The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(53)

Grider pushed his chair back from his table and started to rise. Nikki put her phone up to her ear and glanced down at her eggs. She could feel Grider’s eyes on her as he walked past her booth on his way to the front door. He left alone.

She looked back to his table. His breakfast companion was still there, one arm gesturing as he spoke with the smiling waitress. He had a booming laugh. A familiar laugh. Everyone around him laughed with him as he stood up and turned to go.

Thomas “Big Duff” Duffy.

“Grider,” Nikki muttered under her breath. “You son of a bitch.”


*



NIKKI SAID NOTHING TO Grider as she walked into their office; just gave him a long flat look as she took her coat off and hung it up. He glanced away first, phone pressed to his head.

Candra Seley watched the silent exchange as she crossed the room to Nikki’s desk.

“It’s another beautiful day in the neighborhood, I see,” she said as she pulled up a chair.

Nikki rolled her eyes. “What have you got for me?”

“Jennifer Duffy’s info,” she said, handing her a note card with the address and phone number. “I also sent these to your e-mail, but I’m old-fashioned. I like things written down.”

“Perfect. What about the missing Nilsens?”

“I can’t find Renee Nilsen,” Seley said. “And I mean, I can’t find her anywhere.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. She seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. The Nilsens never got divorced. She never legally changed her name in this state. She does not hold a current driver’s license. She has not used or applied for a passport; nor has she filed a Minnesota tax return.”

“Was she ever reported missing?”

“No.”

“Shit,” Nikki muttered. “I want to solve one case; now we’ve got a bonus mystery? I hope for her sake she ran off with a hot boyfriend.”

“That’s not all,” Seley said. “I did a little digging to find out what happened to the son.”

“And?”

“Get this: He enlisted as soon as he turned eighteen, just a couple of months after Ted Duffy’s murder. He didn’t even wait to graduate.”

“I guess he couldn’t wait to get the hell away from the old man,” Nikki said. “Who could blame him? Especially if Dad made Mom disappear. Time to get out of Dodge. Then he dies serving his country. That’s sad.”

“It would be if it were true,” Seley said. “He was given a psych discharge nine years ago.”

“Then what happened to him? How did he die?”

“I’m not convinced he’s dead. Or, if he’s dead, he didn’t die in the state of Minnesota. There’s no death certificate. There’s no obituary anywhere.”

“Ah,” Nikki said. “So you’re thinking he might not be dead; he might just be dead to dear old Dad.”

“Imagine how a psych discharge would go over with that man. I think it’s worth checking into. I mean, Jeremy Nilsen could be dead, or he could be living on the street somewhere. You know, a lot of these guys fall through the cracks in the system and just disappear off the grid. He could be anywhere, doing anything.”

“Keep looking,” Nikki said. She swiveled her chair and sighed. “I was thinking last night that the people close to this murder who were overlooked were the kids. No one really seriously questioned any of them.”

“They were small.”

“Jennifer Duffy was nine. That’s not too young to know what’s going on in the family. Barbie Duffy said that her daughter had a lot of issues afterward. Why? And the foster kids were teenagers. My boys are teenagers. They’re wrapped up in their own stuff, but they’re certainly very aware of what goes on between their dad and me, whether they want to be or not. They hear things, they sense things, it impacts them,” Nikki said, thinking of R.J. and his stomachache of the other night, brought on as much by the tension between her and Speed as by too much junk food after the wrestling meet.

“I haven’t found anything on the foster kids yet,” Seley said. “But I’ve reached out to a woman I know at DCFS. She’ll get back to me.”

Nikki hoped Seley’s connection would make the difference. The system at the Department of Children and Family Services was a maze unto itself.

“Great. In the meantime,” she said, raising her voice, “I’ve got a meeting with Thomas Duffy. I need to ask him how he liked the pancakes at Cheap Charlie’s.”

Grider heard her. She could tell by the way he tipped his head, by the tension in his jaw. He was off the phone now, scribbling notes. He didn’t look at her. She half expected him to ask her if she was running to the lieutenant to tell on him. Then again, if he cared about that, he shouldn’t have met with the man in a public place—not just a public place, a cop hangout.

What was it to him if he got fired? He was already retired. He had his pension. He didn’t need this job. He had only come back to work the Duffy case, and now that the case was no longer his, his number one priority was being a pain in Nikki’s ass. She should have wanted him to get fired, but it seemed like a better idea to keep him where she could see him, no matter how annoying he was.

He sat up straighter as Mascherino came into the office looking all business. But the lieutenant’s sharp blue eyes were on Nikki.