He paused a beat. “I’m listening.”
“Hight and his daughter. Was there anything there?”
Paladino became quiet again. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost its polish and become exceedingly quiet and precise.
“I had three spotters in the courtroom, Lena. Three of the best analysts around. When I floated the idea that Hight molested his daughter, it was clear that no one on the jury wanted to hear that.”
Lena got up and moved to the slider. The city was awash in new morning light. “Okay, so the jury didn’t want to hear it. But were you fishing, or was it more than that? Did you have something real?”
“We’ll talk in the office,” he said. “Later in the day.”
And then he hung up.
24
She drove across town to Hight’s house in the TSX, listening to the V6 under the hood and thinking about what she hoped to accomplish in the next hour. She didn’t mind doing this alone. There was a certain advantage to seeing Hight without a partner by her side, a chance that Hight might speak more freely. But as she pulled around the corner and spotted the patrol unit still on watch at the curb, she had to admit that she felt some degree of relief.
Lena parked in the drive and walked over to the car with her briefcase. Sitting behind the wheel was a uniformed officer she recognized from the day before and knew by name. Carmine Ruiz looked like he only had one or two weeks on the job, but that was okay with her.
“Is he in there?” she asked.
Ruiz fought off a yawn as he pointed to the sunroom. “He’s been in there all night. He sits in that window chain-smoking in the dark. He came out once to tell me that he wanted his car back. I think he was drunk.”
“I’m gonna need your help, Carmine. No big deal. Just come inside with me and wait in the foyer.”
“You got it,” he said.
They walked through the gate and up the path onto the porch. Before Lena could knock, the door swung open to reveal Hight and those bloodshot eyes of his. He stared at them for a while-back and forth and long enough to creep Lena out. But then, without a word, he stepped aside to let them enter.
“Are you sober?” Lena asked.
Hight nodded. “Close enough.”
“I want another look at your daughter’s bedroom.”
The man seemed to need time to process her request, but eventually started up the staircase. Lena followed three steps behind, keenly aware of the distance between them. When they reached the landing, she gave him a good lead through the gloom until they reached the door.
“Where’s your friend?” he asked.
“Officer Ruiz will wait downstairs.”
“How much time is this gonna take? What are you looking for?”
“Open the door, Mr. Hight.”
He turned the knob and gave it a soft push, the bright light from the bedroom spilling over them like the crest of a ten-foot wave. As Lena entered, she noticed Hight’s hesitation to follow and watched him lean against the doorjamb.
“You lied to me yesterday, Mr. Hight. You said that you hadn’t seen Jacob Gant since the trial. But that wasn’t the case at all, was it? You’ve seen him many times over the last six weeks. And you had an argument with him on the day he was murdered.”
He met her eyes, but couldn’t hold her gaze-shifting his weight and looking down at the floor.
“Maybe I didn’t understand the question,” he said.
“Maybe. But it was a simple question, Mr. Hight. Tell me what the argument was about.”
Hight shrugged. “I saw him hop over the fence. I told him to stay off my property.”
“That’s it?”
He nodded. “Pretty much.”
“I don’t believe you, Mr. Hight.”
“That’s your problem, not mine, lady.”
“Is this the way your attorneys told you to act?”
“I didn’t call them.”
There was a touch of arrogance in his voice. Defiance.
“You can’t do this alone,” she said. “You can’t do it because it is your problem. And it’s a big problem. You need legal advice. It’s your right.”
He wasn’t listening. He needed legal advice, but he needed a shower and a shave and a change of clothes as well.
Lena finally broke her gaze to take in the room. She could see fingerprint powder on almost every surface and remembered the request she’d made as they waited for Paladino’s press conference to end yesterday in the front yard. No matter how odd, their daughter’s bedroom hadn’t been turned into a tomb. Based on the large number of smudges, the room was obviously still in use.
“You spend time in here,” she said.
Hight shook his head. “I haven’t set foot in this room since Lily died. Once in a while I’ll find my wife in here. I don’t know what she does.”
Lena found a pair of gloves in her briefcase and walked over to the chest of drawers. Yesterday she had been looking for a gun. Today was all about confirmation. When she spotted a camera in the top drawer, she pulled it out and hit the POWER button. Remarkably, the device fired up, but only to indicate that the battery needed to be charged and that the media card was empty. After ten seconds, the screen went blank and the power shut down.
“Your daughter liked to take pictures?”
“She wanted to make it her living,” he said. “That photograph by the bed is one of hers.”
Lena stepped over for a look. It was a landscape, a black-and-white image shot at the beach from atop a cliff. The lens was pointed straight down at the rocks and sand, the shutter snapped just as a wave reached the shoreline. What struck Lena most about the image was the sunlight sweeping across the rocks and sand from a low angle-the way the image was composed.
“Your daughter had an eye.”
“Well beyond her years.”
“What happened to the rest of her work?”
“Cobb had her computer taken away after Gant was arrested. When we finally got it back, I downloaded the images and erased the drive.”
“Were they all landscapes, Mr. Hight? Or did she photograph people, too?”
Lena’s eyes were on him, but Hight showed no emotion-no changes.
“A little of both,” he said.
“Anything stand out?”
“Not really.”
A moment passed, but she didn’t think he’d bend. “The night she was murdered, where did you find her?”
“Right where you’re standing.”
Lena acknowledged the spot, then turned to the window and found the impressions in the carpet left by the chair. Pushing the chair over, she turned it toward the window and felt the feet fall into place. Through the window and across the drive she could see Jacob Gant’s room and the chair still in place before his window.
“We like it better the way it was,” Hight said.
“But on the night of the murder, the chair was here. And it had been that way for a long time. Long enough to break down the carpet.”
