“Sure.”
He led the way to a slightly messy home office and sat down at his computer. With a couple of clicks of the mouse, he opened his photo app and went directly to a file labeled REMODEL. There had to have been a hundred or more thumbnail snapshots, but he found the one he wanted quickly, and enlarged it to fill the screen. He had a series of five photographs of Donald Nilsen, red-faced, his expression contorted in anger, a small rifle in his hands.
A chill of excitement ran down Nikki’s back. Goosebumps raced down her arms. Her heart had picked up a beat, but she kept her expression calm.
“Look at that lunatic,” Bruce Larson said with disgust. “There are little kids in this neighborhood, and he’s in his yard waving that thing around!”
He looked up at Nikki. “That’s not the murder weapon, is it? I mean, if he did it, he would have been arrested back then, right?”
“Mr. Nilsen had an alibi,” Nikki said. “I’m just covering all the bases. Would you mind e-mailing those five photos to me?”
“Sure, no problem. I’ll do it right now.”
“Thank you.”
*
NIKKI WENT BACK OUT into the miserable drizzle, jamming her hands into her coat pockets and hunching her shoulders against the raw cold. What gray daylight they had had was fading. The streetlights had already come on. Lights had come on inside Donald Nilsen’s house, but not on his porch. He wasn’t inviting anyone to come knocking on his door. Nikki knocked on it anyway.
The old man came and peered out at her through the sidelight, his face sour.
“I don’t have anything more to say to you,” he announced, cracking the door open. He glanced toward the house next door. “Was that faggot complaining about me?”
He had seen her coming from Larson’s house. He probably kept tabs on everyone in the neighborhood.
“I have some additional questions for you, Mr. Nilsen.”
“I don’t have to talk to you,” he snapped. “I know my rights.”
“Fine,” Nikki said. “Then you know you have the right to remain silent and you have to right to an attorney—”
“You’re arresting me?” Nilsen’s face went bright red beneath his white crew cut. “You can’t do that!”
“I’ve got a badge here that tells me I can if I feel the need,” Nikki said, pulling her ID out of her coat pocket and holding it up, selling the bluff. Mascherino wouldn’t approve, but Mascherino wasn’t here.
“I’ve had a long day, Mr. Nilsen,” she said. “And I’m tired and I’m bitchy, and I’m not messing around here. I have reason to believe you’re in possession of a hunting rifle that happens to match my murder weapon. So, if you’re not going to cooperate, I’ll make your life inconvenient just because I can. From what I’ve heard from your neighbors, past and present, you’re more than familiar with that tactic. So let’s get on with it.”
He stepped back, stunned to silence for the few seconds it took Nikki to slip past him into his entry hall.
“I’ll report you,” he threatened, slamming the door shut behind her.
“You do that,” she said. “I could use a vacation. Meanwhile, until I get suspended, I’ll get a search warrant and go through every piece of crap in this house on the grounds that you have a history of making terroristic threats to your neighbors, and because I believe you to be in possession of a rifle of the same caliber used to kill Ted Duffy. How about that? You want to try to trump that?”
“I had an alibi—”
“Had being the important word there. Your wife, who hasn’t been seen or heard from since shortly after the murder.”
He didn’t deny it. He went on the attack instead. “I’ll sue!”
“Well, everybody in prison needs a hobby, I suppose.”
“You don’t have any grounds to arrest me!” he protested, as if saying it again and saying it louder made it so. “I’m a law-abiding taxpayer!”
“Really?” Nikki said. “Let’s start with hindering a police investigation. You lied to me, Mr. Nilsen. You told me your son is dead. Your son isn’t dead, is he?”
“He’s dead to me,” the old man snapped, looking to his living room, where electric logs were glowing orange in the fireplace, and Fox News was playing on the television.
“That’s not the same thing as actually being dead, now, is it?” Nikki said.
She glanced up at the wall over the small cabinet in the entry, at the senior-year photo of Jeremy Nilsen. He was a handsome kid, looking very serious in a suit and tie. A quiet boy, according to Barbie Duffy. Polite. He must have taken after his mother, she thought.
There was no photograph of him in uniform, which struck her as odd. She would have thought Donald Nilsen the type to be loud and proud to have a son serving his country.