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?”