Finally the set was restaged for the interview. They all sat on camp stools around a fake campfire, looking like characters in a piney woods Fellini film: the news reporter and Nikki in business attire, Big Duff still in costume, and the stupid fucking moose. Theater of the absurd, Minnesota style.
“. . . and how do you feel about Big Duff’s efforts to promote the case, Detective?” the reporter asked.
“Anything that might bring attention to the search for Ted Duffy’s killer—”
“That’s right!” Big Duff interrupted, trampling over Nikki’s airtime. “We want people to remember! My brother was a decorated police detective! If anyone can remember any detail about that day, call the hotline! The reward for information leading to a conviction of my brother’s killer is up to one hundred thousand dollars! One hundred thousand dollars!”
By the time the fiasco was over, Nikki’s head was throbbing to the point that she wanted to grab a camping hatchet and put herself out of her misery.
“Mr. Duffy,” she started as the news crew packed up and the moose went to the customer service area to sign autographs. “I need to speak with you privately—”
“Yeah, sure.” He didn’t look at her. “Thanks, Melvin!” he called out, waving to his cohort. “Kids! Be sure to get your picture with Melvin!”
“Mr. Duffy,” Nikki started again.
“Great ad, don’t you think?” he said, still more interested in his customers than in her. “I think we might get something off that.”
She wanted to ask if he meant sales or information. “It’s possible—”
“People love that damn moose! They’ll pay attention because of that damn moose!” He laughed, amused at his stroke of genius in creating the character of Melvin.
Nikki wanted to kick him in the balls to get his attention on her. He was her least favorite kind of man: the kind who only talked, and who never listened to a woman. A woman’s part in a conversation with this Neanderthal was as a placeholder, a blah-blah-blah while he thought of the next brilliant thing he wanted to say.
He chuckled to himself. “That goddamn moose!”
Nikki waved a hand in front of his face. “I don’t give a shit about the fucking moose,” she said, loud enough that several shoppers in line for autographs turned with expressions of shock and disapproval.
Duffy looked down at her as if she had just sprung up out of the ground like an unpleasant little forest gnome in his surreal camp scene.
He frowned at her. “I heard you had an attitude.”
Nikki forced an unpleasant smile. “I can’t imagine where you heard that. Do you have an office we can go to, Mr. Duffy?”
He led the way to the back of the store, pulling his hat off to reveal thinning black hair shot through with gray. They passed the restrooms and the employee break room, which smelled of reheated chili and microwave popcorn. At the end of a hallway, Duffy opened a door and walked into the office ahead of her.
“I’ve told this story a hundred times to a dozen different cops,” he said, rounding his messy desk to drop into the well-worn leather executive’s chair.
The store was the Big D flagship off 494, near the Mall of America, a bright, modern building, but the office chair looked like it had been with him from the early days. The wall behind him was dominated by a stuffed blue marlin and a poster of a pair of scantily clad sex kittens posing with hunting rifles.
Nikki sat down across from him. He was a big man, on the flabby side, his face heavy with the beginnings of jowls. With the goofy cap off, the makeup he was wearing for the television camera stood out: clownish red rouge, eyebrow pencil and mascara, black powder to darken his five o’clock shadow.
“And now we have to start all over again with you,” he said, none too pleased about it.
“I continue to be confused by the low standard everyone involved in this case seems to have,” she said.
He gave her a look that said she should know better. “It’s been twenty-five years.”
“You think the case can’t be solved? Is that why you doubled the reward? Because you don’t believe you’ll ever have to cough up a hundred thousand dollars?”
“Every detective in the city was on this case when Ted was killed,” he said. “Are you better on a cold case than every detective in the city on a fresh case put together?”
“You don’t know that I’m not,” she said, “despite what Gene Grider might have told you over your Corn Flakes this morning at Cheap Charlie’s.”
He sat up a little at that, frowning at the idea that he might have underestimated her. Clearly Grider hadn’t gotten through to him with the news that she had seen the two of them together.
“I keep hearing how close you were to your brother,” she said.
“I loved my brother. He was my best friend every day of my life since before we were born. And every year, at this shitty time of year, I get reminded that someone killed him and he’s never going to be in my life again. And that sucks like nothing else I’ll ever know.”
“Then you ought to be rooting for me.”