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

Grider looked at the lieutenant. “How am I supposed to work with her?”

“You’re not,” Mascherino said. “You’ve got your own case to work. Take your number two and run with it. Nikki, you’ve got priority for Candra’s time, however you need her.”

Logan unfolded himself from his chair, looking at Nikki. “Press conference at five in the government center.”

“Today?” She glanced at her watch. It was nearly four.

“Plenty of time to go powder your nose and put on some lipstick,” Logan quipped.

“Speak for yourself,” Nikki snapped, gathering her notes from the table. “I’ve got a case to review.”





3


“The guy’s a freaking twitch,” Sam Kovac said. “The first thing he did when we got him in the box was puke on the floor.”

He sat at his desk watching the feed from the interview room on his computer screen. His new trainee—he refused to use the word partner—was just down the hall, taking his turn trying to get information out of Ronnie Stack. Stack—thirty-four, meth head, bone thin, pasty white—was a nervous rodent type: furtive, thin lips quivering, narrow eyes darting all around the room, rubbing his hands together like he was washing, over and over.

“Is he high?” Tippen asked, watching over Kovac’s shoulder like a vulture. He was built that way, too: long and bony, with a permanent slouch, a beak of a nose, and keen dark eyes. He’d been a detective nearly as long as Kovac, which made the two of them old as dirt.

“No, but I’m sure he wants to be.”

This fact would, Kovac hoped, tip the scales in their favor. Stack wanted out of that room—maybe badly enough to give them what they wanted: information on the murder of a drug dealer known as BB. Stack was a known associate of BB’s, and had reportedly been with the dealer shortly before somebody stuck a knife in his throat and caused him to drown in his own blood.

Stack was not under arrest. This was a noncustodial interview. He was free to get up and leave anytime he wanted. It amazed Kovac how few people exercised that right. They seemed to think that option was some kind of trick.

“How’s the kid doing?” Tippen asked, helping himself to the other desk chair in the cubicle.

The kid, Michael Taylor, fledgling homicide detective, was Kovac’s third trainee in as many months. Of the other two, one had gone back to his old job in Sex Crimes, and the other had transferred to a sudden opportunity in the Business and Technology unit. Neither had been cut out for Homicide as far as Kovac was concerned—an opinion he had made abundantly clear.

Bottom line: He didn’t want a new partner. He was too old and cranky to break one in. He and Liska had been partners for so long that they were comfortable together, their styles meshed; they had learned to tolerate each other’s annoying habits. They were like an old married couple that never had sex. He wanted that back. Instead, he had to take this kid and try to make him into something he could live with.

Taylor showed some promise, Kovac admitted grudgingly. He had been an MP in the army. After two tours in Iraq he had opted out of the service and come home to Minneapolis. He joined the force and set his sights on making detective, rising quickly through the ranks. He had come to Homicide from Special Crimes, to bulk up his résumé before he was fast-tracked to further stardom. At least, that was what Kovac believed. The kid was too handsome and too sharp to loiter in the trenches with the rest of the grunts. He had Big Things written all over him. His sheer perfection rubbed Kovac the wrong way.

He shrugged at Tippen’s question. “We’ll see.”

He turned up the volume on the computer speakers. Taylor was sitting looking relaxed, looking like he could sit there for the next two or three days. He had his shirtsleeves rolled perfectly halfway up his forearms. Even this late in the day his shirt still looked freshly starched, perfectly tailored to showcase his broad shoulders and trim waist.

“Good thing Liska transferred out,” Tippen said. “She’d be all over Taylor like stink on a billy goat.”

Tippen resembled a billy goat, Kovac thought, with his long homely face, sporting a goatee and mustache these past few months. His vintage beatnik look. He claimed it played well with the coffeehouse chicks.

“The guy is hot,” Tippen went on. “If I was a woman, I’d f*ck him.”

Kovac made a pained face. “Oh Jesus, don’t put that in my head!”

“Taylor’s too young for Tinks,” Elwood Knutson announced, joining them in the cramped gray cubicle, and taking up all remaining available space. He was built like a Disney cartoon bear, and had a similar pelt of hair.

“Don’t tell Tinks that,” Kovac advised. “She’ll pluck your eyeballs out and feed them to you.”

“Merely an observation,” Elwood murmured, hunkering down closer to the screen. “She’s not the cougar type.”

“He’s not that young anyway,” Kovac muttered. The kid made him feel like a dinosaur. “He’s thirty-four.”

“And how old are you now, Sam?”

“Old enough to remember rotary telephones. I’ve got shoes older than this kid,” he confessed. “And a couple of neckties, too.”

He turned his focus back to the computer screen.