The Bitter Season (24 page)

He started to grumble something else. She cut him off with a look.

“I should haul you in right now,” she said. “You’re damn lucky
I didn’t pull the trigger. If I made decisions the way you do, you’d have a hole in your head the size of Iowa right now.”

Her brain was already rushing ahead to the hassle of taking him in and charging him with attempted assault. It wouldn’t be worth the paperwork. He would be seriously inconvenienced, but so would she, and at the end of the day he would get kicked loose anyway because he was an elderly taxpaying citizen no one would consider anything more than a harmless old nuisance who hadn’t actually laid a hand on her.

She would miss dinner with the boys.

“Where’s your son?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I swear to God, Mr. Nilsen—”

“I don’t know!” he shouted. “I don’t want to know.”

“Where was he the last you knew?”

He looked down at the floor and mumbled, “The VA hospital.”

“When was that?”

“Years ago.”

“You haven’t had any contact with him at all?”

“No.”

Nikki stared at him for a long moment, wondering what could ever make her cut ties with one of her boys the way Donald Nilsen had with his. She couldn’t think of anything. They were a part of her and she was a part of them, no matter what.

She wondered if Donald Nilsen’s wife felt the same way, wherever she was. Maybe they were together someplace, mother and son, living in paradise without the man who had undoubtedly made their lives miserable. But Nikki didn’t really believe that. In her experience, most stories like this one didn’t have a happy ending. Damage didn’t get undone.

Donald Nilsen had gotten a good look by previous investigators. None had considered him a strong suspect. At the time of Ted Duffy’s murder, Nilsen’s wife was around to give him an alibi. Later,
no one believed he had sufficient motive. But he’d felt he had sufficient motive just now to haul off and clock a police detective for punching his buttons. He’d felt sufficient motive to threaten the neighbor’s dog with a rifle for taking a crap on his grass. How much motive did a man like this need?

“Barbie Duffy told me you took a little too much notice of the two foster girls living with them, and that Ted had a talk with you about it. What do you have to say about that?”

Nilsen glared at her. “Nothing.”

“If I go digging back into your history, am I going to find anyone who accused you of messing with young girls?”

“I never did!” he protested.

He didn’t say no one had ever accused him. He denied the charge.

“Do you own a .243 deer rifle?”

“No.”

“Have you ever?”

“No.”

“You’re lying. I just saw five photographs of you holding that gun. You threatened to kill your neighbors’ dog with it.”

He couldn’t argue that. He chewed on his frustration like he was chewing on a dirty rag, his mouth twisting at the taste.

“Would you mind showing me the guns you have?” Nikki asked, knowing he would say no. She knew once she was out the door she wasn’t getting back inside this house without a warrant.

“Get out of my house,” he said, coldly calm now. “I’m calling my attorney.”

Damn
. Mascherino was going to kill her.

“You can call him from downtown,” she said, mentally kissing dinner with the boys good-bye. “You’re under arrest for attempting to assault a police officer.

“You know the rest of the song,” she said, pulling out her handcuffs, “but let’s sing it anyway. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

Lieutenant Mascherino stared at her
across the desk. “Is it possible for you to go one day without offending someone to the point that they threaten legal action?”

“Apparently not,” Nikki said. She felt like she was thirteen again and sweating it out in front of the principal for filling the Home Ec teacher’s car with packing peanuts. Only the Home Ec teacher couldn’t get her fired from her job.

“Mr. Nilsen’s attorney has already called to inform us he will be suing for false arrest.”

“Yeah, he’s got that guy on speed dial,” Nikki said. “The ink’s barely dry on his paperwork.”

Not equipped for transporting a suspect, she had called from her car for backup, and had turned Nilsen over to a pair of uniforms who had taken him to be booked and put in a holding cell. He could rot in there for all she cared. He had invoked his right to an attorney. She couldn’t speak with him at any rate, being the victim of the charge against him. She had beat it back to the office and written up her report and the affidavit for the search warrant as fast as was humanly possible without forgetting to dot all the
i
’s and cross all the
t
’s.

“Anyway, it wasn’t a false arrest,” Nikki argued. “If I hadn’t drawn my weapon, he would have punched a hole through my face. I’d probably be stored in his basement now with his missing wife and son.”

“He’s seventy years old.”

“So? He’s had a long time to perfect being an asshole and a bully. Ask Seley. He was aggressive and antagonistic the first time we saw him. Ask his neighbors. He has a history of bad behavior.”

“The press is going to portray you as the bully, Nikki.”

“The press?” She dismissed the idea. “Nilsen likes to make noise, but I don’t think he’s going to want to talk to the media now. He’s a suspect in a murder investigation. Feed that to the newsies.”

“Is he?” Mascherino asked. “Really?”

“He is until I’m convinced otherwise.” Nikki ticked the reasons off on her fingers. “He had a beef with Ted Duffy, he’s a red zone rageaholic, he owned a rifle of the same caliber as the one that killed Duffy, and his alibi for the time of the murder hasn’t been seen or heard from in twenty-five years. I want a warrant to find that rifle.”

“Nobody is going to give you a warrant based on your speculation.”

“I have photographs of him holding a rifle. He attempted to assault me while I was questioning him with regard to the homicide. He was subsequently put under arrest. I don’t get a warrant off that? Are you kidding me?”

The lieutenant arched an eyebrow. “Was that your reasoning for arresting him? To get your warrant?”

“Partly,” Nikki confessed. “He was going to make a big stink either way. I figured I had better have a paper trail documenting his behavior, even if the county attorney’s office doesn’t prosecute the charge.”

“Which they won’t.”

“That’s on them.”

Mascherino sighed the sigh of a long-suffering mother. “Why do I get the uncomfortable feeling you’re already familiar with this particular defense?”

Nikki shrugged. “The best defense is a good offense. I’ve got Seley digging hard on Nilsen’s past. Ted Duffy gave him a warning for
taking too much interest in their teenage foster girls. I think Duffy might not have been the first person to look sideways at this guy. If Nilsen felt threatened enough, could he be violent? Absolutely.”

“Was he a serious suspect when the murder occurred?”

“At the time, he had an alibi witness. He got looked at later on, but no one thought he had sufficient motive. I disagree. I think there’s something there. Before, the focus was on bad guys Duffy had put away, or was trying to, or it was on the brother and the wife—and that’s certainly a viable theory. I’m not discounting that one at all. Both the wife and the brother made money off Ted Duffy’s death, and lived happily ever after together. But in all this time no one has cracked their story.

“Meanwhile, I think Nilsen is hiding something. He lied to me about his son being dead. What’s the point of that?”

“What would his son have to do with this?”

“He was a senior in high school when the murder happened. He used to mow the Duffys’ grass and shovel their sidewalk. He might have been friends with the girls next door. He was at a school event when the murder took place, so I don’t know what his role in this might be, but the old man lied to us about him, and I want to know why. The son would have been well aware of the bad blood between his father and Ted Duffy. Barbie Duffy said he came to the funeral with his mother. Then Mom disappears and Junior gets shipped off to boot camp.”

“Have you found the son?”

“No. Nilsen claims he hasn’t seen his son in years. There’s bad blood there. Why?”

“Have you spoken with the Duffys’ foster daughters? Did they make any accusations against Donald Nilsen at the time?”

“Nothing on the record. The one is dead,” Nikki said. “She was found raped and strangled about six months after the Duffy murder. The crime was never solved. The case file was actually already in the stack on my desk.

“Seley just got an address for the older girl. She’s my age now. I’ll talk to her tonight—unless I’m executing my search warrant,” she said, raising her brows hopefully.

“Go talk to the woman,” Mascherino said. “I’ll call Logan and see what we can do.”

“Awesome. Thanks, LT,” Nikki said, getting up to leave. “And I want to execute the search tonight. If he gets released, the first thing he’s going to do is go home and get rid of that rifle.”

Mascherino gave her a look. “Anything else? A red carpet to the front door?”

Nikki grinned. “Naw, that’ll do.”

“Please try not to strong-arm anyone else tonight,” the lieutenant said. “You’re turning my roots gray, and I don’t have time to get them done. Please take Seley with you. So you have a witness.”

*   *   *

“N
ILSEN HAS NEVER BEEN CHARGE
D WITH ANYTHING
,” Seley said as they left the office. “You would think if Ted Duffy had anything on him with regard to some kind of sexual assault charge, he would have done something with it.”

“Maybe he didn’t get the chance,” Nikki said. “How long were these girls with the Duffy family?”

“Less than a year. They got placed there in June. The murder took place at Thanksgiving time.”

“Tomorrow I want you to call Nilsen’s former employer and see what they have to say about him.”

“I can’t imagine anyone who was there twenty-five years ago is still around.”

“It’s doubtful, but there should at least still be people there from his last years with the company. He can’t have been retired for that long. If he’s the kind of creeper who’s looking at teenage girls, some client along the way might have complained. That behavior isn’t something men outgrow or retire from.”

They got in the car and headed south, merging into the still-heavy traffic on 35W. The pavement glistened wet under the headlights. A steady drizzle was still falling.

Nikki wanted to be snug and warm at home. That had been the whole point of going to Cold Case: regular hours. Instead, she drove past the exit that would have taken her to her neighborhood. If this former foster child of the Duffys’ had something to contribute to the conversation about Donald Nilsen, that could be the piece of information that locked in her search warrant for the Nilsen house. And there would go the rest of the evening . . . But she couldn’t take a chance on Nilsen’s posting bail and going home to get rid of any souvenir he might have hung on to from all those years ago.

“If we get this search warrant for Nilsen’s house, he’d better have his dead wife in a barrel in the basement,” she grumbled.

“Better hope he has that deer rifle.”

“I’ll bet a week’s pay he still has the gun. Hunters like their trophies. He’d still have the gun in lieu of Ted Duffy’s head on his wall. Besides that, I’ll bet he’s a cheap old bastard. He probably hasn’t thrown anything away since Reagan was president.”

They took the Crosstown Highway and exited into a neighborhood not unlike Nikki’s—tree-lined streets and well-kept homes of a mix of styles popular in the forties and fifties; the kind of neighborhood where people lived quietly and raised their kids to go to church on Sunday.

“So, the story on this girl is what?” she asked.

“Angie Jeager was in and out of foster care growing up,” Seley said. “Her mother was in and out of psychiatric facilities. She died of a drug overdose four months before the Duffy murder, so the girl was with the Duffys when it happened. When Barbie Duffy sent the girls back into the system, Angie was put into a group home. When she aged out of foster care, she had no family to go to, and apparently she ended up on the street. She has a yellow sheet full of petty drug stuff and prostitution.”

“She must have turned herself around at some point,” Nikki said. “She’s not turning tricks in this neighborhood.”

“My friend at DCFS told me she’s a Chrysalis Center success story. They pulled her out of a bad situation. She ended up getting a degree in social work.”

“Good for her.”

“Actually, I think she was quoted in that article about Chrysalis in the
Trib
a week or so ago,” Seley said. “Talking about girls aging out of the system.”

It broke Nikki’s heart to see kids fall through the cracks. The social services system left a lot to be desired, but at least kids trapped in it got fed and had a roof over their heads. The second they aged out of the system, however, there was no safety net. They were thrown into the world like baitfish in a shark tank. They had no place to stay, no money, no means to support themselves.

Most homeless shelters wouldn’t take them, reserving their spots for women with small children. A lot of them ended up on the street. Most of them were barely educated because of the chaotic nature of their lives and the lack of adult support. The lack of education made job opportunities scarce. And most businesses wouldn’t hire a homeless person anyway. Employers wanted stable individuals with real addresses, but it was impossible to get a real address without real money, and difficult to get money without a job.

Caught in a downward spiral, these kids were easy prey for drug dealers and pimps. Angie Jeager was lucky to have caught the attention of someone from the Chrysalis Center. Good on her for making the most of her chance.

“This is it, on the right,” Seley said, and repeated the address.

The house was a cute little English-cottage-style, like something found in the enchanted forest of a fairy tale. A fall wreath hung on the arched front door. Amber lights glowed in the multipaned windows.

“She’s married now,” Seley said. “Her last name is Burke. First name, Evangeline.”

Nikki rang the doorbell and they waited in the rain. They had not called ahead. She preferred seeing a person’s honest reaction to a cop showing up on their doorstep.

A tentative voice came from behind the door. “Who is it?”

“Minneapolis Police Department,” Nikki said.

She pulled her ID out of her coat pocket and held it up so it could be seen through the peephole. A second later, locks were being undone.

The woman who opened the door was Nikki’s age, pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way, with light brown hair and big blue eyes.

“Did Kate send you?” she asked.

“Kate?”

“Kate Quinn. From Chrysalis.”

“No,” Nikki said. “You’re Evangeline Burke?”

“Evi. Evi Burke. Yes,” she said, clearly confused.

“I’m Detective Liska; this is Detective Seley. We have some questions for you.”

“This isn’t about the note?”

“May we come in?” Nikki asked, ignoring her question. “It’s a little wet out here.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Of course,” Burke stammered. “I’m so sorry. Making you stand in the rain . . .”

She stepped back into the house and allowed them to come in, but Nikki could feel her resistance. Not many people were happy to see them. Even the perfectly innocent wanted them to go away as soon as possible, as if their presence might attract some dark force into their homes.

Nikki pulled her hood down, ruffled a hand through her hair, and unzipped her jacket, giving the impression she was ready to settle in for a while.

At a glance, she could see that Evi Burke’s home had a cheery feel, with a palette of soft yellow, blue, and white. It had undergone a remodeling at some point, the walls having been opened up so
that the spaces flowed one into another. From the entry she could see the living room, a section of the dining room, and the staircase that led up to the second-floor bedrooms.

“What a lovely home,” Seley said, smiling, setting a friendly tone.

Evi Burke wasn’t buying it. She didn’t smile back. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and crossed her arms in front of her defensively. “Thank you. I’m confused. If you’re not here about the note, I don’t understand what you’re doing here.”

“I know Kate,” Nikki said to further confuse the woman. “I haven’t seen her in a while. How is she?”

“She’s fine.”

“She’s a great advocate for victims.”

“Yes, she is,” Burke said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, impatient.

“Why would she be sending detectives to your house?” Nikki asked.

“I work for the Chrysalis Center. We have a client about to testify against some potentially dangerous people.”

“You said something about a note?” Seley asked.

“Someone sent me a note that was vaguely threatening. My husband is a firefighter. He’s not always here at night. Kate said she would ask for extra patrols in the neighborhood. I just assumed you had something to do with that.”

Kate would have gone straight to Kovac with that request, Nikki thought, knowing he could pull some strings and knowing he was incapable of saying no to her. He’d been half in love with Kate forever, though he would never admit it.

“Would you mind if we sat down?” Nikki asked. “I’d like to know more about this note.”

It was the perfect hook to get them away from the door. Once they all sat down, it became harder to get rid of them without being rude.