“I don’t understand why I can’t come in,” Charlie Chamberlain said stubbornly.
They stood in the drizzle on the front walk of the house: Charlie, Diana, Ken Sato, Kovac, and Taylor. Kovac had purposely made sure that Charlie knew the time they would be meeting, in the hope he would turn up, despite the fact he had been told not to come. Kovac did so for the express purpose of literally shutting the kid out. If Charlie Chamberlain didn’t want his sister left alone with the cops, it was worth messing with him to find out why.
“I told you, kid,” Kovac said curtly. “I can’t have people wandering around the crime scene. We’re here for two reasons. One, so I can walk through the collection with Professor Sato, and two, so your sister can look over your mother’s jewelry with my partner. I don’t need a third wheel here.”
“I have a DVD of the collection,” Chamberlain said, pulling a plastic DVD case out of the patch pocket of his rain jacket. Mr. Helpful. “I stopped by the attorney’s office to talk about making funeral arrangements, and I remembered he had a copy—”
Kovac took the case and handed it to Taylor like he couldn’t be bothered with it. “Thanks, that’s great. You can go now.”
“This is my home,” Chamberlain argued. “I have as much right to be in it as anyone.”
“No,” Kovac snapped. “This is my crime scene until I say it isn’t, and you don’t have any rights here until I say you do. That’s how this works. Now, I’d like to get out of this filthy weather before pneumonia sets in, so . . .”
“It’s fine, Charlie,” Sato said. “It’s all fine.”
Sato went to put a hand on the kid’s shoulder. Charlie Chamberlain shrugged him off, shooting Sato a look that could have cut glass. “Nothing is fine. No part of any of this is fine, Ken.”
“Oh my God, Charlie,” Diana said impatiently. “Why don’t you just shut the fuck up and go do whatever it is you do when you’re not butting into my life.”
“Oh yeah, this is all about you, Diana,” Charlie bit back. “Our parents are dead.”
She rolled her eyes like a teenager.
Kovac resisted the urge to raise his eyebrows. Something had shifted in the dynamic between the siblings since that morning, when they clung to each other, crying over their mutual grief. He caught Taylor’s eye and knew he was making note of it as well.
“And unless you know something the rest of us don’t,” Kovac said, “Detective Taylor and I are in charge of solving their murders. Do you have something to contribute to that conversation, Charlie?”
The kid huffed and looked away and back, shoving his clenched fists into his jacket pockets as he struggled with his temper. “No. I would just like to see for myself the state of the house.”
“We’re not pocketing the silverware, if that’s what you think.”
“I’ll video,” Diana said and walked up the steps, dismissing him.
Kovac made a show of relenting. “Look, kid, go sit in your car if you’ve got time. I’ll walk you through when we’re done.”
They left him standing on the sidewalk looking like an unhappy wet puppy.
Inside the front door, they shed their dripping coats, hanging them on an iron coat tree. Taylor handed out booties for everyone to cover their shoes.
The house still carried a hint of the smell of spilled blood and the faint stink of cigarettes. While no one was allowed to smoke in a house being processed as a crime scene, plenty of the people on the job ducked outside for a break during the hours it took to do the job, bringing the smell of smoke back inside with them.
“Where were they killed?” Diana Chamberlain asked. True to her word, she held up her phone and took a video of the foyer and the staircase.
“The dining room,” Taylor said. “We won’t be going in there.”
“I think I should.”
Sato gave her a disapproving look. “Di, no.”
“I should,” she insisted, turning to him with her bravest and most earnest expression. “It’s the last place their souls were,” she said with all the drama of a soap opera actress. “That’s where I should say good-bye to them.”
“We really can’t have people in there,” Kovac said. “We need you to go upstairs with Detective Taylor and look through your mother’s things.”
He turned to Sato. “Professor, you and I are going to the professor’s study.”
He didn’t look any more like a professor today than he had the day before. He was in black jeans and a black hoodie with several glossy black Japanese characters running down the left side of his chest.
“Do you have some kind of history with the boy?” Kovac asked. “He doesn’t seem too happy to see you.”
“Charlie thinks I’m an anarchist because I don’t fit in any of his neat little boxes.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means he can’t control me, and control is everything to Charlie. Control the emotions. Control the situation. Move the chess pieces around on the board to create the best defense.”