The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(58)

“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.”