The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(73)

“Do you think Sato killed your parents? Why would he do that? Because of the job promotion? You need to help me out here, Charlie. Or is this about Diana?” Kovac asked. He sat down on the arm of a tufted leather chair, tired just watching this kid’s nervous energy burn.

“He puts things in her head,” the kid said. “He just uses her to get at our father.”

“So you know they’re sleeping together, right? That bothers you—the idea of him and her sweating up the sheets?”

“Shut up!” Charlie snapped. He didn’t want to hear it, but he didn’t deny it, either. “Of course it bothers me. She’s my sister. He’s taking advantage of her.”

“You’re very protective of her,” Kovac said, going right back to the conversation they had had at the morgue. “That must be exhausting, considering. She’s not exactly a stranger to trouble, is she? Drinking, drugs, shoplifting, sex—”

“She’s fragile,” he said in his sister’s defense. “You don’t understand.”

“I’m trying to, Charlie,” Kovac said, keeping his voice even and soft. Annoyingly calm. “Help me. Why is Diana so fragile? Did someone abuse her when you were kids?”

He wasn’t going to talk about it. Kovac could see the stubborn set of his jaw, the muscles flexing as he fought to contain whatever unpleasant memories were coming to him.

Kovac pushed a little harder. “Did your father abuse her?”

“He abused everyone,” Charlie muttered with a hint of a tremor in his voice. He stared hard at the floor, or at some memory only he could see. He was breathing like he was under the strain of a great weight.

“Physically?” Kovac asked. “Sexually?”

The kid shook his head, but the movement was small, almost as if he was saying no to himself rather than to Kovac’s questions. No, he would not talk about this.

“Do you think Sato put Diana up to going to the Office for Conflict Resolution?” Kovac asked. “To mess with your father’s chances at the promotion?”

“He certainly didn’t try to stop her,” Charlie said sarcastically. “She wants to please him.”

“And piss off your old man at the same time? Bonus. Did your dad know she was sleeping with Sato? Is that what they argued about Sunday night?”

If that was the case, Lucien Chamberlain could have used that information against Sato. Which would have been worse in the eyes of the university: a professor who created a hostile work environment with his bipolar grad student daughter, or a professor who slept with his rival’s daughter as a power play? Kovac had to think Sato came out with the short end of that stick, no matter Sato’s comment from the night before when he implied he had no fear of losing his job over his relationship with the girl.

“They were going to resolve their issues,” Charlie said. “They just had to cool off. They were going to meet—”

“Only, your father had no intention of going to that meeting,” Kovac said. “On Monday he called his attorney’s office and made a Wednesday appointment for the same time of day. Now, in my experience, when a parent and an adult child have a big argument and the next day the parent is calling his attorney, that means one thing: he’s changing his will. And when that parent turns up dead before that change can happen, we call that motive.

“Is that where the argument went Sunday night, Charlie?”

The kid shook his head vehemently. He was close enough that Kovac could see the tears rising in his eyes. His face was as red as if he was holding his breath against the need to scream.

“The old man had just had it with Diana’s behavior, and said enough was enough,” Kovac suggested. “He was disowning her, writing her out of the will. I can see that. He probably never wanted her in the first place, right? I mean, he doesn’t strike me as a kid person, from what I’ve heard about him—especially not someone else’s kid. And then it turns out she’s defective, with the bipolar disorder. He probably wanted his money back.”

“Stop it,” Charlie said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Kovac knew he had hit a nerve. He felt a little rotten about it, but it went with the job. He had to keep poking until he found a raw patch, then dig in.

The tears were welling up and spilling over, streaking down Charlie Chamberlain’s cheeks despite his efforts to hold them back. He scrubbed them away with the back of his good hand.

“Do you know who killed your parents, Charlie?” Kovac asked quietly.

“No.”

“Do you think Diana knows?”

He kept shaking his head. “She didn’t do this. It was a robbery. His picture was all over the news at noon. Why didn’t you tell us about that? There’s a manhunt for a suspect, and you never even mentioned it to us.”

“I don’t know what the media is saying,” Kovac said. “We don’t know enough about the guy to even call him a suspect.”

“That’s bullshit. This handyman did it, and you’re wasting time accusing my sister—”

“I’m not accusing your sister, but who could blame her if she had something to do with it?” Kovac pressed. “Your old man was a piece of work. You two couldn’t do anything right. You couldn’t make him happy. Kids deserve parents who love them. Diana lost out on that twice—dumped by her birth mother, then gets adopted by a drunk and a tyrant who was ready to disown her. That’s gotta hurt.”