The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(87)

“She listed the professor as a contact on the paperwork the rehab administrator wouldn’t hand over. I have an uncanny ability to read upside down, you know. One of my many hidden talents.”

“Most of which should remain hidden,” Kovac remarked. “Did you talk to the professor?”

“Professor Roland Landers,” Elwood said, sniffing the aromas as he perused the open cartons on the table. “He’s writing a biography of Millard Fillmore. The girl was supposed to be helping gather and organize his research.”

“Jesus,” Kovac grumbled. “I’d be doing cocaine, too.”

“Fillmore’s wife, Abigail, had the first bathtub with running water installed in the White House.”

“Fascinating.”

“Landers was happy to fill us in,” Tippen said. “With Professor Chamberlain dead, he didn’t feel any need to be loyal to the daughter.”

“So the bottom line here is that Diana Chamberlain could possibly know Gordon Krauss,” Taylor said. “You searched his room?”

“No ninja weapons, no samurai swords, no bloody clothing. He did have about twenty-five hundred dollars in a sock stuffed into the toe of a boot, and half a dozen different IDs—none of which belong to a Gordon Krauss,” he said. “He could be James Gilliam. He could be Clyde Dodson. He could be Jeremy Nilsen—”

“So we don’t even know who this guy really is.”

“We lifted fingerprints from the room,” Elwood said. “Hopefully he’s in the system.”

“If he’s a vet, he’s in the system,” Taylor said.

“There’s probably a better chance of him being a criminal than being a veteran,” Kovac said. “And if Diana knows this guy, then there’s a connection through her for Sato or the brother, or any combination of all of them to hire this mutt as a hitman. They all benefit one way or another from Lucien Chamberlain’s death.”

“But we don’t know that Diana knew Krauss was working for Handy Dandy, or that she knew anything about her mother calling Handy Dandy to do the repairs. That could be a coincidence,” Taylor said.

Tippen and Elwood winced and howled like they were about to witness a car crash in an action movie.

“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” Kovac growled. “Never, never overlook anything in an investigation based on the assumption that it might be a coincidence. Assume every person of interest is, deep down, stinking rotten to the core,” he said, stabbing his fork in the air for emphasis. “And always believe they all have the potential to be in cahoots with one another.”

“Yes, sir,” Taylor said.

Kovac gave him the stink eye, in case he was being a smart-ass. “What did you come up with in the phone records?”

Taylor went to a large portable dry-erase board he had filled with columns—dates, times, names—all in meticulous printing with a different color marker for each person.

“Starting Sunday night we have multiple calls from the Chamberlain landline to Diana’s cell phone. None of them lasts longer than thirty seconds.”

“Straight to voice mail,” Tippen ventured.

“They had the big blowout at dinner,” Kovac said. “That’s probably Mom trying to connect, maybe trying to mend fences.”

“There’s one longer call to Charlie’s cell.”

“Mom crying on the kid’s shoulder,” Kovac speculated. “He’s had to function as the adult in the family all along, watching out for his sister, keeping the peace between the parents.”

“Charlie calls Diana. Again, it doesn’t look like she probably answered,” Taylor said. “They connect Monday at twelve seventeen P.M. and speak for forty-three minutes. Charlie then calls the professor’s cell number, and they speak for eight minutes. It looks like Mrs. Chamberlain tries throughout the day to get through to Diana, but she also calls the number for Handy Dandy Home Services at one-o-seven in the afternoon, and that call lasts twelve minutes.”

“Where the hell are you? Why haven’t you fixed the whatever? Get your worthless asses over here and blah, blah, blah,” Kovac said. He looked to Elwood and Tippen again. “What about the other handyman? Verzano?”

“We’ve got nothing on him other than the fact that he’s been in the Chamberlains’ house, and that the professor wasn’t happy with the job,” Tippen said.

“He denies any involvement. He says he doesn’t know where Krauss is, that he doesn’t hang out with the guy, that he’s worked with him only a few times,” Elwood added.

“He did hint that he thought Krauss was a bit of a twitch,” Tippen added.

“Oh yeah, sure,” Kovac grumbled. “The missing guy is conveniently the twitch.”

“We took his prints,” Elwood said. “He objected to that, citing his Third Amendment rights.”

Kovac rolled his eyes. “A freaking constitutional scholar.”

“He seemed confused when I explained to him that our taking his fingerprints for elimination purposes had nothing to do with the quartering of soldiers in private homes.”

Elwood chose a carton of stir-fried vegetables and chopsticks and sat down to eat, his brow furrowed beneath the short brim of his porkpie hat. “He could have theoretically made a Fourth Amendment argument. He would have lost, of course, but still . . .” He sighed. “I find it deeply disturbing that the average citizen isn’t better informed.”