“Mrs. Duffy, let me be perfectly clear with you on this,” she said. “I think your husband’s case is a difficult one. I believe we have a lot of other cases pending that are more solvable. But this is the case I’ve been assigned. It was assigned to me specifically because I have no history with it. I have no preconceived ideas about anyone involved. That will allow me to pick up on things a detective who has been over this ground many times may have overlooked. And now that the case is mine, I will dig at it like a terrier. If there’s anything to be found, I’m going to find it. If it’s even remotely possible to get my hands on the person who killed your husband, I will.”
Barbie Duffy clapped her hands slowly, a sardonic smile twitching up one corner of her perfectly painted mouth.
“Points for a passionate speech,” she said. “You should have saved that for a camera.”
Nikki wanted to call her a bitch for the remark, but she wouldn’t. She had dealt with hundreds of family members of homicide victims over the years. No two reacted exactly the same way. No two had exactly the same experience. And she had been at the center of a number of high-profile cases where the pressure of the media was so intense and abrasive, and the public scrutiny so harsh, that it was crushing.
Still, she couldn’t imagine losing a loved one and just letting go of the fact that someone had ended that person’s life with malice aforethought. As many times as she had wanted to kill Speed with her bare hands over the years, she would have gone to the ends of the earth to track down someone who had killed him. He was the father of her boys. She owed them that much.
“Does your husband feel the same way?” Seley asked Barbie Duffy, breaking the silence. “We were told this morning he’s willing to up the reward for information leading to an arrest.”
Barbie Duffy closed her eyes and sighed, shaking her head. “Of course he is. Duff wants it solved. It nearly destroyed him when Ted died. Ted was his little brother by twelve minutes. Duff went through depression, alcohol abuse . . . He was so angry. It took a long time for him to come to some kind of resolution. But every time you people come around trying to peddle hope, he buys a load of it and then is crushed all over again when nothing happens.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Nikki said, “because the first thing I learned when I started working Homicide is that I work first for the victim, and my obligation to the victim is to get them justice. It can’t matter to me if you want to do this or not. I have to ask the questions and dig through this. I’m sorry.”
“I doubt that you are,” Barbie returned. “Being the one to solve Ted’s case would be a nice feather in your cap, wouldn’t it, Detective?”
“Why are you trying to make me your enemy?” Nikki asked.
“It’s not personal. I don’t know you. I don’t care to know you. I just don’t want to do this again.”
“So you think you might as well make a bad situation worse by being difficult? You should consider going back to school. You’d make a hell of a lawyer.”
Barbie laughed at that. “Don’t forget I know exactly how much of an insult that was. I was married to a cop.”
“And how was your marriage in the months leading up to your husband’s murder?”
She arched a brow. “Oh, you’re going straight for the jugular. You forget, I’ve been asked these questions a thousand times. You aren’t going to shock me or surprise me.”
“Good. Then we can skip over the niceties. How was your marriage in the weeks leading up to your husband’s death?”
“It was very ordinary for people married ten years with three kids and not quite enough money. It was a partnership. Ted had his job, I had mine. When we had time together, we were too exhausted for sex, so we argued about money instead. Occasionally we both got enough sleep to wake up and remember how much we used to like each other.”
“Were either of you dissatisfied with that arrangement?”
“I think both of us were dissatisfied with that arrangement, but that’s life. At that stage of the game, I didn’t know any couples that were entirely happy. Are you married, Detective?”
“Divorced.”
“Kids?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have enough time for everything? Is there ever enough money? You dumped your husband for a reason—or he dumped you.”
“I dumped him for a reason, all right,” Nikki said. “What about Ted? Was he the kind of guy who fooled around? And remember: I am a cop, and I know cops. My ex was a cop. I know that animal.”
“I don’t know if Ted was fooling around,” she said, glancing down at the arm of her chair, pretending to pick at a piece of lint. “I was too tired to care at the time.”
“So you wouldn’t know if there was a jealous husband or boyfriend who might have wanted to eliminate the competition?”
“No.”
“How was Ted acting around that time? Up? Down? Distracted?”
“Well . . . he was either the most generous, caring guy you’d ever met, or the biggest prick on the face of the earth. It depended on what kind of case he was working. The sicker and more depraved the case, the darker and angrier he was.”
“Did he talk about his cases with you?”
“No. He said the things he had to deal with were too horrible to bring home. He didn’t want it touching the kids,” she said. “He’d been glum. He always hated this time of year—the shorter days, the rotten weather. He always complained that everything died in November. I always thought he had that seasonal disorder. But the Duffy men are just prone to their moods. That Black Irish thing, you know.”