The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(93)

The building was a plain blond brick rectangle, probably built in the 1960s, four stories tall, eight units per floor. (He had counted the doors the night they first came to talk to the kid.) A utilitarian kind of place, there were no fancy signs in front naming the building, or lovely landscaping dressing the place up. A narrow parking lot ran along one side of the building, one slot per unit. All others had to take their chances finding parking on the street. Chamberlain’s car was in its assigned slot.

Taylor walked all the way around the building, looking for visible security cameras, seeing none. Visitors had to be buzzed in the front door via an intercom system. He punched buttons until someone assumed he was the pizza guy. He didn’t buzz Charlie Chamberlain’s apartment. It was too easy to say no to a disembodied voice. And when he got to the apartment, he knocked instead of ringing the doorbell. Conscientious people were less likely to ignore knocking because of the potential for upsetting their neighbors. He knocked again, loudly.

On the third knock, the door cracked open and Charlie Chamberlain glared out at him. He looked like he’d run into a wall—and had probably had some help doing it. His face was a bruised and battered mess, with a blackening eye and a swollen split lip. His glasses sat slightly crooked because of the damage.

“What happened to you?” Taylor asked.

“Nothing.”

“Did Sato do that to you?”

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” he mumbled, talking around the swollen lip.

“Charlie, this is over the line. You popped Sato a good one, but this is assault.”

“I tripped and fell.”

“Into a box of hammers? I know a beating when I see one.”

“Keep your voice down!” he said in a harsh whisper. “I have neighbors.”

“I’m sure they saw on the news that somebody brutally murdered your family,” Taylor said. “They shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a detective at your door. Or is it that you don’t want them to see that somebody beat the shit out of you?”

Chamberlain swore under his breath as the neighbor across the hall opened her door and peered out.

“Come in,” he said, stepping back. “But you’re not staying. I have to be somewhere.”

“Where?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“How’s your sister?” Taylor asked, stepping into the apartment. The place was still as neat as a pin. Charlie had gone elsewhere for his beating.

“She’s upset. We’re all upset.”

He had wrapped gauze around the knuckles of the hand he’d clocked Sato with.

“Did you get that X-rayed?” Taylor asked.

“It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. What do you want?”

“I have a couple of questions about the last phone call you got from your mother. I was hoping you could help me get a clearer picture as I lay out the time line.”

“Fine. What?”

“Looking at the phone records, I see she called you from her cell phone that night.”

“Yes. So?”

“Did she say anything about having misplaced the phone for a couple of days?”

“No. Why would she?”

“There was a long period of inactivity in the usage records. Then she called you; then she called your sister on the landline.”

Charlie stared at him, looking confused and impatient. “So what? Our mother was a drunk. She misplaced things; then she found them again. She probably lost the phone and by the time she found it and called me, the battery was ready to die.”

“That could be,” Taylor said, not convinced. “Would she have been able to disarm the house security system from her phone?”

“She wasn’t very good with gadgets—especially after a few glasses of wine—so, no. Why?”

“Do you know if their system has that capability—to run it from an app?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I’m just trying to reconcile something,” Taylor said. “The security company said the system was disarmed after midnight. Why would your parents have disarmed the system that late at night?”

“I don’t know.”

“We were thinking the perpetrator let himself in through the dining room, then disarmed the system from the panel in the kitchen, but if someone came in through that door, all the control panels would have been beeping until the code was entered. If the system was beeping, why wouldn’t your parents hit the panic button upstairs? They couldn’t have been expecting company that late at night.”

“I don’t know!” Charlie said, exasperated. “How am I supposed to know? I wasn’t there.”

“Could I listen to the message your mother left you that night?” Taylor asked, ignoring Chamberlain’s growing sense of urgency.

“No!” Charlie said indignantly. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

“You were one of the last people to hear from her. I’d like to know her state of mind.”

“She was sad. She was lonely. She’d been drinking.”

“I’d like to hear—”

“Well, you can’t! I erased it!” he snapped, pacing now, back and forth, three steps one way, three steps the other way.