by Tami Hoag
“You’d be surprised,” Kovac said. “You run into the wrong person, they’ll kill you for having blue eyes. That’s why we need to know anything at all that might fit into the picture. Even if it seems insignificant to you.”
Taylor stared intently at his phone, flipping through the photographs he had taken earlier. He stopped on one, enlarged it with his thumb and forefinger, and shot a look at Kovac.
“Handy Dandy Home Services. There was a notation on the calendar in the kitchen for last Friday.”
“The guy had offered to come back and do some work for free if my father took the bad review down,” Chamberlain said.
“Do you know if that happened?”
“I don’t know. My father said he wouldn’t take it down until he was satisfied with the follow-up work.”
“I’ll look it up,” Taylor said, tapping the screen of his phone.
“When did you last see your folks?” Kovac asked.
“Sunday. My father’s birthday dinner.”
“And how was that?”
He bobbed his eyebrows, looked away, and sighed. “It was the usual family gathering.”
“What does that mean?”
He didn’t want to say. He stared down at his hands and picked at the loose piece of cuticle.
“We’ve already spoken to your sister,” Kovac prompted. “You might as well give us your version.”
Another sigh as he considered what to say.
“My mother tried too hard to be festive. My father played the role of tyrant, my sister got belligerent, and we all ended up screaming at each other.”
“That’s the usual?”
“It is for us. In case no one’s told you, my father is a raging narcissist, and my sister is bipolar. It’s not a good mix. Our mother drinks to take the edge off.”
“And what do you do?”
“I try to keep my head down.”
“Have you spoken to your sister today?”
He shook his head and gave in to the nervous urge to bite off the offending loose cuticle. “She won’t pick up. She isn’t answering text messages, either. She’s punishing me for not taking her side Sunday. I didn’t take his side, either. But she didn’t care. You’re either for Di or you’re against her. She doesn’t believe in neutrality.”
“Who’s the oldest?” Kovac asked.
“She is.”
“But she’s still a student?”
“She had some . . . interruptions along the way.”
“Are you a student, too?”
“No. I’m a paralegal at Obern and Phipps. Family law.”
“Decided not to follow in the old man’s footsteps?”
“There’s more call for paralegals in the workplace than for scholars of ancient Asian history,” the kid said. “I didn’t have any desire to go into his field and be his rival.”
“But your sister felt differently?”
“We’re different people. She still has some idea that if she pleases him, he’ll be proud of her. The thing is it’s virtually impossible to please him.”
“So, you became a paralegal, and you don’t have to live up to your old man’s reputation or expectations?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he mumbled. “He doesn’t limit his criticism to his own field of expertise. But I don’t care,” he declared in a way that made it clear he did care. “I figured him out a long time ago. Narcissists love themselves. The rest of us live on a sliding scale of pleasing them or displeasing them.”
“Where did you rank on that scale lately?”
“Somewhere on the lower end of center,” he admitted.
“What was his beef with you?”
He shrugged, as if to say, Take your pick. “I should have become an attorney instead of a paralegal. I should have become a doctor instead of a lawyer. I should have been him instead of me. That’s how it works. To try to live up to his expectations is a trap. He just keeps raising the bar—a lesson my sister refuses to learn.”
He went quiet for a moment. “I guess she doesn’t have to now.”
Kovac sat back and scratched the side of his face, thinking he needed a shave, watching the kid’s body language. He was uncomfortable talking about his family issues. He was having a hard time sitting still. He kept glancing at Taylor, who was reading something on his phone.
“What was the fight about Sunday?” Kovac asked.
Chamberlain rolled his eyes. “Diana is—was our father’s student assistant. Pretty much the worst idea ever. She filed a complaint about him at school, and he’s up for a big promotion. He accused her of sabotaging him.”
“Was she?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. Partly. I mean, it’s not like he isn’t a jerk. He was hard on her. But her timing . . . Everything is complicated with Diana. Her brain is hardwired differently. She doesn’t feel obligated to make sense to anyone but herself.”
“What about Ken Sato?”
“What about him?” he asked, his expression carefully neutral.
“He and your sister seem . . . close.”
The kid shook his head again, like a pitcher shaking off a catcher’s signs. He didn’t want to play this game.
“I mind my own business. I don’t get involved in Diana’s life.”
“She’s truly bipolar? Is she on medication?”
He shrugged. “She should be. Whether or not she takes it, I don’t know. Why are you asking all these questions about her?” His eyes got big. “You can’t think she would— No. No.”
“We’re just trying to get a clear family picture,” Kovac reassured. “We’re not accusing anybody of anything.”
Chamberlain looked around, uncomfortable, anxious, probably feeling trapped in his own home. He’d just about had enough. He got up and walked behind his chair, needing to burn off some of the anxiety. He chewed on a thumbnail as he paced.
“Di is a mess, but she would never do anything like that,” he said. “I mean, she and our father went around and around. That was just their relationship. It was like a sick game.”
“What was your relationship with your father like?” Taylor asked.
“It was . . . fine,” he said, struggling for the right word, clearly not satisfied with the one he chose. “I have my own life. I saw him when I had to see him. We weren’t buddies or anything. That’s not who he is.”
“We have to ask,” Kovac said. “Where were you last night, Mr. Chamberlain?”
The kid looked from one of them to the other. “I was here, working. I have a deadline.”
“Can anyone verify that? A roommate, a friend, a co-worker, a neighbor?”
“Oh my God,” he breathed. “Do I need an alibi?”
“It just makes our job easier if we can conclusively put people in place while we figure out the time line,” Kovac said.
“I was home. Alone.” He looked like he might get sick.
“Lots of people are. That’s not a crime.”
“I was on my computer,” he said. “It has a log.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Kovac said, rising. Taylor took his cue and stood.
“What happens now?” the kid asked. “Should I be making arrangements or something? Who’s supposed to do that?”
“Next of kin,” Taylor said. “Do you have any uncles, aunts, grandparents in the area?”
“No.”
“You’re it, then. You and your sister.”
“The bodies are at the medical examiner’s office, pending autopsy,” Kovac said. “Five thirty Chicago Avenue. Someone will have to come downtown and make the official ID.”
“Are you kidding me?” Chamberlain asked, horrified. “We have to come look at them?”
“It’s an unpleasant formality,” Kovac said. “They’ll let you do the viewing on a monitor.”
Chamberlain looked away, shaking his head. He didn’t want to be a part of any of this. He didn’t seem to want to be a part of his family at all. He had gone to that disastrous birthday dinner
out of a sense of duty. Now duty would drag him to the morgue.
“We can take you down there and bring you back,” Kovac said.
“Now?” the kid asked, incredulous.
“Tomorrow is soon enough.” Kovac took a card out of his pocket and handed it to him. “We’ll be in touch. Sorry for your loss.”
* * *
“THE FAMILIES I’VE SEEN . . .” Kovac started as they left the apartment building. “Makes being divorced twice seem not so bad.”
Even as he said it, he thought of Tinks and her boys. They did well as a family—as long as that asshole she had been married to stayed in line or out of the picture.
Kovac had started his own family once. Or so he had thought. His second wife gave birth and then promptly divorced him, took the kid, and moved to Seattle, where she remarried with suspicious haste. It all happened so fast and so long ago, it seemed like some weird bad dream now. He doubted the kid was even his. Kovac had been a convenient source of health insurance, that was all.
“The Yelp review is still up,” Taylor said.
“How bad is it?”
“He called the workmen incompetent, ignorant, filthy, and foul-mouthed, and said that was apparently company policy as evidenced by the behavior and attitude of the manager over the phone. Thirteen people have found the review useful. Three thought it was funny.”
“Funny?”
Taylor shrugged. “Thirteen ‘useful’ is thirteen customers lost, to say nothing of the people who read the review but didn’t comment. That’s dollars lost to a small business, plus a bad reputation in a good neighborhood.”
“See what you can find out about the business. Let’s pay a visit to the manager. For now, let’s go back to the office. I want to get the war room set up. There’s so many people that hated this professor, I already need a program to keep track of them.”
* * *
CHARLIE CHAMBERLAIN SAT ON HIS SOFA for a long time after the detectives had left. He sat with perfect posture, staring into the middle distance, images and arguments tumbling through his mind. Pandora’s box had opened wide, and all the memories came spilling out, one running into the next, and into the next.
Him at five in short pants and a bow tie, with knobby skinned knees, and tears on his cheeks. His mother’s drunken, angry face; her mouth twisted open like a gash in her face. His father’s cold stare.
He saw himself at nine, at twelve, at fourteen. He heard the voices.
Stupid boy . . .
I told you never . . .
. . . so disappointed . . .
Get out of my sight . . .
Worthless . . .
. . . mistake . . .
He saw the hand striking, the belt swinging.
He saw his sister and heard her crying.
He felt the helplessness of a child.
“Such a perfect family,” everyone used to say. They didn’t know, and wouldn’t suspect. Appearances were all that mattered. Appearances, accolades, money, the right car, the perfect dinner party. Two children brought out on cue and promptly put away.
Seen not heard.
Don’t cause a problem.
Don’t say a word.
He didn’t know how much time passed as he sat there. Years passed through his head. He might have sat there an hour or all night, lost in a trance, in emotional limbo. So many feelings tore through him and collided that they canceled each other out until he was numb.
What was he supposed to feel?
The doorbell brought him back into the moment. He had no idea of the time. Maybe the detectives had come back to take him to the morgue to identify the bodies.
He put an eye to the peephole and took in the distorted view of his sister—hair disheveled, eyes red, face swollen.
“Di,” he said as he opened the door.
“They’re dead, Charlie,” she said, her face twisting in anguish. “Oh my God, they’re dead!”
She threw herself against him and began to sob. He put his arms around her and held her. They had only ever had each other.
“They’re dead,” she mumbled through her tears. “We’re free . . .”
Even as he tried to comfort her, he knew that wasn’t true. They weren’t free. The future might be clear ahead, but the past was something no one could escape but the dead. There was irony. They would always be damaged by their pasts and by the choices other people had made. The only ones free in this story were lying on slabs at the county morgue.
But he said nothing as he held his sister, and they cried together.
13
Nikki read files until her eyes burned and her vision blurred. So much for the idea of no late hours working cold cases. While there may have been no outward sense of urgency in solving a case that had been gathering dust in the archives for a quarter of a century, that didn’t change who she was. She was still going to dig and scratch and poke and prod with the focus of a terrier.
At least she got to do it at home.
She had gotten home in time to make a nice dinner for herself and the boys, and had taken an hour to watch some TV with them. Every commercial break included a promo for the local news: More on the story of the double homicide of a university professor and his wife! Tune in at ten!
The big news of the new cold case squad and the unsolved murder of Detective Ted Duffy hadn’t even managed a twenty-four-hour cycle in the media. Everyone in the metro area was now captivated by the bigger, fresher, more gruesome crime.
She had caught the coverage of the press conference on the six o’clock edition. The mayor, the chief of police, Deputy Chief Kasselmann, and Lieutenant Mascherino, all looking suitably grave as they gave their statements. No Kovac. No surprise. Sam loathed press conferences. He would have been out doing his job, sure not to pick up the message that his presence was required in front of a news camera.
She wanted to call him, to find out what was going on, if they had any leads, but she wouldn’t let herself. He was busy, and it was none of her business. He was probably setting up the war room, scribbling all over the whiteboard with his terrible handwriting. Tippen was in on the case, and Elwood would be as well. They’d be up all night drinking bad coffee and eating pizza out of cardboard boxes.
She would be up all night reading about a case that had already happened and had long gone stale, making notes on her own whiteboard in her own little office at home. At least the coffee was better.
At the time of Ted Duffy’s death he had half a dozen cases going at work. No one had been able to connect any of those cases to his murder. Considerable time had been spent tracking down guys Duffy had sent to prison over the years who had subsequently been released in the right timeframe. Of those known to be in the vicinity, some had alibis, some didn’t, but no one could put any of them in that park behind the Duffy house with a rifle on the day in question.
The hottest prospect they’d had at the time was a rapist, a repeat offender who’d screamed at Duffy in the courtroom that he would get him. He had been released from prison just a week prior to the shooting. After three days of an intensive search in the Twin Cities and surrounding area, it was discovered that the guy had been arrested in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, three days after his release from the prison in Moose Lake, where many of Minnesota’s hard-core sex offenders were sent to be rehabilitated. He had gotten out of prison, taken a bus to Wisconsin, and promptly tried to assault a waitress leaving her workplace late at night.
“I guess that rehab didn’t take,” Nikki mumbled, setting those reports aside.
She thought a little about the weapon that had been used to kill Ted Duffy: a small-caliber hunting rifle, a .243. It was described as a gun suitable for smaller hunters because of the lighter recoil. One of the comments she had read online regarding this caliber of weapon for hunters: “A nice rifle for a woman.”
Barbie Duffy had allegedly been out grocery shopping the day of her husband’s death. She came home with groceries, but who could prove when she had bought them? T
here was no store receipt on file, and no mention of any store surveillance tape showing her buying groceries at the time in question. The detectives—Grider being one of them—cut her slack in small ways they might not have had they not known her and her husband. If Barbie said she had been shopping, then she must have been shopping. The grocery bags were probably still sitting on the kitchen counter when the detectives showed up.
Had the Duffys owned a .243 hunting rifle? Ted had been going to join his brother deer hunting in Wisconsin that weekend. But Ted Duffy was a big guy. He would have used a big gun, not one written up as being “A nice rifle for a woman.” Nikki made a note to ask Barbie Duffy if she had ever gone deer hunting. But even if Ted Duffy didn’t own a .243, his twin had access to every gun there was.
Big D Sports was best known for hunting and camping gear, including guns. Big Duff had allegedly been in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, opening his cabin for the weekend’s hunting when his brother was killed. That was where he had been found by the family friend who drove the two hours to deliver the news of Ted’s death in person. But that was several hours after the discovery of Ted Duffy’s body. Big Duff would have had more than enough time to kill his brother and drive back to Rice Lake. He had been seen in a convenience store near his cabin earlier in the day, but most of his afternoon was unaccounted for.
Whose idea had it been to send the friend to Rice Lake to deliver the news to Big Duff? The cabin had no telephone, but they could have called the local sheriff’s office and sent a unit out to inform Duff of his brother’s demise. They would have gotten to him much closer to the time of Ted’s death—or they might have gotten to an empty cabin, as Thomas Duffy was still making his way back from killing his brother.
If the crime had taken place a week ago, or a year ago, or even ten years ago, they would have been able to track Thomas Duffy’s movements via the cell towers his phone had pinged off. But at the time of his brother’s death, cell phones were less common, and used differently. Back then, a cell phone was something to have for emergencies.