The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(19)

“So,” Taylor said, “the question is did he know the weapons would be here, or were they a bonus once he got in the house?”

“That’s for you guys to figure out,” Culbertson said. “I’m going to go do my job. I’ve got a bus coming to transport the bodies as soon as you give the go-ahead, Sam.”

“Okay. Thanks, Steve.”

“This one has to be worth a couple of rounds at Patrick’s tonight, don’t you think?”

“At least. You buying?”

“Shit, no. The noob’s buying, right?”

Taylor looked confused. “Why am I buying?”

“Because you’re celebrating your first scene working with me,” Culbertson said on his way out. “Kids these days. No appreciation for tradition.”

Kovac rested his hands on his hips and looked around the study. A couple of desk drawers that had probably been locked had been forced open and rummaged through. Books had been cleared from shelves and lay scattered on the floor. Someone had been looking for a safe, most likely. There were a number of empty spaces in the wall display where only the small plaque beneath described the pieces that had been there.

“So, maybe this mutt came looking to steal specific items,” Kovac speculated. “A collector with a bad attitude? Who would know this stuff is here?”

“Family, friends, colleagues, maybe other collectors. His students, maybe.”

Kovac scratched a hand back through his hair and sighed as he thought about the other recent burglaries in the neighborhood. No violence, the officer had said. No violence, no witnesses. There probably hadn’t been nunchucks or samurai swords at the other houses, either. Sometimes the only difference between a thief and a murderer was opportunity.

Many a killer began his career by accident—in the heat of passion, in a moment of self-defense, in a split-second’s rage when a weapon was within reach. He struck out and killed—and then came the rush of adrenaline, the surge of power as he realized what he’d done. Few things were more intoxicating to a person with no conscience than the omnipotent control over life and death.

Absorbed in that thought, Kovac retraced the killer’s footsteps to the dining room, where the crime scene people were marking evidence and measuring distances. He stood in the doorway imagining the possible scenario: rushing at the professor with the nunchucks, swinging his arm, crushing the man’s skull. If that was how it had happened, the killer had gone back to the study to get the sword and then had waited for the wife to come looking for her husband.

One death hadn’t been enough. The overkill spoke to frenzy—either a wave of rage or a sick euphoria. The sword that pinned Mrs. Chamberlain to the floor like a bug in a collector’s display case was a statement, an artist’s signature.

“What are you thinking?” Taylor asked.

He was thinking they had better hope someone had hated these people enough to do this terrible thing, because the alternative was a monster on the loose whose thirst for blood was not likely to fade.

“I’m thinking you were right,” he said soberly. “About that feng shui business. They should have hung that mirror over the door before their luck ran out.”





8


“. . . here in this beautiful, normally quiet neighborhood, now the apparent scene of a brutal double homicide. While there has been no official statement from the police as to the names of the victims, the home belongs to Professor and Mrs. Lucien Chamberlain.”

“Way to notify the next of kin, *,” Nikki muttered at the television on the kitchen counter.

“Who’s an *?” R.J. asked.

“You are,” Kyle muttered, helping himself to more bacon.

“Don’t say ‘*,’” Nikki corrected halfheartedly.

“You do.”

“I’m the Mother of Dragons. I can use bad language if I want.”

“Can I get a dragon tattoo?”

“When you’re thirty-five. Now shush. I’m trying to listen to this.”

With school canceled because of the treacherous road conditions, the boys had slept in. With Nikki working Cold Case, there was no urgent need for her to go in to the office. She had brought a stack of files from the Duffy case home with her to review, anyway. This was just the kind of scenario she had imagined when she first thought of leaving Homicide: being able to take a snow day with the boys and fix them a big breakfast instead of the usual hastily grabbed bowl of cereal or toaster waffles.

But now, with the local news reporting live for half the morning from the scene of a double murder, she was feeling jittery, wanting to know more—from inside the yellow tape. She wanted to be in on it.

“Chamberlain is listed on the university’s roster as a professor of East Asian history,” the reporter went on, looking suitably grim. He was standing in the street with the background of an old established, well-off neighborhood crawling with police and crime scene investigators. “Reports of an attack by a sword-wielding assailant are unconfirmed at this point . . .”

“Maybe they were attacked by one of the Knights Templar!” R.J. said excitedly. He jumped from his stool at the kitchen island and began to pretend he was fighting with a sword of his own.

“You’re such a dork,” Kyle commented.