City of Fire (11 page)

David hadn’t been embarrassed.

Instead, he liked the idea of his sister being a cop, called it outrageous, and kept his worries about her safety to himself. He even attended a department fund-raiser for abused children with her. It was the day Lena had first met Stan Rhodes. A picnic on the lawn at the Police Academy across from Dodger Stadium. She could remember her brother whispering in her ear that he had a joint in his pocket, and laughing at his own joke. She could still see him zeroing in on the homicide detectives, hitting them with questions from all the novels he’d read and listening to their stories. He had a good time, particularly when he found the bar and realized that cops drink beer, too.

“We’re up next,” Novak said.

Lena surfaced, watching her partner cross the floor. His daughter got out of the chair, rolling it back to her father’s desk.

“Sorry, honey,” he said. “You’re gonna have to split.”

“Thanks for dinner, Daddy. Maybe we could get together again next week.”

“I’d love to. You know that. Just pick the day.”

Lena watched them hug. Then the girl turned and smiled at her.

“Thanks for talking to me, Lena. Hope I didn’t say anything wrong. It was great seeing you.”

“You, too,” she said. “Take care.”

She watched Novak walk his daughter out the door to the elevators down the hall, then closed the lid on her steak, thinking about the words
black and blue.
Charred on the outside, but raw underneath. She wondered if the memories she
harbored all these years would ever stop. If her skin would ever thicken. She reached for her coffee. What was left tasted bitter and cold. She was ready to meet James Brant, she figured. Pumped and in the mood.

LENA stepped through the alcove, passing the captain’s office and entering Room 2.

“Is there anything you need before we get started, Mr. Brant?”

Brant’s weary eyes rose from his empty Styrofoam cup, bounced off Lena, and slid over to Novak closing the door. It was 2:00 a.m. He was slumped over the wooden table holding his head. He had missed a night’s sleep, was about to miss another, and was showing it.

“I’m fine,” he said, slurring his words. “Where did those guys go?”

“They thought you might want something to eat. You’ve been so helpful, they thought it was time for a break.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“We just have a few follow-up questions. It won’t take long.”

Brant lowered his hands. “Come to think of it, I am getting hungry. And I could use another cup of coffee, too.”

“It’s on the way,” Lena said.

Novak sat down, blocking the door and remaining quiet. Lena glanced at her notes, intentionally letting the silence take over the room. The monotonous late-night hum of the overhead lights. It was part of the play. Sanchez and Rhodes had spent an additional four hours working with Brant, going over the details in a friendly manner and not getting anywhere. Now it was time to shift gears and see what floated to the surface. Lena had finished reading SID’s preliminary
report on the fingerprints picked up at the crime scene. Because it was a Friday, because they only had about six hours during the day to work with the evidence, the findings remained incomplete and covered only a partial sampling of the prints found in the bedroom and bath. Thus far, every print belonged to Brant or his wife. There was no evidence indicating a third party had entered either room.

Brant suddenly laughed. “You think I did it, don’t you?”

“What makes you think that?” Lena asked.

“The way you’re looking at your notes. And why else would Tito have read me my rights?”

“He does that for everybody, Mr. Brant. He was just doing his job.”

“Yeah, I get it. That’s why that other guy asked me to take a polygraph. Just doing his job.”

“It would’ve saved time. Why should you be worried? You don’t have anything to hide.”

Brant nodded, then leaned back in the chair and yawned. As he stretched his arms over his head, Lena realized it was a ploy. He was peeking through his arms for a look at her body. In spite of his wife’s murder, he was checking out her boobs.

“You’re a beautiful woman, you know that?”

“And you’ve spilled your coffee.”

His eyes followed hers to his wrinkled shirt. He looked at the stain, rubbed it with his thumb, and seemed embarrassed by his disheveled appearance. Smoothing out his jacket, he covered the stain with his palm.

“We’ve read your statement and found a few discrepancies,” she said. “We were hoping you might help us clear them up.”

“What discrepancies?”

“Your marriage. You called it perfect and we’re trying to understand why.”

“But it was,” he said.

“From what we’ve heard, it sounds more rocky than that.”

Brant straightened up in the chair and tried to focus. “Who have you been talking to?”

“Friends and neighbors.”

“Do me a favor and tell my friends and neighbors to go fuck themselves. What are we doing here anyway? Why are you wasting time on me? That guy’s still out there.”

“Which guy is that, Mr. Brant?”

He sat back and shook his head in disbelief. “The sick bastard who did this. He’s out there and we’re in here. How stupid is that?”

“Then let’s go upstairs and take the polygraph.”

He shook his head, unwilling to move. Lena remained quiet, waiting the man out. It was a small room with poor air circulation, and she imagined the walls were beginning to close in on him now.

“Okay, so maybe it wasn’t perfect,” he said finally. “Maybe if you were watching from the outside, we had our moments. From where I stood, it was still good for both me and her. Real good.”

“What did you fight about?”

His eyes stirred. “They weren’t fights. They were discussions.”

“Okay,” Lena said. “Then what did you discuss?”

“Nikki wanted kids.”

“And you didn’t.”

He turned to Novak as if trying to recruit an ally. “Why is she putting words in my mouth?”

Novak stared back at the man, his eyes steady but dead, not saying anything for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was so restrained that Lena felt a slight chill.

“She’s not putting words in your mouth, Mr. Brant. Detective Gamble asked you a simple if not obvious question. You’ve already told Detectives Sanchez and Rhodes that you can’t think of anyone who would want to hurt you or your wife. No one at work. No one you knew. We thought you wanted to help us find out what happened. It’s in your best interest to help us find out what happened. It’s in everyone’s interest that you assist us any way you can.”

Brant quickly looked away from the detective as if he
might be dangerous. Clearly, Novak was holding in his anger at considerable effort.

Lena cleared her throat before continuing, “She wanted a family and you didn’t.”

“Whoever told you that is a liar. I knew where Nikki was at. I knew why she wanted it so bad. You think I’m an idiot? It was all about money. We couldn’t afford to have a family. We needed to wait until the deal went through. I wasn’t sure I’d still have a job, and my paycheck only covers gas and groceries.”

“Your boss seems to think a lot of you. Why would you be worried about losing your job?”

“My boss wouldn’t be making the decision. We’re merging with a Fortune 500 company based in Chicago. That’s two thousand miles away. All I’ll be is a number. Numbers don’t have faces. They come and go.”

“But you’re going to benefit from the merger.”

“So what? Everybody is.”

“How much money will you receive in back pay?”

“I haven’t had time to add it up.”

Lena smiled. “In other words it’s a lot of money and you’re afraid to tell us how much.”

“I haven’t had time to add it up. And it won’t be that much. Not enough to cover my place in the unemployment line.”

“Did you know your wife was pregnant?”

Brant didn’t bat an eye. He should have, but he didn’t.

“Where’s that coffee?” he asked.

Lena repeated the question, then watched him think it over. After a few moments, he slid down on the seat and sighed with resignation.

“Yeah, I knew,” he said. “I knew, but I didn’t know. I’ve been thinking about it all day. Nikki had been acting weird for almost two weeks—hinting at it but not saying anything.”

“Then she didn’t tell you directly. She didn’t say anything when you called last night from the office.”

“No. When I called, she just told me she was going to bed.”

“For a man who’s just learned that he was about to be a father, you’re not showing much emotion.”

“That’s because I’m having such a wonderful day.”

“Why did you give your assistants the night off?”

He smiled. “So I could go home and kill my wife.”

“Do you think this is funny, Mr. Brant?”

“No. I think it’s a fucking waste of time.”

“Why did you give them the night off?”

“Everyone was tired and they were screwing up. I knew we’d be working the weekend. I thought they needed a decent night’s rest.”

“What did you do when they left?”

“I tried to get something done, but must’ve lost it. I woke up in my desk chair.”

“What time was that?”

“Around five. I woke up and drove home.”

“What about your sex life?” Lena asked. “How would you describe it?”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“How would you describe it?”

He thought it over and flashed a lazy smile. “Perfect.”

Lena ignored the jab. “Describe perfect.”

“Perfect is a world where this kind of bullshit doesn’t happen. If you think I get my rocks off covering my wife’s face with a trash bag, then you can stick it up your ass.”

“When was the last time you had sex with your wife?”

He shook his head. That smile was back.

“Last weekend,” he said. “About seven in the morning before I went back to work. If I remember correctly, she was on top and I sucked her tits.”

“Then the seminal fluid found at your house isn’t your own?”

His eyes lost their focus as he considered the question. He glanced at the ceiling briefly, then back at Lena.

“No, Detective. The cum found at my house isn’t my own. If it was, we wouldn’t be here.”

He reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and lit one. When he tapped the ash into an empty Styrofoam cup
with his right hand, Lena noticed that he was trembling. Novak glanced at the smoke detector and cracked the door open. Then she checked her notes, deciding to move on.

“Do you like to play around, Mr. Brant? Do you have a girlfriend on the side? Maybe someone at the office?”

“You’re really good, you know that. You think I’m like that guy in the papers.”

“What guy in the papers?”

“The one that killed his wife because she was pregnant. You think I’m just like that.”

“Were you keeping up with the story?”

He nodded, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. “They say that when he threw her into the bay, she was eight months pregnant. That her body decomposed and that’s what caused the birth. There’s a name for it.”

“It’s called a coffin birth.”

“That’s it,” he said. “A coffin birth.”

His eyes glazed over. Lena took a moment to get a read on him. He was smart, tough, seemingly impenetrable.

“How often did you hit your wife, Mr. Brant?”

The smile finally vanished, along with the attitude. Brant stared at her without responding.

“It’s a simple question,” she said. “You seem to have answers for everything else.”

She glanced at the coffee stain on his shirt just long enough for him to notice. When he did, he quickly covered the spot with his free hand.

“I never touched her.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “We know about the bruise on her arm because people saw it. How often did you hit her?”

He looked away, trying to avoid her eyes. “Just that one time,” he whispered.

“Just that one time,” Lena repeated. It had been a guess, but somehow she knew. “According to the medical examiner your wife weighed ninety-eight pounds. You look like you’re about two-thirty. Did you hit her with a closed fist?”

He started to nod, then caught himself. “It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to do it.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. Did you seek counseling?”

“I didn’t need to. All I had to do was remember the way she fell. She wouldn’t let me help her up. And there was that bruise on her arm, but there were bigger bruises on her shoulder and hip. They didn’t heal for six weeks. I could see them every time she got in the shower.”

Novak leaned forward, clasping his hands on the table. “You’re right, kid. It all sounds so perfect.”

Brant’s eyes shut down, narrowing into two tight beams of darkness. When he dropped the cigarette into the empty cup, Lena heard the head fizzle out.

“Fuck you,” he said, pointing his finger at Novak. “I loved her, and when I hit her, it was a mistake. People shouldn’t judge other people by their mistakes. A mistake only happens once. That’s why it’s called a mistake.”

“Do you consider murder a mistake?” Novak asked.

Brant jumped to his feet and lunged toward him. When Novak gave him a hard push back into the chair, he started screaming.