The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(17)

“What’s this bullshit about a samurai sword?”

“No bullshit, Sarge. You’ll see. Down the hall and to the left. These people were killed by freaking ninjas.”

“Ninjas didn’t use samurai swords,” Taylor said. “Samurai used samurai swords.”

“There’s a difference?”

“That’s why you’re still in a uniform, Dave.”

“Fuck you, dude,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not stupid. I just lack ambition.”

“I don’t remember any questions about ninjas on the detective’s exam,” Kovac said as they went into the front hall of the house and put sanitary booties on over their shoes.

“I was a ninja in a past life,” Taylor said, deadpan as he pulled on purple disposable gloves.

Kovac looked around the hallway they had come into. As the exterior of the house suggested, everything was prim and proper: cream-colored wainscoting and drab gray wallpaper, an expensive-looking Oriental carpet runner leading the way down the hall. To the left was a formal living room. The furniture looked stiff and uncomfortable, the chairs upholstered in silky fabrics that didn’t invite anyone to sit on them. It was a “kids, don’t touch anything” kind of a house, a museum of antiques and formality. At the top of the staircase a spotlight shone on a huge painting of an ancient Chinese man scowling down on them with disapproval.

Taylor looked from the staircase to the front door, frowning. “That’s bad feng shui.”

“What?”

“The Chinese never want a staircase to end directly opposite the door like that. All of your good chi will go out the door. It’s very unlucky.”

Kovac’s brows pulled together. “Who are you?”

Taylor shrugged. “I grew up on Karate Kid and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, then Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. I’ve always had an interest in the martial arts and the societies that practice them.

“These people have all this Chinese and Japanese art and antiques. They were allegedly killed with a samurai sword. Too bad they didn’t extend their interests to philosophy. They should have at least hung a mirror over the door to bounce the good chi back in before it could escape.”

“Their good mojo went out the front door, and this is why a ninja killed them?”

“If you buy into the philosophy,” Taylor said, snapping photos of the offending staircase and front door with his iPhone. “There’s a whole faction of people who believe Bruce Lee died because the design of the house he was living in flew in the face of feng shui.”

“Are you one of them?” Kovac leveled a flat stare at him. “Don’t even think about trying to feng shui the cubicle.”

Taylor held his hands up to ward off the idea. “Hey, man, I’ve got my shit together. Your life force is not my business.”

“That’s right.”

As they proceeded down the hall, the stench of a violent death scene wafted out of the dining room to greet them: blood, urine, and shit, the stink of absolute terror.

Kovac cut his partner a look. “Don’t puke on my scene, ninja boy.”

“Don’t worry,” Taylor said, brows pulling low over his narrowed eyes as he put his game face on.

“Mr. Culbertson!” Kovac called out as they stopped in the wide doorway to the scene of the crime.

The room was busy with a swarm of people in jumpsuits collecting evidence, photographing the scene, dusting for fingerprints. Culbertson, the ME’s investigator, had his back to them, hands on his hips as he stood over a body.

He was the first person to physically examine the decedent at a death scene. No one touched the body before he did, for any reason. It was his unpleasant task to take the temperature of the corpse to aid in figuring out the time of death. It was his job to assess and make note of the visible wounds and a hundred other minute details.

Culbertson turned around to face them, blocking their view of the scene. Lean and vaguely scruffy, fast-talking and shifty-eyed, he was the kind of guy who looked like he would step out of a dark alley in a sketchy part of town and try to hustle you out of something or into something. Kovac had known him for years. They had polished off more than a few bottles of whiskey together, burning the taste of death out of their mouths at the end of a long night.

“It’s about time you got here, Kojak. I thought sure the words samurai sword would get even your jaded ass excited about a couple of stiffs. You’re slowing down in your old age.”

“Fuck you very much,” Kovak said without much rancor. “Steve, Michael Taylor, who drives like an old lady despite his dashing good looks. Taylor, Steve Culbertson, ME investigator and all-around reprobate.”

“Another noob?” Culbertson asked, arching a dark, bushy brow. “What happened to the last one?”

“He reconsidered his career path.”

“I can’t imagine why. Was it your sunny disposition or the fact that you drive like a drunken Formula One reject? You look like hell, by the way.”

“Thanks. I’m trying to dispel that whole ‘fifty is the new thirty’ myth.”

“Job well done.”

“Can you introduce us to our host and hostess here?” Kovac asked. “I’m sure we’ll find their personalities more agreeable than yours.”