The Bitter Season

by Tami Hoag

  “Probably,” Kovac conceded. “I thought we were being clever bringing them here. Instead we’re up for the Clusterfuck of the Year award.”

  Taylor shrugged, then winced and rubbed at his stiff neck. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Kovac nodded. “I’ve said for years that’s going on my headstone.”

  * * *

  KOVAC CLOSED HIS EYES and dozed in the car on the twenty-minute drive to the office of the Chamberlains’ insurance agent. As much as he hated to give up control and let the kid drive, he needed a rest, however brief. He was dog tired. Not for the first time (or the hundred and first time), he thought, I’m getting too damned old for this. In the next thought, he wondered what Liska was doing. He wondered how bored she was. He thought of cold case squads as the place old Homicide dicks went when they couldn’t keep up anymore. Then he remembered with no small amount of depression that he was an old Homicide dick.

  He looked at Taylor out of the corner of his eye: a man just coming into his prime, smart, fit, hungry, good-looking. All the things Kovac had been nearly two decades ago. Well, he admitted, he’d never been that good-looking. He had probably never been that fit, either. He had to grit his teeth against the urge to groan as he got out of the car at the insurance agent’s office, his body protesting old injuries and the lack of sleep.

  The agent, Ron Goddard, a short, bald Buddha of a guy, met them at the receptionist’s desk with a friendly smile and showed them down a narrow hall to his small office, which looked out onto the parking lot. He closed the blinds with a twist of a wand and went around behind his desk.

  “I can’t believe what happened,” he admitted as he took his seat. “Twenty years in this business and I’ve never had a client murdered. A college professor and his wife. A nice home in a good neighborhood. You just don’t expect a murder.”

  “They weren’t expecting it, either,” Kovac said.

  Goddard shook his head. “I told Professor Chamberlain he’d be wise to upgrade his security system. The technology today is amazing.”

  “Why didn’t he?” Taylor asked.

  “He didn’t see the need. The system he had worked well. They had never had any serious crime in the neighborhood.” He made a sheepish face. “And to be perfectly honest, he was cheap. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say he was paranoid. He always thought people were trying to rip him off. I had to work to get him to insure the household contents for replacement cost. He thought I was just trying to make a bigger commission.”

  “What about the collection?” Kovac asked.

  “That was his passion. He was more reasonable about that. The collection had a separate policy.” Goddard placed three binders side by side on the desk and tapped each one in turn. “Household, jewelry, and the collection. The inventories and appraised values. You can take those. I printed them out for you.”

  Kovac picked up the binder for the collection and started to page through it.

  “There’s a DVD in each one, too,” Goddard said.

  “The son gave us one of those,” Kovac said.

  “Charlie. Nice young man. He tried to convince his father to upgrade the security, too. Typical twenty-something tech-savvy kid. If I didn’t have one in my family already, I’d go out and adopt one,” the agent said with a chuckle. “My phone is smarter than I am. These gadgets are going to take over the world.”

  “When was the last appraisal done on the collection?” Taylor asked.

  “Five years ago. I had it in my pending file to suggest to Lucien that he might want to have it reappraised next year, just to be sure nothing had changed significantly. To my surprise, he called me Monday and asked about just that.”

  “He wanted to have the collection reappraised?” Taylor asked. “Did he say why?”

  “He said he was planning to donate it to the university.”

  Kovac came to attention. “He what?”

  “I was shocked myself,” Goddard said. “He’s spent his life building that collection. But the university is going to be doing a big expansion of the Asian studies program. Lucien felt he could donate it, get plenty of notoriety and whatever kudos the university would give him. He wanted to get the appraisal first to be sure to get every nickel of his tax deduction.”

  “Had he told anyone at the U about this?” Kovac asked.

  “I wouldn’t know. But it would be like him to get the appraisal first. He liked his ducks beak to tail.”

  “What about his kids?” Taylor asked.

  Goddard made a little frown. “He said it was his collection to do with whatever he wanted, not theirs.”

  * * *

  “THERE’S THE PROFESSOR’S END-AROUND PLAY,” Taylor said as they got back in the car. “He could blow off the Office for Conflict Resolution if he thought he had something that trumped his disagreement with Diana.”

  “He was going to leverage the collection for the job,” Kovac said. “If he had had that and knowledge of Diana and Sato’s affair, Sato wouldn’t have been just dead in the water as far as the promotion was concerned. He could possibly have gotten rid of Sato altogether.”

  “Smells like motive to me,” Taylor said. “If Sato knew about it.”

  “I tried to get Charlie to tell me what the big fight at Dad’s birthday dinner was all about,” Kovac said. “But he wouldn’t spill it.”

  “If Daddy threw his new big plan in Diana’s face, she would have gone straight to Sato and told him,” Taylor said. “Suddenly they’re both better off with Lucien Chamberlain out of their lives.”

  “Sato knows how to handle a sword.”

  “But on the mother?” Taylor said. “That’s still a sticking point for me, no pun intended.”

  “She’s collateral damage.”

  “That attack was so vicious.”

  “Or it was the fastest, most expedient way to kill her. Sato told me the first strike would be at the neck and shoulder. Mrs. C was nearly decapitated. She would have died quickly.”

  “Try selling that to her daughter.”

  “I think Diana believes whatever she needs to believe to get the reality she wants. Don’t you?”

  Taylor thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, you’re probably right about that. She seems erratic, but that’s her logic system at work.”

  “And maybe all the wailing and screaming is grief magnified by guilt,” Kovac said.

  “Neither of them has an alibi.”

  “The phone records might tell a story.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Good,” Kovac said, leaning back in the seat and closing his eyes. “Wake me up when you’ve got something.”

  22

  “I’m really sorry to bother you,” Nikki said as the latest owner of the old Duffy house invited her inside.

  “It’s not a problem at all,” Bruce Larson said, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. He was a big burly bearded lumberjack of a man, a look contradicted by a chef’s apron with DOMESTIC GODDESS embroidered on the chest. “It’s kind of exciting, to be honest.” He made a comical face. “David, my partner, told me I probably shouldn’t admit that out loud.”

  Nikki toed her shoes off. “Not everyone can say they had a famous murder in their backyard.”

  “Do you really think it can be solved after all these years?”

  “Never say never.”

  “We are the biggest fans of true-crime shows,” Larson admitted. “I was saying to David, we could end up being in an episode of 48 Hours or Dateline or something. How crazy would that be?”

  “Pretty crazy,” Nikki agreed. “I just want to have a look out the window of the one bedroom, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “Sure. I’ll take you up,” he said, gesturing her toward the stairs.

  “Don’t let me keep you from your cooking. It smells amazing.”

  “Not a problem. The meat loaf just went in the oven. The best thing about this time of year is the menu, right? Comfort food.
My famous Italian meat loaf and heart-attack-in-a-hot-dish macaroni and cheese. I’m a personal chef. I’ll give you a card before you go.”

  Nikki checked her watch as they went into the bedroom. The boys would be getting home, and she had nothing planned for dinner.

  “Was the tree stump still here when you bought the house?” she asked.

  “Yes, and was that thing a bitch to get out of there!”

  “Can you point out where it was?”

  He joined her at the window. “Where the fire pit is.”

  Visible from where they stood, but not if she backed up more than a few feet. Jennifer Duffy had been on her bed or in a chair, reading a book. She couldn’t have seen anything. Nor could she have seen where the shots came from—especially considering it was nearly dark at the time of the shooting. Nikki had figured as much. She had wanted to get into this room more to imagine Jennifer in here, nine years old and hiding out from the chaos of her family.

  “Cozy room,” she said, glancing around.

  Larson and his partner had it ready to welcome a guest, with an antique iron bed with a small mountain of pillows, a patchwork quilt tossed across the foot. There was a small dresser and an upholstered armchair, and bedside tables draped in lace.

  “Thanks,” Larson said, then his smile dropped. “You don’t think the killer shot him from here, do you?” he asked, torn between horror and excitement at the thought.

  “No,” Nikki said. “We know the shots came from the park. The victim’s daughter was in this room at the time. I just wanted to know if she might have been able to see something.”

  She imagined the world beyond the lacy curtains dark and cold, Jennifer tucked up against the pillows with her foster sister Angie reading in the amber glow of the bedside lamps.

  That wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t been close, Nikki thought. What teenage girl would go out of her way for a lonely little bookworm if she didn’t feel a connection to the girl? Certainly little Jennifer had looked up to her surrogate big sister. Certainly she would have known if Angie Jeager had a boyfriend, or if she had been friends with the boy next door.

  Nikki looked across the backyard to the second story of Donald Nilsen’s house.

  “How well do you know your neighbor? Mr. Nilsen?”

  Bruce Larson rolled his eyes dramatically. “Better than we would care to. He’s a horrible, hateful old homophobic geezer. That’s the Discovery ID show we’ll probably end up on—the one where the neighbor from hell ends up killing us.”

  “That bad?”

  “You have no idea. The first thing he did when we moved in was tell us he doesn’t approve of our lifestyle—and I’m phrasing that politely. Then we started remodeling the house, and he was a nightmare. He was constantly complaining about the noise, about the workmen’s trucks. He kept reporting us for whatever imagined infractions he could come up with—which only prolonged the project of course.

  “When we took that stump out, he tried to get us in trouble for that. We planted a vegetable garden. He complained about the tiller.

  “Every time we have guests over for a cookout or a party, and we’re in the backyard, he calls the cops to complain. And it’s not like we’re out there dancing naked and having a Roman orgy. We’re quiet guys. We like to cook and eat, and drink good wine. Our friends are professional people. We talk about books and movies and politics. I’m sure Donald Nilsen hasn’t read a book since Mein Kampf.”

  “If it’s any comfort, he doesn’t like heterosexual couples with families, either,” Nikki said.

  Larson shook his head. “He hates everyone. He’s the most miserable man on the planet.

  “We had a big Labrador when we first moved here. Duck was his name. Nilsen constantly complained about Duck. The dog barked too much, the dog jumped over the fence and shit on his lawn. Nilsen actually threatened to shoot him! And he meant it! He was raving like a lunatic one day, waving a rifle around! It was crazy! I took pictures of him on my phone because I was afraid no one would believe us. David called the police. They talked Nilsen down and told us to keep the dog away from him, and put up a better fence. We should have pressed charges is what we should have done.

  “We put up the privacy fence, and Nilsen complained about that. I wanted to go over there and shit on his lawn myself.”

  “What happened with the dog?”

  “He died. I would bet money the old man poisoned him, but we couldn’t prove it. What kind of person does that? Sick bastard.”

  “You could move.”

  “The hell with that,” Larson said. “We’ve put heart and soul into this house. We like it here. The neighborhood is in an upward transition. He’s an overweight old man with rage issues. He’ll stroke out one of these days, and a gay couple will buy his house, and we’ll all live happily ever after.”

  “In the meantime, stay on your side of the fence,” Nikki said, moving toward the door.

  “You don’t think he’s the killer, do you?” Larson asked, following her down the stairs. “Oh my God!”

  “I really can’t comment on the case,” Nikki said, stepping back into her shoes. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Larson.”

  “No problem. Come back if you need to.”

  He handed her a business card on her way out. “Just in case.”

  “Wishful thinking.” Nikki took the card and slipped it in her coat pocket. “The only way I’m getting a personal chef is if I marry one.”

  “Sorry, I’m taken,” he said with a smile. “I bat for the wrong team anyway.”

  “My luck,” Nikki said. She started for the door, then stopped and turned back to him. “Do you by any chance still have the photo of Donald Nilsen with the rifle the day he threatened to shoot your dog?”

  “Sure, of course. I never delete photos unless I look fat in them. Everything else gets put in a folder on the computer.”

  “Could you show me?”

  “Sure.”

  He led the way to a slightly messy home office and sat down at his computer. With a couple of clicks of the mouse, he opened his photo app and went directly to a file labeled REMODEL. There had to have been a hundred or more thumbnail snapshots, but he found the one he wanted quickly, and enlarged it to fill the screen. He had a series of five photographs of Donald Nilsen, red-faced, his expression contorted in anger, a small rifle in his hands.

  A chill of excitement ran down Nikki’s back. Goosebumps raced down her arms. Her heart had picked up a beat, but she kept her expression calm.

  “Look at that lunatic,” Bruce Larson said with disgust. “There are little kids in this neighborhood, and he’s in his yard waving that thing around!”

  He looked up at Nikki. “That’s not the murder weapon, is it? I mean, if he did it, he would have been arrested back then, right?”

  “Mr. Nilsen had an alibi,” Nikki said. “I’m just covering all the bases. Would you mind e-mailing those five photos to me?”

  “Sure, no problem. I’ll do it right now.”

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  NIKKI WENT BACK OUT into the miserable drizzle, jamming her hands into her coat pockets and hunching her shoulders against the raw cold. What gray daylight they had had was fading. The streetlights had already come on. Lights had come on inside Donald Nilsen’s house, but not on his porch. He wasn’t inviting anyone to come knocking on his door. Nikki knocked on it anyway.

  The old man came and peered out at her through the sidelight, his face sour.

  “I don’t have anything more to say to you,” he announced, cracking the door open. He glanced toward the house next door. “Was that faggot complaining about me?”

  He had seen her coming from Larson’s house. He probably kept tabs on everyone in the neighborhood.

  “I have some additional questions for you, Mr. Nilsen.”

  “I don’t have to talk to you,” he snapped. “I know my rights.”

  “Fine,” Nikki said. “Then you know you have the right to remai
n silent and you have to right to an attorney—”

  “You’re arresting me?” Nilsen’s face went bright red beneath his white crew cut. “You can’t do that!”

  “I’ve got a badge here that tells me I can if I feel the need,” Nikki said, pulling her ID out of her coat pocket and holding it up, selling the bluff. Mascherino wouldn’t approve, but Mascherino wasn’t here.

  “I’ve had a long day, Mr. Nilsen,” she said. “And I’m tired and I’m bitchy, and I’m not messing around here. I have reason to believe you’re in possession of a hunting rifle that happens to match my murder weapon. So, if you’re not going to cooperate, I’ll make your life inconvenient just because I can. From what I’ve heard from your neighbors, past and present, you’re more than familiar with that tactic. So let’s get on with it.”

  He stepped back, stunned to silence for the few seconds it took Nikki to slip past him into his entry hall.

  “I’ll report you,” he threatened, slamming the door shut behind her.

  “You do that,” she said. “I could use a vacation. Meanwhile, until I get suspended, I’ll get a search warrant and go through every piece of crap in this house on the grounds that you have a history of making terroristic threats to your neighbors, and because I believe you to be in possession of a rifle of the same caliber used to kill Ted Duffy. How about that? You want to try to trump that?”

  “I had an alibi—”

  “Had being the important word there. Your wife, who hasn’t been seen or heard from since shortly after the murder.”

  He didn’t deny it. He went on the attack instead. “I’ll sue!”

  “Well, everybody in prison needs a hobby, I suppose.”

  “You don’t have any grounds to arrest me!” he protested, as if saying it again and saying it louder made it so. “I’m a law-abiding taxpayer!”

  “Really?” Nikki said. “Let’s start with hindering a police investigation. You lied to me, Mr. Nilsen. You told me your son is dead. Your son isn’t dead, is he?”

  “He’s dead to me,” the old man snapped, looking to his living room, where electric logs were glowing orange in the fireplace, and Fox News was playing on the television.