“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.”
“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.
“I can’t comment on that,” Kovac said again. “I wouldn’t know one from the other at any rate. We were hoping you might be able to help us in the weaponry department, Mr. Sato.”
Sato sat down on the couch a foot away from the girl, touching her reassuringly on the shoulder. “Absolutely. Whatever you need.”
“Did they suffer?” the girl asked. “I wouldn’t want to think my mother suffered.”
She sounded like she was talking about a stray animal that had been run over.
Kovac took a seat on a hard, straight wooden chair to be at her eye level. He thought of Sondra Chamberlain lying spread-eagle on the floor of her dining room, a quarter of her face sliced away, a samurai sword planted through her abdomen. “It looked like it happened pretty fast.”
The girl blinked her wide gray eyes. Vacant eyes. He wondered if she was on something.
“When was the last time you spoke to either of your parents?” Taylor asked. He took the other hard wood chair and balanced his notebook on his thigh as he scribbled his notes.
“I was there for dinner Sunday. It was my father’s birthday,” she said. “And my mother called me every day. I didn’t answer her call yesterday, though.”
“What time did she call?”
“Around eight thirty. I don’t take her calls after dinner. I can’t stand to listen to her when she’s been drinking.”
“How would you know she’d been drinking if you didn’t speak to her?” Taylor asked.
She looked at him like he was an idiot. “My mother drinks in the evening. Every evening. I would drink, too, if I lived in that house, but I wouldn’t live in that house, so I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Your father was a difficult man?” Kovac asked.
“An egotistical, misogynistic megalomaniac.”
“But you went to his birthday dinner?” Taylor said.
“It was a command performance. I didn’t say I enjoyed myself.”
“You were his grad student,” Kovac said. “Did he twist your arm to do that?”