The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(106)

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 vulnerability 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?