The Liska-Hatcher calendar week for Thanksgiving was double the usual chaos. Kyle got out of school Tuesday, R.J. on Wednesday. Regularly scheduled weeknight events had been canceled or moved because of the holiday. R.J.’s normal night for wrestling was Tuesday, but there would be no meet the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
She thought back on her own high school years—when this crime had taken place. Boys’ sporting events had been held Tuesday and Friday nights. Girls’ events had been held Monday and Thursday.
Ted Duffy had been killed the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
Nikki paged through the witness statements, looking for the name of the high school Angie Jeager and Jeremy Nilsen had attended, and then went to her office, sat down at her desk, and brought her computer to life with a move of the mouse. She typed in the name of the school and, once on the school website, brought up the calendar for the month of November. The Tuesday night before Thanksgiving was marked NO EVENTS.
There was no way of looking up the school calendar from twenty-five years in the past from this site, but the information was out there in the ether someplace. She would put Seley on it. If there was no basketball game on the night in question, then Angie’s and Jeremy’s alibi went out the window.
But why would they lie? Where had they been? Why had nobody really cared? If two teenagers had anything to do with the death of Ted Duffy, why would the people under the most pressure as suspects, Barbie and Big Duff, not have turned and pointed the finger at them?
It didn’t make sense, but Jennifer Duffy and Angie and Jeremy were loose threads in the fabric of the story, and Nikki couldn’t stand a loose thread. She would worry at it and tug at it to see where it led, and if the whole sweater unraveled in the process, so be it.
Of her three loose threads, she had access to only one: Evi Burke. Evi Burke, who didn’t want her husband to know about this chapter of her past—which made little sense, because she had been through far worse, far darker chapters that were common knowledge.
It all worked out for you . . . a faceless voice on the telephone had said to Evi. The idea that her beautiful life was now somehow under threat had Evi Burke terrified.
“I’m sorry, Evi,” Nikki murmured. “I need to know why.”
40
“You realize you’re going away for a long time here, Gordon, right?” Kovac asked casually. “We’ve got a whole grab bag of charges against you. Assaulting an officer, resisting arrest, fleeing the scene, attempted murder of a homeless guy last summer.”
There was a flicker of something in Krauss’s eyes at that last bit, so fast that Kovac couldn’t have named it. It was the first tiny crack he’d seen in Krauss’s armor since they brought him in. They had been in the box now nearly four hours.
“We’ve got a witness who ID’d you as trying to beat his friend’s brains out with a hammer.”
Still Krauss said nothing, but his expression had changed subtly. He looked less self-satisfied. He had played the Zen prisoner, saying nothing, asking for nothing, drinking nothing. Kovac had asked him several times if he wanted something to eat, but had gotten no response. But as cool as Gordon Krauss had played it, he couldn’t keep it up forever. He was probably beginning to dehydrate. His stomach was growling loudly.
Slowly, Kovac had picked away at Krauss’s show of confidence with small, sharp truths. He never raised his voice. He remained genial throughout, indifferent to Krauss’s silence.
“Aaaah,” he said. “You didn’t know I had that in my pocket, did you? You were probably thinking you were in the clear for that. It happened months ago. Just a bunch of homeless junkies having a party down by the river. Who gives a shit what happens to them, right? Nobody came looking for you.
“Turns out they weren’t all high. We’ve got a good witness, sober as a judge, an honest-to-God war hero.” He embellished Liska’s facts. Details made a more convincing story. “And then there’s the fact of those IDs we found in your room at Rising Wings. It’s only a matter of time before we connect them to their owners—living or dead.”
He let that sink in and took a sip of coffee.
“You’re racking up the prison time like a freaking Vegas slot machine on jackpot,” he said. “And all that is just frosting on the cake, really, because I can put you with Diana Chamberlain at the rehab, and at her parents’ house within days of the murders. And she is gonna fucking bury you to save herself. We both know that.”
The corners of Krauss’s mouth turned ever so slightly downward.
“I realize you probably haven’t gotten to watch much TV in the last few days,” Kovac said, “but I have to tell you, she’s a very convincing grieving daughter on camera. Ooooh, those big eyes, that pouty mouth . . . Of course, crazy girls do make the best actresses.”