by Tami Hoag
“But we know the call was made,” Elwood said.
“But we only have his word about the message. What if Diana pocketed that phone Sunday night? What if the call was only for show?”
“Why steal her mother’s phone?” Tippen asked.
“To disarm the security system from the app.”
“I like that,” Kovac said. “Gold star for Junior.”
“You didn’t drive to Dinkytown and ask the girl if she put a beat-down on her brother and hacked her mother up with a sword, Mr. Overachiever?” Tippen asked.
“The lights were off, and she didn’t answer the door,” Taylor returned. “I didn’t see her car on the street. And she never answers her phone.”
“She was probably off eating a bloody steak with her bare hands,” Kovac said, pushing to his feet. He looked at Elwood and Tippen. “You two stay on Gordon Krauss.”
He grabbed his coat and hat and nodded to Taylor. “We’re going to find Ms. Chamberlain and have a chat about her taste in men.”
35
Evi Burke had called in sick to work. Nikki mused on that on the drive south. Was she sick, as in the stomach flu? Was she sick, as in the work flu? Was she sick, as in afraid of a stalker? Was she sick, as in detectives came to her house and asked her questions that upset her?
“I’m freaking Typhoid Mary,” she muttered to herself, thinking of Jennifer Duffy lying in a hospital bed, recovering from a stomach pumping and suicidal intentions.
It made Nikki sick to think about it. Over and over she went through her meeting with Ted Duffy’s daughter. Had she pushed too hard? She didn’t think so. She knew what it was to go after a suspect like a tigress when it was the method that would yield the best result, but she prided herself on being able to read people and find the path of least resistance to get the information she needed.
They had talked about being the daughters of cops, how it was hard, how their fathers had been distant from them, how kids took things to heart. Jennifer Duffy had not spoken of her father in a sentimental way, and yet she had clearly absorbed some of the guilt the afternoon he died below her bedroom window. She had smiled a little remembering her secret bedtime reading sessions with Angie Jeager. Then a cloud had passed over her memories, and the smile had faded away.
She knew something. Something she had kept secret all these years. Something that had sent her to therapy. Something that had driven her to take an overdose of pills.
And the family had rallied around her.
What the hell was that about? Nikki wondered as she pulled up in front of the Burkes’ charming little English-cottage-style house.
Evi Burke’s husband answered the door. He was a virtual Viking god in the flesh. In jeans and a faded navy-blue thermal shirt that hugged sculpted muscles, he looked like he could have been a few years younger than his wife. Jackpot, Evi Burke, Nikki thought as he invited her in.
“What’s this about?” he asked, not letting her get any farther than the entryway. He crossed his arms over his chest and took a stance with his feet shoulder-width apart. The protector. “We’re looking for a person of interest in a homicide,” Nikki said. “And we’re trying to learn as much as we can about him.
“We think he might be connected to one of your wife’s clients at the Chrysalis Center,” she lied. “Mrs. Burke may have had an encounter with him during a home visit.”
“Do you think he’s in our neighborhood? There’ve been a lot of radio cars on the street.”
“A clerk at the SuperAmerica on Thirty-fourth thinks he might have seen him this morning. We’ve saturated the surrounding area with patrol cars.”
Eric Burke took in her answer, thought about it, and nodded. She gave a mental sigh of relief.
Evi emerged from the dining room white as a sheet, with dark circles under her eyes, shuffling in a pair of fuzzy cat-face slippers, yoga pants, and an oversize sweater. She was preceded by an adorable blond-haired moppet wearing a pink tutu and waving a glitter wand.
Nikki grinned at the little girl. “Are you a princess or a fairy?”
“I’m Mia!” the girl exclaimed as her father scooped her up onto his hip.
“Mia and I will go up to the Magic Kingdom while you two talk.”
Nikki murmured her thanks. Evi watched her husband and daughter disappear up the stairs. She hugged herself as if she was cold.
“Why did you do that?” she asked. “This suspect doesn’t have anything to do with anyone at Chrysalis.”
“No,” Nikki said. “But I didn’t see a need to tell your husband this is about something that happened twenty-five years ago, either.”
“Thank you.”
They went into the dining room, taking the same seats they had the night before.
“You look like you had a rough night,” Nikki said. “Did something happen after we left?”
Tears filled Evi Burke’s eyes. “I got a phone call,” she murmured. “In the middle of the night. The person said, ‘It all worked out for you.’”
“What does that mean?”
She made a little fluttering movement of frustration and confusion with her hands. “I-I have a nice life now. I didn’t always.”
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“No.”
“Male or female?”
“I couldn’t really tell. They whispered.”
“Did you tell your husband about this?”
“No. I don’t like to worry him. I mean, it wasn’t really a threat, was it? Just— It all worked out. I don’t even know why I’m so afraid.”
“Because some faceless creep is reaching into your life without so much as introducing themselves,” Nikki said. “That’s scary. Knowing that you have a past, knowing that you work with at-risk women—that ups the ante considerably.”
“That’s not why you’re here, though, is it?” Evi said, trying to steer the conversation elsewhere.
Maybe, Nikki thought, but she didn’t say it. Jeremy Nilsen had left the army on a psych discharge. Maybe he wasn’t so happy life had finally smiled on the girl he had known as Angie Jeager. And Donald Nilsen had as much as said he blamed her for some imagined downfall of his family. Who knew where he had been in the middle of the night? He had nothing but time on his hands. He might have seen Evi’s face in the newspaper article about the Chrysalis Center and recognized her. Nikki kept those thoughts to herself for the moment.
She pulled the photograph of Gordon Krauss out of her portfolio and put it on the table. “Do you recognize this man?”
“He’s the one you’re looking for—for those murders. I saw the picture on television,” Evi said, looking confused. “I don’t understand. Why would I know him?”
“He’s calling himself Gordon Krauss. A search of his room turned up Jeremy Nilsen’s ID. Could he be Jeremy Nilsen?”
Evi looked more closely at the photo, not touching it, frowning. “I haven’t seen Jeremy in twenty-five years. He was a teenage boy.”
“Imagine him without the beard,” Nikki said. “What was he like back then? Was he troubled? Was he angry? Could he be violent?”
She stared at the picture. Her color worsened as she considered the questions and her answers to them, answers she chose to keep to herself.
“He seemed like a nice boy,” she said so softly Nikki almost had to strain to hear her. She looked as fragile as spun glass.
“Was he ever in trouble?”
“Not that I know of.” Her hands were shaking. She sat back and put them in her lap.
“Were you involved with Jeremy Nilsen, Evi? Did his father know about it?”
“No. I told you, we were just acquaintances.”
Nikki reached into the leather portfolio again and pulled out the photographs she had taken from Jeremy Nilsen’s bedroom and put them on the table. “Then why would I find these in Jeremy’s bedroom? They were hidden under the mattress. All these years.”
Evi Burke’s eyes widened at the sight of herself, sixteen and shy, her vu
lnerability captured by a school portrait photographer.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, blinking against tears.
Nikki sat back and sighed. “You have to tell me, Evi. You need this to be over.”
“I think you should go now,” Evi said. “I’m not feeling well. I need to lie down.”
“Jennifer Duffy tried to kill herself last night.”
Evi’s face dropped. “Oh my God. That’s terrible. Is she all right? Will she be all right?”
Nikki shrugged. “The family seems to think the conversation I had with her about her father’s murder prompted her to do it. She’s in the hospital.”
“I’m so sorry,” Evi whispered, closing her eyes and pressing a hand to her forehead as if feeling for a fever. Nikki wondered if she was speaking in general or specifically apologizing to Jennifer Duffy . . . for what?
“Evi, what could Jennifer have known that would have upset her to the point of trying to end her own life?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“You weren’t there the night Ted Duffy was murdered. But what about any other night?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What was going on in that house, Evi? The Duffys have closed ranks around Jennifer. Whatever she knows about her father’s death is staying in that circle. Why?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You lived there,” Nikki said, frustrated.
“Please go now.”
Nikki sighed but made no move to get up. She could feel Evi Burke teetering on the edge. The harder it felt to hold the secret, the more tempting revealing the truth became.
“There’s no reason not to tell me, Evi,” she said gently. “You were a child. You didn’t have any control over what happened.”
Evi looked out the window at the cold gray day as if she was staring into her past. She looked utterly alone. Nikki wanted to reach out to her, but that wasn’t her job, and it wouldn’t get her the answers she needed.
Not finding an answer to an impossible internal question, Evi finally shook her head.
“I can’t help you,” she said at last. She pushed the photographs back across the table. “I don’t know who that man is. I’m sorry.”
Nikki reluctantly put the pictures back in her portfolio.
“I will get to the bottom of this, Evi,” she said in the least threatening voice she could use. “I know I’m close. I can taste it. I won’t stop until I have the answer.
“I’m not out to hurt anybody,” she said. “It makes me sick that Jennifer Duffy is lying in the hospital today. There was no reason for her to make that choice. Nothing is worth that. Nothing that happened back then, when she was just a child, could be worth paying that price.
“You have a nice life now, Evi,” she went on. “You’ve been through enough. You deserve to be happy. I don’t want to disrupt that for you. I just want the truth. That’s what my job is: finding the truth. I won’t stop until I get it. I owe that to my victim.”
“Good luck,” Evi said, pushing her chair back and screwing up the strength to stand.
They walked to the door together.
“Please call me if you decide you have something to say,” Nikki said, handing over another business card. “Twenty-five years is long enough to keep a secret that doesn’t matter anymore. Let it go. Set yourself free of it.”
“If it didn’t matter,” Evi said, “you wouldn’t be here.”
Nikki couldn’t really argue the point, she thought as she walked away from the Burke house. It seemed she was one of a small minority who gave a rat’s ass what had happened to Ted Duffy or why. Maybe she would feel the same way by the time this was over, but that wasn’t her choice to make.
* * *
EVI WATCHED THE DETECTIVE walk to her car at the curb even as a patrol car rolled past on the street. Behind her and up the stairs she could hear the laughter of her husband and her child.
No, Detective Liska, she thought. Some secrets have to last forever.
36
“I don’t have anything more to say to you people,” Diana said as she came out of her apartment and locked the deadbolt with a key. She was dressed for yoga in black leggings and a sloppy gray top hanging off one shoulder, revealing a lacy turquoise bra strap. Despite the damp chill of the day, she wore no coat.
“You don’t want to give us your side of the story?” Taylor asked.
“My side of what story? You were there yesterday. You saw what happened.”
“I mean later, with Charlie.”
She narrowed her eyes and swept a messy chunk of hair behind one ear. “What about Charlie?”
“Come on, Diana,” Taylor said. “I saw him last night.”
“I’m not speaking to Charlie. I don’t know what he might have said to you.”
“He didn’t have to say anything. The cuts and bruises spoke for themselves.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did he have some kind of accident?”
“Yeah, he walked into some fists.”
“What happened to your hands?” Kovac asked, looking at the small cuts and the puffy redness of swollen knuckles.
Immediately she crossed her arms to hide them. “Nothing. This weather gives me chapped skin.”
“Funny, beating the shit out of someone gives the exact same results.”
She had the nerve to look incredulous. “Are you accusing me of hitting Charlie? That’s ridiculous! I’m a woman. I don’t go around beating people up. That’s Charlie’s department. Ken had to go get an X-ray on the way home yesterday.”
“You know, I think maybe we should go downtown to discuss this,” Kovac suggested. “We’ve got an assault victim to consider. It’s serious business.”
“Did Charlie tell you I hit him?” she asked. “He wouldn’t.”
“Because he’s afraid of you?” Taylor asked.
“Charlie loves me.” She said it like it was a challenge. I dare you to tell me he doesn’t love me.
“Yeah, well,” Kovac said, “live a few more years and you’ll figure out that doesn’t mean what you thought it did.”
“What does that mean?” Diana demanded. “Are you arresting me?”
“No, no. We just have a few questions for you,” Taylor said.
“I’m going to be late for my yoga class,” she complained, and pushed past them, headed for the front door of the building.
Taylor hustled ahead to hold the door for her, and then stepped out on the sagging front porch and cut off her angle to the steps down to the sidewalk. She gave him a nasty look.
“We need to have you take a look at a photograph,” he said.
“You know this guy,” Kovac said, showing her the photo of Gordon Krauss.
“No.”
“Oh, you misunderstand,” he said. “I wasn’t asking a question. You know this guy.”
“I do not!”
“Diana, we have a witness who puts you flirting with this guy at your parents’ house the day they had some repairs done.”
“He’s lying!”
“He’s got no reason to lie.”
“So? People lie just to lie.”
“Some people.”
“Maybe she just doesn’t remember him, Sarge,” Taylor said. “She’s a beautiful woman. I’m sure Diana has guys flirting with her every day.”
Kovac watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her demeanor toward Taylor instantly softened at the compliment. She couldn’t help herself. Though she was clearly annoyed with the situation in general, she gave him a little smile, looking up at him through batting lashes.
“You’ve got a point,” Kovac said. “My apologies, Ms. Chamberlain, if I seemed abrupt. We’re all running on a lack of sleep trying to solve the murder of your parents.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about it. I’ve told you a hundred times.”
“Let’s try this again,” Kovac suggested, holding up the photograph. “This is Gordon Krauss. Yo
u met him while you were a participant at Rising Wings, an outpatient drug rehab on the North Side. You met him again when you were at your parents’ house the day they had repairs done. He is now wanted for questioning in the murder of your mother and father. Is any of this ringing a bell?”
“Are you saying I had something to do with him?” Diana asked, her face twisted with disgust. “That’s just gross.”
“He didn’t try to ask you any questions about the security system at the house that day?” Taylor asked.
“No,” she snapped, done with it. “I have to go. Get out of my way.”
She made a move to go forward. Taylor blocked her.
Kovac looked around at the sorry old house with the peeling brown paint and ill-fitting aluminum replacement windows, the porch cluttered with students’ bicycles and a trash can full of beer bottles.
“I suppose you’ll be moving out of this dump and back to the house as soon as we release the scene,” he said. “Assuming you inherit.”
She looked offended. “Of course we inherit. We’re their children. Why wouldn’t we?”
“Well, your dad was pretty fed up with you. He spoke to his lawyer on Monday,” he lied. “Of course, the lawyer can’t tell us what it was about, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.”
“And we know for a fact he was donating his collection to the university ASAP to secure the promotion you were trying to keep him from,” Taylor said. “So that’s off the table as far as inheritance.”
“You don’t know any of that.”
Kovac shrugged. “Maybe they died before the paperwork was done, but yeah, I’d say you were getting chucked off the gravy train, sweetheart.
“But maybe Charlie will throw you a bone,” he suggested. “He was the good kid, right? Always trying to pull your pretty butt out of the fire. You might want to reconsider using him for a punching bag. Maybe take up a career in the UFC instead. Put your rage in the cage. Earn a paycheck doing it. You’ll need it.”
“I’m leaving now. Namaste,” she said directly to him, enunciating each syllable with venom. Her eyes were nearly white with anger.
