The Bitter Season

by Tami Hoag

  “If Ted Duffy’s murder isn’t on this agenda, I’m out of here,” Grider threatened.

  Like he was some kind of supercop. Like he was Derek Jeter coming out of retirement to save the Yankees or something.

  “And every cop in Minneapolis is going to be up in arms about it,” Grider continued, cutting a hard look at Liska. “Except this one,” he muttered, and then put his attention back on the people he wanted to sway. “Duffy’s is the only unsolved homicide on the books involving a police officer. It’s a black eye on the department. And I would think now—especially now—that would mean something.”

  Liska sat up straighter, incredulous. “Is that a threat? Is that what you’re trying to so cleverly slip into that rant? You’ll set a fire amongst the rank and file if you don’t get your way?”

  Grider shrugged. “I’m just saying people are already on edge.”

  “You’re a fucking bully.”

  Lieutenant Mascherino cut Nikki a disapproving look. “We can do without the language, Sergeant.”

  Nikki bit her tongue. Great. She had a mouth like a sailor on holiday, and a schoolmarm for a lieutenant.

  They sat at a round white melamine table in a war room commandeered from Homicide. Round tables were supposed to foster feelings of equality and cooperation, according to the industrial and organizational psychology expert the department had wasted taxpayer dollars on during the last remodeling of the offices. The same expert had recommended painting the office walls mauve, and had told them they needed to remove the U bolts from the walls and floors in the interview rooms, so they had nowhere to cuff violent offenders if the need arose, because the threat of physical restraint might be deemed “intimidating.”

  Nikki could still see the look on her partner Kovac’s face as they listened to the presentation. Nobody had a better “Are you fucking kidding me?” face than Kovac.

  Weeks later a suspect had yanked a useless decorative shelf off the wall of an interview room and cracked Kovac in the head with it. He still had a little scar. Nikki had kneecapped the suspect with her tactical baton before he could do worse. Thank God Kovac had a head like granite.

  Mascherino exchanged a look with Chris Logan, the chief assistant county attorney. Logan was a big, handsome man in an expensive suit, tall and athletic with a thick shock of Black Irish hair streaked with gray. Fiftyish. Brash. Aggressive. Intimidating in the courtroom or in a conversation.

  Logan’s role in this meeting was to give his blessing to cases he thought might have the potential to be prosecuted successfully. The Duffy case offered nothing for him to sink his teeth into as a prosecutor. He would want witnesses, evidence, forensics—at the very least, a viable suspect at this stage of the game. Yet, he didn’t jump in to dismiss Grider’s sales pitch.

  Logan was certainly aware of the contract tensions between the city and the police union, recently made worse by the mayor’s threats of deep budget cuts and layoffs. But if any of that concerned him, he wasn’t going to show it. He had to be a hell of a poker player.

  He rubbed a hand along his jaw as he weighed the pros and cons.

  “We owe Duff one more try,” Grider pressed. “All we need is for one person to talk. That’s all it takes to crack a case like this.”

  “After twenty-five years, why would anyone talk?” Nikki asked.

  “Maybe they got a conscience,” Grider said, “or found Jesus, or now hate the person they were protecting back then.”

  But none of that seemed likely, and even if someone talked, there was still no physical evidence to speak of. They couldn’t go to trial with nothing but hearsay or uncorroborated accomplice testimony. Nikki sighed.

  The cold case she had pulled as her number one candidate was the 2001 rape and murder of a young mother. There were two solid suspects. They needed only a couple of puzzle pieces and a little luck to make the case. The victim’s mother had already been in touch with her to lobby on her daughter’s behalf.

  “Have you read the entire Duffy murder book?” Logan asked her.

  “Enough to know there isn’t—”

  “That’s a no,” he said. “Maybe you need to take a closer look.”

  “I’ve personally read through sixty-seven other cases that are more promising.”

  Logan didn’t blink.

  “Re-interviewing friends, family, co-workers. Going through the file with a fresh eye,” he said. “That’s not a huge investment of time. A few days. A week at the most. If nothing turns up, at least we gave it a shot.”

  “It’s a good case for the media,” Grider said, sweetening the deal. “The twenty-fifth anniversary of the murder of one of the city’s finest. The news coverage might shake something loose.”

  And there was nothing a politically ambitious prosecutor liked more than a free media spotlight. It was no secret the current county attorney was considering running for the U.S. Senate. Everyone assumed Logan was next in line to take over as top dog for Hennepin County. If he decided to champion the Duffy case, he could get that initial news exposure that would come at the launch of the new unit, and curry favor with the police union at the same time. Two birds, one stone. To the cops, he would look like a hero for reopening the case, and if, after the media had moved on to other news, the case didn’t get solved, that would be the fault of the investigators. No downside for Logan.

  Nikki sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. She wouldn’t admit defeat, but she would have to accept it. Fine. Let Grider have his one case. It would keep him out of her hair while she devoted herself to her dead young mother.

  Unlike Homicide, where the detectives worked together, and had multiple cases going at the same time, in Cold Case each of them would be working one case at a time, until it was either solved or all hope had been exhausted, and then they would move on to the next one.

  Logan drummed his fingers on the tabletop and gave a decisive nod. “Let’s do it. That’s our headliner.”

  Mascherino stood up and went to the long whiteboard on the wall behind her. “All right, then. We start with the murder of Ted Duffy.”

  She chose a marker and wrote Duffy’s name at the top of the board in neat cursive. Grider looked at Nikki and smiled like a shark. She rolled her eyes away from him and toward the third member of their team, Candra Seley, who shrugged and spread her hands, mouthing her opinion: He’s such an asshole!

  Seley, on loan from the Business and Technology unit, would primarily be reviewing evidence, processing and reprocessing test results, performing witness and suspect background checks, compiling witness lists, and constructing time lines. Liska and Grider would be the feet on the ground.

  Grider got up from his chair, smoothing his tie over his protruding belly. “I’ll get right on it.”

  “No,” Mascherino said calmly. “The Duffy case goes to Liska.”

  “What?!” Liska and Grider blurted out simultaneously.

  “That’s my case!” Grider argued, his face turning red.

  “It’s time for a fresh pair of eyes,” the lieutenant said firmly. “That’s the whole point of a cold case unit—getting a fresh take on an old crime. I’m sure Sergeant Liska will appreciate your input when she asks for it, but this is her case now.”

  “But I know this case inside and out! I know these people!”

  “That’s just my point. I want someone who doesn’t know any of the people involved. Someone who has no preconceived ideas going in. That’s the only way a case this stale has any chance of being solved.”

  Grider paced behind the table. Nikki could hear him breathing in and out like he’d run a hundred yards.

  “She doesn’t even think the case deserves to be investigated!” he shouted, pointing at Nikki as if he were fingering her for a witch.

  “I don’t think it deserves to be a priority,” Nikki corrected him, pushing her chair back and standing. He was still half a foot taller than she was.

  “You said it was unsolvable.”

  “Wel
l, in twenty-five years you certainly haven’t proven me wrong.”

  “So it’ll be just fine with you if you don’t solve it, either,” Grider said sarcastically. “You’ve already got your excuse ready.”

  Nikki felt like the top of her head might blow off. Furious, she walked up on him, her hands jammed at her waist. “Are you implying that I won’t do the job? You think I’m a bad cop? Fuck you, Grider! I didn’t ride in here on a powder puff. I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am. I’ll put my record in Homicide up against yours any day of the week. I don’t have any moldy age-old unsolved murders with my name on them.”

  Grider looked at the lieutenant. “How am I supposed to work with her?”

  “You’re not,” Mascherino said. “You’ve got your own case to work. Take your number two and run with it. Nikki, you’ve got priority for Candra’s time, however you need her.”

  Logan unfolded himself from his chair, looking at Nikki. “Press conference at five in the government center.”

  “Today?” She glanced at her watch. It was nearly four.

  “Plenty of time to go powder your nose and put on some lipstick,” Logan quipped.

  “Speak for yourself,” Nikki snapped, gathering her notes from the table. “I’ve got a case to review.”

  3

  “The guy’s a freaking twitch,” Sam Kovac said. “The first thing he did when we got him in the box was puke on the floor.”

  He sat at his desk watching the feed from the interview room on his computer screen. His new trainee—he refused to use the word partner—was just down the hall, taking his turn trying to get information out of Ronnie Stack. Stack—thirty-four, meth head, bone thin, pasty white—was a nervous rodent type: furtive, thin lips quivering, narrow eyes darting all around the room, rubbing his hands together like he was washing, over and over.

  “Is he high?” Tippen asked, watching over Kovac’s shoulder like a vulture. He was built that way, too: long and bony, with a permanent slouch, a beak of a nose, and keen dark eyes. He’d been a detective nearly as long as Kovac, which made the two of them old as dirt.

  “No, but I’m sure he wants to be.”

  This fact would, Kovac hoped, tip the scales in their favor. Stack wanted out of that room—maybe badly enough to give them what they wanted: information on the murder of a drug dealer known as BB. Stack was a known associate of BB’s, and had reportedly been with the dealer shortly before somebody stuck a knife in his throat and caused him to drown in his own blood.

  Stack was not under arrest. This was a noncustodial interview. He was free to get up and leave anytime he wanted. It amazed Kovac how few people exercised that right. They seemed to think that option was some kind of trick.

  “How’s the kid doing?” Tippen asked, helping himself to the other desk chair in the cubicle.

  The kid, Michael Taylor, fledgling homicide detective, was Kovac’s third trainee in as many months. Of the other two, one had gone back to his old job in Sex Crimes, and the other had transferred to a sudden opportunity in the Business and Technology unit. Neither had been cut out for Homicide as far as Kovac was concerned—an opinion he had made abundantly clear.

  Bottom line: He didn’t want a new partner. He was too old and cranky to break one in. He and Liska had been partners for so long that they were comfortable together, their styles meshed; they had learned to tolerate each other’s annoying habits. They were like an old married couple that never had sex. He wanted that back. Instead, he had to take this kid and try to make him into something he could live with.

  Taylor showed some promise, Kovac admitted grudgingly. He had been an MP in the army. After two tours in Iraq he had opted out of the service and come home to Minneapolis. He joined the force and set his sights on making detective, rising quickly through the ranks. He had come to Homicide from Special Crimes, to bulk up his résumé before he was fast-tracked to further stardom. At least, that was what Kovac believed. The kid was too handsome and too sharp to loiter in the trenches with the rest of the grunts. He had Big Things written all over him. His sheer perfection rubbed Kovac the wrong way.

  He shrugged at Tippen’s question. “We’ll see.”

  He turned up the volume on the computer speakers. Taylor was sitting looking relaxed, looking like he could sit there for the next two or three days. He had his shirtsleeves rolled perfectly halfway up his forearms. Even this late in the day his shirt still looked freshly starched, perfectly tailored to showcase his broad shoulders and trim waist.

  “Good thing Liska transferred out,” Tippen said. “She’d be all over Taylor like stink on a billy goat.”

  Tippen resembled a billy goat, Kovac thought, with his long homely face, sporting a goatee and mustache these past few months. His vintage beatnik look. He claimed it played well with the coffeehouse chicks.

  “The guy is hot,” Tippen went on. “If I was a woman, I’d fuck him.”

  Kovac made a pained face. “Oh Jesus, don’t put that in my head!”

  “Taylor’s too young for Tinks,” Elwood Knutson announced, joining them in the cramped gray cubicle, and taking up all remaining available space. He was built like a Disney cartoon bear, and had a similar pelt of hair.

  “Don’t tell Tinks that,” Kovac advised. “She’ll pluck your eyeballs out and feed them to you.”

  “Merely an observation,” Elwood murmured, hunkering down closer to the screen. “She’s not the cougar type.”

  “He’s not that young anyway,” Kovac muttered. The kid made him feel like a dinosaur. “He’s thirty-four.”

  “And how old are you now, Sam?”

  “Old enough to remember rotary telephones. I’ve got shoes older than this kid,” he confessed. “And a couple of neckties, too.”

  He turned his focus back to the computer screen.

  “You know,” Taylor was saying to Stack, “we’re just not making the progress here I thought we would, Ronnie. You seemed so eager to cooperate, but you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

  “Maybe I don’t know anything more than you know,” Stack said, pushing his limp blond hair back from his face.

  Taylor shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve overestimated you. I think you want to help us out here,” Taylor said. “BB was your friend, after all.”

  Stack’s eyes darted from side to side. “He wasn’t really my friend. I mean, I knew him, but . . .”

  Taylor leaned forward a bit. Stack leaned back.

  “Now, there you go, trying to distance yourself when we have witnesses who put you with BB shortly before his death,” Taylor said. “Now you’re suddenly telling me maybe you and BB weren’t such good friends after all when I know you’d been staying at his house. You have to know what this makes me think, Ronnie.”

  Stack nibbled at a hangnail as he curled in on himself, turning into a human comma on the other side of the table, trying to make himself smaller and smaller, as if he thought he might eventually become so small Taylor would find him physically insignificant and let him disappear.

  “It makes me think maybe we should be looking at you as a suspect instead of a possible witness.” Taylor’s voice was quiet and even, matter-of-fact. “Should we be looking at you that way, Ronnie?”

  “N-no.” The twitch wiped his arm across his forehead. “It seems really hot in here. Aren’t you hot?”

  “Me? No. I spent two years in Iraq fighting for your freedom in the ninth circle of hell. I know what hot is. It’s not hot in here. I mean, we’ve got the fan going and everything.”

  Without another interview room available, they had had a janitor come in and clean Stack’s vomit off the floor, and then had brought in a little desk fan to blow on the wet carpet and dissipate the smell of puke and cleaning agents.

  “Did you have some kind of beef with BB, Ronnie?”

  “No!”

  “Did he have some kind of beef with you? Maybe you pissed him off. Maybe he caught you stealing.”

  “No!” Stac
k protested—too fervently. Like a guilty man. “I’m not like that. I’m a nice person. I’d do anything for anybody. I’d give you the shirt off my back,” he said, tugging at the collar of his dirty, puke-stained, olive-colored sweater. The color made him look like maybe he had a liver disease—or maybe he did have a liver disease. Fucking junkie.

  “I’m always getting blamed for shit I didn’t do!” he whined.

  “But isn’t it true you were mooching off BB for a long time?” Taylor asked in that calm, even voice that was somehow more unnerving than a shout. “You were sleeping on his couch, eating his food, taking advantage of his kindness.”

  “It’s not like I didn’t help him,” Stack said indignantly. “I watched his dogs when he was out of town.”

  “You watched his dogs while you were sleeping on his couch and smoking his dope and eating his food and helping yourself to the meth.”

  “He owed me something for all I did.”

  “You felt entitled,” Taylor said, nodding.

  “I did all kinds of stuff for him,” Stack claimed.

  “Like selling his dope and sticking the money in your pocket? How did he feel about that?”

  “I never did that! He would have killed me!”

  “So you did it only while he was out of town and you were looking after his dogs?” Taylor said. “Because you were entitled to that much.”

  Stack shifted in his seat, agitated. “No! I told you. BB would’ve killed me.”

  “So maybe you beat him to it.”

  “I’m really hot,” Stack said, tugging again at the collar of his sweater.

  “It’s probably just nerves,” Taylor said. “I mean, here you sit with a homicide detective telling you you might be a suspect in the death of your friend. Maybe I’m trying to visualize you sticking that knife into BB’s neck, shoving that blade down his throat, listening to him gurgle as he drowned in his own blood. Hell of a way to go, sucking that blood down in big gulps.”

  Stack twisted and turned in his seat. He looked like he might puke again. Taylor rose from his chair, smoothing his tie down with one hand.