The Bitter Season

by Tami Hoag

  “Well, that’s an old picture,” she said stubbornly.

  “Also known as Millicent Johnson, Antoinette LaPort, Robert Milland,” Tippen said, producing an array of credit cards and driver’s licenses as with a magician’s card trick. He plucked one from the rest. “And last but by no means least: Ms. Sparkle Cummings.”

  “Ms. Sparkle, where did you get this ID and credit card?” Kovac asked. “Lucien Chamberlain’s.”

  “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you think.”

  “You’re not a cat burglar-slash-martial arts assassin in addition to your many other talents?”

  “Are you out your mind?”

  “You seem to have a lot of alternate personalities,” Tippen said. “Did you not steal any of them?”

  “I plead the Fifth Commandment.”

  “Your mother and father will be glad to hear it,” Kovac said. “Look, I don’t care about any of the rest of those people. I don’t care how you came to have their credit cards in your possession. I don’t care if you boiled them and ate them. I only need to know where you got Lucien Chamberlain’s cards.”

  She gave him a look. “I’m not going to recriminate myself. I know my rights. This ain’t my first rodeo, handsome.”

  “Indeed, it is not,” Tippen said. “Ms. Sparkle and her alter egos have been guests of Hennepin County on several occasions—shoplifting, possession, vagrancy, public intoxication, and multiple counts of soliciting . . .” He gave the woman a sideways look. “Ms. Sparkle, you naughty girl!”

  She laughed, eyes flashing. “Honey, I ain’t giving all this away for free!” she said with an elaborate gesture to her person.

  “Honest to God,” Kovac said, bracing his hands on the table and leaning down. “I’m not interested in sending you to jail if you help me out here, Sparkle. If you help me out, I’ll help you out. I’ll get you into a shelter if you want. I’ll get you into a drug program if you need it. I will have you relocated like a bear to another part of the city. Whatever you want, sweetheart. I need to know where you got these cards.

  “But if you don’t play nice with me,” he continued, “I’ll flip the switch and be the biggest jerk you ever met. Lucien Chamberlain and his wife are on slabs down at the morgue, and I will be very happy to arrest you for putting them there just because I’m tired and pissed off.”

  “I didn’t kill nobody!” she protested.

  “I don’t care,” Kovac said. “I haven’t slept since God was a child. I will throw you in jail and take a vacation to Bermuda. Where did you get these cards?”

  “I found them!”

  “Found them where?”

  “On the ground next to a garbage can.”

  “Where?”

  The address she gave them was a street lined with check cashing places, bail bonds places, and dive bars; a part of town populated with drug dealers and their customers, homeless people, street hustlers, and prostitutes.

  “When was this?”

  “Yesterday morning,” she said. “I like to get out early and look for treasures. People drop things, lose things, throw all kinds of things away when they’re drunk or high. I found this weave in the trash,” she said, pointing to the rainbow on her head.

  “So these cards were on the ground like somebody just threw them away?” Taylor asked.

  “That’s the God’s honest truth,” she said.

  “You didn’t see anybody drop them or throw them there?” Kovac asked.

  “No. I wasn’t out the night before. The weather was bad. I found them in the morning, on the sidewalk all covered in ice.”

  * * *

  “WHAT THIEF THROWS AWAY CREDIT CARDS?” Mascherino asked. “They use them, they sell them, they don’t throw them in the trash.”

  She had come into the war room for an update and to bring them a gallon of Starbucks and a bag of deli sandwiches. Gold stars for the lieutenant. She sat with them now, nibbling on an egg salad on whole wheat as they filled her in.

  “Unless the idea is to throw us off the scent,” Kovac said. “A misdirection play. We have to run around chasing down these credit cards and whoever happened to get hold of them, wasting time and taking up our manpower while our bad guy is off unloading a fortune in antique weaponry.”

  “We just heard from American Express that Sondra Chamberlain’s card is vacationing without her in Spain,” Tippen said.

  “So was this a theft with two murders thrown in?” Mascherino asked. “Or was it a double homicide and the trinkets were a bonus?”

  “We’ll find out this afternoon what the stolen pieces from the weapon collection are worth,” Taylor said. “Plus Mrs. Chamberlain’s jewelry, and the small electronics.”

  “The other burglaries in the area,” Mascherino said, looking again to Tippen and Elwood. “What was taken?”

  “Small electronics, cash, and jewelry,” Elwood said.

  “Art? Antiques?”

  “No.”

  “Did these homeowners have anything in common?”

  “Anthony and Lillian Johnson are both art history professors at the U,” Elwood said. “That neighborhood is thick with college professors, obviously, but it might be interesting to note the Art History Department and the History Department are both housed in Heller Hall.”

  “What about the other case? Is this a thief targeting university people only?”

  “No. The other house belongs to a CPA and his wife,” Tippen said. “No connection to the U at all. No connection to any of the other victims.”

  “Did any of these people know the Chamberlains?”

  “The professors were acquaintances, not friends.”

  “Lucien Chamberlain didn’t have any friends,” Kovac said.

  “The wives were friendly,” Elwood said. “They served on a museum charity together. Mrs. Johnson is pretty broken up about what happened.”

  “Had any of these people had handyman work done recently?” Mascherino asked.

  “All of them,” Tippen said. “Two different companies. The CPA used Handy Dandy, and the Johnsons used Lundquist Contracting.”

  “What’s the proximity of the two houses from one another?” Taylor asked.

  “Same street, about a block apart,” Elwood said. “So, anyone working either job might have cased other houses in the neighborhood. And these houses are about two blocks away from the Chamberlains’.”

  “So what’s the update on your missing handyman?” the lieutenant asked, turning back to Kovac and Taylor.

  “We don’t have one yet,” Taylor said. “There’s no Gordon Krauss in the system.”

  “The name is probably an aka,” Kovac said. “He came out of a church shelter. They didn’t care what name he used. The rehab took him as a charity case. They didn’t bother with paperwork. Nobody’s checking up on this mutt. He could be anyone.”

  “If we can get our warrant for his room at Rising Wings, we can lift his prints,” Tippen said. “Prints don’t lie.”

  “You’ll have it by the time we finish lunch,” Mascherino said. “Have there been any sightings of him today?”

  “Not that have panned out,” Elwood said.

  “And Michael, how’s your head?” she asked, looking at Taylor.

  “I’m fine, ma’am. A little headache and a stiff neck is all.”

  “Good,” she said. “When is the last time a suspect used martial arts to get away from you—any of you?”

  “Never,” Taylor said. “But if this guy is a veteran, then he’s had some combatives training. And he’s pretty good if he can land a kick like that.”

  “I’ll be interested to see if he has a pair of nunchucks in his room,” Kovac said.

  The lieutenant sighed and pushed the last of her sandwich aside on its little square of brown paper. She may not have been in the office all night, or out in the rain looking for their phantom suspect, but she had stayed late and come in early, and here she was now with her suit jacket off and the sleeves of her crisp white blouse neatly ro
lled up. That was more than Kovac could have said for a lot of lieutenants.

  “I’ve spoken with the Chamberlains’ family attorney,” she said. “He’s been out of the country. He got back late Tuesday evening. He says Professor Chamberlain called his office Monday morning and made an appointment for late Wednesday afternoon.”

  “Did he say what the appointment was for?” Kovac asked.

  “He didn’t know. He said Chamberlain would never have told his secretary. He was a very private man.”

  “He and the daughter were supposed to meet with Ms. Ngoukani at the Office for Conflict Resolution late Wednesday,” Taylor said.

  Kovac arched a brow. “Sounds like maybe he decided he didn’t care to resolve that conflict after all.”

  “But he had to,” Taylor countered, “or he wasn’t getting the promotion.”

  “We’re missing a puzzle piece,” Mascherino said as she rose to leave. “Go find it.”

  Kovac breathed a long sigh and glanced at his watch as the lieutenant made her exit. They had an hour before they had to leave for the Chamberlain house.

  “I’m gonna lock myself in a room for an hour,” he said to Taylor. “Come find me when it’s time to go. Or if you solve the case in the meantime, that’d be good, too.”

  An hour of shut-eye would recharge his batteries enough for him to get through the afternoon.

  He stepped out of the war room and ducked right.

  “Sam Kovac! You’re a sore sight for my eyes.”

  “Oooooh man!” Kovac groaned. “The most beautiful woman in my life, and you have to catch me on the backside of an all-nighter? You’re heartless, Red.”

  “You’re working the latest crime of the century,” Kate Quinn said. “Murder is not a pretty business.”

  He’d been in love with her for years, the girl of his dreams: a tall, gorgeous redhead with a quick mind and a smart mouth. But she had always been out of his league (or so he thought), and she had ended up with an FBI profiler who looked like George Clooney.

  “What can I do for you, Gorgeous?”

  “Can I have a few minutes?”

  “You can have as many minutes as you need,” he said, motioning toward the interview room he had earmarked for his nap. “What’s up? How’s it going at Chrysalis? I saw the piece in the paper. Nice write-up.”

  He had first known Kate as a victim/witness advocate for the county, a job she left when she and the profiler started their family. She came back to the same field, but in the private sector, working part time for the Chrysalis Center as a liaison with law enforcement and the county attorney’s office.

  “Seeing how there’s no end to human depravity, poverty, and cruelty, we’re doing a booming business,” she said, taking a seat. “We’re up to our ears in victims of the sex trade, homeless teenagers who’ve aged out of the foster care system, young women trying to transition out of rehab to make a life.

  “It’s rewarding,” she confessed. “I wish I could give them more hours than I do.”

  “So what brings you here?”

  “One of our social workers got this note in her personal mail yesterday,” she said, handing him a plastic bag with a note inside. “She doesn’t have any idea where it came from, but she’s working with a client who came out of a sex trafficking situation. The pimp is a very bad guy called Drago. He’s at large. Meanwhile, the girl has ratted out her eldest brother for molesting her, and it turns out the family is part of some scary religious cult.”

  “Has anybody else at the center been threatened?”

  “Grace Underhill gets threatened on a semiregular basis because she’s the face of the place, but she hasn’t gotten anything similar to this or anything specific to the Hope Anders case.”

  Kovac turned the note over. “There’s nothing on here that refers to anyone in particular. What makes you think it’s to do with the girl?”

  Kate shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just the only answer we could come up with for why anybody would target Evi. She’s the sweetest thing on the planet. She lives a quiet life. There’s no reason anyone should want to threaten her—except that she’s working with this girl who’s going to eventually end up testifying against several bad people in court.”

  Kovac glanced at the note again.

  I KNOW WHO YOU ARE

  I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE

  “It’s not much, as threats go,” he said.

  “I realize that. Which is why I’m coming to you.”

  “You didn’t just miss me?”

  “Of course I miss you,” she said. “How many Sundays have I invited you over for football? And do you ever come? No.”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  “Yeah, well, there’s that whole having-to-interact-with-people-who-aren’t-cops thing . . .”

  “So what do you want me to do about this?” he asked, handing the note back to her. “There’s been no crime.”

  “You know everybody worth knowing in the department. Can you reach out to someone and get a few extra patrols past her house? Let them know there’s a potential stalker situation. Evi’s husband is a firefighter. He’s gone for twenty-four hours at a time. She’s home alone at night with her five-year-old daughter.”

  Kovac looked at the address. A neat, unremarkable neighborhood full of houses built in the 1940s and ’50s. A mix of blue-collar workers and young professionals starting families.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll make a phone call. No problem. Anything for you, Red.”

  “Thank you, Sam,” she said, standing. She leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re the best.”

  “Yeah, that’s what all the ladies say,” he said sardonically as he saw her to the door.

  Giving up on the idea of sleep, he headed back to his desk to make that phone call.

  18

  “I wish you wouldn’t go,” Charlie said.

  “Why? Are you afraid I’m going to take something?” Diana asked. “Mommy would have given her jewelry to me, not to you.”

  “I don’t care about the stupid jewelry,” he said, shoveling scrambled eggs onto two plates on the breakfast bar. He pushed one of the plates toward her. “Here, eat this. There probably isn’t any jewelry left to go through anyway. It was a robbery.”

  “Then what’s your problem?”

  “It’s just . . .” How to put it into words that wouldn’t set her off? A conversation with Diana was like traversing a minefield. “I just . . . I don’t want them to misconstrue something you might say.”

  “And what do you think I might say, Charlie?” she asked, sitting up straighter, setting her fork aside.

  He cringed inwardly. He could see the storm building in her eyes. “I don’t know. They’re cops. You know they can twist what you say. It’s just better to stand back and let them do their jobs.”

  “Do you think I did it?” she asked, her voice clipped, angry.

  “Diana . . .”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you?” she asked again, sliding off her stool. “Look at me!”

  “No!”

  “Do you think I killed our parents?” She picked up the plate and flung it at him, eggs spraying everywhere. “Fuck you, Charlie! You hated them, too! Daddy treated you like shit, too!”

  This was exactly why he didn’t want her going to the house with the detectives, not without him. Kovac was right: He had spent his whole life running interference for her. Her temper was volatile at the best of times, but now she was emotional and tired, and probably off her medication. She might say anything just to say it, just to be difficult.

  “They’re going to start asking questions about insurance,” he said, “and who inherits what, and—”

  “And I don’t know anything about any of that!” she shouted.

  “No, but you already told them you want a piece of jewelry,” he said. “You told them that Mother would have given you her jewelry—”

  “She would have!”

  �
��That’s not the point! Do you not hear how that sounds? Do you not hear how that must sound to detectives who are looking to put these murders on someone?”

  “You think I’m stupid,” she snapped. “You always think I’m stupid!”

  “I do not!”

  “I’m the one getting my master’s!”

  “I’m the one who studied the law!”

  “You’re a fucking clerk! No wonder Daddy was always disappointed in you,” she said, eyes narrowed like a snake’s.

  The remark cut as sharp as any of the swords in their father’s collection.

  “You’re such a bitch, Diana! I’m trying to help you, and that’s what you say to me?” he said, his voice cracking. “Jesus! I’ve always tried to protect you!”

  “Well, you never have done a very good job of that, have you?” she said bitterly, coldly, glaring at him.

  Tears rose in his eyes and burned like acid. He turned away from her and stood staring out the narrow window that overlooked the parking lot. He couldn’t look at her, not now, not after that.

  He heard the door slam. He didn’t go after her. He leaned his forehead against the cool of the window and started to cry. Through the blur of his tears and the rain on the window, he watched her get into her car and drive away. Then he slid down to the floor with his back to the wall, hugging his knees and burying his face, wishing he had never been born.

  19

  The scene was surreal: Big Thomas Duffy dressed like a cartoon lumberjack in a red plaid flannel shirt over old-fashioned long johns, with hunting boots and an Elmer Fudd–style cap with earflaps. His sidekick: the Method actor from hell. A man in a moose costume, who insisted on speaking in his character’s goofy voice without cease.

  They stood in front of a Northwoods set with cardboard pine trees against a painting of a lake and a full array of camping gear on display like a prize package on a game show.