The Bitter Season

by Tami Hoag

  “Do you want to pursue any of that?” she asked.

  “Do you think Ted Duffy doesn’t deserve justice?”

  “I think life dealt out crueler justice than any of these people had coming,” Nikki said, the sadness of that truth heavy on her shoulders. She tried to shrug it off. “But I’m just a cop. I do what I’m told.”

  Mascherino arched an eyebrow, but made no comment.

  “Where’s the son?” Logan asked.

  “His dental records are a match for a John Doe death last summer,” Seley said. “A body found snagged under some branches in the Mississippi. A probable homicide victim. His ID was found in possession of Gordon Krauss, a man who has been identified as having committed assault on a homeless man near the river in June.”

  Logan sighed and swiveled his chair. He had jerked his tie loose at the end of the day. His shirtsleeves were rolled up as if he had been doing physical labor. “So what you’re saying is you’ve got nothing for me to prosecute.”

  “Who’s left?” Nikki asked. “Evi Burke? The then teenage rape victim of a celebrated detective? Do you want to open that can of worms? What do you try to pin on her? Conspiracy? Accessory after the fact? What’s the point? I think if you talk to the Duffy family, they won’t want you to pursue this. They didn’t want the case reopened in the first place.”

  It was Logan’s choice. As the county attorney’s number one, he had prosecutorial discretion, the power to pick and choose cases. But he was a realist and a politician, and there was nothing to be salvaged from this sad mess of a case. He nodded and smiled, conceding defeat graciously. “Happy Thanksgiving, Detective Liska. Close the case. Pick a winner off the pile when you come back from the holiday.”

  49

  “Man, that’s cold,” Tippen said as they stared at the computer screen.

  The photographs had been pulled off Charlie Chamberlain’s cell phone: One close-up of Lucien Chamberlain’s crushed, bloody skull, eyeball dangling from the socket. And one taken from slightly farther away to include the murder weapon, the nunchucks that lay within reach of the professor’s hand, as if he had done this to himself.

  In a way, he had, Kovac thought. He had spent twenty-four years breaking down the psyche of the son who had turned on him.

  They were in the war room, putting the case to rest. The whiteboards had been erased, the paperwork filed and boxed up. The case that had consumed their every waking moment for days was officially over, but they rehashed the details as they wound down, trying to make sense of it all as the adrenaline receded. As if there was any sense to be made of the dark twists and turns taken by the human mind and heart.

  Diana Chamberlain, so fond of shooting spontaneous videos on her phone, had been recording her father’s birthday dinner when the argument began. They started with potshots at one another, she and Lucien, taking aim like snipers. Then a quick show of their mother’s nervous disapproval, and Charlie scowling at the camera even as he tried to play diplomat.

  Bit by bit, the foundation of civility eroded away beneath them. Lucien berated Diana for making the complaint to the Office for Conflict Resolution. He called her names, questioned her intelligence, and speculated about her true parentage, since she clearly was no daughter of his.

  She struck back with “I’m fucking Ken Sato.”

  As family fights went, it was as nasty a verbal bloodbath as Kovac had seen in a while. There were few cutting instruments on the earth as razor-sharp as an articulate tongue fueled by bitterness and alcohol. The words cut to the bone and lacerated the heart.

  Diana had tried to drag Charlie onto her side of the argument. He tried to remain the voice of reason. She lashed out at him like a viper. The pain in his expression was more eloquent than words.

  “He killed them for her, though,” Taylor said. “He stole his mother’s cell phone that night so he could access the security system through the app. The call from Sondra’s phone to Charlie’s phone the night of the murders pinged off the tower nearest Charlie’s apartment.”

  “He got plenty of satisfaction out of it, though,” Kovac said, gesturing to the images on the computer screen. “He probably fantasized about it for years. He took the pictures so he could relive the thrill.”

  Liska had told them that during the standoff in the Burke house, Charlie spoke repeatedly of “closing the circle.” He killed the father who had constantly belittled him, and the mother who had allowed that to happen. He slit the throat of the sister he loved too much, and then tracked down his birth mother to end it all.

  John Quinn, Kate’s husband, a renowned criminal profiler, told Kovac that Charlie Chamberlain ticked off many of the boxes of a type of killer known as a family annihilator. Abused as a child, feeling inadequate and powerless, having the need to exert strict control over as many aspects of his life as possible. While he had undoubtedly killed his parents in retribution for their abuse, he could very well have killed his sister out of a twisted sense of love and protection. He had tried to protect her all his life; how could he leave her to the world to be destroyed without him there to defend her?

  If Gordon Krauss was to be believed, Diana Chamberlain had tried to solicit him to murder her parents more than a week before they were killed. Had Charlie been a part of that plan? Had Diana’s death always been a part of Charlie’s plan? They would probably never know. They did know, from searching Charlie’s computer at work, that he began methodically searching for the truth of his parentage in the spring, and knew about Evi Burke since late summer.

  “Shakespeare would have had a freaking field day with these people,” Kovac declared.

  “‘The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us,’” Elwood quoted. “‘The dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him his eyes.

  “‘Thou hast spoken right, ’tis true. The wheel is come full circle . . .’”

  “Oh talk Shakespeare to me, baby,” Liska said, walking into the room, her hands tucked in the pockets of her coat, ready to leave for the day. “I miss you, Elwood.”

  “What?” Kovac asked, getting up from his chair. “Gene Grider doesn’t do poetry readings in the broom closet?”

  “Gene Grider is noticeably absent from the broom closet following the closing of the sad case of Ted Duffy. Poor guy,” she said. “I feel sorry for him, to be honest. None of that panned out the way he thought it would.”

  “Another hero bites the dust,” Tippen said as he shut down the computer.

  “No heroes in this story,” Liska said. “Just humans, good, bad, and otherwise.”

  “The world’s overrun with them,” Kovac said, shrugging into his overcoat and grabbing his hat. “It’s our job to sort them out.”

  “Yeah, well,” Liska said, backing toward the door. “Before we have to do it all again, let’s go drink a toast to the survivors.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks go out to several people for their incredible generosity to causes near and dear to me.

  To Candra Seley for her generous winning bid to play a role in The Bitter Season. Her donation goes to Play for P.I.N.K. (www.playforpink.org), a fantastic organization that raises funds for lifesaving breast cancer research via sports events such as the Challenge of the Americas dressage event held annually in Wellington, Florida. And to Rona Mascherino Garm and Kent Mitchell for their generous donation to the extraordinary Vinceremos Therapeutic Riding Center (www.vinceremos.org) in Loxahatchee, Florida, for Rona’s mother, Joan Mascherino, a longtime avid reader, to also play a role in this book.

  Thank you all for your generosity of heart and spirit in donating to these worthy organizations.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tami Hoag’s novels have appeared on national bestseller lists regularly since the publication of her first book in 1988. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages worldwide. She is a dedicated equestrian in the Olympic discipline of dressage and is an avid fan and student of mixed martial arts. She s
hares her home in Florida with three English cocker spaniels.

  Find Tami Hoag on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TamiHoag and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TamiHoag, or at www.tamihoag.com.

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