The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(61)
“That’s not the point! Do you not hear how that sounds? Do you not hear how that must sound to detectives who are looking to put these murders on someone?”
“You think I’m stupid,” she snapped. “You always think I’m stupid!”
“I do not!”
“I’m the one getting my master’s!”
“I’m the one who studied the law!”
“You’re a f*cking clerk! No wonder Daddy was always disappointed in you,” she said, eyes narrowed like a snake’s.
The remark cut as sharp as any of the swords in their father’s collection.
“You’re such a bitch, Diana! I’m trying to help you, and that’s what you say to me?” he said, his voice cracking. “Jesus! I’ve always tried to protect you!”
“Well, you never have done a very good job of that, have you?” she said bitterly, coldly, glaring at him.
Tears rose in his eyes and burned like acid. He turned away from her and stood staring out the narrow window that overlooked the parking lot. He couldn’t look at her, not now, not after that.
He heard the door slam. He didn’t go after her. He leaned his forehead against the cool of the window and started to cry. Through the blur of his tears and the rain on the window, he watched her get into her car and drive away. Then he slid down to the floor with his back to the wall, hugging his knees and burying his face, wishing he had never been born.
19
The scene was surreal: Big Thomas Duffy dressed like a cartoon lumberjack in a red plaid flannel shirt over old-fashioned long johns, with hunting boots and an Elmer Fudd–style cap with earflaps. His sidekick: the Method actor from hell. A man in a moose costume, who insisted on speaking in his character’s goofy voice without cease.
They stood in front of a Northwoods set with cardboard pine trees against a painting of a lake and a full array of camping gear on display like a prize package on a game show.
This Big D Sports camping package can be all yours, Nikki Liska! Or would you rather have a BRAND-NEW CAR?!!
I’d take the car, she thought. Camping was one of the few things Speed did well with regard to his boys. Nikki’s idea of roughing it was a hotel room with no mint on the pillow at bedtime.
Crowding around Duffy and his moose pal was the crew, there to shoot a Big D commercial wherein Duffy would take ad time to talk about his brother’s case. And gathering around that crowd was the KTWN news crew, shooting the footage of the production in order to use pieces of it in their news segment. Crowding around all the cameras were the lunch-hour shoppers at Big D Sports, as goggle-eyed to see their local celebs, Big Duff and Melvin D. Moose, as they would have been to see actual movie stars. Nikki wanted to pull an arrow out of the quiver in the display beside her and stab herself in the eye.
The point of the ad, and the news segment they would be shooting, would be for Big Duff to announce the increased reward money for information leading to the arrest of his brother’s killer. A good idea on paper, but the reality of a big reward on a cold case was usually a lot of false leads that tied up investigators’ time and yielded nothing. If no one had come up with a viable lead for fifty thousand dollars in the last twenty-five years, chances were not good of anything real materializing now.
Still, Nikki knew that any publicity for the renewed effort at solving the crime held some slim chance of reaching the ear of the right person with the right piece of information. She had to take the opportunity no matter the odds. She should have been glad Thomas Duffy was willing to spend his company’s money and ad time asking for information from the public. This wouldn’t be just a sixty-second segment on the news that people might blink and miss while they were passing the potatoes at the supper table. People loved Big Duff and Melvin D. Moose. They would pay attention to the ads. Still, it rubbed her the wrong way. It was still a commercial for Big D Sports with a “By the way, if you happen to know anything about my brother’s murder . . .” thrown in; a “Hey, we’re offering this big-ass reward . . . and THE LOWEST PRICES IN THE TWIN CITIES!” kind of a thing.
She watched the show, standing at the edge of it, her arms crossed, foot tapping, her expression set in stone—a stark contrast to the delighted faces of the shoppers around her. They were loving it. Take after take after take. The moose kept messing up and then falling into comic antics that had the crowd in stitches. Nikki wanted to step in and beat him like a cheap pi?ata.
Finally the set was restaged for the interview. They all sat on camp stools around a fake campfire, looking like characters in a piney woods Fellini film: the news reporter and Nikki in business attire, Big Duff still in costume, and the stupid f*cking moose. Theater of the absurd, Minnesota style.
“. . . and how do you feel about Big Duff’s efforts to promote the case, Detective?” the reporter asked.
“Anything that might bring attention to the search for Ted Duffy’s killer—”
“That’s right!” Big Duff interrupted, trampling over Nikki’s airtime. “We want people to remember! My brother was a decorated police detective! If anyone can remember any detail about that day, call the hotline! The reward for information leading to a conviction of my brother’s killer is up to one hundred thousand dollars! One hundred thousand dollars!”
By the time the fiasco was over, Nikki’s head was throbbing to the point that she wanted to grab a camping hatchet and put herself out of her misery.