The Bitter Season (3 page)

“But I know this case inside and out! I
know
these people!”

“That’s just my point. I want someone who doesn’t know any of the people involved. Someone who has no preconceived ideas going in. That’s the only way a case this stale has any chance of being solved.”

Grider paced behind the table. Nikki could hear him breathing in and out like he’d run a hundred yards.

“She doesn’t even think the case deserves to be investigated!” he shouted, pointing at Nikki as if he were fingering her for a witch.

“I don’t think it deserves to be a priority,” Nikki corrected him, pushing her chair back and standing. He was still half a foot taller than she was.

“You said it was unsolvable.”

“Well, in twenty-five years you certainly haven’t proven me wrong.”

“So it’ll be just fine with you if you don’t solve it, either,” Grider said sarcastically. “You’ve already got your excuse ready.”

Nikki felt like the top of her head might blow off. Furious, she walked up on him, her hands jammed at her waist. “Are you implying that I won’t do the job? You think I’m a bad cop? Fuck you, Grider! I didn’t ride in here on a powder puff. I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am. I’ll put my record in Homicide up against yours any day of the week. I don’t have any moldy age-old unsolved murders with my name on them.”

Grider looked at the lieutenant. “How am I supposed to work with her?”

“You’re not,” Mascherino said. “You’ve got your own case to work. Take your number two and run with it. Nikki, you’ve got priority for Candra’s time, however you need her.”

Logan unfolded himself from his chair, looking at Nikki. “Press conference at five in the government center.”

“Today?” She glanced at her watch. It was nearly four.

“Plenty of time to go powder your nose and put on some lipstick,” Logan quipped.

“Speak for yourself,” Nikki snapped, gathering her notes from the table. “I’ve got a case to review.”

“The guy’s a freaking twitch,”
Sam Kovac said. “The first thing he did when we got him in the box was puke on the floor.”

He sat at his desk watching the feed from the interview room on his computer screen. His new trainee—he refused to use the word
partner
—was just down the hall, taking his turn trying to get information out of Ronnie Stack. Stack—thirty-four, meth head, bone thin, pasty white—was a nervous rodent type: furtive, thin lips quivering, narrow eyes darting all around the room, rubbing his hands together like he was washing, over and over.

“Is he high?” Tippen asked, watching over Kovac’s shoulder like a vulture. He was built that way, too: long and bony, with a permanent slouch, a beak of a nose, and keen dark eyes. He’d been a detective nearly as long as Kovac, which made the two of them old as dirt.

“No, but I’m sure he wants to be.”

This fact would, Kovac hoped, tip the scales in their favor. Stack wanted out of that room—maybe badly enough to give them what they wanted: information on the murder of a drug dealer known as BB. Stack was a known associate of BB’s, and had reportedly been with the dealer shortly before somebody stuck a knife in his throat and caused him to drown in his own blood.

Stack was not under arrest. This was a noncustodial interview. He was free to get up and leave anytime he wanted. It amazed
Kovac how few people exercised that right. They seemed to think that option was some kind of trick.

“How’s the kid doing?” Tippen asked, helping himself to the other desk chair in the cubicle.

The kid, Michael Taylor, fledgling homicide detective, was Kovac’s third trainee in as many months. Of the other two, one had gone back to his old job in Sex Crimes, and the other had transferred to a sudden opportunity in the Business and Technology unit. Neither had been cut out for Homicide as far as Kovac was concerned—an opinion he had made abundantly clear.

Bottom line: He didn’t want a new partner. He was too old and cranky to break one in. He and Liska had been partners for so long that they were comfortable together, their styles meshed; they had learned to tolerate each other’s annoying habits. They were like an old married couple that never had sex. He wanted that back. Instead, he had to take this kid and try to make him into something he could live with.

Taylor showed some promise, Kovac admitted grudgingly. He had been an MP in the army. After two tours in Iraq he had opted out of the service and come home to Minneapolis. He joined the force and set his sights on making detective, rising quickly through the ranks. He had come to Homicide from Special Crimes, to bulk up his résumé before he was fast-tracked to further stardom. At least, that was what Kovac believed. The kid was too handsome and too sharp to loiter in the trenches with the rest of the grunts. He had Big Things written all over him. His sheer perfection rubbed Kovac the wrong way.

He shrugged at Tippen’s question. “We’ll see.”

He turned up the volume on the computer speakers. Taylor was sitting looking relaxed, looking like he could sit there for the next two or three days. He had his shirtsleeves rolled perfectly halfway up his forearms. Even this late in the day his shirt still looked freshly starched, perfectly tailored to showcase his broad shoulders and trim waist.

“Good thing Liska transferred out,” Tippen said. “She’d be all over Taylor like stink on a billy goat.”

Tippen resembled a billy goat, Kovac thought, with his long homely face, sporting a goatee and mustache these past few months. His vintage beatnik look. He claimed it played well with the coffeehouse chicks.

“The guy is hot,” Tippen went on. “If I was a woman, I’d fuck him.”

Kovac made a pained face. “Oh Jesus, don’t put that in my head!”

“Taylor’s too young for Tinks,” Elwood Knutson announced, joining them in the cramped gray cubicle, and taking up all remaining available space. He was built like a Disney cartoon bear, and had a similar pelt of hair.

“Don’t tell Tinks that,” Kovac advised. “She’ll pluck your eyeballs out and feed them to you.”

“Merely an observation,” Elwood murmured, hunkering down closer to the screen. “She’s not the cougar type.”

“He’s not that young anyway,” Kovac muttered. The kid made him feel like a dinosaur. “He’s thirty-four.”

“And how old are you now, Sam?”

“Old enough to remember rotary telephones. I’ve got shoes older than this kid,” he confessed. “And a couple of neckties, too.”

He turned his focus back to the computer screen.

“You know,” Taylor was saying to Stack, “we’re just not making the progress here I thought we would, Ronnie. You seemed so eager to cooperate, but you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

“Maybe I don’t know anything more than you know,” Stack said, pushing his limp blond hair back from his face.

Taylor shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve overestimated you. I think you want to help us out here,” Taylor said. “BB was your friend, after all.”

Stack’s eyes darted from side to side. “He wasn’t really my
friend
. I mean, I
knew
him, but . . .”

Taylor leaned forward a bit. Stack leaned back.

“Now, there you go, trying to distance yourself when we have witnesses who put you with BB shortly before his death,” Taylor said. “Now you’re suddenly telling me maybe you and BB weren’t such good friends after all when I know you’d been staying at his house. You have to know what this makes me think, Ronnie.”

Stack nibbled at a hangnail as he curled in on himself, turning into a human comma on the other side of the table, trying to make himself smaller and smaller, as if he thought he might eventually become so small Taylor would find him physically insignificant and let him disappear.

“It makes me think maybe we should be looking at you as a suspect instead of a possible witness.” Taylor’s voice was quiet and even, matter-of-fact. “Should we be looking at you that way, Ronnie?”

“N-no.” The twitch wiped his arm across his forehead. “It seems really hot in here. Aren’t you hot?”

“Me? No. I spent two years in Iraq fighting for your freedom in the ninth circle of hell. I know what hot is. It’s not hot in here. I mean, we’ve got the fan going and everything.”

Without another interview room available, they had had a janitor come in and clean Stack’s vomit off the floor, and then had brought in a little desk fan to blow on the wet carpet and dissipate the smell of puke and cleaning agents.

“Did you have some kind of beef with BB, Ronnie?”

“No!”

“Did he have some kind of beef with you? Maybe you pissed him off. Maybe he caught you stealing.”

“No!” Stack protested—too fervently. Like a guilty man. “I’m not like that. I’m a nice person. I’d do anything for anybody. I’d give you the shirt off my back,” he said, tugging at the collar of his dirty, puke-stained, olive-colored sweater. The color made him look like
maybe he had a liver disease—or maybe he
did
have a liver disease. Fucking junkie.

“I’m always getting blamed for shit I didn’t do!” he whined.

“But isn’t it true you were mooching off BB for a long time?” Taylor asked in that calm, even voice that was somehow more unnerving than a shout. “You were sleeping on his couch, eating his food, taking advantage of his kindness.”

“It’s not like I didn’t help him,” Stack said indignantly. “I watched his dogs when he was out of town.”

“You watched his dogs while you were sleeping on his couch and smoking his dope and eating his food and helping yourself to the meth.”

“He owed me something for all I did.”

“You felt entitled,” Taylor said, nodding.

“I did all kinds of stuff for him,” Stack claimed.

“Like selling his dope and sticking the money in your pocket? How did he feel about that?”

“I never did that! He would have killed me!”

“So you did it only while he was out of town and you were looking after his dogs?” Taylor said. “Because you were entitled to that much.”

Stack shifted in his seat, agitated. “No! I told you. BB would’ve killed me.”

“So maybe you beat him to it.”

“I’m really hot,” Stack said, tugging again at the collar of his sweater.

“It’s probably just nerves,” Taylor said. “I mean, here you sit with a homicide detective telling you you might be a suspect in the death of your friend. Maybe I’m trying to visualize you sticking that knife into BB’s neck, shoving that blade down his throat, listening to him gurgle as he drowned in his own blood. Hell of a way to go, sucking that blood down in big gulps.”

Stack twisted and turned in his seat. He looked like he might
puke again. Taylor rose from his chair, smoothing his tie down with one hand.

“I’d be nervous if I was in your place, too, Ronnie,” he said. “You’ve got a couple of drug busts on your sheet already. BB was a drug dealer. Most people won’t have to try too hard to stretch that story to fit. You know what I’m saying? I’ll guarantee a jury isn’t going to be interested in all your ‘poor, poor Ronnie’ sob stories.”

“Fuck you!” Stack spat the words at him.

Taylor ignored the insult. He hadn’t changed the tone or volume of his voice since the beginning of the interview. Pretty damned impressive, Kovac thought, though wild horses couldn’t have kicked that confession out of him.

“Tell you what, Ronnie,” Taylor said. “I’m going to step out for a moment to confer with Detective Kovac. I’ll tell you right now, he wants to hold you on this. He’s not as patient as I am. While I’m out, you try to refresh your memory for me. Otherwise, Kovac’s going to come down on you like Thor’s hammer. Trust me, you don’t want that to happen.”

“Who’s Thor?” Stack asked stupidly. “Oh. Like in the movie?”

Taylor just looked at him, and then left the room.

“Well played, young man,” Tippen said, impressed.

“I like his style,” Elwood agreed.

Kovac growled a little in his throat, as if to say he wasn’t convinced just yet.

As soon as Taylor was out the door of the interview room, Stack got up and started to pace, holding his stomach, bending over a little.

“Oh man. Oh man,” he muttered.

“I don’t know,” Taylor said, joining the small crowd in the cubicle. “We’ve been at this for two hours already and he hasn’t given us anything useful.”

“Except that he now sounds more like a suspect than a witness,” Elwood said. “Well done.”

Taylor shrugged it off. He had shoulders like the fucking Rock. No possible way he bought his shirts off the rack.

“Ronnie Stack didn’t stick a knife in a drug dealer—not face-to-face,” he said. “He doesn’t have the balls for murder.”

“No, but I’d say there’s a good chance he knows who did,” Kovac said. “We’ll go back in together. If he knows anything, he’ll tell us now.”

“Can we take a couple of minutes?” Taylor asked as Sam got up from his chair. “The smell in that room is making me nauseous. I think the dude ate a head of cabbage for lunch. Anyhow, I don’t know how much more we can squeeze out of him before he uses the
L
word.”

“That all depends on what you mean by that,” Elwood said, pointing at the computer screen. “I think he’s about to squeeze out something right now.”

Kovac turned his attention back to the screen. “What the fuck is he doing?”

Ronnie Stack was hopping from foot to foot as he undid his pants, chanting, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”

“Oh no!”

“No fucking way!”

“Aw, MAN!”

Even as they shouted their protests, their interviewee yanked his pants down and squatted over the room’s tiny wastebasket, his ferret face squeezed tight.

“Oooooooh!”

“Not seriously!”

“I’ll call Maintenance,” Taylor said, turning away, looking a little green beneath his tan.

“Good luck with that,” Kovac said. “They’re not coming back after the puke, not the guys on this shift.”

“Welcome to the big leagues, kid,” Tippen said, slapping Taylor on the shoulder. “You scared the shit out of him, you get to clean it up.”

“Noooo, no, no,” Taylor said, shaking his head. “I’m calling in a hazmat crew. I’m ready to puke right now. I’m not going back in there!”

“Somebody better go back in there,” Elwood said, pointing at the screen again.

Stack was crying now, crawling on his hands and knees across the floor, his pants still undone.

“What now?” Kovac asked, watching their person of interest make his way toward the fan. At first he thought Stack was just trying to get away from the smell. Then he picked up the cord of the fan, raised it to his mouth, and tried to bite into it.

“Fuck!” Taylor shouted, bolting for the interview room.

The rest of them watched the action on the screen—Taylor bursting into the room, shouting, yanking the cord of the fan out of the wall before Stack could light himself up like a Christmas tree.

“Oh my God!” Taylor said, reeling at the stench. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

He pursued Stack as the junkie jumped up and stumbled backward, hiking up his pants. “Were you born in a barn? Shitting in the trash can? Seriously? Who does that? We have plumbing here!”

Stack stepped back, stumbled, kicking over the wastebasket and spilling the contents onto the floor. Overwhelmed by the stench, Taylor unloaded his lunch all over their suspect, to the groans and shouts of his fellow detectives.

“The kid gives his all,” Tippen said.

“We’re going to have to burn sage in that room,” Elwood murmured seriously.

Kovac shook his head at the ridiculousness of it all. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

*   *   *

K
OVAC THOUGHT ABO
UT THAT
as he stared into his drink. He wished he was as young as he was the first time he said he was too old. The
big five-oh was looming large on the horizon. He was on the steep downhill side of making his thirty years on the job. He had always said he would make his thirty and move to a climate where he could wear bad Hawaiian shirts year round. Now that thirty was looming on the horizon, he had to admit he hated Hawaiian shirts and that the idea of retirement scared the crap out of him.