The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(22)

“I’ll see some ID,” Nilsen snapped.

Each produced her identification. Nilsen looked through smudged reading glasses and sniffed in disapproval. “I remember when women were meter maids.”

“Yeah? Now they let us have guns. Crazy, huh?” Nikki said. “How well did you know the Duffy family?”

He scowled harder. “I’ve answered all these damned questions a hundred times.”

“Well, it’s all new to me. I have to investigate this case as if it happened yesterday. So, please bear with me because I haven’t heard your answers before, Mr. Nilsen.”

“The police don’t keep records of these things?”

“How well did you know the Duffy family?” she asked again.

“As well as I cared to.”

“You didn’t like them?”

“Too many kids, too little discipline, too much noise. You would have thought they were Italian.”

“Did you know Ted Duffy personally?”

“I knew him to say hello. I didn’t care for him. He let his wife run the show. But he was a decorated police officer. He worked hard. I had to respect him for that. Now, if the wife had stayed home and taken charge of those kids—but no, she had to have her little job on the side . . .”

“Mrs. Duffy was an emergency room nurse,” Seley pointed out.

Nilsen just looked at her, underwhelmed by the excuse. “She had three small children. She should have been home with them, but he didn’t make enough money, she said. Then she brought those foster kids in for babysitters. That was clever, I suppose, if they hadn’t been a couple of little tarts.”

“What did you do for a living, Mr. Nilsen?” Nikki asked.

“I sold life insurance.”

“Did you ever sell any to the Duffys?”

“He was covered by the city. This has all got to be in a file somewhere,” he complained, looking frustrated.

Nikki glanced around the room as he went on, her gaze settling on old family photos on the wall above a small cabinet cluttered with mail and keys and a bulging old wallet. Nilsen had the same unpleasant expression in his family portrait from twenty-some years past: that of a man in constant pain. Despite his expression, he had been handsome in a rugged way. He hadn’t aged well.

“Is your wife around, Mr. Nilsen?” Seley asked.

“No!” he barked. “She left. I haven’t seen her in years.”

The wife had been an attractive woman with a shy, pretty smile, Nikki noted, never failing to marvel that women routinely married less than they deserved—herself included.

“Does she still live in the area?”

“I have no idea.”

“And your son?” she asked. “Was he living here at the time?”

“What’s the matter with you?” Nilsen snapped. “You don’t like my answers? You want to talk to people until you find someone who will tell you what you want to hear?”

“Not at all. But when it comes to potential witnesses in a cold case investigation, the more the merrier. We need all the help we can get to put the picture together.”

“Where’s the last detective who investigated this?” he demanded. “He at least knew what he was doing.”

“He had gender reassignment surgery and left the force,” Nikki said.

Seley doubled over, coughing to cover her laughter.

“What the hell?” Nilsen looked horrified at what Nikki had said. Seley could have fallen and died at his feet for all he cared.

“Excuse me!” Seley said hoarsely, a hand at her throat, eyes wet. “I just need to step outside.”

No one paid attention to her as she went out the front door.

“How old was your son at the time of Ted Duffy’s murder?” Nikki pressed on.

“He wasn’t here when it happened.”

“I know that, but did he know the Duffy kids or the foster kids? Looks like he might have been in high school at the time. If he knew them, they might have spoken to him about the family.”

In his high school senior picture, Young Nilsen was a lean, more refined version of his father, but with the same unhappy expression. Nikki didn’t remember seeing any mention of the boy among the interviews in the Duffy files. Kids sometimes got overlooked or discounted in investigations, as if they were invisible.

“He had some sports event that day. I’ve said it a hundred times. I was home, my wife was home, and I didn’t see anything.”

“Still, I’d like to talk to him.”

“Good luck with that. He’s dead,” he said coldly. “Now get out of my house. You’re an idiot! I don’t have anything more to say to you. If you people haven’t solved this crime in all these years, stop wasting our tax dollars and do something about the crime rate now. People are being murdered in their own homes by sword-wielding maniacs, for Christ’s sake!”


*



“MISOGYNISTIC PRICK,” Nikki muttered as she descended Nilsen’s front steps.

“That’s redundant,” Seley pointed out.

“For emphasis,” Nikki said as they walked back to the car.

“Could we have some kind of signal for when you’re about to say something outrageous?” Seley asked. “I almost peed my pants!”