The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(91)

He walked past her without so much as acknowledging that she had spoken.

Nikki stood with her hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched against the damp cold, watching while Nilsen dispatched his attorney. The two men stood arguing at the nose of a black Lincoln parked at the curb. The lawyer finally threw his hands up, got in the car, and drove away.

Nilsen came back up the sidewalk, stopping just short of the steps and glaring up at the officer blocking the way into his home. He was breathing hard from aggravation, his face mottled red. He didn’t want them in his house. There had to be a good reason for that.

Nikki stood on the lawn just a few feet from him, the damp soaking into her shoes. Hands in her coat pockets, she fingered the photographs of Angie Jeager. Just how angry would Donald Nilsen have been to know that his son had a crush on the tart next door?

“Your son, Jeremy, went to school with the Duffys’ foster daughters, didn’t he?”

Nilsen ignored her. She could see his pulse in a big vein on the side of his neck.

“Jennifer, the oldest Duffy girl, told me your son and Angie Jeager were friends. That must have been awkward, considering the names you called those girls.”

“That’s a lie,” he snapped, unable to leave the bait alone.

“Really?” Nikki said. “Why would she lie about something like that?”

He didn’t answer. He shook a finger at the house. “If there’s one thing missing out of that house, I’ll sue.”

“We’re only looking for the .243 and ammunition for it. We don’t have any interest in the rest of your things, though I find it strange that your wife left so much behind when she took off. She must have been in some big hurry.”

Nilsen glared at her, directing his finger her way. “If you touched her things—”

Nikki held a hand up. “I know, I know, you’ll sue,” she said on a long sigh. “So, did Jeremy try to keep it a secret that he was seeing Angie? Or was he one of those kids that just wanted something to throw in your face?”

“I don’t have anything to say to you about my son or anything else.”

“I have to think you would have blown a gasket finding out he was seeing that girl behind your back.”

“He wasn’t.”

“Then why did I find pictures of her in his bedroom?” Nikki asked.

He flinched just enough that Nikki knew she’d struck a nerve.

“I have two boys of my own,” she said. “I know all their little hidey-holes. The trick to that one is reaching all the way in between the mattress and the box spring.”

The pulse in his neck was pounding harder. She could see the wheels turning in his mind.

“He had a thing for Angie,” Nikki pressed. “Was he in love with her?” she asked. “Was that how he disappointed you? Or was he a stalker, like his old man? Was he looking over the fence at that ripe young body, thinking nasty thoughts?”

“Shut up!” Nilsen shouted, suddenly moving toward her aggressively.

From the corner of her eye Nikki could see Stevens, the uniformed officer, start toward them. She raised her hand to hold him off.

“What happened, Donald?” she asked, standing her ground, her focus on Nilsen. “Did that little slut next door ruin your perfect boy? Or did Jeremy just help himself to what he wanted?”

“You shut your filthy hole!” he shouted, his face purple in the bright motion-sensor light that had clicked on at the corner of the porch.

He stopped short of touching her, his hands raised and clenched in front of him as if he might punch her or strangle her. He leaned down over her, trying to intimidate her with his size and with the hate in his narrowed eyes.

“Or what, Donald?” she asked quietly. “You’ll hit me? You’ll choke me ’til I just stop talking? ’Til I just stop breathing? Is that what you did to your wife?”

“You’re nothing but a dirty cunt,” he said, his lowered voice much more effective than his usual shouted tirade. Ranting Donald Nilsen was a man capable of throwing things, hitting things, striking out in a heated moment of rage. This Donald Nilsen, with the cold fury contained within, was the kind of man who would hurt deliberately and with malice aforethought.

“You all are,” he murmured. Then he turned and stalked off to the car parked in his driveway.

“You forgot ‘brilliant,’” Nikki said as she watched him drive away.





27


“I told you, we saw the stuff through the window,” Greg Verzano said for the tenth time.

He flopped sideways on his chair, exhausted and frustrated. He was a smallish, wiry guy in jeans and a New York Giants jersey, a Yankees baseball cap backward on his head. Twitchy. Nervous. He was the kind of guy who wanted everyone to be light and happy, but this was not a light and happy situation.

Kovac sat across the table from him, stone-faced, unamused, arms crossed over his chest. “How’d your fingerprints get in that office? Telekinesis?”

Verzano groaned and slumped forward, grabbing his head with his hands. Mr. Drama. “We saw the stuff through the windows, and we had to go inside anyway to fix the cupboard door in the kitchen. What was it gonna hurt to go look? How many times do you get to see a samurai sword in real life? So I touched it. So what? I didn’t steal it.”