The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(70)

He stepped back, drawing the sword all the way to the left, across his body. “The second strike would be a sideways stroke,” he said, moving in slow motion as he swung the blade almost like a baseball bat. “High to decapitate. Or low to disembowel.”

The tip of the blade, which looked just as lethal now as it probably was two centuries ago, passed within an inch of Kovac’s stomach.

Sato stepped back again, into some kind of ready stance, and then brought his feet together and bowed deeply.

“And that,” he said as he straightened, “is shinkendo: the real way of the sword. Was that helpful, Detective?”

“One way or another,” Kovac said as he watched Lucien Chamberlain’s chief rival sheath the sword and reverently place it back on the curved rests that held it in its place of honor on the wall. One way or another . . .


*



“THIS LOOKS GOOD ON ME, DON’T YOU THINK?”

Diana Chamberlain lifted her streaky blonde waves up in two messy handfuls and admired herself in the mirror over the dresser. She had put on one of her dead mother’s necklaces—a thick twist of dark gray beads that brought out her pale gray eyes.

The costume jewelry had been left untouched by the thief—the necklaces left hanging in the closet, the earrings in trays stacked on the dresser, the bracelets in a dresser drawer that had been pulled open but left alone. The large lacquered rosewood tiered jewelry box that sat atop the dresser had been emptied.

Taylor stood near the door to the master bedroom like a guard and watched Diana in the mirror, his face carefully neutral. She had changed her look from that morning, abandoning the studious glasses and letting her hair loose, unbuttoning the man’s white shirt one button too far for modesty, giving glimpses of a lacy black bra when she moved. The red lipstick had been refreshed, he noticed as she pursed her lips and batted her eyelashes at her reflection—and at his.

“Don’t you think I’m pretty?” she asked, her voice dark and smoky.

His inclination was to ignore the question, but Kovac had given him a job. Put those looks to work, Junior. See what you can get her to say.

He had always been acutely aware of the power of his looks, but not necessarily comfortable with that power. He didn’t like being given things for no other reason than that he was handsome. Nor did he like using his looks as some kind of bait. It wasn’t his nature to be disingenuous.

“You’re a very pretty girl,” he said flatly, like it was a dry fact. “Were you close to your mom?”

She pouted for a second at his apparent lack of interest in her beauty. “She was my mother. Of course I loved her. She was the sweetest person.”

“Except when she was drinking?” Taylor said. “How long had she been doing that? Did she drink when you were little?”

“How would I know?” she asked quietly. “Everything is normal to a kid.”

“I knew it was normal for my uncle Phil to smell like beer,” Taylor said. “I knew it was hard to understand him when he talked. I knew to stay away from him if he’d had one too many. And when I was old enough, I figured it out that Uncle Phil was a drunk.”

“What does it matter if she drank?” she asked. “Who could blame her? My father wasn’t a nice man to live with.”

“She could have divorced him,” he said, taking a couple of steps closer to hear her better.

She shook her head as she fingered through a tray of earrings. “People always think they know how easy someone else’s life should be.”

She chose a big red button of an earring and put it on. It matched her lipstick. There was something exotic about her, something a little too eccentric or untamed for the stuffy formality of her parents’ bedroom, with its drab gray-green walls and heavy silk draperies.

“What about your life?” Taylor asked. “It’s tough on kids when their parents don’t get along. Was that hard on you and Charlie?”

She raised a shoulder and let it drop. “We had each other.”

“You watched out for each other. Is Charlie adopted, too?”

“He was here first.”

“But he’s younger than you.”

“They adopted Charlie as an infant. Two years later they adopted me. They decided to skip the baby phase the second time,” she said. “Too loud and messy. So they went out and got me—walking, talking, and already potty-trained. They thought that would be easier. Joke’s on them!” she said with a bitter smile. Then she sighed, and just looked sad. “Poor Mommy. All she wanted was a nice little family. She renamed me so Charlie and I went together like a set.”

“And what did your father want?”

“For us to be quiet, to speak when spoken to, to reflect well on him.”

“Was he abusive?”

“Daddy has expectations,” she said, slipping back into the present tense, as if she thought her father might still be watching her.

“And if you didn’t meet them?”

“When,” she corrected him.

“When . . . ?”

“Then Daddy doesn’t love you anymore,” she said, putting on the second earring. “Mustn’t disappoint Daddy.”

She picked up her phone off the dresser and took a selfie in the mirror, and then turned the camera on him.