by Tami Hoag
“Or he could have an answer for you,” Kovac said. “This guy’s crazy like a fox, not crazy like a loon. We don’t know how he came by these IDs. Maybe he bought them off these guys for drug money, maybe he stole them. Hell, he could have killed them for all we know. I might like him for my double homicide. Could be the daughter of my vics hired him to off her parents.”
“Holy shit,” Nikki murmured. That would be the luck. She finally got a lead on Jeremy Nilsen only to discover someone killed him for his ID and his veterans benefits.
“Call me if you bring him in,” she said, getting up.
“Will do.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The booming voice belonged to Gene Grider.
Nikki turned and looked at him as he barged into the room like a charging bull, knocking the door back so hard it bounced off the doorstop and nearly hit him on the rebound.
“I told you to leave the family alone!” he shouted at her.
Nikki stared at him, confused. “What? What are you talking about? What’s wrong with you?”
“He’s in the wrong office, for starters,” Kovac said, getting up. “Get out of my war room, Grider. No one invited you to the party.”
“Butt out, Kojak,” Grider snapped, coming forward, red-faced. He looked like his tie was too tight, choking him. He jabbed a thick finger at Nikki. “I told you to leave the Duffys alone!”
Nikki squared off with him, leaning up toward him on her tiptoes. “And I told you to butt the hell out of my case! You’re not the boss of me, Grider. My case is the murder of Ted Duffy. I’m damn well going to speak to his family and anyone else I want to. It’s called an investigation.”
“Well, great fucking job!” Grider shouted at her. “I hope you got what you needed. Jennifer Duffy tried to kill herself last night.”
* * *
“I HAD A CONVERSATION WITH HER,” Nikki said, still in a state of disbelief. Her gaze skimmed around the lieutenant’s office, looking for something to focus on. She settled on a picture of Mascherino with a granddaughter about the age Jennifer Duffy was when her father was killed.
“I asked her normal questions. It was very casual. I was persistent, but I didn’t bully her. Is she going to make it? What did she do? Pills?”
“Sleeping pills and antianxiety meds. A neighbor heard her fall in the middle of the night and thought someone was breaking in. They called the police.”
“Oh my God,” Nikki whispered, rubbing her hands over her face, relief and shock and guilt all tumbling through her at once. “Thank God.”
“She’ll recover, hopefully no liver damage,” Mascherino said. “She apparently told her mother over the phone earlier in the evening that you came to the library and she didn’t want to speak to you.”
Nikki rolled her eyes. “I’m a cop. No one wants to speak to me.”
“She said you threatened her.”
“That’s a lie! I did not threaten her. She didn’t want people to know who I was or why I was there, but she left the building with me voluntarily. Ask anyone at the coffee shop—I didn’t have a gun to her head! We had cappuccinos, we talked. When she decided to stop talking, I left her alone. I tried to call her later. I had a few more questions. The call went to voice mail.”
The lieutenant sighed. “Nikki, she was nine years old when her father died—”
“And she knows something, or she saw something,” Nikki insisted. “I’d bet the farm on it. That’s why she went off the deep end—I opened the door to her past, and she didn’t want to look at what’s on the other side,” she said. “I need to know what she knows.”
“You’re not getting anywhere near her,” Mascherino said. “None of us are getting anywhere near her. The Duffys have circled the wagons.”
“Right,” Nikki muttered. “Barbie Duffy had all the motherly love of a reptile when Jennifer was a kid. Now, all of a sudden, she’s fucking Mother Earth.”
The lieutenant’s face pinched at her language. “Stay away from Jennifer Duffy.”
Nikki heaved a sigh. Now she had to wonder at the sudden show of family solidarity. Maybe she was off the mark. Maybe what Jennifer knew had to do with the family, and Jeremy Nilsen and his father were superfluous to the story.
Grider and Big Duff both had warned her away from the family. Barbie Duffy hadn’t wanted the investigation into her husband’s murder reopened at all.
“This is the strangest murder investigation I’ve ever been a part of,” she said.
“I guess Cold Case isn’t so boring after all.”
“Not so far.”
Her head was buzzing from the possibilities—or from Kovac’s coffee, she wasn’t sure which. What she did know was that unless she could find Jeremy Nilsen, she was now left with one key to the whole thing: Evi Burke.
33
“How’s my princess?” Eric asked as he came in the house, sweeping Mia off the floor and twirling her around, to her delight. “Were you a good girl while Daddy was at work?”
“I was very good, Daddy!”
Evi watched them with a sickening mix of love and fear. She loved them so much it terrified her. She was still trembling from last night. It all worked out for you . . .
“And how’s my queen?” Eric asked as their daughter scampered away in her pink tutu, twirling her glitter wand. He turned to Evi with a smile that faltered.
“Are you all right?” he asked, slipping his arms around her. “You’re as pale as a ghost.”
“I’m feeling a little off this morning,” she said, forcing a weak smile. “It’s nothing.”
“I hope it’s a little something,” he whispered in her ear, hugging her gently.
Evi closed her eyes against a sudden rush of tears. They had been trying to get pregnant again for a while now—not such an easy feat at her age. They had both been thrilled at the idea of a second child. Now she saw that wonderful dream in her mind falling under a dark cloud. She tried to tell herself she was being ridiculous, but the fear was stronger than logic.
“Todd’s wife had a little boy yesterday,” he said. “Maybe it’s contagious.”
He kissed her forehead and stepped back. “I’ll make you some oatmeal and tea for breakfast. That always settles your stomach. Come sit and tell me how your day was yesterday.”
“Nothing special,” she said, following him.
She spied Detective Liska’s business card on the dining room table, swept it up, and tucked it into the pocket of her sweater. Given her job, it wouldn’t have been unusual to find a cop’s business card lying around, but the word Homicide jumped out. She dealt primarily with Sex Crimes detectives in her work with the girls at Chrysalis.
That truth struck her oddly today. Ted Duffy had been a Sex Crimes detective. Her life was running in some kind of weird circle as it turned back to that time.
It all worked out for you . . .
“Pete Heller’s wife said there were a lot of cop cars in the neighborhood last night,” Eric said as he gathered ingredients and pots at the stove. “Did you hear if there was something going on?”
“No,” Evi said, taking a seat on a counter stool. “Oh, well, they’re looking everywhere for a man who might be connected to that horrible murder of that professor and his wife.”
“They didn’t come around knocking on doors, did they?” he asked, looking troubled. “Good thing I’m home for a couple of days. I don’t want you and Mia home alone if the cops think that guy might be in our neighborhood. I’ll call Brad Dunn later. He’ll have the scoop.”
A bolt of panic shot through Evi. Eric knew almost as many patrol cops as he did firefighters. She hadn’t even thought about that when Kate told her she would see that extra patrols came through the neighborhood. Would the officers have been told to keep a special eye on the Burke house? Would they have been told why?
Evi hadn’t wanted to worry Eric over the note when she thought it might be connected to the Anders case. She had no intention of telling him anything
about her connection to the reopened investigation of Ted Duffy’s murder. There was no need to burden him with her ancient past . . . unless that past could put her family in jeopardy.
The idea turned her stomach over and over. A vague note and a late night phone call didn’t constitute a threat, she tried to tell herself. That’s what the police would say. What would her husband say if he found out she was keeping these things from him? Would he be hurt? Would he be angry? He had worked so hard to gain her trust over the course of their relationship, and here she was hiding something that could be potentially dangerous to them.
“We’re going to need a bigger house,” he said, setting her tea on the counter in front of her.
Evi looked up, startled.
“You’re a lovely shade of pale green,” he said, with a sweet, soft smile as he came around the counter to wrap her up in his arms. “Looks like morning sickness to me.”
“I hope so,” Evi murmured, fighting tears.
She wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck and buried her face against his shoulder.
It all worked out for you . . .
34
“He came in out of the rain to use the bathroom,” Tippen said as they watched the security video. “Betrayed by his own bowels. It’s one for the anals.”
He chuckled diabolically as everyone else groaned at his play on words.
“What time was this?” Kovac asked, squinting at the television screen. Even with his glasses, the time and date stamp was squiggly.
“Five seventeen this morning at the SuperAmerica convenience store on Thirty-fourth Avenue, south of the Minnehaha Parkway,” Elwood said, pushing a pin with a red head into the map on the war room wall.
“You’re sure it’s him?”
“Looks like him,” Tippen said, referencing the photo on the wall. “Same hair, same beard. The clerk was dead certain. Said he acted shady.”
“Him and every other street twitch sneaking into a bathroom meant for paying customers,” Kovac said. “What do you think, Tinks?”
“I think this bearded lumberjack fad has to end soon, or I’m going to become a lesbian.”
“Is that supposed to be a threat?” Tippen asked, “Or a tantalizing glimpse into one of my favorite fantasies?”
Liska threw a piece of stale donut at him, hitting him in the forehead. “Not in front of the children, you disgusting pervert,” she returned without rancor.
Taylor was glaring at Tippen like a hungry guard dog, clearly unhappy with Tippen’s apparent lack of respect for the lady of the group.
“Don’t worry about Tinks, kid,” Kovac said. “She could turn Tippen inside out by the scrotum if she wanted to.”
“Don’t give me ideas,” Liska said. “I don’t have time to play. Let’s get back on point, please.”
“Second possible sighting at Oxendale’s Market, just down the street from the convenience store,” Elwood said, sticking another pin in the map. “A truck driver delivering produce thought he saw Krauss hopping out of a Dumpster behind the store. That’s two sightings, blocks apart, within an hour and a half of each other.”
Kovac scratched his head as he stared at the map. “He’s a long way from Rising Wings. What’s he doing on that end of town?”
“Maybe he’s from that area, knows his way around, is comfortable there,” Taylor speculated.
“It’s a risk. That’s a quiet residential area,” Kovac said. “He’s going to stick out more there than if he had stayed downtown.”
“But downtown is crawling with cops.”
“Maybe there’s somebody he wants to see before he splits town,” Tippen offered. “He’s working his way south. He’s got his pick of major highways from there. He can kiss an old flame good-bye and hit the road for anywhere.”
“The airport’s right there, too,” Taylor pointed out. “Who knows what he might be carrying for an ID. It won’t say Gordon Krauss, we can be sure of that. A shave and a haircut, and he’s past TSA as Joe Schmoe.”
Kovac nodded at Liska. “Fill them in on your deal.”
She got up and went to the map. “I’m looking for a man named Jeremy Nilsen who may have information related to my cold case. He lived next door to my victim at the time. His father and the victim had an ongoing beef. Your guy, Krauss, had Jeremy Nilsen’s ID.”
“And five others,” Tippen said. “Do you think he’s your guy?”
She shrugged. “I don’t have a current photo of Nilsen, but if it’s him, you should have gotten a hit on his prints. He’s ex-military.”
“Unless he’s been erased,” Tippen said, excited at the thought.
Kovac tossed a pen in the air and rolled his eyes. “Oh God, here come the conspiracy theories.”
Tippen pointed a finger at him. “If you think it doesn’t happen, my friend, you are doomed to an Orwellian future.”
“Yeah, I’ve got news for you,” Kovac said, “1984 was a few decades ago.”
“Here’s what’s interesting,” Liska went on. “Jeremy Nilsen lived next door to Ted Duffy here, west of Lake Nokomis.” She stuck a pin in the map. “His father—the poster boy for angry white men everywhere—still lives there. The kid had a crush on Duffy’s foster daughter—now known as Evi Burke—who now lives here, east of Lake Nokomis.” She stuck a second pin in the map and then drew a finger in a triangle between her pins and Elwood’s. “We’re talking about a relatively small area, a few square miles. And yesterday Evi Burke received a creepy, vaguely threatening note in the mail that said, ‘I know who you are and I know where you live.’”
Kovac sat up straighter. “She works at Chrysalis?”
“Yes. She assumed the note was related to one of her cases. Maybe not.”
“So, the guy you want to question about a twenty-five-year-old homicide could be our suspect in a possible double murder-for-hire?” Taylor said. “And he’s stalking the girl he had a crush on in high school? That’s a whole lot of a word I’m not allowed to use.”
“An unlikely serendipitous collection of ideas,” Elwood offered.
“I’m not saying anything,” Liska said. “But I am taking a picture of your guy over to Evi Burke, and I think it’d be a good idea to put an unmarked unit on her block until somebody throws a net over this guy.”
“Done,” Kovac said.
“Thank you. I’m out of here,” she said, giving a jaunty salute. “Call me when you catch him, boys.”
As the door closed behind her, Taylor said, “I stopped to talk to Charlie Chamberlain on my way home last night.”
“And he didn’t tell you to call his attorney?” Kovac asked.
“I made speaking to me a better choice.”
“Good boy.”
“Someone had beaten the living crap out of him.”
Kovac’s brows sketched upward. “Sato?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Not Sato.”
“My hunch? I think Diana did it,” Taylor said.
“The sister beat him up?” Tippen asked. “Now, that’s my kind of crazy.”
“She’d snap you like a twig,” Kovac said, “and pick her teeth with your bones. She’s a freaking Amazon, and a whole truckload of nuts.”
“He didn’t want to talk about it,” Taylor said.
“If Sato did that to him, he’d be bringing charges.”
“Exactly. I also spoke with his neighbor across the hall. She referred to Diana as his tall girlfriend, and said there seemed to be a lot of fighting and making up between them.”
“And we have just crossed a line, even for me,” Tippen commented.
“I’m not surprised,” Kovac said. “Even if he’s not sleeping with her, her power base is sexual. She’s had him wrapped around her finger since they were kids. He pissed her off popping her boyfriend in the face yesterday.”
“There was probably a sexual component to the father-daughter relationship, as well,” Elwood added. “Actual or implied.”
“Charlie didn’t come ou
t and say so,” Kovac said, “but he hinted there might have been abuse in Diana’s background. Before or after she was adopted by the Chamberlains, I don’t know. The damage was done either way. Add the result of sexual abuse to her bipolar disorder, and you’ve got a potentially explosive mix.”
“Sex and violence,” Taylor said. “She goes off on her brother for taking a swing at her lover. Charlie looked like he went a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson.”
“They both studied martial arts as kids,” Kovac said. “Imagine her reaction if Daddy told them he was giving away their inheritance.”
“Charlie denied knowing about that,” Taylor said, “but I wasn’t convinced. He said their father was always making threats like that, but that he would never follow through.”
“He was following through this time,” Kovac said.
“So Big Sis picked up the phone and called her ninja lover at Rising Wings,” Tippen suggested. “Oh, won’t you please slaughter my father for me, Gordon? He’s so mean.”
“She saw Gordon Krauss at the house the day he was there to do the repairs,” Kovac said. “Tweedle Dumber told me she was slinking around Krauss like a cat in heat.”
“She probably watched him do the deed,” Elwood said.
“Watched?” Kovac asked. “Hell, she could have beaten her father to death herself. Whoever did it had a whole lot of rage. Then either Krauss or Sato took care of the mother.”
“Or Charlie,” Taylor said. “After yesterday, we know he can lose control. And he certainly knows more than he’s saying.”
“Were there any calls from Diana’s phone that might have been to Krauss?” Kovac asked. “To Rising Wings? To a pay phone? Anything?”
“No, but she’s smart enough; she could have used a burner,” Taylor said. “Disposable phones are everywhere.
“I’m still bothered by the anomaly in the calls from the mother’s phone,” he went on. “I hope to hear back from the phone company today what towers those calls were pinging off. I asked Charlie if I could listen to the message his mother left Tuesday night. He said he erased it.”
