“I don’t have any reason to believe you can do what nobody else has done in twenty-five years,” he said. “All you’re going to do is upset my wife and family. You’re just going to ask the same damn questions and get the same damn answers every other cop has.
“Isn’t that what you came in here to do?” he asked. “Where was I the day my brother died? Was I having an affair with Barbie? Did we kill him for the insurance money? Blah, blah, blah. The same fucking five questions over and over. Excuse me for not being excited about that or excited about you.”
Nikki considered what he said as she looked at the calendar of UFC ring girls hanging on the wall above a tall filing cabinet. Thanksgiving weekend was X’d out for his annual hunting trip.
Nothing changed. Every year was another year his brother was dead with no resolution to his murder. Every year on the same weekend in November he went to Wisconsin to hunt. Every year he and his buddies probably sat around the fire at the cabin and toasted his absent twin. And every time his brother’s case got dragged back out, the same questions and the same theories were raised, with no result.
If Thomas Duffy had been telling the truth all these years, he had nothing new to offer. If he had been lying all these years, why would he stop now?
“You know, you’re right,” she conceded. “There’s no point in me asking you the same questions every other detective has already asked you over and over. You’re not going to tell me anything you didn’t tell anyone else. And the same answers aren’t going to get this case solved. It’s Einstein’s definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
“So I’m not going to ask if you killed your twin brother to collect on the insurance so you could sink the money into the business,” she said. “Or if you killed him because you were fucking his wife. Or both. You wouldn’t tell me if you did.”
“I didn’t.” The desk chair groaned as he leaned back and spread his hands. “So, what’s the point of you being here?”
“I like to know exactly who I’m dealing with,” she said. “And I want you to know exactly who you’re dealing with.”
“Am I supposed to feel threatened or something?”
“Not unless you’ve done something wrong.”
“I’ve got some parking tickets I haven’t paid,” he said with a self-amused smirk. “You probably know some meter maids. Maybe you can take care of that for me.”
“Boy, those meter maid jokes never get old,” Nikki said, putting the thinnest veneer of amusement over a pained smile. “Feel free to call me if you come up with any more of those gems.”
She stood up, took a business card out of her coat pocket, and placed it on the blotter in front of him.
“In the meantime, I’m going to do everything I can to solve your brother’s murder. I’m going to look for things nobody else thought to look for. I’m going to talk to people nobody else bothered talking to. Because those are the people who see things—the ones nobody notices. And maybe they haven’t talked before because nobody asked them, or maybe they haven’t talked because they didn’t realize they had anything relevant to say.
“That’s who’s going to solve this case,” she said. “Me, and someone nobody ever thought about—a clerk at a convenience store, a neighbor looking out a window, a child nobody paid any attention to.”
“Yeah?” Duffy said, clearly bored with her. He picked up her card and tossed it on a pile of junk mail. “Well, you be sure to call me when that happens.”
“You’ll be the first to know. Maybe you can give the reward to that person here in the store, give them one of those giant checks. They can get their picture taken with the moose. Great publicity.”
He made a face that looked like he had a toothache.
“You have a nice day, Mr. Duffy,” Nikki said. “Don’t forget about those parking tickets. They have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass. The past always does.”
*
TED DUFFY’S ELDEST DAUGHTER, Jennifer, now thirty-four, worked as a librarian at the Pierre Bottineau Library, five minutes northeast and across the Mississippi from downtown Minneapolis. Single, she lived in an apartment within walking distance of her job.
Seley’s research had returned nothing remarkable on Jennifer Duffy. She had graduated in the middle of her class in high school and in the middle of her class in college. She had never done anything to make herself stand out in any way. Her mother had talked about her extensive history of therapy, to deal with the aftermath of her father’s death, but if she had ever taken her troubles in the direction of drugs or alcohol, she had done so quietly. She had no police record of any kind.