CHAPTER 119
Tommy’s face was knotted with anger and disbelief. He asked, “What the fuck are you doing?”
The operator came on the line, said, “What is your emergency?”
I disguised my voice, spoke softly with a Spanish accent. “I heard shots fired in a house on San Francisquito Canyon Road.”
I gave her the house number and said that I’d gone inside to see if someone needed help. That I’d found one person in the house, a man, and he’d been shot.
“Is he breathing?” the operator asked me.
“No. He’s dead.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t say.”
I hung up the phone.
Tommy was asking me again what I thought I was doing, repeating that he’d shot Clay Harris in self- defense.
I wasn’t sorry that Harris was dead, but it would have been better for me if he’d lived, if we’d gotten him to turn on Tommy and testify that they’d conspired to kill Colleen.
Tommy was highly agitated, his cockiness entirely gone. He was saying, “Jack, let’s get the fuck out of here. I’ve got to get rid of my gun.”
His only concern was to get rid of the gun. One thing I had to say about Tommy: He was a shit, just like my dad.
I aimed my camera phone at the bite mark on Clay Harris’s hand, took three or four shots to be sure I got what I needed, frames that included both his bitten hand and his dead face. Then, I left the house by the open front door.
I disarmed the car with the remote, and my headlights flashed a hundred yards away. I walked along the dark roadway with Tommy following.
There wasn’t another car traveling on this road. Not a soul.
I reached the car and got in behind the wheel. Tommy was at the passenger side, trying the door, but I’d locked it. He yanked on the handle several times, then pounded on the window with the heel of his hand. He cursed at me, sounding completely desperate.
He was still begging me to open the door as I started the engine.
“Jack. Come on. Please open the door. You know I was just horsing around. You know he was going to shoot me. You know he was worthless.”
I let the window down a couple of inches. “Tell it to the cops,” I said. “You’re very persuasive, Tommy. They’ll be here in a couple of minutes. Or you can start walking. Maybe you’ll get away.”
“Jack. You don’t want to leave me here. Come on. Don’t do that. I’ll tell them you were here. I’ll say you did it.”
I buzzed up the window and pulled out onto the road that stretched from nowhere to nowhere two miles in both directions.
When I was back on Copper Hill Drive, I called Eric Caine and filled him in.
Then I just listened to what my Harvard-educated, street-trained lawyer had to say.
CHAPTER 120
Eric Caine sat next to me in an interrogation room at the police station downtown. He looked calm, like he’d had a good lunch, a nap, and had checked the balance on his retirement account and found that it was good.
My stomach felt like it was full of snakes.
They hadn’t said why they wanted to see me, but I was pretty sure Mitch Tandy hadn’t summoned us to North Los Angeles Street so he could tell me that I was a great guy.
I forced myself to think of fluffy clouds and rainbows, not that Tandy had sworn to put me in a federal prison for life for killing Colleen.
Tandy got comfortable in one of the two metal chairs across from us. Then Ziegler came in with a bulky manila envelope. He made a big production of pulling out a chair, putting the envelope down on the table, and taking his seat, snapping a rubber band on his wrist.
Like he was onstage.
Like he wanted all the attention.
What was up?
Other than the rubber band tic, neither cop gave any sign of emotion.
Tandy said, “I suppose you know what this is about.”
“Why don’t you tell us?” Caine said. “My client has a busy schedule. I’m sure you do too.”
“Does the name Clay Harris mean anything to you?” Tandy asked me.
He knew full well that I had known Harris.
Three days had passed since I’d stared down at Harris’s dead body. I hadn’t heard anything about the shooting since then. And I hadn’t heard from my brother.
Caine was speaking for me.
“We both know Clay Harris. He worked for Private for, what, three years, Jack? He was terminated in ’09 for extortion.”
“He’s dead,” Tandy said. “He was shot in his house out in the boondocks three days ago. An anonymous tipster called it in.”
“I’m sorry to hear that Harris is dead,” Caine said. “What does that have to do with Jack?”
The snakes writhed in my belly. Had I left a fingerprint at Harris’s house? Had my car, with its crumpled rear panel, been seen by a passerby? Had Tommy gone to the police and said that I was the shooter? I’d considered these possibilities many times, but I was sure that I hadn’t touched anything in Harris’s house. I hadn’t left any trace, I was pretty damn sure.
Ziegler opened the envelope, rummaged around, took out a sheet of paper. I’d learned to read upside down when I was three. Ziegler had a report from the LAPD’s forensic lab.
Ziegler said, “Someone took a bite out of Clay Harris’s hand. The ME matched the bite mark to Colleen Molloy’s dental chart. Looks like she bit Harris. Probably the last thing she did before he shot her.”
I already knew what the LAPD lab knew. Sci had matched that bite mark to Colleen’s charts too.
I waited for Ziegler to speak again. I guessed he was hoping I’d blurt something out, give him something on me that he didn’t have already. The silence seemed to go on forever.
Caine said, “This isn’t 48 Hours, Detective, and we don’t have forty-eight hours. You matched the bite on Harris’s hand to Colleen Molloy’s teeth. You want to know if we’re interested? We are.”
CHAPTER 121
Ziegler twisted in his seat. He’d delivered the news as if it had caused him physical pain.
“We’re all interested, Caine,” he said. “We actually want the one who killed her.”
I exhaled. It didn’t matter that Ziegler and Tandy saw my relief. They had evidence that Colleen had bitten Clay Harris. Their evidence was now our evidence.
Apparently Tandy felt the same way. He said, “We’re going to concede that Colleen bit Harris. But, Morgan, before you and your attorney start throwing confetti around, let me say that this bite mark isn’t conclusive. It
