The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(101)

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 guys 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.”

“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.