by Tami Hoag
“You forgot ‘brilliant,’” Nikki said as she watched him drive away.
27
“I told you, we saw the stuff through the window,” Greg Verzano said for the tenth time.
He flopped sideways on his chair, exhausted and frustrated. He was a smallish, wiry guy in jeans and a New York Giants jersey, a Yankees baseball cap backward on his head. Twitchy. Nervous. He was the kind of guy who wanted everyone to be light and happy, but this was not a light and happy situation.
Kovac sat across the table from him, stone-faced, unamused, arms crossed over his chest. “How’d your fingerprints get in that office? Telekinesis?”
Verzano groaned and slumped forward, grabbing his head with his hands. Mr. Drama. “We saw the stuff through the windows, and we had to go inside anyway to fix the cupboard door in the kitchen. What was it gonna hurt to go look? How many times do you get to see a samurai sword in real life? So I touched it. So what? I didn’t steal it.”
“So, Mrs. Chamberlain was killed with that sword, Einstein,” Kovac lied. The sword Sondra Chamberlain had been killed with had yielded no usable fingerprints. “And your prints are on it. Do you see how, despite the fact that you are annoying as hell, you’re making my job easy for me?”
Verzano’s eyes went wide, and he threw his hands up in the air. “I didn’t kill anybody! She seemed like a real nice lady. The husband was a prick, but I didn’t kill him, either. I’m not a violent person!”
“You have a conviction for assault in New Jersey.”
“That’s because I’m stupid, not violent!” he said earnestly. “I got into it with a guy over a girl. We were in a bar watching a hockey game. I had too much to drink! I was shit-faced, and here’s this hot chick, and she’s all smiles and batting her eyelashes,” he said, smiling and batting his eyelashes in his best imitation of a pretty girl. “And here comes this asshole in a Rangers jersey—and I’m a Devils fan—and he’s all ‘Fuck off, dude.’ Well, she never said she had a boyfriend, so naturally I took a swing at the guy.”
“You did more than take a swing.”
“I landed a couple of lucky punches. You know I used to box a little,” he said, pantomiming a flurry of jabs and hooks. “And then I was going to switch to MMA and do the whole UFC thing, but then this Brazilian dude kind of fucked up my shoulder ’cause I owed him some money, and then this thing happened with the Rangers fan, and the guy was a dick about it, and he pressed charges.” He shook his head and looked away, speaking to an unseen audience. “The girl wasn’t even good-looking after I sobered up!”
Like that should be considered a mitigating circumstance.
“Franken told me he does background checks on his guys,” Kovac said. “How’d you slip under the radar?”
“He married my sister.”
So Franken, who could have been looking like the mastermind of a burglary ring, was really just a guy trying to do the right thing, hiring his wife’s hapless idiot brother and trying to help out vets and addicts with cash-under-the-table jobs.
“Tell me about Gordon Krauss.”
“What about him? I wouldn’t say I really know the guy. I’ve worked with him a few times, but he’s not one to socialize, you know? I mean, I guess he’s not exactly gonna hit the bar and hoist a few brewskies with the guys after work—him having a substance issue and all,” Verzano said. He sucked in a quick breath and shrugged. “He’s quiet. It’s that Minnesota thing, you know? Like the Vikings—the warriors, not the football team. You know, they don’t say much, but don’t fuck with them.”
“Don’t fuck with Krauss?”
“No, man, the dude knows karate and shit. He was some kind of top-secret Black Ops agent or something in the army.”
“He told you that?”
“Dan told me. Gordon doesn’t talk about it. Like I said: a man of few words. I wouldn’t mess with him. He gets mad, he goes cold, you know? Internal. Scary.”
“How did he react that day when Professor Chamberlain was unhappy with the work?”
“He didn’t like it. The professor or whatever was running his mouth, calling names, calling us idiots and this and that.”
“What did Krauss do?”
“Nothing. He just went cold. I could see it in his eyes. Me? I told the dude he was a douche and he should go fuck himself with his stupid fucking storm windows. Who the hell has storm windows in this day and age anyway? Cheap bastard.”
Kovac pulled a picture of Diana Chamberlain out of a file folder and shoved it across the table. “Have you ever seen her?”
Verzano’s eyes went wide. “Wow! She is hot! Do you know her? Is she crazy? She looks a little crazy. Totally my type.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Kovac muttered. “Are you high?”
“No, not really. Well, I smoked a little weed after the other detective this afternoon, because he made me nervous, you know. I shouldn’t have told you that, should I? I’m just nervous.”
“Why are you nervous if you didn’t do anything?”
“Because I’m a fuck-up,” Verzano admitted. “And I’ve got bad luck. I mean, I didn’t do anything bad, and here I am, see? You’re telling me I put my fingerprints on a sword that killed somebody. Who has that happen? Me, that’s who.”
Kovac rubbed his hands over his face. He should have given this idiot to the kid, and gone home to bed. He leaned over and snapped his fingers in Verzano’s face. “Focus. Have you ever seen that girl?”
Verzano looked at the picture again. “Yeah, sure. She was there that day.”
Kovac sat up straighter, suddenly wide awake. “The day you were at the Chamberlain house, she was there?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?”
“Dude, seriously?” Verzano said. “I’m stupid; I’m not blind.”
* * *
TAYLOR PARKED IN A LOADING ZONE in front of Charlie Chamberlain’s apartment building, got out, and took a slow walk around. He was supposed to be on his way home to catch some sleep. He’d lost track of the hours he had been going on nothing more than catnaps. But the questions tickling the back of his mind needed to be addressed. If he could get Charlie Chamberlain to speak to him for just a couple of minutes, he could sleep on the answers and let his subconscious mind work while his body recharged.
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.
“Why would you do that?” Taylor asked. “That was the last time you will ever hear her voice.”
“And listen to her say how disappointed she is, and how sad she is, and why couldn’t I do something about it?” he said, building up a head of steam as he paced. His eyes filled. His voice strained. “Why would I save that? I have enough memories of her being disappointed in me. I don’t have to keep them on my phone.”
“Why was she disappointed in you, Charlie? You’re the success story of the family. You graduated, got a good job, never in trouble—”
“Because it’s never enough,” Charlie muttered. “Nothing is ever enough. Something is always wrong or bad or not enough.”
“Well . . . it’s over now,” Taylor said.
Charlie stopped his pacing and looked at him, a quiet fury in his eyes.
“You have to go,” he said quietly. “Please go.”
Taylor hesitated, testing him.
“How did you feel about your dad donating his collection to the university?” he asked.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“We spoke with his insurance agent this afternoon. Your father called him Monday and wanted a new appraisal done because he was planning to donate the collection. Isn’t that what you argued about at dinner Sunday night?” he asked. “He was angry with your sister. Maybe he found out about her and Sato. Did he decide to trump her charge against him by giving his collection to the school?”
“He wouldn’t have done it,” Charlie said, agitated. “He was always making threats like that. He wouldn’t have actually done it.”
“Well,” Taylor said with gravity, “he won’t now, will he?”
Charlie Chamberlain’s body went rigid; his good hand balled into a fist. His mouth twisted with rage. “Get out. Get out!”
“Thanks for your time,” Taylor said, stepping slowly toward the door. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride to an ER?”
“Get out!”
The door slammed shut behind Taylor as he stepped into the hall, and the neighbor stuck her head out again and looked at him. Taylor smiled at her and reached into his pocket for his ID.
“Miss, I’m with the police. Can I have a moment of your time?”
28
The nightmare would go on forever, Charlie thought as he paced his apartment, working around his swollen lip to chew on the cuticles of his left hand. His fingernails were already bitten to the quick. The trajectory of their lives, his and Diana’s, had been charted before they were even born, without their consent, by women they had never met, and had been moved forward on that line by every event thereafter, hurtling them toward disaster for twenty-four years. This was the life they had been placed into.
What lucky little children they were, they had been told, to be adopted by parents who could give them opportunities and education and life experiences. They had looked like the perfect family from a distance. From within the bubble, their life experiences were learning how to survive in a house where children were not welcome, with parents who had wanted them for all the wrong reasons. They were supposed to be cute and quiet and well behaved, to reflect well on their parents, to be seen only on cue, to speak only when spoken to.
Don’t bother your father . . . Mommy has a headache . . . Be quiet! Never touch the things in your father’s study! . . . You’re dirty! Go wash your face . . . Go change your clothes . . . You’re an embarrassment . . . You’re a disgrace . . . Behave or we’ll send you back where you came from! Slap! Pinch! Go to your rooms!
They had spent their childhoods trying to protect and comfort each other. Diana got the worst of it because she asked for it. Charlie always came to her defense. He learned to read the moods of all concerned, and worked to circumvent trouble before it could happen. Meanwhile, Diana ran headlong into it.
Their father belittled Charlie for trying. He called Charlie Diana’s minion from the time they were small. Even when Charlie didn’t know what that meant, he knew it was an insult by his father’s tone and by the sneering face that went with it.
Charlie always thought of himself as his sister’s hero—unsung, for the most part. He believed that was his purpose. He had been placed into the life he had to protect her. Diana, more often than not, had no lasting appreciation for his self-sacrifice. She was quick to use him when she needed him, and just as quick to dismiss him after. She used her love as a bargaining chip to get what she wanted from men, including him, and he fell for it every time because she was the only family he�
�d ever had, the only one who had ever given him any love at all.
There was a part of him that admired her and envied her for her recklessness, her passion, her violence. There had never been a line drawn that Diana wouldn’t step across just to defy authority. She did what she wanted no matter the consequences. Charlie didn’t have that in him. He was the dutiful son, the rule follower. He worked within the system like a good little drone, ever hopeful he would be rewarded for being a good boy. Diana had no system. She lived on emotion and thrived in chaos.
At times, he even envied Diana her mental illness. Her bipolar disorder was the built-in absolution for everything, from her erratic behavior to her hypersexuality. As much trouble as she got into because of it, she got out of because of it. Poor Diana, she can’t help herself. Poor Diana, the medication has such unpleasant side effects. Poor Diana, she’s trying so hard to be good.
As she moved into her teens, she collected the sympathy and empathy of their substance-abusing mother. She became the key pawn between their parents, a tool used by the passive-aggressive parent against the narcissistic one. But even as angry and vindictive as their father could be, even he couldn’t resist Diana entirely—nor could she resist him. Even as she defied him, she wanted his approval. Even as their father tried to control her, he was drawn in by her magnetism, which was so seductive and so twisted.
And Charlie was lost in the shuffle, pushed to the side, called upon when needed by one side or the other. Charlie the Minion.
He stopped pacing and looked at his reflection in the mirrored doors of his bedroom closet. He hated that the detective had seen him looking like this. He felt ashamed and embarrassed. Exposed. He looked ghoulish with his battered, misshapen face and bandaged hand, like the survivor of a zombie movie. He felt just as battered psychologically. This was the internal ugliness of being a Chamberlain seeping outward like a stain.
He had gone to Diana’s apartment after the disaster at their parents’ house that afternoon. He wanted her forgiveness. He wanted to set her straight, to get her to see Ken Sato for the user he was. She needed to trust him—Charlie. He was the one who had always loved her. He was the one who had her best interests at heart. He was the one who would keep them together, and keep her safe.