by Tami Hoag
And that was the whole point of their being there, Nikki thought as she drove them back into the city. They had yet to see the whole picture of Ted Duffy’s life and death. She only hoped they could bring it into focus. His death had to mean something to someone—even if that someone wasn’t the person who should have cared the most.
* * *
HOMICIDE WAS CROWDED WHEN THEY GOT BACK. The shift had changed, but no one seemed to have left. Kovac’s double murder, Nikki thought, straining to pick up bits of conversation as she passed through on her way to the Cold Case unit’s borrowed office space.
A professor from the U and his wife, murdered in their own home. The brass would be clamoring for the case to be closed ASAP, all the while getting as much air time and management mileage out of it as possible. She could see Mascherino in her office with Deputy Chief Kasselmann, deep in conversation. The sense of energy and urgency that came with a high-profile case was palpable in the room.
Tippen was on the phone at his desk, scribbling notes. He glanced up as she passed, held the phone to his shoulder, and said, “You’re missing a big one, Tinks!”
“I have my own big one, thanks.”
“I know that. But I’m talking about a case.”
She flipped him the finger and kept going, her mood darkening even as he laughed in her wake. She hated feeling left out of a job she had left by choice. But she had her own job to do.
She had stewed on Barbie Duffy’s attitude all the way back from Apple Valley. The fact that Grider had fouled the waters for her before she had a chance to establish a rapport with Ted Duffy’s widow was burning like an ulcer in her gut. Bad enough to start from zero with a case as cold as this one. He had made sure she was starting in a hole.
And there he was, ten feet in front of her, stuffing a sandwich in his fat mouth as he stood shooting the shit with one of the Homicide guys, no doubt drawn into the room by the same energy they all felt when a big case was getting off the ground.
Nikki saw red.
“Grider!” she snapped, walking up on him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Having a sandwich,” he said, with his mouth still half full. “What’s your problem?”
“You’re my problem,” she said, toe to toe with him, wishing she didn’t have to crane her neck to look up at him. “I just came from interviewing Barbie Duffy. Imagine my unpleasant surprise when she told me you called her yesterday. What the hell is the matter with you?”
Nikki realized her voice was raised. She could feel the attention of the room turning toward them. She was too angry to care.
“Just letting her know it’s your case now,” Grider said.
“And telling her I’m gonna do a shit job? Fuck you!” She jabbed him in the sternum with a forefinger. “Keep your big ugly mug out of my case!”
Seley touched her on the shoulder. “Nikki—”
Nikki shrugged her off.
“Or what?” Grider challenged.
“I’ll have your ass on a platter, that’s what!”
“Nikki—” Seley started.
The next voice that came made Nikki cringe. Mascherino.
“Sergeant Liska. My office. Now.”
Fuck. Well, there was nothing for it now but to go all in. She grabbed a handful of Grider’s shirt and turned toward the lieutenant.
“He’s coming with me.”
Mascherino frowned. “I want to speak to you.”
“He’s the reason you want to speak to me,” Nikki said. “If you’re killing birds, you might as well get two for one.”
“All right,” the lieutenant said, turning her frown on Grider. “Both of you.”
“She attacked me!” Grider whined.
“Right now,” Mascherino snapped.
She turned on her heel and marched. Nikki fell in step behind her, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Grider was coming. Everyone watched silently as they passed on their way to the lieutenant’s office, and started talking again the second they’d gone by, the noise of their voices swelling like a wave behind them.
“Close the door and sit down,” the lieutenant ordered as she went behind her desk and turned to face them.
Nikki was too angry to sit. She crossed her arms over her chest and stood behind a chair, glaring at Grider, who took the other seat in front of the desk. Mascherino let it go.
“I’m running a Homicide unit, not some dive bar where people start brawls on a nightly basis,” she said. “I will not have my detectives shouting expletives and threats in this office. Is that understood, Sergeant Liska?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nikki said, choking on the explanation and accusations that wanted to come spewing out of her mouth.
“She attacked me!” Grider said again.
The lieutenant gave him an icy look. “We’ll get to you,” she said, and turned back to Nikki. “You will calmly explain to me what this is all about.”
She took her seat behind her desk and waited. Nikki blew out a breath and sat down.
“He called the widow of my victim and led her to believe I’m not all that dedicated to this case, putting me in an adversarial position with her before I could even introduce myself.”
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Mascherino asked, turning her steely gaze on Grider.
“I’ve known Barbie Duffy for thirty years,” he said. “I called her to let her know the case had been reassigned. We had a conversation, and I gave her my opinion.”
“I gave her my opinion, too,” Nikki said. “If you haven’t solved her husband’s murder in twenty-five years, why does she want you on it? She should have decided you were incompetent a couple of decades ago.”
“Nikki . . .” Mascherino warned.
“Seriously, Lieutenant,” Nikki said. “Seley was with me. She’ll tell you the same thing. Barbie Duffy couldn’t get rid of us fast enough. She doesn’t want us reopening the case at all. She was perfectly happy with the lack of results this one gave her,” she said, hooking a thumb in Grider’s direction.
“What the hell are you implying?” Grider asked, his face darkening as his blood pressure rose.
“I don’t know,” Nikki said, shrugging. “I’m just stating the facts. Maybe you can enlighten us. Why would she rather run off to her exercise class than talk to people who want to solve her first husband’s murder? Maybe there’s a reason this case was never solved on your watch.”
“Are you accusing me of something?” Grider demanded. “Ted Duffy was my friend. You think I didn’t want to close his case? I’m the one who brought it up for review!”
“So you could keep not solving it?”
Grider shoved himself out of his chair. “I don’t have to listen to this shit from you.”
“Sit down!” Mascherino ordered.
He backed down reluctantly, and planted his ass back in the chair.
“You will not interfere in this investigation,” the lieutenant said to him. “This is no longer your case. I don’t want to hear again that you’ve contacted someone involved and offered your opinion or anything else. Do you understand me?”
Grider rubbed a hand across his mouth like he was trying to push his opinion of the situation back down his throat.
Mascherino waited, staring him down. She might have a sweet picture of her three grandchildren sitting next to her pen holder on her desk, but there was no sweetness in her as a boss. She was going to make everyone toe her line, Gene Grider included.
He tossed his hands up as if in defeat, but he was shaking his head no even as he said, “It’s all yours.”
Nikki bit her tongue. He was no more going to stay out of it than he was going to stop breathing. He’d said it himself: He’d known the people involved for thirty years. He had gone back to them time and again over the decades.
The lieutenant turned her gaze on Nikki and pointed in the direction of the squad room. “I will not have another outburst like that in this office. Is that understood?”
> “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not,” Mascherino said. “But I’ll take it anyway. Now go, the both of you. I’ve got a press conference to prepare for.”
Ever the gentleman, Grider walked out ahead of Nikki.
“Are you happy now?” he grumbled over his shoulder, as they went down the hall toward their own office. “Tattling to the principal. Nice cunt move, Liska. You and the Mother Superior there can have a good laugh over it while you’re rolling your own tampons later on.”
Nikki cut in front of him and stopped, facing him, hands on her hips. The hall was empty but for the two of them. Technically, they were out of the Homicide office proper. Grider stopped and mirrored her stance.
“Now what?” he asked. “You’re going to report me for gender insensitivity?”
“You listen to me, you fucking dinosaur,” Nikki said, keeping her voice low. “I’ve had worse from better than you. So don’t think for a minute that you can intimidate me. You can take your last-century misogynist bullshit attitude and stick it up your ass. And if you want to make this a fight, metaphorically or otherwise, you’d better know, I will break you in two and beat the shit out of both ends. Stay out of my case.”
She let that hang in the air. Grider said nothing. He just stood there staring at her with cold eyes, his resentment oozing out of his pores like rancid sweat. He had come on the force during another era. Having to stomach the fact that women were equal to or ranked above him stuck in his craw like a chicken bone.
Slowly, Nikki started to back away like a thug leaving a gang confrontation, mean-mugging all the way into their office. Grider followed, but went directly to his desk, grabbed his coat, and left without a word.
Seley sat at her desk, eyes wide. “Can I be you in my next life?” she asked. “You’re a total badass.”
Nikki ignored her, staring at the open door Grider had gone out, and thinking the very first thing he would do when he got out of the building would be to call Barbie Duffy.
“Generally speaking,” she said, “who doesn’t want a crime solved?”
“The perpetrators of the crime,” Seley answered.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Nikki said. “I’m going to go home and read every scrap of paper on this case again.”
11
Diana Chamberlain didn’t answer her phone. She lived in a shabby neighborhood near the commercial district known as Dinkytown, not far from the U of M campus. An area where the big old box-style houses had been cut up into cheap apartments for students, and where the sidewalks were buckled from the massive roots of the old trees that lined the boulevards. An assortment of older cars took up all the parking spaces on the street.
The sun that had melted the morning’s ice was gone, and its meager warmth along with it. The temperature had dropped just enough to freeze the slush into ruts and turn the puddles back into little skating rinks.
Taylor cruised past the address, pulling into the parking lot of a dirty little strip mall a block down the street. He parked in a space reserved for customers of a small dry cleaners with a flickering red-neon Open sign in the front window. A pissed-off-looking tiny woman in a hot-pink sari stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips.
“Parking for dry cleaning only!” she shouted as they got out of the car.
“We’re here on police business, ma’am,” Taylor said politely, holding up his shield.
“Police dry cleaning business?” she asked pointedly.
“Uh, no, ma’am.”
“I thought not. Then take your handsome self away from here and park elsewhere. I have a business to run.”
“We’re from Homicide—” Taylor started.
“No one has been murdered here. I have no need of you.”
“We have to go deliver some bad news—”
“I’m so terribly sorry to hear it. Don’t let me delay you,” she said. “Get in your car and go deliver your bad news of a murder that did not happen here at Star Dry Cleaning.”
Taylor looked at Kovac, clearly not used to being denied anything by a female.
“What time do you close, ma’am?” Kovac asked.
“Six o’clock.”
“It’s almost six now.”
“In seven minutes it will be six o’clock. You are taking the parking space of customers who must rush in to get their dry cleaning at the last possible moment, and this will cost my business money.”
“It’s only four minutes by my watch,” Kovac said. “We can drag this out for four minutes and park for free or you can accept our gratitude and let us get on with our business.”
She arched a brow. “How much gratitude?”
He looked at Taylor. “Give the lady ten bucks.”
“Ten bucks?” Taylor said with a tone of protest as he dug out his wallet. “It’s three minutes.”
“You are a cheap man,” the woman scolded, snatching the bill out of his hand. “Cheapness makes you less handsome.”
“It’s ten bucks more than you would have had without us,” Kovac pointed out.
A brilliant smile split her face. “This is very true. I thank you, gentlemen. Excuse me now while I close my shop. Good day to you.”
“We could have just parked there,” Taylor grumbled.
“Don’t be a piker. It’s important to foster good community relations,” Kovac said, flipping up the collar of his coat. The damp cold dug into his shoulders like talons. “Besides, it did my heart good to spend your money.”
“I’m so happy for you.”
Diana Chamberlain’s apartment was located on the ground floor of a huge, ugly brown house with a sagging wraparound porch. The front door was open. Three different kinds of loud music leeched through the thin walls into the first-floor hall, the volume rising and falling as apartment doors opened and closed. Taylor rapped on the door marked “B,” and they waited. He knocked again.
The door of the house opened and a college kid with dreadlocks came in with a bicycle and muscled it up the stairs to the second floor.
Taylor knocked again. “Miss Chamberlain?”
The door cracked open and a fit, good-looking Japanese man in his late thirties stared out at them. “Can I help you?”
Taylor held up his ID. “Police. We’re looking for Diana Chamberlain.”
“Finally. She had to see the news on TV first. Nice job, guys,” the man said sarcastically.
“And you would be . . . ?” Kovac asked.
“Ken Sato.”
“Professor Ken Sato?”
“Yes.”
Kovac cut Taylor a subtle What did I tell you? look.
“Do you live here?” Taylor asked. “We have a different address for you.”
“No, I came over for Diana,” Sato said. “She called me, hysterical. She’d seen the news coverage at the gym while she was working out.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I knew something had to be wrong when Lucien didn’t show for the meeting this morning. I never imagined anything like what happened. Was there really a sword involved? That’s a hideous thought.”
Doors opened and closed above them, and feet thundered down the stairs, accompanied by talk and laughter.
“We’d like to come in and speak to Miss Chamberlain,” Kovac said.
“She’s resting. She’s had a rough day.”
Taylor had the better angle to see into the apartment. He was looking past Sato, his suspicions rising just as Kovac’s were. For all they knew, Sato had massacred the Chamberlains and had come here to cross the daughter off the list.
“Yeah, well, I’m afraid we have to insist,” Kovac said. “We have a few questions we need answered.”
“She just lost her parents. This can’t wait until tomorrow?”
“No. It can’t,” Kovac said firmly.
Sato frowned, not moving from the doorway. A woman’s voice came from somewhere behind him.
“Ken? Who is it?”
“The police. They want to speak to you.”
&nb
sp; “Oh, we’ll want to speak to you, too, Professor,” Kovac said. “You being so close to the family and all.”
Unhappy, Sato stepped back and motioned them inside. He was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve Henley T-shirt that skimmed broad shoulders and a tapered waist. No bow tie, no tweed jacket. His Clark Kent glasses only made him look hipper. His thick black hair was shaved close on the sides of his head, and left long on top, to spill across his forehead. The sleeves of his shirt were pushed halfway up to his elbows, revealing intricate sleeves of tattoos on both forearms.
Diana Chamberlain was taller than Sato by several inches. She had to be close to six feet, an angular, athletic-looking girl in her mid-twenties with tumbling waves of streaky blonde hair. Her face was an interesting oval of slightly asymmetrical features. A bump on the bridge of her nose suggested it had been broken once. Her eyes and nose were red and puffy, presumably from crying.
Kovac introduced himself and Taylor. She looked Taylor up and down like he might be on the menu for dinner.
“We’re sorry for your loss, Miss Chamberlain,” Taylor said.
“We’re sorry about the way you found out, too,” Kovac added. “The media ran with the story before we could stop them.”
“Was it true?” she asked. She backed up to a sagging couch and curled her long legs beneath her like a foal, settling back into a corner and pulling a blanket around her shoulders. She never took her eyes off Taylor. “What they said about my parents being attacked with a sword—is that true?”
There was no emotion in her voice as she asked, no fear, no horror at the idea. Nothing but morbid curiosity.
“There was evidence to suggest that, yes,” Taylor said.
“That’s so terrible,” she said, wide-eyed. “With one of Daddy’s swords?”
“We can’t really get into those details yet,” Kovac said.
The apartment smelled of weed and incense. Everything in it looked thirdhand and worn out. The sink and counter of the kitchenette were piled with dirty dishes. It was a far cry from the home the girl’s parents had died in.
“Do you know which sword it was?” she asked. “Did they use more than one?”
She wasn’t crying now. She wasn’t tearing up at the thought of her parents being hacked to death. She wanted to know which sword their killer had chosen to use.