The Bitter Season

by Tami Hoag

  She closed Kyle’s door softly and went back downstairs to the kitchen for a fresh cup of coffee—decaf, to begin to wind down. She was tired. Her head was swimming with everything that had gone on that day. Too tired to think straight, she admitted as she went to her office.

  She sat back against the desk to look at her whiteboard and the notes she had made. She had put a call in to Jennifer Duffy, requesting a call back. No call had been forthcoming. She wasn’t surprised. There was a reason Jennifer didn’t want to go back to those memories, a reason she had struggled over the years with depression and whatever her other demons were.

  Nikki thought back to the moment the dark cloud passed over Jennifer Duffy’s memories as she spoke about sneaking into Angie’s room to snuggle and read at night.

  What did she know about Angie and Jeremy Nilsen? Angie had been like a big sister to a lonely little girl. Jennifer would have hung on her every word, would have wanted to imitate her, would have wanted to know about everything that went on in Angie’s life—including whether Jeremy Nilsen was her boyfriend.

  Why wouldn’t she just say so?

  And what did the answer have to do with Ted Duffy’s death?

  Nikki’s follow-up call to Evi Burke had also gone unanswered. Evi Burke, who had been through two or three kinds of hell growing up but had managed to come out the other side and build a nice life, a meaningful life. It was no wonder she would rather pass on the opportunity to go back and dig up unhappy times.

  “Sorry, Evi,” Nikki murmured as she stared at the time line of Ted Duffy’s death. “I’m taking you back there whether you like it or not. I think you might be my lynchpin in this.”

  31

  The dream took her back to a place she didn’t want to go, to a time she didn’t want to remember. Even in the memory, she felt so empty and so alone, the emotions creating a physical pain inside her.

  She was alone in the world. She had no one. Her mother was gone. Gone for good, not gone to a rehab or gone to a hospital or gone on a bender. She was dead. She was gone and never coming back. As damaged as she had always been, as inadequate as her capabilities as a parent had been, she had been Evi’s only relative, the only person to which she truly belonged—and vice versa.

  It had come as a surprise, how hard it was to lose her. Evi had seen her sporadically as a teenager in and out of foster care. In many ways they had been little more than acquaintances and occasional roommates. Evi had done as much caretaking of her mother over the years as her mother had of her—probably more. Yet the loss felt as if a giant hole had been torn open inside her, and there was nothing to fill it. That emptiness had terrified her.

  She had a roof over her head at the Duffys’. She had people around her, and she had school. But Barbie Duffy was not a mother to her, and Evi had no real friends. She was shy by nature, and ashamed of being in foster care. People looked at her differently, treated her differently, like there must be something wrong with her, something contagious that made her unlovable, or something intrinsically broken and dirty that attracted the darkness in the souls of men.

  None of them reached out to touch her heart. All of them reached out to touch her body—young or old; in anger, as if it was her fault they wanted her; or in the guise of something kinder, as if it was their duty. She took what was offered because anything was better than the emptiness inside her.

  She hadn’t meant for bad things to happen. She had only wanted to be loved. She had only wanted to break the sense of feeling separate from everyone around her. She longed to feel she was a part of something, connected to someone. How could that be so wrong?

  In the dream, everything was dark, all moonlit shapes and forms. Comfort came in secret. She grabbed it with both hands and held on. Hands and mouths and tangled legs, beating hearts and hot breath. But even in the attempt to connect to someone, she felt detached from her body, as if the essence of her being was just a tiny ball of energy trapped inside an empty shell. Frightened and confused, she held on tighter. She wanted something more, needed something she couldn’t name because she had never known it.

  She had never meant to hurt anyone, but in the end she had destroyed everyone she cared about most. As if her heart were Pandora’s box: She had opened it and chaos had tumbled out like an avalanche, crushing everything in its path.

  She had spent years in purgatory trying to pay for the damages. She was still paying on nights like this one, when she dreamed of sex and violence, and what her past could do to her present.

  She woke up gasping for air, drenched in sweat, shaking, crying, dizzy, nauseated. She stumbled out of bed, tripping on the covers, and hurried into the bathroom to be sick. When her stomach was empty, she brushed her teeth and turned the shower on. Stripping her nightgown off and dropping it on the floor, she stepped under the water, gasping because it was still cold. She didn’t care. She needed to wash the sensation of the dream away, the sensation of being dirty and defiled and disgusted with herself. She lathered herself with soap and scrubbed her skin with a loofah until it hurt.

  Afterward, she felt weak and shaky. She wrapped herself in a towel and sat on the edge of the tub, trying to pull herself together. She wished Eric were there, and at the same time was glad that he wasn’t. She didn’t like to burden him with the aftereffects of her past. He knew a lot about her life, and the things she had been through, but there were memories she had chosen not to share with him. Things that haunted her. Things she regretted even all these years later that, as much as he loved her, she feared he wouldn’t be able to understand or forgive. The prospect of losing him for the mistakes she made all those years ago was more than she could stand.

  And yet, she knew there was no escape. Her past was part of who she was and who she had become. The past was like a stone thrown in a lake, the ripples going on and on and on. It was the ominous Other Shoe, and she felt the weight of it hovering over her, ready to crush her and all she held dear. And all she wanted to do was ignore it and hope that it would go away.

  Detective Liska had called again and left a message saying she had a couple of additional questions. Evi hadn’t called her back.

  She thought of Jennifer Duffy, who had been like a little sister to her for that brief time. She had wondered for a long time after leaving the Duffys what would become of Jennifer. How much did she know? How much had she understood? Detective Liska had said Jennifer struggled for years after, another casualty of the past. Evi’s heart ached for her.

  My fault, she thought. She had only wanted what every child did, to be loved, and in the end she caused nothing but death. The death of a man, the death of innocence, the death of what might have grown into real love.

  Needing to move, she got up, discarded her towel, and put on a fresh pair of pajamas. She left her room and went in to check on Mia. She always felt calmer looking at her daughter, her assurance that life went on and renewed itself with innocence. Evi felt a desperate need to keep her child that way: innocent and pure. Her mother hadn’t been strong enough to do that for her.

  Mia slept the sleep of a much-loved child, sound and happy, snuggled with a favorite stuffed toy.

  I can do this for you, Evi thought. She couldn’t go back and change the past, but she could ensure her daughter’s present and work for her future, and hope that that would make up for the choices she’d made so many years ago.

  She went to the dormered window at the end of the room to look out at the night. The rain had subsided to a pea soup mix of mist and fog hanging low to the ground. The waxing moon played hide-and-seek behind black clouds scudding across the night sky.

  She saw their faces in the moon, the face and expression changing every time a cloud slipped by—Ted Duffy, broken and defeated; Barbie Duffy, cold and bitter; Jeremy, tormented and brooding; Donald Nilsen, angry and full of hate . . .

  The motion sensor security light above the back door clicked on, and Evi flinched, her heart jumping in her chest. She told herself it was probably a stray cat cu
tting through the yard. Once, over the summer, they had a family of raccoons visit. She scanned the yard from side to side. One of the swings on the swing set was moving. The wind?

  Only one seat was moving. The other was still.

  A big oak tree took up one corner of the yard. Most of its leaves were gone, but the thick trunk still offered a hiding place. Near the tree was Mia’s playhouse, which Eric had built for her birthday this year. They kept it locked. No one could get inside . . . but they could hide behind it.

  Funny how something so sweet and pretty in the daylight could become so dark and sinister at night. Was that the shadow of a figure in the window? She held her breath and waited for it to move.

  Her mind went back to the conversation she had had with the detectives, to the questions they had asked about why someone would be stalking her. She had assumed it might have to do with Hope Anders, but as Detective Liska had pointed out, Evi was no one of any real consequence in that case. She was a liaison. She gave the girls her counsel once a week. She had nothing to do with any of the investigations. She wasn’t the figurehead of Chrysalis. She was a social worker. Why would anyone stalk a social worker?

  Why would anyone stalk her at all?

  Had someone seen her picture in the newspaper article and become fixated on her for reasons only a sick mind could know?

  The sensations from her nightmares came back to her—the panic, the darkness, the feeling that she couldn’t breathe or move. The shadows from her past stalked her every night. Had one of them come calling in person?

  Liska had asked her if she’d kept in touch with Jeremy. She had not. She had been removed from the Duffy house and taken to a group home that seemed to have existed in another world. She never tried to contact him, did her best to put him out of her mind. Eventually, she succeeded. Years later. Just as she put his father out of her mind, and Ted Duffy, and the rest of them.

  The ringing of the telephone tore through the silence, and Evi jumped and ran to answer it. A phone call in the middle of the night was never a good thing to a firefighter’s wife. Her heart was hammering as she picked up the handset from the nightstand in her room.

  “Hello?”

  Her mind was already racing. Eric was hurt. She would throw on clothes and scoop up Mia. Would she remember how to get to whatever hospital he had been taken to?

  “Hello?” she said again, realizing no one had spoken on the other end of the line.

  “Hello? Who is this?” she asked, trying not to sound as frightened as she was.

  “It all worked out for you.”

  The voice was soft, barely more than a whisper. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

  “Who is this?” she asked again, her voice trembling.

  There was no answer. The caller was gone.

  Evi tried to put the phone down, her hand shaking so badly she couldn’t get it back in the stand, and it tumbled to the floor.

  “Uh-oh, Mommy!”

  Mia had come into the room, teddy bear tucked under her arm, her sandy curls tousled.

  “It’s okay, Mommy,” she said as she rounded the end of the bed. “It didn’t break. You don’t have to cry.”

  Evi scooped her child up into her arms and held her tight, choking back the sobs of sheer panic that clogged her throat. Holding on to her future as she tried to forget her past.

  It all worked out for you . . .

  32

  “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.”

  * * *

  SHE 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 gu
ys 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.”