The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(3)
Mascherino had come over from Internal Affairs just in time to be handed the plum task of putting together the Cold Case unit, which would, initially at least, be high profile and put her in the media spotlight.
Gene Grider, retired for eighteen months, had come back to work this unit, offering himself at part-time pay, which made him very attractive to the number crunchers trying to squeeze every penny out of the grant money. But it also augmented Grider’s pension, and allowed him to bring his own agenda along with him.
His agenda was Ted Duffy.
So went the law enforcement food chain.
Nikki had her own agenda, too. She had leveraged her role in closing the Doc Holiday cases to get Kasselmann to recommend her to this unit. When she caught a case in Homicide, it wasn’t unusual to be on for twenty-four hours or more, straight. In Cold Case, there was no urgency. There were regular hours, giving her more time with her boys.
She had spent the better part of a decade in Homicide. The unit was her home away from home, her family away from family. She loved the job, was very good at the job. But R.J. and Kyle, at fourteen and sixteen, were growing into young men, struggling around the pitfalls of adolescence as they made the transition from boyhood to independence and maturity. They needed an adult available, and she was it. God knew their father didn’t qualify for the job.
It had been during the height of the Doc Holiday hunt that Nikki realized she didn’t know enough about what was going on in the life of her oldest son, Kyle. The lives of teenagers were so much more complicated now than when she was a kid. Her sons could be lost so easily while she was looking away—lost literally and figuratively. No matter how much she loved her job, she loved her boys a million times more.
News of the grant money coming in for a cold case unit had started circulating at the perfect time. She would still be investigating homicides, but the urgency and long hours of a fresh case would be removed. The challenges would be different, but she would still be fighting for a victim.
Except that, at the moment, she was fighting against a victim. Another detective, no less.
“If Ted Duffy’s murder isn’t on this agenda, I’m out of here,” Grider threatened.
Like he was some kind of supercop. Like he was Derek Jeter coming out of retirement to save the Yankees or something.
“And every cop in Minneapolis is going to be up in arms about it,” Grider continued, cutting a hard look at Liska. “Except this one,” he muttered, and then put his attention back on the people he wanted to sway. “Duffy’s is the only unsolved homicide on the books involving a police officer. It’s a black eye on the department. And I would think now—especially now—that would mean something.”
Liska sat up straighter, incredulous. “Is that a threat? Is that what you’re trying to so cleverly slip into that rant? You’ll set a fire amongst the rank and file if you don’t get your way?”
Grider shrugged. “I’m just saying people are already on edge.”
“You’re a f*cking bully.”
Lieutenant Mascherino cut Nikki a disapproving look. “We can do without the language, Sergeant.”
Nikki bit her tongue. Great. She had a mouth like a sailor on holiday, and a schoolmarm for a lieutenant.
They sat at a round white melamine table in a war room commandeered from Homicide. Round tables were supposed to foster feelings of equality and cooperation, according to the industrial and organizational psychology expert the department had wasted taxpayer dollars on during the last remodeling of the offices. The same expert had recommended painting the office walls mauve, and had told them they needed to remove the U bolts from the walls and floors in the interview rooms, so they had nowhere to cuff violent offenders if the need arose, because the threat of physical restraint might be deemed “intimidating.”
Nikki could still see the look on her partner Kovac’s face as they listened to the presentation. Nobody had a better “Are you f*cking kidding me?” face than Kovac.
Weeks later a suspect had yanked a useless decorative shelf off the wall of an interview room and cracked Kovac in the head with it. He still had a little scar. Nikki had kneecapped the suspect with her tactical baton before he could do worse. Thank God Kovac had a head like granite.
Mascherino exchanged a look with Chris Logan, the chief assistant county attorney. Logan was a big, handsome man in an expensive suit, tall and athletic with a thick shock of Black Irish hair streaked with gray. Fiftyish. Brash. Aggressive. Intimidating in the courtroom or in a conversation.
Logan’s role in this meeting was to give his blessing to cases he thought might have the potential to be prosecuted successfully. The Duffy case offered nothing for him to sink his teeth into as a prosecutor. He would want witnesses, evidence, forensics—at the very least, a viable suspect at this stage of the game. Yet, he didn’t jump in to dismiss Grider’s sales pitch.
Logan was certainly aware of the contract tensions between the city and the police union, recently made worse by the mayor’s threats of deep budget cuts and layoffs. But if any of that concerned him, he wasn’t going to show it. He had to be a hell of a poker player.
He rubbed a hand along his jaw as he weighed the pros and cons.
“We owe Duff one more try,” Grider pressed. “All we need is for one person to talk. That’s all it takes to crack a case like this.”
“After twenty-five years, why would anyone talk?” Nikki asked.