“Yeah, I’ve got news for you,” Kovac said, “1984 was a few decades ago.”
“Here’s what’s interesting,” Liska went on. “Jeremy Nilsen lived next door to Ted Duffy here, west of Lake Nokomis.” She stuck a pin in the map. “His father—the poster boy for angry white men everywhere—still lives there. The kid had a crush on Duffy’s foster daughter—now known as Evi Burke—who now lives here, east of Lake Nokomis.” She stuck a second pin in the map and then drew a finger in a triangle between her pins and Elwood’s. “We’re talking about a relatively small area, a few square miles. And yesterday Evi Burke received a creepy, vaguely threatening note in the mail that said, ‘I know who you are and I know where you live.’”
Kovac sat up straighter. “She works at Chrysalis?”
“Yes. She assumed the note was related to one of her cases. Maybe not.”
“So, the guy you want to question about a twenty-five-year-old homicide could be our suspect in a possible double murder-for-hire?” Taylor said. “And he’s stalking the girl he had a crush on in high school? That’s a whole lot of a word I’m not allowed to use.”
“An unlikely serendipitous collection of ideas,” Elwood offered.
“I’m not saying anything,” Liska said. “But I am taking a picture of your guy over to Evi Burke, and I think it’d be a good idea to put an unmarked unit on her block until somebody throws a net over this guy.”
“Done,” Kovac said.
“Thank you. I’m out of here,” she said, giving a jaunty salute. “Call me when you catch him, boys.”
As the door closed behind her, Taylor said, “I stopped to talk to Charlie Chamberlain on my way home last night.”
“And he didn’t tell you to call his attorney?” Kovac asked.
“I made speaking to me a better choice.”
“Good boy.”
“Someone had beaten the living crap out of him.”
Kovac’s brows sketched upward. “Sato?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Not Sato.”
“My hunch? I think Diana did it,” Taylor said.
“The sister beat him up?” Tippen asked. “Now, that’s my kind of crazy.”
“She’d snap you like a twig,” Kovac said, “and pick her teeth with your bones. She’s a freaking Amazon, and a whole truckload of nuts.”
“He didn’t want to talk about it,” Taylor said.
“If Sato did that to him, he’d be bringing charges.”
“Exactly. I also spoke with his neighbor across the hall. She referred to Diana as his tall girlfriend, and said there seemed to be a lot of fighting and making up between them.”
“And we have just crossed a line, even for me,” Tippen commented.
“I’m not surprised,” Kovac said. “Even if he’s not sleeping with her, her power base is sexual. She’s had him wrapped around her finger since they were kids. He pissed her off popping her boyfriend in the face yesterday.”
“There was probably a sexual component to the father-daughter relationship, as well,” Elwood added. “Actual or implied.”
“Charlie didn’t come out and say so,” Kovac said, “but he hinted there might have been abuse in Diana’s background. Before or after she was adopted by the Chamberlains, I don’t know. The damage was done either way. Add the result of sexual abuse to her bipolar disorder, and you’ve got a potentially explosive mix.”
“Sex and violence,” Taylor said. “She goes off on her brother for taking a swing at her lover. Charlie looked like he went a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson.”
“They both studied martial arts as kids,” Kovac said. “Imagine her reaction if Daddy told them he was giving away their inheritance.”
“Charlie denied knowing about that,” Taylor said, “but I wasn’t convinced. He said their father was always making threats like that, but that he would never follow through.”
“He was following through this time,” Kovac said.
“So Big Sis picked up the phone and called her ninja lover at Rising Wings,” Tippen suggested. “Oh, won’t you please slaughter my father for me, Gordon? He’s so mean.”
“She saw Gordon Krauss at the house the day he was there to do the repairs,” Kovac said. “Tweedle Dumber told me she was slinking around Krauss like a cat in heat.”
“She probably watched him do the deed,” Elwood said.
“Watched?” Kovac asked. “Hell, she could have beaten her father to death herself. Whoever did it had a whole lot of rage. Then either Krauss or Sato took care of the mother.”
“Or Charlie,” Taylor said. “After yesterday, we know he can lose control. And he certainly knows more than he’s saying.”
“Were there any calls from Diana’s phone that might have been to Krauss?” Kovac asked. “To Rising Wings? To a pay phone? Anything?”
“No, but she’s smart enough; she could have used a burner,” Taylor said. “Disposable phones are everywhere.
“I’m still bothered by the anomaly in the calls from the mother’s phone,” he went on. “I hope to hear back from the phone company today what towers those calls were pinging off. I asked Charlie if I could listen to the message his mother left Tuesday night. He said he erased it.”