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, the 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.
Lena nodded, eyeing the bookshelves. Hight’s library of films looked to be as extensive as the music collection she had inherited from her brother. Several thousand titles filled the shelves from floor to ceiling. Skimming through the collection in the dim light, it took a moment to grasp that they were sorted by the director’s name, not the title of the film. Because this information wasn’t printed on the spine, Hight had to possess a certain knowledge of each film’s history. All the same, some of Lena’s favorites were here. Films by Truffaut and Bresson, Bunuel and Bertolucci. Works by Hitchcock, and Huston, Kubrick, Kurosawa, and Herzog.
It all registered even though she was thinking more about Jacob Gant’s murder and the memories that had surfaced while she examined the gunshot wounds to his head. She was looking for John Ford. When she found Hight’s copy of The Searchers, she pulled it from the shelf.
The cover was a reproduction of the original poster: John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter on horseback with their rifles set on their saddles. Across the image the words, He had to find her … were repeated twice. Still, nothing registered.
“Hey, Fred,” she said. “Are you into movies?”
“Since I was a kid.”
“You ever see this one?”
She turned and held out the cover. When he read the title, he smiled.
“One of my favorites,” he said. “Along with Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and My Darling Clementine.”
“Someone shoots someone in the eyes. This is the movie, right? Without eyes, you can’t enter the spirit world.”
Wireman thought about it for a moment, started to nod, then stopped as he put it together. “That’s the one,” he said. “Of course, it doesn’t prove anything.”
“I’m not saying it does. All it means is that he owns the film and probably watched it once or twice.”
“More than once or twice would be my guess, Lena. Before Hight’s career tanked and he moved to reality TV, he directed Prairie Winds. The poster’s over here on the wall.”
Wireman swung the closet door shut, revealing the framed poster. Lena crossed the room. She had seen the film more than once and liked it. Once with her brother, and once with Rhodes.
“You look surprised,” he said.
“I didn’t realize it was him. What went wrong? Why’d he stop making movies?”
Wireman shrugged and got back to work. “Shit happens, I guess. Seems like he got more than his share.”
13
Lena noticed a second door in the hallway. Because it was slightly more narrow than the door leading to the attic, she assumed that it opened to a closet. But when she gave the handle a push, bright sunlight flooded the entire landing and swirled around her feet.
It turned out to be another bedroom. Lily Hight’s bedroom.
And there was a feeling inside-something undefined and difficult to absorb.
The girl’s room was almost the size of her father’s office across the hall. On the left, Lena could see a walk-in closet-a chest of drawers and a bathroom. On the right, a small desk stood beside a pair of bookcases and two sets of windows facing the Gants’ house on the other side of the drive. Curiously, a window was cracked open, a slight breeze filtering warm air into the air-conditioned room.
Lena walked in, letting the door drift shut behind her. As she stepped into the middle of the room, she looked at the double bed pushed against the far wall, noted an armchair, the computer, and various keepsakes the sixteen-year-old had collected before her death. But what struck her most was the condition of the room itself. That feeling she got when she first opened the door.
One year ago this bedroom had been a crime scene. After the investigation, the space would have been released and the Hights given the names of several companies specializing in bio waste and crime scene cleanup. It seemed as if their work had been thorough. Even the white carpet looked spotless. But it was more than that. What struck Lena about the room was that the Hights didn’t appear to have sealed it off. Unlike most families who have suffered a devastating loss, the room had the odd feeling of openness that comes from continued use.
She moved over to the bed. Pillows were propped up against the headboard with several books stacked by the lamp on the night table. An impression left by a body was visible on the mattress. On the carpet by the window Lena noticed marks from the chair and was surprised that the carpet fibers hadn’t filled in after the cleanup. The chair must have been placed in front of the window for a long time before someone moved it closer to the bed.
She turned back to the chest, found it filled with the girl’s clothing, and started searching through the drawers. She tried not to think too much about what she was seeing, the sadness and heartbreak that came with such a loss. Still, Lily Hight’s clothing was clean and neatly folded. And Lena couldn’t help but smell the girl’s body lingering here and there throughout the room. The fragrance of her hair and skin. She knew from experience that no matter how well you cleaned a room, no matter how much you scrubbed everything down, the scent of a human being lasted until the walls were repainted and the furniture was removed.