The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(33)

He looked at Taylor. “Give the lady ten bucks.”

“Ten bucks?” Taylor said with a tone of protest as he dug out his wallet. “It’s three minutes.”

“You are a cheap man,” the woman scolded, snatching the bill out of his hand. “Cheapness makes you less handsome.”

“It’s ten bucks more than you would have had without us,” Kovac pointed out.

A brilliant smile split her face. “This is very true. I thank you, gentlemen. Excuse me now while I close my shop. Good day to you.”

“We could have just parked there,” Taylor grumbled.

“Don’t be a piker. It’s important to foster good community relations,” Kovac said, flipping up the collar of his coat. The damp cold dug into his shoulders like talons. “Besides, it did my heart good to spend your money.”

“I’m so happy for you.”

Diana Chamberlain’s apartment was located on the ground floor of a huge, ugly brown house with a sagging wraparound porch. The front door was open. Three different kinds of loud music leeched through the thin walls into the first-floor hall, the volume rising and falling as apartment doors opened and closed. Taylor rapped on the door marked “B,” and they waited. He knocked again.

The door of the house opened and a college kid with dreadlocks came in with a bicycle and muscled it up the stairs to the second floor.

Taylor knocked again. “Miss Chamberlain?”

The door cracked open and a fit, good-looking Japanese man in his late thirties stared out at them. “Can I help you?”

Taylor held up his ID. “Police. We’re looking for Diana Chamberlain.”

“Finally. She had to see the news on TV first. Nice job, guys,” the man said sarcastically.

“And you would be . . . ?” Kovac asked.

“Ken Sato.”

“Professor Ken Sato?”

“Yes.”

Kovac cut Taylor a subtle What did I tell you? look.

“Do you live here?” Taylor asked. “We have a different address for you.”

“No, I came over for Diana,” Sato said. “She called me, hysterical. She’d seen the news coverage at the gym while she was working out.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I knew something had to be wrong when Lucien didn’t show for the meeting this morning. I never imagined anything like what happened. Was there really a sword involved? That’s a hideous thought.”

Doors opened and closed above them, and feet thundered down the stairs, accompanied by talk and laughter.

“We’d like to come in and speak to Miss Chamberlain,” Kovac said.

“She’s resting. She’s had a rough day.”

Taylor had the better angle to see into the apartment. He was looking past Sato, his suspicions rising just as Kovac’s were. For all they knew, Sato had massacred the Chamberlains and had come here to cross the daughter off the list.

“Yeah, well, I’m afraid we have to insist,” Kovac said. “We have a few questions we need answered.”

“She just lost her parents. This can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“No. It can’t,” Kovac said firmly.

Sato frowned, not moving from the doorway. A woman’s voice came from somewhere behind him.

“Ken? Who is it?”

“The police. They want to speak to you.”

“Oh, we’ll want to speak to you, too, Professor,” Kovac said. “You being so close to the family and all.”

Unhappy, Sato stepped back and motioned them inside. He was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve Henley T-shirt that skimmed broad shoulders and a tapered waist. No bow tie, no tweed jacket. His Clark Kent glasses only made him look hipper. His thick black hair was shaved close on the sides of his head, and left long on top, to spill across his forehead. The sleeves of his shirt were pushed halfway up to his elbows, revealing intricate sleeves of tattoos on both forearms.

Diana Chamberlain was taller than Sato by several inches. She had to be close to six feet, an angular, athletic-looking girl in her mid-twenties with tumbling waves of streaky blonde hair. Her face was an interesting oval of slightly asymmetrical features. A bump on the bridge of her nose suggested it had been broken once. Her eyes and nose were red and puffy, presumably from crying.

Kovac introduced himself and Taylor. She looked Taylor up and down like he might be on the menu for dinner.

“We’re sorry for your loss, Miss Chamberlain,” Taylor said.

“We’re sorry about the way you found out, too,” Kovac added. “The media ran with the story before we could stop them.”

“Was it true?” she asked. She backed up to a sagging couch and curled her long legs beneath her like a foal, settling back into a corner and pulling a blanket around her shoulders. She never took her eyes off Taylor. “What they said about my parents being attacked with a sword—is that true?”

There was no emotion in her voice as she asked, no fear, no horror at the idea. Nothing but morbid curiosity.

“There was evidence to suggest that, yes,” Taylor said.

“That’s so terrible,” she said, wide-eyed. “With one of Daddy’s swords?”

“We can’t really get into those details yet,” Kovac said.

The apartment smelled of weed and incense. Everything in it looked thirdhand and worn out. The sink and counter of the kitchenette were piled with dirty dishes. It was a far cry from the home the girl’s parents had died in.