The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(128)

She had often wondered what her life would have been like if she had had that kind of love as a child. Now she couldn’t help but wonder what a difference it would have made in the life of the child she had given up. What kind of horrible pain had he carried within to do the things he had done? She had given him the only thing she could: a chance at something better, never imagining that chance could become a nightmare.

“Tell me about Jeremy Nilsen.”

Jeremy, her first real crush. She had been his first girlfriend, a secret from his father. And he had been her secret from the Duffys. Romeo and Juliet.

“He was a sweet boy. He had a difficult relationship with his father, trying to live up to his father’s idea of what a man should be. I suppose that was where the trouble started.

“When I found out I was pregnant, I was so afraid. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what would happen to me. I was afraid they would send me away. I told Jeremy what had happened.

“He was so angry. He wanted to do something. He wanted to confront Mr. Duffy. He wanted to have him arrested. I told him we couldn’t do any of those things. I told him they’d send me away. He wouldn’t let it go. He wanted to be my hero. He thought he should defend my honor.”

She put her hands over her face and leaned against the table.

“He said he would kill Mr. Duffy for what he’d done. I didn’t believe he’d really do it.”

“But he did.”

“I tried to find him after school,” she said. “I couldn’t find him.”

She started to tremble, remembering her growing panic as the afternoon darkened. She remembered how she had stood outside the Nilsen house, afraid to knock on the door, afraid Mr. Nilsen would answer. She could hear Mr. Duffy chopping wood next door.

“We used to meet in the park and walk on the trails in the woods. It was the place we could be together without anyone knowing. I thought maybe he had gone there to think. It was almost dark.”

She remembered the bitter day, damp and cold. A spitting, freezing rain pelleted her face like tiny shards of glass. It was changing to snow as she hurried down the trail. She was crying, afraid, filled with dread. What had she done? Why had she told him?

“And then I heard the shots,” she said, and an overwhelming sadness filled her. It filled her now, and she wanted to cry for everything that was lost in that moment. Their lives had just been set on a path over which they would have no control, and any hope for their budding love would be dashed, all because a troubled boy had done the wrong thing for all the right reasons.


*



“. . . THEY CAME UP WITH THE STORY OF HAVING been at school at the basketball game,” Nikki said.

They sat in Logan’s office in the government center: Nikki, Candra Seley, Logan, and Mascherino. Logan’s desk phone was lighting up like a pinball machine. He ignored it. The news media had gone rabid for details of Charlie Chamberlain and his wake of death.

“Any other week, there would have been a game on Tuesday night. No one bothered to check,” she went on. “No one really questioned them. They were just kids. Everybody thought Ted Duffy was killed by someone he had put away, or that Barbie and Big Duff had pulled it off. There were so many more realistic possibilities. If Barbie had any suspicions, she kept them to herself rather than risk the world finding out her husband, Mr. Sex Crimes Detective of the Year, had raped their sixteen-year-old foster child. She and Big Duff closed ranks around the family, and she sent the foster girls back into the system. Jeremy Nilsen turned eighteen and joined the army.”

“Do you think Donald Nilsen knew?” Mascherino asked.

Nikki looked away. “Can I plead the Fifth on that?”

“Off the record, then,” Logan said.

“Jeremy Nilsen was an honor student,” she said. “He had already been accepted to several universities. How many parents would let that kind of son drop out of high school to join the army?”

“You think it was the father’s idea?” Logan asked.

“Do you have kids, Logan?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

“I think Donald Nilsen is a sad old man who did what he could to protect his only child for killing a man who raped a teenage girl. I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same,” she confessed. “I think he packed his son off to the army and hoped for the best. That wasn’t what he got, but I think that was his intent. And I think his wife probably left him over it.

“Do you want to pursue any of that?” she asked.

“Do you think Ted Duffy doesn’t deserve justice?”

“I think life dealt out crueler justice than any of these people had coming,” Nikki said, the sadness of that truth heavy on her shoulders. She tried to shrug it off. “But I’m just a cop. I do what I’m told.”

Mascherino arched an eyebrow, but made no comment.

“Where’s the son?” Logan asked.

“His dental records are a match for a John Doe death last summer,” Seley said. “A body found snagged under some branches in the Mississippi. A probable homicide victim. His ID was found in possession of Gordon Krauss, a man who has been identified as having committed assault on a homeless man near the river in June.”

Logan sighed and swiveled his chair. He had jerked his tie loose at the end of the day. His shirtsleeves were rolled up as if he had been doing physical labor. “So what you’re saying is you’ve got nothing for me to prosecute.”