The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(8)

“Speed is taking the boys to a wrestling meet at the U of M,” she said, sliding into the place they had made for her.

“Hot sweaty guys groping each other, and you’re not going?” Tippen asked, arching a brow. “Are you unwell?”

“Momma needs a vodka. What a rotten day.”

“Please. How can you even break a sweat in Cold Case? Your vics have all been dead for years.”

“Like my love life,” Liska lamented on a sigh.

“Maybe that’ll pick up now that you don’t have to worry about going on a date smelling like a fresh corpse.”

“Always looking on the bright side, Elwood. I miss that,” she confessed, looking around. “Where’s the noob? I spent all day staring at Gene Grider’s ugly mug. I need some eye candy.”

“He had to go home on account of the stench,” Kovac said.

They filled her in on the fiasco.

“That’s so gross!” She laughed. “You guys have all the fun!”

“See what you’re missing out on, Tinks?”

Kovac had given her the nickname Tinker Bell on Steroids when she first came into Homicide. Tiny but fierce—and woe to the person who crossed her—she wielded a mean tactical baton. The name had quickly been shortened to Tinks for practical purposes. She was five feet five inches of dynamite with silver-blonde hair cropped short and sticking up all over in one of those trendy finger-in-the-light-socket cuts. Her blue eyes had a gaze that could cut steel.

The waitress brought her a vodka and tonic without Liska having to ask. She took a long drink.

“Don’t rub it in,” she grumbled. “So what happened to the twitch?”

“We had to call him trying to bite through the electrical cord a suicide attempt,” Kovac said. “So, he’s in the loony bin at HCMC on a psych hold. Now, of course, he’s going to get a lawyer, and that’ll be that. Taylor had him that close to spilling his guts,” he said pinching thumb and forefinger nearly together.

“He actually did do that, just not the way you wanted,” Liska said. “I suppose none of you saw me on TV, seeing how you were in the midst of a literal shit storm. The Cold Case unit is officially launched. I’m the poster girl, thank you very much.”

“Did you wear a bikini?” Tippen asked.

“You’re such a perv.”

“Don’t undersell me,” Tippen said, pretending offense. “I am the perv.”

“Whatever,” Kovac snapped, not in the mood for their usual banter. “What case gets the big spotlight?”

“Ted Duffy.”

“That’s stupid,” he said. “No one’s ever going to solve that case. There’s jack shit to go on.”

“My words exactly,” Liska said. “But Grider bullied it through. Then Mascherino gave it to me. I thought Grider’s head would explode.”

“They were pals back in the day,” Kovac said. “Grider and Duffy.”

“Did you know Duffy?”

“Yeah. He was a prick.”

“Salt of the earth, best cop to ever walk the earth—according to Grider.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a prick, too,” Kovac said as he raised his burger to his mouth.

“I’ve already seen that for myself. Was he a good cop? Duffy?”

He chewed, nodded, swallowed. “Yeah, he was. I had just made detective the year Duffy bought it. I was low man on the totem pole in Sex Crimes. Duffy took all the plum cases, the high-profile stuff. But he solved them, so who was going to complain? He was Sex Crimes detective of the year three years in a row. Plenty of rapists and pedophiles hated him. When he got whacked, everybody figured it was someone he’d put away, but nothing ever panned out.”

“And now it’s all on me,” Liska said with a facetious cheer. “Yay!”

“Maybe the new media attention will shake something loose, get somebody to talk,” Elwood said.

“I hope so. After I spent an hour trying to convince everybody the case is unsolvable, I all but guaranteed Grider I can close it.”

“Don’t let your mouth write a check your ass can’t cash, Tinker Bell,” Kovac warned.

She reached over to his plate and stole some French fries, like she always did. “You’ve got to quit eating this junk, Kojak. Between the fried food and the cigarettes—”

“I quit smoking.”

“Yeah, like twenty-nine times. Are you smoking these days? And remember, I asked a question I probably already know the answer to.”

Kovac scowled. “Then you probably also know I’m going to tell you to f*ck off.”

“I expected nothing less.”

This was how it was with them. She nagged him like a wife, always had. But there had never been anything sexual between them. She was more like an annoying kid sister he would have walked through fire for.

He couldn’t fault her reasoning for transferring. She wanted to be a good mother to her boys—and she was. She had managed to raise two good boys with no real help from her jerk-off ex-husband. Kovac just missed her. That was the plain fact of it. They worked well together. He felt a little like he was missing a limb without her.

“Everything changes, Kojak,” she had said to him months ago when she made her decision.