The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(107)

“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.