“It all worked out for you.”
The voice was soft, barely more than a whisper. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Who is this?” she asked again, her voice trembling.
There was no answer. The caller was gone.
Evi tried to put the phone down, her hand shaking so badly she couldn’t get it back in the stand, and it tumbled to the floor.
“Uh-oh, Mommy!”
Mia had come into the room, teddy bear tucked under her arm, her sandy curls tousled.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” she said as she rounded the end of the bed. “It didn’t break. You don’t have to cry.”
Evi scooped her child up into her arms and held her tight, choking back the sobs of sheer panic that clogged her throat. Holding on to her future as she tried to forget her past.
It all worked out for you . . .
32
“You got home really late last night,” Kyle said as he got the orange juice out of the refrigerator.
“We had to execute a search warrant,” Nikki said, stirring the eggs. “It couldn’t wait.”
“You said that wouldn’t happen anymore.”
“It won’t happen very often.”
“You missed jiu-jitsu,” R.J. said, putting the plates on the island. “Matt took us.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll be there next week. I promise.”
“No classes next week,” Kyle said. “It’s Thanksgiving. No classes Wednesday or Thursday.”
Thanksgiving? God, how had that happened? Nikki kept the question to herself. She meant for their lives to be on a more normal track now. She didn’t want them thinking she would forget holidays and important things like jiu-jitsu.
“I don’t have wrestling, either, next Tuesday,” R.J. reminded her.
“I get out of school Tuesday,” Kyle added.
“Make sure all of this is on the calendar, please,” Nikki said, dishing up their eggs. She cut a glance across the room to the whiteboard calendar that was awash in a rainbow of colored marker for this school function and that activity.
“You’re not gonna forget to buy a turkey, are you?” R.J. asked.
“No, I’m not gonna forget to buy a turkey.”
Mental note: Order a fresh turkey at Lund’s.
“You’re a turkey,” Kyle said, flicking scrambled eggs at his brother.
“You’re a dork,” R.J. shot back.
“You’re both going to be late for school,” Nikki said. “Eat up and hit the road.”
*
SHE MADE PHONE CALLS from the car before pulling out of the driveway and heading downtown. Evi Burke: No answer. Jennifer Duffy: No answer. Donald Nilsen: No answer. No surprise.
Wanting to know the minute he came back from wherever he had stormed off to, she had put a unit on Nilsen’s house the night before. She wished she could have put a tail on him the minute he left the property, but Mascherino had nixed the idea. Nilsen’s itchy trigger finger for lawsuits had bought him his freedom for the evening.
She wondered where he’d gone. To a bar? To a girlfriend? She couldn’t begin to imagine that. To a hooker? There was an ugly thought. Donald Nilsen, with his hatred and disdain for women, with his hair trigger for violence, was every prostitute’s worst nightmare.
Immediately Nikki thought of the other Duffy foster child, Penny Williams, found dead in an alley only months after Ted Duffy’s murder. Nikki had the case file on her desk. Had Penny Williams known something about the Nilsens, father or son? There had been no statement from or about her in the Duffy case file. There had been practically nothing in the file about Jeremy Nilsen, or Angie Jeager.
Either I’m a genius or an idiot, she thought as she headed into the office. She believed she was on the right track—the track no one else had gone down. But sometimes the road less traveled was less traveled for a reason—because it led nowhere.
In need of caffeine, and secretly hoping for camaraderie, she went into Kovac’s war room.
He looked up at her from where he sat alone at the table, going through statements. He looked freshly showered and shaved, and not nearly as bleary-eyed as he had the last time she’d seen him.
“Oh my God, did you actually go home last night?” she asked. “You’re getting soft in your old age.”
“What?” he barked. “They don’t have coffee back in the broom closet?”
“Yeah, but it’s not nearly as bad as this,” she said, pouring herself a mug of sludge. “Have you caught your ninja yet?”
“Nope. This case is like a big grab bag full of broken glass and venomous snakes. Yours? Did Herb Peterson have anything for you?”
“Who?”
“Herb Peterson. The retired cop you were so hot to talk to yesterday when you tracked me down at Cheap Charlie’s.” He gave her a knowing look. “Tinks, I think you miss me.”
Scowling, Nikki slid down on the chair across from him. “Of course I miss you. Don’t be an ass about it.”
“It’s what I do best.”
“You’re coming to Thanksgiving,” she said bluntly, absently looking over the writing on the big whiteboard. “It’s next week, in case you’ve forgotten. Who has the neat handwriting?”