“So the neighbor you didn’t get along with gets murdered, and within two months, your wife disappears and your kid drops out of school and joins the army,” she said. “Is there a reason nobody wanted to stick around for you, Mr. Nilsen?”
“He wanted to be a soldier,” Nilsen said. “He turned eighteen and signed up. I couldn’t stop him, and why would I? Saved me having to pay for college.”
“And maybe you gave him a little push out of the nest,” Nikki said. “Maybe that’s why you’re lying to us now. You don’t want us talking to him about what happened to Ted Duffy.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So what’s your problem, anyway?” she asked. “Your son served his country. You should be proud of that. What kind of father isn’t proud of that?”
Nilsen made a bitter face and tried to turn away, waving a hand at her, as if to make her disappear.
Nikki put herself in front of him again. “Are you ashamed of him because of the psych discharge?”
“He’s weak,” he grumbled. “Like his mother. He always was.”
“He joined the army,” Nikki said. “He served in combat. That sounds like the opposite of weak to me.”
“You don’t know anything about it!”
“You’re pissed off at him because war wounded his mind?”
“He’s an embarrassment! He always was.”
“No. I see who the embarrassment in this family is,” Nikki muttered.
Nilsen wheeled on her like a wild animal, coming at her, screaming in her face, “You don’t know anything! Get out of my house! Get the fuck out of my house!”
Nikki stumbled backward and banged hard into the small cabinet, knocking a pile of junk mail to the floor and tipping over the small lamp. Nilsen drew his fist back as if he meant to strike her. Nikki drew her gun and pointed it in his face.
“You need to seriously rethink your attitude, Mr. Nilsen,” she said calmly. “Back off. Now.”
He took a step back, huffing and puffing, his eyes still bulging in his red face. “You provoked me—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Nikki snapped, lowering the weapon. “I’d ask if you’re senile, but according to the Duffys, you were an asshole twenty-five years ago, so I have to assume nothing has changed.”
He started to grumble something else. She cut him off with a look.
“I should haul you in right now,” she said. “You’re damn lucky I didn’t pull the trigger. If I made decisions the way you do, you’d have a hole in your head the size of Iowa right now.”
Her brain was already rushing ahead to the hassle of taking him in and charging him with attempted assault. It wouldn’t be worth the paperwork. He would be seriously inconvenienced, but so would she, and at the end of the day he would get kicked loose anyway because he was an elderly taxpaying citizen no one would consider anything more than a harmless old nuisance who hadn’t actually laid a hand on her.
She would miss dinner with the boys.
“Where’s your son?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I swear to God, Mr. Nilsen—”
“I don’t know!” he shouted. “I don’t want to know.”
“Where was he the last you knew?”
He looked down at the floor and mumbled, “The VA hospital.”
“When was that?”
“Years ago.”
“You haven’t had any contact with him at all?”
“No.”
Nikki stared at him for a long moment, wondering what could ever make her cut ties with one of her boys the way Donald Nilsen had with his. She couldn’t think of anything. They were a part of her and she was a part of them, no matter what.
She wondered if Donald Nilsen’s wife felt the same way, wherever she was. Maybe they were together someplace, mother and son, living in paradise without the man who had undoubtedly made their lives miserable. But Nikki didn’t really believe that. In her experience, most stories like this one didn’t have a happy ending. Damage didn’t get undone.
Donald Nilsen had gotten a good look by previous investigators. None had considered him a strong suspect. At the time of Ted Duffy’s murder, Nilsen’s wife was around to give him an alibi. Later, no one believed he had sufficient motive. But he’d felt he had sufficient motive just now to haul off and clock a police detective for punching his buttons. He’d felt sufficient motive to threaten the neighbor’s dog with a rifle for taking a crap on his grass. How much motive did a man like this need?
“Barbie Duffy told me you took a little too much notice of the two foster girls living with them, and that Ted had a talk with you about it. What do you have to say about that?”
Nilsen glared at her. “Nothing.”
“If I go digging back into your history, am I going to find anyone who accused you of messing with young girls?”
“I never did!” he protested.
He didn’t say no one had ever accused him. He denied the charge.
“Do you own a .243 deer rifle?”
“No.”
“Have you ever?”
“No.”
“You’re lying. I just saw five photographs of you holding that gun. You threatened to kill your neighbors’ dog with it.”