The Bitter Season (4 page)

“Hey, move over, Methuselah. I need a seat and a stiff one,” Liska said.

“But would you like a drink?” Tippen asked.

Liska gave him the finger. Ever the lady.

They had a corner booth at Patrick’s, an Irish bar owned by Swedes, conveniently located halfway between the sheriff’s office and the police department. Any fool trying to rob the bar would have thirty or forty guns drawn on him all at once. The place was always packed with cops—off-duty cops, retired cops, cops just finished with their shifts, cops grabbing a meal before they went to work.

“To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Ms. Liska?” Elwood asked. “Isn’t it a school night?”

“Speed is taking the boys to a wrestling meet at the U of M,” she said, sliding into the place they had made for her.

“Hot sweaty guys groping each other, and you’re not going?” Tippen asked, arching a brow. “Are you unwell?”

“Momma needs a vodka. What a rotten day.”

“Please. How can you even break a sweat in Cold Case? Your vics have all been dead for years.”

“Like my love life,” Liska lamented on a sigh.

“Maybe that’ll pick up now that you don’t have to worry about going on a date smelling like a fresh corpse.”

“Always looking on the bright side, Elwood. I miss that,” she confessed, looking around. “Where’s the noob? I spent all day staring at Gene Grider’s ugly mug. I need some eye candy.”

“He had to go home on account of the stench,” Kovac said.

They filled her in on the fiasco.

“That’s so gross!” She laughed. “You guys have all the fun!”

“See what you’re missing out on, Tinks?”

Kovac had given her the nickname Tinker Bell on Steroids when she first came into Homicide. Tiny but fierce—and woe to the person who crossed her—she wielded a mean tactical baton. The name had quickly been shortened to Tinks for practical purposes. She was five feet five inches of dynamite with silver-blonde hair cropped short and sticking up all over in one of those trendy finger-in-the-light-socket cuts. Her blue eyes had a gaze that could cut steel.

The waitress brought her a vodka and tonic without Liska having to ask. She took a long drink.

“Don’t rub it in,” she grumbled. “So what happened to the twitch?”

“We had to call him trying to bite through the electrical cord a suicide attempt,” Kovac said. “So, he’s in the loony bin at HCMC on a psych hold. Now, of course, he’s going to get a lawyer, and that’ll be that. Taylor had him that close to spilling his guts,” he said pinching thumb and forefinger nearly together.

“He actually did do that, just not the way you wanted,” Liska said. “I suppose none of you saw me on TV, seeing how you were in the midst of a literal shit storm. The Cold Case unit is officially launched. I’m the poster girl, thank you very much.”

“Did you wear a bikini?” Tippen asked.

“You’re such a perv.”

“Don’t undersell me,” Tippen said, pretending offense. “I am
the
perv.”

“Whatever,” Kovac snapped, not in the mood for their usual banter. “What case gets the big spotlight?”

“Ted Duffy.”

“That’s stupid,” he said. “No one’s ever going to solve that case. There’s jack shit to go on.”

“My words exactly,” Liska said. “But Grider bullied it through.
Then Mascherino gave it to me. I thought Grider’s head would explode.”

“They were pals back in the day,” Kovac said. “Grider and Duffy.”

“Did you know Duffy?”

“Yeah. He was a prick.”

“Salt of the earth, best cop to ever walk the earth—according to Grider.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a prick, too,” Kovac said as he raised his burger to his mouth.

“I’ve already seen that for myself. Was he a good cop? Duffy?”

He chewed, nodded, swallowed. “Yeah, he was. I had just made detective the year Duffy bought it. I was low man on the totem pole in Sex Crimes. Duffy took all the plum cases, the high-profile stuff. But he solved them, so who was going to complain? He was Sex Crimes detective of the year three years in a row. Plenty of rapists and pedophiles hated him. When he got whacked, everybody figured it was someone he’d put away, but nothing ever panned out.”

“And now it’s all on me,” Liska said with a facetious cheer. “Yay!”

“Maybe the new media attention will shake something loose, get somebody to talk,” Elwood said.

“I hope so. After I spent an hour trying to convince everybody the case is unsolvable, I all but guaranteed Grider I can close it.”

“Don’t let your mouth write a check your ass can’t cash, Tinker Bell,” Kovac warned.

She reached over to his plate and stole some French fries, like she always did. “You’ve got to quit eating this junk, Kojak. Between the fried food and the cigarettes—”

“I quit smoking.”

“Yeah, like twenty-nine times. Are you smoking these days? And remember, I asked a question I probably already know the answer to.”

Kovac scowled. “Then you probably also know I’m going to tell you to fuck off.”

“I expected nothing less.”

This was how it was with them. She nagged him like a wife, always had. But there had never been anything sexual between them. She was more like an annoying kid sister he would have walked through fire for.

He couldn’t fault her reasoning for transferring. She wanted to be a good mother to her boys—and she was. She had managed to raise two good boys with no real help from her jerk-off ex-husband. Kovac just missed her. That was the plain fact of it. They worked well together. He felt a little like he was missing a limb without her.

“Everything changes, Kojak,” she had said to him months ago when she made her decision.

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” he had answered.

Everything changes,
Kovac thought to himself as he drove home through a cold, bleak rain, but he absolutely
didn’t
like it. His mood matched the weather. He hated this time of year, this bitter season of raw cold and gray skies, knifing winds, and days that grew shorter and shorter. The year was old and dying like the few remaining leaves on the trees. It made him feel empty and alone. And he felt it most coming home to his nondescript box of a house in his tired, nondescript neighborhood.

This night, he didn’t even have the energy to hate his next-door neighbor’s lunatic mishmash Christmas decorations, which already cluttered his yard: plywood cutout snowmen and tin soldiers crowding around a nativity scene; an army of Santas mounting an attack on the house. At least the cranky old bastard wouldn’t light it all up until the day after Thanksgiving.

It occurred to Kovac that he was probably also considered a cranky old bastard by most of the neighbors. He didn’t fraternize. It was tough for him to relate to civilians, and vice versa. What did he have to talk about? Death, depravity, autopsy results, potential suspects who shit in trash cans for fear of having to speak to him.

He wasn’t exactly party material, unless the party was full of cops swapping war stories and engaging in gallows humor. Like a more-than-average number of his peers, he had two failed marriages to his credit, but the neighborhood ladies of reasonable age
shied away from him because of his general attitude. He had been assured he wasn’t scaring them off with his looks, even though his hair was more gray than brown and his face was a slightly asymmetrical road map of his life. He had character, like a beat-up old alley cat. Liska advertised him as a “poor man’s Harrison Ford,” whatever the hell that meant.

Anyway, he had pretty much abandoned the relationship idea as a self-fulfilling prophecy of wary anticipation, disappointment, and ongoing bitterness.

Feeling sorry for himself, he fell into his recliner and turned on the television. The Travel Channel was showing something left over from Halloween—
A Killer’s Tour of London,
a guided tour of gruesome historical murder sites with costumed reenactments of the crimes. Further proof that people were just plain nuts, he thought glumly.

“Chin up, Kojak,” Liska had said to him tonight as they left the bar, giving him an elbow in the side and a cheeky, if forced, grin. “Maybe you’ll get a good juicy double homicide tomorrow. That’ll cheer you up.”

If that was the best thing he had to look forward to, what the hell did that say about his life?

*   *   *

T
HE HOUSE WAS QUIET
and dark at last after the chaos of the boys coming home. And when she thought “boys,” Nikki included her ex-husband. In many ways, Speed Hatcher had never matured past seventeen. When he spent time with Kyle and R.J., he didn’t play the role of father as much as big brother. He wanted to be friends with them. He wanted to be the good guy, never the authoritarian, never the disciplinarian, never the one to soothe hurts or sort out problems. He wanted to clown and show off and be one of the guys. That was Speed: an overgrown boy living out the badass fantasy.

Kyle was long since over it. Her quiet, serious, sensitive boy
tolerated his father, but he hadn’t fallen for Speed’s best-buddy bullshit for years. He had long been more mature than his dad in most ways. R.J., two years younger, had always been more little boy to Kyle’s little man. Now, as a teenager, he was beginning to see who his father really was, but he made a conscious decision to pretend otherwise.

When they came home from these outings it was always the same: Speed, too exuberant, too loud, trying too hard to sell himself. Kyle, too quiet, with an underlying current of anger. R.J., mirroring his father’s behavior, but lacking the same bravado, confused and agitated by his feelings. And Nikki, simmering and ready to snap at her ex, wanting to protect her sons from the emotional damage he did with all good intentions.

At least she had invested in therapy, so she understood her shortcomings, even if she did continue to make the same mistakes again and again. At least she knew why.

“What do you want from me, Nikki?” Speed said with the usual exasperation as they had their usual argument after the boys had gone upstairs to bed. “It’s always the same bullshit with you! You rag on me for not spending enough time with them, then you rag on me when I do!”

What she wanted was for him to become an entirely different person inside the Speed suit. That wish was no more realistic now than it had been during their marriage. The reckless bad boy with the sexy grin had caught her eye when they were both in patrol uniforms, but what made him a hot, exciting lover lost its charm in the long term. Much as she hated to admit it, she had been one of those stupid girls who believed that men would change for them.

“It’s nearly midnight and the boys are just getting to bed,” she said. She sat back against her desk in her tiny home office and crossed her arms. “It’s a school night, Speed. I asked you to have them back by ten.”

He shrugged this off. He stood in front of her with his hands
jammed at his waist. His square jaw was set, his blue eyes narrowed and glinting like steel. He was shaving his head these days. The sharply carved mustache and goatee had been dyed dark. The shoved-up sleeves of his University of Minnesota T-shirt revealed the lower half of an inked mural on his left arm: the archangel Michael vanquishing Satan.

It suited him. He worked undercover narcotics in the St. Paul PD. Half the time even he didn’t know if he was the good guy or the bad guy. He slipped in and out of character as easily as changing his shirt.

“So we’re a little late—”

“The wrestling meet was over at nine thirty.”

“We stopped for burgers—”

“You stopped for pizza on the way there.”

“They’re growing boys.”

“Who need their sleep.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Nikki. So they go to school tired one day. Big fucking deal.”

“Kyle has an algebra test tomorrow,” she said, trying to hang on to her temper. “If you ever bothered to show up at a parent-teacher conference, you would know he struggles with math.”

He made a face. “He wants to be an artist. He’ll never use algebra in his whole life.”

“Except to get into a good college.”

“Whatever.”

Nikki shook her head, as if in amazement, though there was no surprise here. “And there it is.”

“What?”

“The attitude.”

Speed threw up his hands and turned around in a little circle. “Here we go again! Don’t you ever get sick of singing the same fucking song, Nikki? ’Cause I sure as shit get tired of hearing it.”

“That’s funny,” she said on a bitter laugh, “because I’m pretty
sure you never listen to anything I say. Or is it that I just sound like the teacher in a Peanuts cartoon to you:
Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah
.”

“That’s about it,” he agreed. “If Kyle wanted to stay home and study, why didn’t he? He could have said no.”

Nikki slapped a palm to her forehead. “Oh my God, you are so fucking obtuse! First, why should Kyle be the adult in the equation? That’s supposed to be your job. Second, of course he wants to spend time with you more than he wants to study algebra. You’re his father. He loves you at least as much as he resents you.”

“Ouch! Fucking low blow, Nikki!” he said, cringing. “You’re such a bitch since you changed jobs. Don’t take it out on me that you left Homicide—”

“I did that for the boys,” she shot back. “It’s called making sacrifices for your children—a concept completely unfamiliar to you, I know.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m an asshole and you’re Supermom.”

“I do what needs to be done. You do whatever you want.”

“Then you won’t be surprised when I leave.”

“Why would that surprise me? You do it all the time.”

R.J.’s voice came down the stairway. “Mo-om! I don’t feel good!”

Nikki gave her ex a nasty look. “That’s your cue to leave anyway—parental duty calling.”

“Suck it, Nikki.”

“Go home,” she said, tired of dealing with him. She pushed past him on her way to the stairs. “I don’t need another child to deal with. Two is my limit.”

*   *   *

N
IKKI SAT ON THE BED BESIDE
R.J., his head on her shoulder as they waited for the antacid to soothe his upset stomach. He was already bigger than she—taller and heavier, and stocky like his dad—but that didn’t stop him being her little boy when he didn’t feel well.

In the shadowed amber light of the lamp on the nightstand, she took in his room. Posters of sports stars, a pennant from a Twins game, a shelf with trophies and awards he had won in football and hockey. His new passions were wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu—also one of Kyle’s sports. Several family-room lamps had paid the price for witnessing their matches.

Kyle was her neat freak. Everything in his room was just so, bed made, clothes put away. R.J.’s armchair was overflowing with laundry—dirty, clean, and borderline. Athletic shoes littered the floor.

R.J. had inherited his father’s blond cowlicks. His dimpled smile was all Speed. He was going to melt a lot of hearts. Unlike his father, R.J. was utterly lacking a talent for lying. Everything was right on the surface with him. If he did something to get in trouble, he was the first one to say so, telling Nikki the story in great detail, admitting any and all culpability. He didn’t have a devious bone in his body.

Nikki hugged him tight.

“Feeling any better?” she asked quietly.

“A little,” he said. She could sense the weight of gravity in his pause. “I wish you and Dad didn’t hate each other so bad.”

Nikki winced internally. “I don’t hate your dad, R.J. We just push each other’s buttons, that’s all.”

“I hate it when you guys fight,” he said with a hint of little-boy whine in his voice. “And you fight all the time.”

Speed wasn’t around enough to qualify for “all the time,” Nikki thought, but she didn’t say this. She didn’t want to call attention to the obvious. At any rate, that would only open the “But you made us move away from him” argument.

She
had
moved them away from their dad, leaving St. Paul for Minneapolis on the excuse of a shorter commute to work and Kyle’s scholarship to a top arts high school. In truth, she had not moved to keep Speed away from the boys, but to keep the boys from noticing that their father didn’t give a shit most of the time. The list of
times Speed had disappointed them by not showing up was long. Nikki had decided it was better if they blamed her for moving than thought about how many times their father had let them down.

“You fight because of us,” R.J. said, a little tremor in his voice. “Because of me and Kyle.”

Nikki wanted to crawl in a hole. She and Speed at least tried to keep their voices down when they were fighting, as if that would keep the boys from feeling the pall of bitterness between them. Kids were so much more astute than adults ever gave them credit for.

“Your dad and I love you both so very much. Don’t ever think we don’t,” she said, holding him close, wondering how much of his upset stomach was junk food versus the stress of hearing his parents argue. “We just don’t agree on how to show it.”

“Well, I wish you’d figure it out,” he said with just enough petulance that it was almost funny. Almost.

“I promise we’ll work on it,” Nikki said. “You know I lie awake nights worrying about screwing you guys up for the rest of your lives. I’m trying not to. You get that, right?”

“You do okay, Mom.”

“Thanks.”

“And Dad does the best he can,” he said. “His best just isn’t the same as your best, that’s all.”

Out of the mouths of babes.

“I’ll try harder to remember that,” Nikki said, closing her eyes against the sudden rise of tears.

“Good. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. You’re pretty darn smart, you know.”

“I try hard,” he said. “That’s the most you can ask from a guy.”

She thought her heart would burst with love for him.

He drifted off to sleep not long after. Nikki stayed, sitting on the bed beside him, watching him sleep, listening to him breathe. She had always loved this part of motherhood when they were small,
just being with her boys as they slept, when the house was quiet and dark and she could pretend that their lives could be perfect and free of hurt or trouble.

Unwilling to make herself get up and leave, she dozed off, propped up against the pillows beside R.J., to the
tic tac, tic tac
of sleet tapping against the window.