The Bitter Season

by Tami Hoag

  She had emerged from the bedroom looking like a naughty librarian character from a porno—hair pulled back, a pair of large plastic-rimmed glasses, the white shirt buttoned up to the throat, and a pair of black leggings painted on her long, long legs. Deep red lipstick and lots of black mascara.

  Who put on come-fuck-me lipstick to identify dead family members first thing in the morning? Diana Chamberlain.

  She had preened and pouted and batted her lashes at her little brother in a way that made Kovac’s skin crawl. Taylor watched the show with a serious frown, even when the girl cast him a few come-hither glances. The brother seemed immune to it. Charles Chamberlain treated his sister like a child, even though she was a couple of years older, and physically larger.

  He sighed now and nodded to Taylor. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Kovac kept his gaze on their faces, barely blinking. He knew the second the monitor came on. The young man flinched and turned away almost immediately, swallowing hard and mumbling “That’s him.” Diana Chamberlain stared at the screen, transfixed, unblinking, her face stark white except for the red mouth.

  Taylor spoke into the intercom. “Next.”

  When the image of Mrs. Chamberlain came on the screen, the son turned away, went to the far side of the room, and retched into a wastebasket. Diana continued to stare at the screen, then slowly began to tremble, then shake harder, and harder, like she was having a seizure. Screams tore up from the depths of her soul. Shrieking, she flung herself at the curtained window that separated them from the room where her parents’ corpses lay. Pounding her fists on the glass, she screamed and screamed.

  “Mommy! No! No! No!” she cried, dissolving into racking sobs.

  Taylor leapt toward her, catching her by the arm before she could fall to the floor. Her brother hurried to her, and she draped herself over him, pressing her face into his shoulder as she cried. They sank down on the small sofa, holding each other.

  Kovac glanced at Taylor to see him watching the pair like a hawk, studying their behavior and their body language. There were times to look away and let survivors grieve. This was not one of those times.

  After a few minutes the Chamberlain siblings separated and began to collect themselves. Charles took his glasses off and cleaned them with his handkerchief, his hands trembling. Diana dried her eyes delicately with tissues from a box on a side table. She had had the foresight to use waterproof mascara, Kovac noticed.

  She sniffed and looked up at Taylor from under her lashes. “My mother had a diamond-and-pearl bracelet she would have given to me,” she said softly, her voice fluttering like the wings of a butterfly. “Do you know if that was taken? I would really like to have it.”

  Taylor’s jaw dropped a little, but he recovered well. “Ah, I’ll have to check on that. We won’t be able to release any personal effects for some time, though.”

  “Would you be able to look at your mother’s things and tell us what might be missing?” Kovac asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Charles frowned. “There’s a detailed inventory of everything in the house, for insurance purposes. I helped make the DVD. That’s going to be the most accurate way to do it.”

  “There’s a DVD?” Kovac said. “Great. Do you know where we can find that?”

  “He would have put it in his safe-deposit box at the bank. And the insurance agent has one, of course.”

  “Great. That’ll be helpful. And we’ll be walking through your father’s collection with Ken Sato today, too.”

  The kid didn’t seem to like that idea, either. He looked pointedly away from his sister. “I’d like to be there.”

  “Sorry, but we can’t have a lot of people traipsing through the crime scene.”

  “That’s our home.”

  He didn’t want Diana with them off leash, Kovac thought, and he didn’t like Ken Sato. Did he have suspicions of one or the other? Or was it just habit to be protective of his wack job of a sister?

  “We understand,” Taylor said. “But our first obligation is to protect the integrity of the scene. You wouldn’t want your parents’ killer getting off because someone had accidentally messed up evidence, would you?”

  “No.” He got up to move, nibbling at a hangnail as the wheels in his mind turned. “What happens now? When can we make arrangements?”

  “That’s up to the ME. It could be a few days before the autopsies are done—”

  “Autopsies?” Diana said. “Why do there have to be autopsies? You know they were murdered. Isn’t that enough? You have to have them cut up like meat? That’s sick!”

  “All violent deaths get autopsies,” Taylor explained. “There are a lot of things we can learn about the crime from the autopsy.”

  Staring down at the floor, the brother pressed the heels of his hands into his temples like his head might be about to explode. “This is a nightmare,” he muttered to himself. “I just want it to be over.”

  Kovac didn’t bother telling him they were only just getting started, or that the road ahead was probably going to get rougher before it got easier. He would be the one making it tougher for them, and he wasn’t going to ease into it, either. His obligation wasn’t to Charles and Diana Chamberlain, but to their brutally murdered parents lying on cold steel tables in the next room. Sympathy ranked far below manipulation on his list of job requirements. He could feel bad for them later if they deserved it.

  Diana excused herself to go to the ladies’ room. Taylor escorted her out to the hall to show her where to go.

  “So, Charlie— Can I call you Charlie?” Kovac asked, not to be a buddy, but to pick at the kid’s tight outer wrapper.

  The boy wanted to say no, but didn’t, making a stiff half shrug. “I don’t care.”

  But he did care. He didn’t like it, but he packed his annoyance down and kept it inside. All those years of dealing with a pompous father had taught him to control his own emotions with an iron fist.

  “So, Charlie,” Kovac began again. “Is there a reason you don’t want your sister going to the house without you?”

  “No!” he said too quickly, looking a little startled. He thought he’d hidden it better.

  “You seem to have a calming influence on her. You two are pretty tight.”

  “I know her.”

  “You understand her. There’s a difference,” Kovac said. “I get the feeling you’ve spent a lot of time running interference for Diana, trying to head disaster off at the pass. You’re a good brother. That’s no small job, I’m thinking.”

  “She’s my sister.”

  “You’re protective of her. Why do you think you need to protect her from us? We’re not the bad guys here.”

  He wouldn’t quite make eye contact. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “We’re not the bad guys,” Kovac said again. “I know she’s been in trouble with the police before, but that’s got nothing to do with what I need to accomplish, right?”

  “Her juvenile record was expunged.”

  “I imagine you helped her with that. Good idea. People shouldn’t have their lives ruined because they did some stupid shit as teenagers, right?”

  “Why are you bringing it up, then? And how do you even know about it?”

  “Having a juvenile record expunged means regular people can’t find it,” Kovac said. “I can find it. Arrest records stay in our system for donkey’s years.”

  “Then why do you need me to tell you about it, if you already know?” the kid challenged, scowling.

  “I know what happened—shoplifting, shoplifting, possession of weed, more shoplifting. I want to know why.”

  “Then you should ask her.”

  “I’m asking you for your opinion as her brother.”

  “I already told you she’s bipolar.”

  “I’m not asking for a medical diagnosis,” Kovac said patiently. “A lot of people are bipolar. They don’t all go around taking the five-finger discount at department stores. They don’t all ge
t into hair-pulling catfights at sporting events. They’re not all in and out of rehab in their teens.”

  The kid was stressing, breathing faster, wanting to get away. But it hadn’t occurred to him yet to say, “Fuck off.”

  “It’s important for me to know who all the people close to the victims are,” Kovac explained.

  “Diana wouldn’t hurt our parents,” Charles said defensively, but his eyes glazed with a fine sheen of tears as he said it. Maybe he wasn’t as certain as he wanted to sound.

  “I’m not saying she did,” Kovac said, lifting his hands a little, fingers spread wide. Nothing up my sleeve, kid. “But I don’t know who her friends are, or were. I don’t know that she didn’t—or doesn’t—have some bad boyfriend, back when she was going through her delinquent phase, and that guy knows where her parents live, and what they have. See what I’m saying here, Charlie?” he asked quietly.

  He could see the wheels turning.

  “She’s always been difficult,” the kid said, giving in. “Even when we were little. I don’t know why. Maybe something happened to her. I don’t know.”

  “Something like what?”

  “I don’t know!” he said, exasperated, glancing toward the door, willing it to open.

  “Did your parents talk about something having happened to her?”

  The kid drew a big breath like he was going to say something more, but the words stayed in his mouth as the door opened and Taylor ushered Diana Chamberlain back into the room.

  “Are we done?” she asked. “Can we go home now?”

  “Yeah, we’re done,” Kovac said, resting a hand on Charlie Chamberlain’s shoulder as he walked with him toward the door. Kovac as father figure. “This isn’t something anyone should have to deal with. I know it’s tough. I’m sorry.”

  He sent them home in a cruiser, watching as the car pulled away in the drizzle.

  “Did she come on to you?” he asked, cutting a glance at Taylor beside him.

  Taylor rubbed his stiff neck as he watched them drive away. “Ooooh yeah.”

  “I’d bet my pension she’s been sexually abused by someone somewhere along the line.”

  “Daddy?”

  “You know what they call that.”

  “Incest?”

  “Motive.”

  “Sato said Diana Chamberlain was adopted when she was four or five,” Taylor said as they walked to the car. “That’s got to be tough for a little kid to be uprooted and given to strangers at that age. I’d like to know if she was broken before the Chamberlains got her or what, you know? Does she come from a long line of crazy? I wonder if we can find out.”

  “Depends. Maybe the family lawyer can help us with that. Given that the Chamberlains had some bucks, it might have been a private adoption.”

  “Poor kid. Abandoned by her real mother one way or another, then ends up with an alcoholic and a narcissistic jerk for adoptive parents. That’s some rotten luck.”

  “That’s a petri dish full of resentment, is what that is,” Kovac said, digging the car keys out of his coat pocket.

  Taylor frowned. “I can drive.”

  “You have a head injury.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d really rather not get another.”

  “I got us here, didn’t I?” Kovac said, perturbed, as he slid behind the wheel.

  “Yeah, but that bus—”

  “Was in the wrong freaking lane. How could you see it anyway? You can’t even turn your head.”

  “Well, there are these things on the sides of the car,” Taylor said, settling himself gingerly in the passenger’s seat. “They’re called mirrors.”

  “Whatever. It’s five blocks. Don’t be such a pussy,” Kovac said as he turned left onto Fifth for the short ride from the morgue to City Hall.

  A BMW swerved around them, horn blaring.

  “There’s two lanes for a reason, asshole!” Kovac shouted. “Get the fuck over!”

  Taylor cringed, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “You survived a war, for Christ’s sake,” Kovac grumbled.

  “Only to die in traffic.”

  “Let’s get our minds back where they belong.”

  “The road would be a good start.”

  “I can drive this in my sleep,” Kovac said. “I have. What did you think of the kids’ reactions to seeing their parents messed up like that?”

  “They seemed real,” Taylor said. “Even Diana’s reaction when she saw her mother seemed genuine—genuinely freaked out.”

  “She just stared at her father, like he wasn’t even real,” Kovac said. “Could she be that completely cut off from him in her own mind? Did she not react because she had already accepted that he should be dead? Like maybe she’s pictured him that way a thousand times.”

  “And Mom was a surprise?” Taylor asked, sounding doubtful.

  “Maybe Mom was collateral damage,” Kovac said. “Daddy was the target. Mom’s supposed to be sleeping off her evening bottle of Château Blackout, but she wakes up, hears the commotion downstairs, goes to investigate . . .”

  “Girls don’t go around physically overpowering people, beating people’s heads in,” Taylor argued. “And whoever killed Mrs. Chamberlain didn’t leave that sword in her by mistake. That was an exclamation point. And then we go back to the whole thing about the scene being too tidy and the burglary being too slick. I’m not saying the daughter couldn’t have had something to do with it, but—”

  “But she likes to twist men around her curvy little finger,” Kovac said. “And there’s Sato—”

  “You think she’s not going to flip out on him if he did that to her mother?”

  “That line of thinking would rule out the brother then, too. How could she be around him if he did that to their mother? But she’s hanging all over him like a cheap sweater,” Kovac said. “I wanted to go take a shower watching that. Do you think they’re sleeping together?”

  “The brother and sister? He doesn’t really react to her that way. He seems to know how to handle her. I guess he’s had his whole life to master it.”

  “Yeah. He doesn’t want her alone with us, though,” Kovac said. “What’s he afraid of? What’s she going to let slip? Does he think she did it? Does he think she’ll rat him out? Are they in it together?”

  “We’ll find out today who inherits what,” Taylor said. “What does either of them have to gain besides getting rid of a tyrant?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” Kovac asked. “I didn’t even know the guy, and I want to punch him in the throat. Add the bonus of whatever that collection of his is worth, and what money Mom was worth, insurance policies . . .”

  “I still say the scene says pro,” Taylor said. “My money’s on the handyman.”

  “A drug addict in and out of rehab,” Kovac mused. “Diana Chamberlain has been in and out of rehab. I wonder what the odds are that their paths might have crossed.”

  Kovac’s head was throbbing with the effort to keep all the threads from tangling and something important from falling through the cracks. He had been up for almost thirty hours, and he was starting to feel it. The adrenaline had finally started wearing off as he sat across the table from Dan Franken in an interview room at oh-dark-thirty in the morning while Taylor was at the Hennepin County Medical Center ER getting a head CT.

  Taylor was probably right, Kovac thought. He probably shouldn’t have been driving a car, but he was afraid to stop moving. If he had been sitting on the passenger side, he would have been slack-jawed and drooling, sound asleep with his head against the window. That would have been okay with Liska. They’d been together too long to worry about impressing each other. But he didn’t want Taylor thinking he was too old for all-nighters—even though he was in fact starting to feel too old for all-nighters.

  His mood soured, he parked the car in a space designated for some city councilman he didn’t give a shit about.

  “Ummm . . .” Taylor made a half-assed gesture at the sign as they got ou
t of the car.

  “Screw him,” Kovac growled. He wanted a gallon of coffee to be delivered intravenously, and to eat a greasy donut just to perpetuate the cop stereotype.

  They went into the CID offices and straight to the war room.

  “We got a hit on Professor Chamberlain’s credit cards,” Tippen said by way of a greeting.

  “If you tell me you have a culprit in custody, I’ll kiss you on the mouth,” Kovac said, making a beeline for the coffee maker.

  “Pucker up, pal. Suite three, down the hall.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Detained by security at the Lake Street Kmart. I’ll pass on the kiss, though. People will think we’re in love.”

  “You have a problem with that?” Kovac asked, his mood brightening again with the prospect of a lead. “I’m hurt.”

  “It’s not you, it’s me,” Tippen said, leading the way down the hall. “I’ll only break your heart in the end, my friend.”

  “You’re not my type anyway,” Kovac said as they stopped outside the interview room. “So tell me we have a sword-wielding ninja on the other side of this door.”

  “I never promised you the moon.”

  What they had on the other side of the door was an angry three-hundred-pound woman with a rainbow-colored hair weave and drawn-on eyebrows like the golden arches of McDonald’s. She sat behind the undersize table, her arms crossed atop the wide ledge of her chest, glaring at the cops as they entered the interview room.

  “Sergeant Kovac,” Tippen said, “meet Professor Lucien Chamberlain.”

  “You’re Professor Chamberlain?” Kovac said, straight-faced.

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “And I demand to be released on my own personal renaissance.”

  “Recognizance,” Taylor corrected her. “You can’t get that from us.”

  “What can I get from you, then, you sweet, hot piece of man candy?” she asked, batting her long false eyelashes at him.

  “You’re Professor Lucien Chamberlain,” Kovac said again, moving to block her sight of Taylor. Kovac put his reading glasses on and held up the driver’s license Tippen handed to him, as if to compare the photo to the person sitting before him. “You’re a professor of East Asian history at the University of Minnesota? Five-feet-nine-inch, one-hundred-fifty-five pound Caucasian male Lucien Damien Chamberlain?”