“He wasn’t.”
“Then why did I find pictures of her in his bedroom?” Nikki asked.
He flinched just enough that Nikki knew she’d struck a nerve.
“I have two boys of my own,” she said. “I know all their little hidey-holes. The trick to that one is reaching all the way in between the mattress and the box spring.”
The pulse in his neck was pounding harder. She could see the wheels turning in his mind.
“He had a thing for Angie,” Nikki pressed. “Was he in love with her?” she asked. “Was that how he disappointed you? Or was he a stalker, like his old man? Was he looking over the fence at that ripe young body, thinking nasty thoughts?”
“Shut up!” Nilsen shouted, suddenly moving toward her aggressively.
From the corner of her eye Nikki could see Stevens, the uniformed officer, start toward them. She raised her hand to hold him off.
“What happened, Donald?” she asked, standing her ground, her focus on Nilsen. “Did that little slut next door ruin your perfect boy? Or did Jeremy just help himself to what he wanted?”
“You shut your filthy hole!” he shouted, his face purple in the bright motion-sensor light that had clicked on at the corner of the porch.
He stopped short of touching her, his hands raised and clenched in front of him as if he might punch her or strangle her. He leaned down over her, trying to intimidate her with his size and with the hate in his narrowed eyes.
“Or what, Donald?” she asked quietly. “You’ll hit me? You’ll choke me ’til I just stop talking? ’Til I just stop breathing? Is that what you did to your wife?”
“You’re nothing but a dirty cunt,” he said, his lowered voice much more effective than his usual shouted tirade. Ranting Donald Nilsen was a man capable of throwing things, hitting things, striking out in a heated moment of rage. This Donald Nilsen, with the cold fury contained within, was the kind of man who would hurt deliberately and with malice aforethought.
“You all are,” he murmured. Then he turned and stalked off to the car parked in his driveway.
“You forgot ‘brilliant,’” Nikki said as she watched him drive away.
27
“I told you, we saw the stuff through the window,” Greg Verzano said for the tenth time.
He flopped sideways on his chair, exhausted and frustrated. He was a smallish, wiry guy in jeans and a New York Giants jersey, a Yankees baseball cap backward on his head. Twitchy. Nervous. He was the kind of guy who wanted everyone to be light and happy, but this was not a light and happy situation.
Kovac sat across the table from him, stone-faced, unamused, arms crossed over his chest. “How’d your fingerprints get in that office? Telekinesis?”
Verzano groaned and slumped forward, grabbing his head with his hands. Mr. Drama. “We saw the stuff through the windows, and we had to go inside anyway to fix the cupboard door in the kitchen. What was it gonna hurt to go look? How many times do you get to see a samurai sword in real life? So I touched it. So what? I didn’t steal it.”
“So, Mrs. Chamberlain was killed with that sword, Einstein,” Kovac lied. The sword Sondra Chamberlain had been killed with had yielded no usable fingerprints. “And your prints are on it. Do you see how, despite the fact that you are annoying as hell, you’re making my job easy for me?”
Verzano’s eyes went wide, and he threw his hands up in the air. “I didn’t kill anybody! She seemed like a real nice lady. The husband was a prick, but I didn’t kill him, either. I’m not a violent person!”
“You have a conviction for assault in New Jersey.”
“That’s because I’m stupid, not violent!” he said earnestly. “I got into it with a guy over a girl. We were in a bar watching a hockey game. I had too much to drink! I was shit-faced, and here’s this hot chick, and she’s all smiles and batting her eyelashes,” he said, smiling and batting his eyelashes in his best imitation of a pretty girl. “And here comes this asshole in a Rangers jersey—and I’m a Devils fan—and he’s all ‘Fuck off, dude.’ Well, she never said she had a boyfriend, so naturally I took a swing at the guy.”
“You did more than take a swing.”
“I landed a couple of lucky punches. You know I used to box a little,” he said, pantomiming a flurry of jabs and hooks. “And then I was going to switch to MMA and do the whole UFC thing, but then this Brazilian dude kind of fucked up my shoulder ’cause I owed him some money, and then this thing happened with the Rangers fan, and the guy was a dick about it, and he pressed charges.” He shook his head and looked away, speaking to an unseen audience. “The girl wasn’t even good-looking after I sobered up!”
Like that should be considered a mitigating circumstance.
“Franken told me he does background checks on his guys,” Kovac said. “How’d you slip under the radar?”