by Robert Ellis
“It’s the only room I’m allowed to smoke in,” Hight said.
Lena knew that victims’ identities weren’t broadcast over the air, but let it go for now.
“We’ll need the keys to your car,” she said.
“I didn’t do it.”
“Everybody says that, Mr. Hight. We’ll need your keys.”
Hight grimaced, digging his hand into his front pocket and fishing them out. As he fumbled with the key ring—his fingers trembling—Lena tried to keep her mind focused on the job.
It wasn’t easy.
No matter what she thought of him, no matter what he’d done, the fact that he had lost his daughter was impossible to ignore. Barrera was standing just off the foyer in the living room. She could see him struggling with it, too. It didn’t help that an array of framed photographs of the man’s daughter were arranged on the baby grand. Lily Hight’s gentle face and bright eyes were more than striking, her intoxication with life set against her horrific fate more than palpable. It almost seemed as if the girl was watching them build the case against her father—keeping an eye on them from somewhere on the other side.
Lena turned away. Tosh Mifune, a criminalist from SID, was standing in the kitchen doorway.
“We’ll do it in here,” he said. “The light’s good.”
She ushered Hight into the room, Mifune pulling a chair away from the breakfast table. Hight started to protest, but finally sat down, perhaps due to Mifune’s patient and well-seasoned manner. As the middle-aged criminalist unpacked his evidence kit and laid the items on the table with great care, Lena could see the concern growing on Tim Hight’s face. Mifune’s tools appeared better suited for a doctor’s office than a crime lab.
Hight began fidgeting in his seat. He glanced at Barrera leaning against the stove, then turned back to Lena. “Aren’t you gonna read me my rights?”
“You’re not under arrest,” she said. “But yes, I’d be happy to.”
She hoped that she didn’t sound too confrontational. Hoped that she could light a fire beneath the man and the flame wouldn’t burn out. But when she finished, Hight started to get out of the chair.
“So I’m allowed to call my attorney,” he said.
“You can do anything you want, as long as you do it from that chair.”
“You mean you’re holding me here? I can’t leave?”
“We’ve got a body warrant, Mr. Hight. We’re gonna take a sample of your hair, swab your mouth, and get a set of your fingerprints.”
“You already have my fingerprints. You took them when Lily died.”
“We’re doing it again. Were you wearing these clothes last night?”
He nodded.
“Then we’ll need to take them as well,” she said. “There’s nothing your attorney can do to stop it.”
Hight fell back into the chair, shaking his head as he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. Unfortunately for him, the pack was empty. Lena watched him crumple it up in disappointment, then traded a quiet nod with Barrera on the other side of the room. They had talked it over before their arrival. Barrera had more experience than any detective he supervised. He had a way of seeing things, and wanted to keep his distance.
She turned back to Hight, acknowledging the man’s distress. “You could make things a lot easier on yourself,” she said. “A lot easier on everyone.”
“How?”
“Tell us what you did with the gun.”
“What gun? I didn’t shoot Jacob Gant.”
“Would you be willing to take a polygraph?”
He ran his hands over his head, ignoring the question. His hair was a mix of blond and gray, cropped short enough to stand on end.
“If you didn’t shoot him,” she said, “then why are you afraid to take a polygraph?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged.
Lena took a step closer. “When was the last time you saw Jacob Gant?”
“Not since the trial,” he said. “Not since he walked out of that courtroom a free man.”
“Do you expect anyone to believe that?”
“People believe what they want to. I’m guessing you’re no different. I haven’t seen him.”
“But he lived next door, Mr. Hight.”
“He hasn’t been around. Maybe he got a job. Or maybe I wasn’t looking for him. Maybe I didn’t want to see him.”
She glanced at the nicotine stains on the first and second fingers of his right hand. Hight noticed and buried them underneath the fold of his arm.
“How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?” she asked. “How much time do you spend in the sunroom? How often do you sit in that chair by the window with the lights out?”
Hight didn’t respond, and silence overtook the room. Lena circled the table. As she passed the pantry she noticed pencil marks on the inside of the door. Beside each line was a date. The months and days remained the same—only the year changed—and she realized that the marks on the door were Lily Hight’s measurements, recorded on her birthday each year.
Lena felt the gloom creeping in. A sudden hard pull. Hight’s daughter had been five feet nine inches tall on her sixteenth birthday. Her last birthday.
She turned back to Hight. He had been watching her. Studying her. As Lena measured him in the chair, he appeared broken, but not frightening—like a man who stared into the abyss, lost his footing, and fell in.
“Why are you afraid to take a polygraph?” she said in a softer voice. “Why go through all this? Why not clear your name and move on?”
Hight had turned away, his eyes fixated on the bright sunlight spilling into the room from the window over the sink. The polished brass faucet and white porcelain tub sparkled and glowed, giving his ultra-pale skin the illusion of life.
“Move on?” he whispered, more to himself than anyone in the room.
“That’s right,” Lena said. “Clear your name and move on. Or take responsibility for what you’ve done. Own up to it.”
A moment passed, the man staring at the rays of sunlight dancing on the counter. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he said. “If you did, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be doing this to me. You are the people I trusted. The people I counted on. The people who were supposed to bring me just—” The words stopped coming with Hight thinking things over as if in a trance. “I won’t do it,” he said finally. “I won’t take a polygraph because nothing in this world is guaranteed. I won’t do it because I’m glad that Jacob Gant was murdered last night. I wished for it. I dreamed about it over and over again. Lily’s gone. She’s gone and I wanted him dead. I’m glad he’s dead. I only wish there was something past dead. Something worse than dead.”
His voice shook, then faded into silence. Lena traded looks with Barrera and Mifune, but she was thinking about the way Jacob Gant had been murdered. The two bullets in his eyes. The anger that the killer had been harboring. The bitterness and hatred that had rushed out the barrel of a gun.
Payback.
Hight gazed up at her, his dilated eyes wild with emotion. As he lowered his hands to his lap and tried to pull himself together, Lena noticed a bandage on his left palm. The blood leaking out. Hight had been cut—wounded—and he was trying to hide it.
Someone tapped on the door from the foyer, breaking the moment. When she turned, John Street motioned her into the living room. She could see his partner behind him. Exiting the kitchen, she joined them by the far window beside the baby grand. Carson was holding something: a plastic evidence bag containing a single sheet of yellow paper. Both detectives were big men. Both were experienced and not in the habit of showing much emotion. But everything about today was different.
Carson glanced at Hight through the doorway, then passed the bag over. “It’s a receipt for a gun,” he said quietly. “A nine millimeter Smith, Lena. Check out the gun dealer’s address.”
Carson opened the window shutter. Lena lowered the receipt into the light and started reading. The 9-mm pist
ol had been purchased in Arizona. The address was nothing more than a Web site, and nothing less. She didn’t see a phone number, but the date of purchase caught her eye.
“He bought the gun six weeks ago,” she said.
Carson nodded, his wide face flushed with color. “The day after the verdict,” he said. “No wait time and no background check. Hight types in his credit card number, and some asshole ships him the piece, no questions asked.”
“Where was the receipt?”
Street answered for his partner. “He’s got an office upstairs. We found it in his desk with a stack of other receipts. Looks like he was trying to write it off as a business expense.”
Lena felt someone move in behind her. It was Barrera. He reached for the evidence bag and examined the receipt.
“Business is business,” he said. “Find the gun. Tear the place apart.”
11
She had asked Mifune to remove his instruments from the table and wait outside. Barrera was seated on the couch in the living room, out of sight but within earshot. Hight remained in the kitchen, alone for the last thirty minutes with whatever was going on inside his head. She didn’t think that time would soften him. The man had been running on fumes for more than a year. When she finally entered the room, he was staring at that empty pack of cigarettes.
“What’s happened?” he said. “Why is this taking so long?”
Lena opened a file she’d pulled from her briefcase. “Do you keep a flashlight in your car, Mr. Hight?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
She found the surveillance photo and set it down on the table. Hight looked at himself behind the wheel and seemed amazed that his ride home had been documented. Lena pushed the photo closer, pointing at the dark object on the passenger seat.
“What do you think this is?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“On the seat beside you. What do you think it is? What’s your best guess?”
Hight didn’t answer and seemed confused. Leaning over the table, he tried to study the image.
“We’re not talking about six days ago,” she said. “It’s more like six hours. You’ve just left Club 3 AM. You said that you don’t keep a flashlight in your car. So what is it, Mr. Hight? What’s on the passenger seat of your car?”
His eyes returned to the photograph. “I don’t know. It could be a shadow. It’s nothing.”
Lena tossed the receipt for the gun on the table.
“A shadow?” she said.
Hight’s body stiffened as he realized what was in the evidence bag. Beads of sweat began to percolate on his forehead. His mouth quivered. Lena pulled a chair away from the table and sat down. Nothing about her voice or manner was confrontational.
“Where’s the gun, Mr. Hight?”
He took a deep breath and shuddered as he exhaled. He tried to look at her, but couldn’t. He seemed embarrassed. The room went quiet again.
“Make it easy on yourself,” she said. “You’re so close. Just tell me where it is.”
Another long moment passed. “I can’t remember,” he whispered finally. “I don’t know what I did with it.”
“You mean you got rid of it. After you left the club, you tossed it.”
He shook his head. “No. I mean I can’t remember where I put it. It came in the mail and I put it somewhere. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was confused.”
Lena sat back in the chair, unable to hide her disappointment. “That’s your story? You bought a gun, but you can’t remember what you did with it. You were at Club 3 AM last night, two men were shot, but all you took with you was your shadow.”
The cynicism in her voice registered on his face, though only for a brief moment.
“I think I should call my lawyers now.”
Lawyers. He didn’t have one attorney. He had more than one.
“I do, too,” she said. “And here’s what you’ll need to tell them. It won’t work, Mr. Hight. What you’re doing. What you’re trying to get away with. It won’t work.”
“I’m not trying to get away with anything.”
“Sure you are. You’re trying to get away with murder. But all that depends on it looking like a crime of passion. And you’ll need public opinion on your side to pull it off.”
“If I had killed Jacob Gant, it would have been a crime of passion.”
“But what happened last night wasn’t a crime of passion,” she said. “And that’s your problem. It doesn’t look like it. It doesn’t feel like it. So how do you expect your lawyers to sell it?”
“If I’d murdered Jake, it would have been,” he repeated with less conviction.
“I can only speak for myself and the people I work with, Mr. Hight. The whole thing looks planned. Everything you did looks scripted, like you spent a lot of time in that chair in the sunroom thinking it over from every angle. Watching the Gants from your window and letting it eat you up from the inside. You dreamed about murdering Jacob Gant. Like you said, you wished for his death over and over again.”
A beat went by. Then another, and Hight started weeping like a man overcome by his memories. His ghosts.
“But Jake murdered Lily,” he whispered into his hands. “My girl. That’s how a crime of passion works.”
Lena spotted a box of tissues on the counter and brought them over to the table.
“You planned it, Mr. Hight. You bought the gun six weeks ago. We checked. It’s not registered. You followed Gant to the club last night. You knew the layout and waited on the fire escape.”
“I haven’t seen him since the trial. I told you that.”
“You shot an innocent man. You shot Johnny Bosco.”
“I didn’t. I couldn’t. I liked Johnny. He was nice to me.”
Lena lowered her voice. “You shot him in the back. You’ll need to tell your lawyers about it because that’s what it really comes down to. The gristle on the bone. You shot an innocent man in the back.”
His body shivered—a tremor from deep within that came and went.
“Why do you keep repeating it?” he said.
“Because you’re playing us. Because you’re trying to take the city down with you. No matter what I might feel for your loss, you’re hurting other people now. You shot Bosco and then you killed Gant just the way you dreamed about it. You took care of business. You wasted him. You disfigured him beyond recognition. Just the way you wanted to. Just the way you planned it.”
“No.”
“When you talk to your attorneys about selling what you did as a crime of passion, remember the details and don’t leave anything out. You took the time to pick up your shell casings, Mr. Hight. You took the time to go through their wallets and make it look like a robbery. You knew Bosco. Everybody knew he carried a lot of cash. So you took his money and tried to make the murders look like something else. You tried to cover your tracks. And then what?”
“I didn’t do any of these things.”
“And then what?” she repeated. “You stayed behind to watch. You got lost in the crowd outside the club because you wanted to see the fallout. You called ahead and sent your wife to Bakersfield. You came home and mended the wound on your hand that you’ve been trying to hide from us. You made a drink and sat down in your chair by the window. And then you waited. You waited for the news to arrive next door. Your dream came true. You made sure it came true. Jacob Gant is dead.”
Lena paused a moment, her words settling into the room.
“That’s not a crime of passion,” she said finally. “That’s the death penalty, Mr. Hight. That’s a trip to the dead room. That’s a ride on a gurney and a needle in the arm.”
He looked up from the floor. His eyes had hollowed out, and the tears were gone. He hadn’t weakened or given anything up. But he was looking through her now. All the way through her—his jaw tight, his gaze bitter and ice-cold.
12
People are capable of anything.
Given the right circumstances, th
e most gentle and meek can lash out in a single instant to become the most vicious and unforgiving.
It was the great lesson she had learned from her first partner in the division. Her last partner. Humanity can be shed as easily as clothing. Everything you know about someone can change in the blink of an eye. For anyone who works in law enforcement, this was the premise, the foundation, the key to survival.
She was standing in the foyer. Barrera had stepped out onto the back porch, smoking a cigar, and talking to the deputy chief on his cell. As she watched Mifune work with Hight in the kitchen, it occurred to her that Hight wasn’t necessarily as disappointed with the way things had turned out as he showed himself to be. He had dreamed about killing Jacob Gant, and the botched trial had given him the opportunity to realize that dream. A shrink would probably call it the quickest way through the grieving process. A shortcut to closure. Gant would never appear in an interview, never be seen in public, never be an issue again. He was nothing more than a memory now.
The thought faded as she climbed the stairs to the second-floor landing. Carson and Street were searching through the master bedroom at the end of the hall. Toward the front of the house she could see a small guest room, well furnished with large double-hung windows and a decent view of Venice and the ocean at the bottom of the hill. A door was open to her left. She noted the unfinished stairs leading to the attic and could hear a pair of detectives moving things around. Across the hall she found Hight’s office and walked in.
It was a large room with the same footprint as the living room. And like the room below, window shutters kept the space in a perpetual state of near darkness. She understood why when she noticed the large TV mounted on the far wall. She looked at the glass coffee table, the leather couch and chairs. The room served as both an office and a screening room. As she walked over to the desk, she realized that Fred Wireman, a senior detective due to retire next year, was searching the closet. Like Carson and Street, Lena knew Wireman to be extremely thorough.
“Lots of movies, huh,” he said.