday night. Eric Burke was a firefighter. He worked a twenty-four-hour shift and then had two days off. The night was young, and they could sleep in tomorrow.

What would I be doing if I had a hot fireman husband and no work tomorrow? she asked herself.

Yeah.

She almost turned to go back to her car, thinking she should just go home and have that hot bath she had promised herself. Tomorrow was another day.

She decided she would complete the circle around the house, and if she didn’t catch a glimpse of someone inside, she would leave.

The backyard was awash in moonlight that came and went as clouds sailed across the sky. The wind had picked up, brisk and cold. The temperature would drop below freezing tonight. The tree branches rattled like bags of bones. The swings on the little swing set were swaying, chains squeaking. At the back of the property sat a child’s playhouse.

A wooden deck that overlooked the backyard ran the length of the house. The hulking shape of a gas grill filled the near corner. The wind rattled a patio umbrella in its stand and bumped it against the house’s siding.

Nikki rounded the end of the deck and stopped cold at the sight of a body sprawled head-first down the steps.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket, turned on the flashlight, and pointed it as she crept closer, lighting up the bloody face of Eric Burke.

*   *   *

“W
HO ARE YOU
? Why are you doing this to us?”

The demon didn’t answer. He shoved her forward, up the stairs.

Evi’s heart was quivering like a frightened bird trapped at the base of her throat. Her legs were so weak with fear she could hardly lift her feet. She tripped going up the stairs, and had to catch hold of the railing or fall on her face. Her assailant shoved at her back with the hilt of the sword.

A sword
. This had to be a nightmare. Had she passed out? Had she lost her mind? This couldn’t possibly be happening.

I’m here for you, Evangeline. Aren’t you lucky now
?

It all worked out for you
 . . .

As she stumbled into the hall at the top of the stairs, she turned and hurried past Mia’s room, hoping and praying her daughter stayed asleep. Even as she hoped that, she heard Mia call out in a sleepy voice, “Mommy?” and her nightmare memories of childhood flashed through her mind: hiding in a closet, trying not to cry while she listened to the sounds of what men did to her mother for money, for drugs, for punishment, for fun.

The monster shoved her through the open door of her bedroom. She tripped and fell, and then scrambled to her feet, backing up until she ran into the wall.

Downstairs, someone was knocking at the front door.

Down the hall, Mia called again, “Mommy?”

Her assailant stepped close, the bloody sword held across its chest. The voice hissed behind the hideous mask. “I’ll cut your throat like I cut your husband’s. Then who protects the pretty little girl?”

Evi bit down on the urge to sob, the terror lodging in her throat like a fist. It was all she could do to keep from choking on it.

Was Eric dead? She had seen his blood spray across the laundry room. She had felt it hit her face and arm.

She touched a trembling hand to her face as the demon stepped back. Her fingers came away smeared with her husband’s blood. She pressed her hands to her mouth to keep from screaming.

“It doesn’t matter who it is,” her tormentor mumbled, taking a step back from her. “This is your destiny. You can’t escape who you are. You can’t escape what you’ve done.”

Evi wasn’t sure if the words were meant for her or for the monster, who began to pace in front of her. Dressed all in black from head to toe, with a wide cloth belt banding the waist, a long knife in a scabbard hung from the belt, this looked like a character from a movie, but it was all too real. She had seen her husband fall. Her throat was raw from screaming. Her child was crying down the hall.

The knocking came again.

Had someone heard her screams? Could Eric have gotten to a neighbor’s house?

The phone on the nightstand rang like a sudden alarm. Evi jumped and looked toward it. If she could pick it up, she could yell for help. But she couldn’t get to it. It was too far away. She would die trying, leaving her daughter at the mercy of a madman.

Somewhere there was a person on the other end of that call sitting in a comfortable chair waiting for her to pick up. Maybe a friend. Maybe a telemarketer. Whoever it was, it would never occur to them that she wasn’t answering because a masked assailant would hack her to death with a sword if she tried.

The ringing stopped as the call went to voice mail.

She couldn’t expect help. She couldn’t wait for help. She had no way of fighting, but she had to try something. Maybe if she could make her attacker see her as a person instead of a target, she could buy some time.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice trembling. She needed to sound calm. She swallowed hard and tried again. “Please, tell me why you’re here. What did I do to you?”

If she was going to die, she wanted to know the reason.

The monster stepped closer until the grotesque mask was inches from her face. It tilted to one side and then the other. Deep inside the black-rimmed eyeholes, blue eyes burned bright with madness.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“You should. Jeager, Evangeline Grace.”

“You owe me this, Evangeline.”

“Please tell me why,” she pleaded. “I don’t know who you are. How did I ever hurt you? Please tell me.”

He pulled the mask off and tossed it on the bed, then looked at her and waited, as if he thought she would surely recognize him. His face was a battered mess, swollen and bruised. His lower lip was fat and split. He was young, twenty-something, with blue eyes and brown hair. She had never seen him before in her life.

She stared at him until her eyes burned, praying for some spark of memory. Was he connected to a client? Someone’s boyfriend? Someone’s brother? Her client Hope Anders had a brother she had accused of molesting her, but he was big and red-haired.

How could someone she had never met be so angry with her?

“You don’t know me?” he asked.

Evi said nothing, afraid of his reaction. The sound of her breathing filled the silence that stretched between them.

“You should,” he murmured. “You gave me life.”

“Don’t you fucking die on me, Fireman!”
Nikki ordered, leaning over Eric Burke.

She had pulled him onto the grass at the bottom of the deck stairs. He had a pulse. It was weak, but it was there. He had been cut badly across the face with some kind of blade. One eye was gone. She could see his cheekbone; she could see his teeth through the gaping wound.

“That’s gonna leave a scar,” she said to him, saying anything just to keep him connected. “Don’t worry. Women go for that shit. You get an eye patch, and you’re all set.”

With one hand, she pressed hard on a badly bleeding wound at the base of his neck; with the other hand, she fumbled with her phone to call Dispatch.

Having no idea where the assailant might be, she kept her voice low as she rattled off the required information about her rank and her badge number and location. Her voice was trembling from the adrenaline rush.

“Listen to me carefully,” she said. “I’ve got a badly wounded man here. I need a bus at this location ASAP, but absolutely no lights, no sirens. Got that? I’ve got a situation ongoing. And I need two backup units. I say again: no lights, no sirens. Tell them to come up the alley behind the house. I’m with the victim in the backyard.”

She made the dispatcher repeat her instructions back as she
looked down into Eric Burke’s remaining eye. She could see his fear. She knew that look. He could feel his life draining out of him.

“Eric, you hang on,” she said. “You’re not gonna let a cop be the last thing you see, are you? You’re a fireman, for God’s sake!”

That was always the running joke between the professions: Firemen thought they were better than cops, and cops thought they were better than firemen. The ribbing between them never ended.

Eric Burke’s lips moved, but he made no sound. She could feel his body starting to shake. He was going into shock.

“You stay with me here, Fireman. I’ve got your buddies on the way to haul you out of here. Don’t you punk out on me!”

His mouth moved again. “Ev— Ev—”

“Evi,” Nikki said. “I know. I’ll make you a deal, Fireman. You take care of you. I’ll take care of Evi. I’ll take care of her now, and you can take care of her later. Right?”

She could see him losing the focus in his good eye. She bumped him in the side with a knee to jostle him back, to make the synapses fire in another part of his brain.

“Eric, do you know who did this to you?”

No response.

Shit, shit, shit
.

“Eric, is he still here? Is he in the house?”

He stared up at her. She was losing him.

She leaned harder against the wound. Her hand was slick with his blood; it seeped between her fingers.

“Damn it, Eric! Stay with me! You’ve got a pretty wife and a beautiful little girl to live for. Fight!”

*   *   *

H
IS
WORDS
TRIED
TO
penetrate Evi’s brain at the same time as her brain tried to reject them.

You gave me life.

Jeager, Evangeline Grace.
Her name, as if read from a legal document.

It couldn’t be.

“You don’t recognize me?” he asked with sarcasm and a bitter little smile. “I’m Baby Boy Jeager. Father: Unknown.”

Oh my God
 . . .

Down the hall, Mia called for her again.

“I’m the one you didn’t want,” her tormentor said.

Evi thought she might faint. She pressed herself hard against the wall to keep from falling as the floor seemed to sway beneath her feet.

Baby Boy Jeager. Father unknown.

Son of Ted Duffy, come to avenge a father he didn’t even know. The father who had died because of him.

She had gone to great lengths to bury those truths so deep inside she would never find them again. She had lost herself on the streets, and had been plunged into a terrible purgatory of degradation, drugs, sex, and despair. It had somehow seemed fitting to try to forget one nightmare by living in another, losing herself in the process. But here she was, all these years later, with that past staring her in the eye, ready to cut her throat.

You can’t escape who you are
, he’d said.
You can’t escape what you did
.

She said the first thing that made any sense to say: “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. “You’re sorry I’m here now. It all worked out for you. Here you are with your nice little life and your nice little family. It all worked out for you.”

She wanted to ask him his name, but she didn’t dare. She hadn’t given him a name when he was born. If she’d given the baby a name, it would have been harder to try to forget. She saw him once after giving birth, then he had been whisked away to a better life than she could have given him, to parents who had no memory of his conception or of what had transpired because of it.

Even as she remembered, the smell of whiskey and smoke and man filled her head. Her mother had died. She felt so alone, so empty. She wanted comfort. She needed connection. He came to her room
to check on her. He held her while she cried. It was late. The house was quiet. He’d had too much to drink. The job was draining the humanity from him. He refilled himself with whiskey to dull the pain.

She didn’t understand what she shouldn’t want. She knew what she felt, and she knew what she didn’t want to feel: alone, abandoned. He kissed her. He touched her. She couldn’t think. She didn’t want to. Was this what it had been like for her mother giving herself over to a man? A welcome escape from the pain and emptiness of her life?

He didn’t force her. She didn’t fight him.

He cried afterward. He sat on the edge of her bed with his head in his hands and sobbed, ashamed, apologetic. She looked past him to see Jennifer’s small face, wide-eyed as she peered out of her hiding place in the closet. And then the shame was Evi’s . . .

She couldn’t tell this man any of that. This man, her own child, who had come here to kill her.

“I couldn’t keep you,” she said. “I was seventeen. I didn’t have a home. I didn’t have a family. I couldn’t give you anything but a better chance.”

“You don’t know anything about what you gave me,” he said.

“I gave you more than I had.”

She hadn’t hated the baby she carried. She’d hated the circumstances that had created him, and the tragedy that followed. She blamed herself for needing things that had never been meant for her—comfort, safety, love—but she gave the child a chance to have those things. It never occurred to her that he might grow up to hate her for it. Not in her worst nightmares did she ever foresee this.

“You gave me to a nightmare!” he shouted, lunging at her, pressing the sword to her throat.

Evi swallowed hard. She felt the blade scrape against her skin. Tears blurred her vision and spilled down her cheeks.

“I’m here to give it back,” he said. “I’m done with it. It’s time to close the circle.”