City of Endless Night

46

Longstreet, with Pendergast a silent shadow at his side, stood at the door to the garage of Robert Hightower’s row house on Gerritsen Avenue in Marine Park, Brooklyn. The door was open, allowing a chill wind to blow in — the short driveway was covered in a dusting of snow that had fallen late the night before — but Hightower seemed not to mind. The space was filled with beat-up worktables; personal computers of varying degrees of obsolescence; circuit boards spewing rivers of cabling; old CRT monitors missing their glass tubes; battered tools hanging from pegboard walls; band saws and compression crimpers and table vises; an assortment of soldering guns; half a dozen small-parts organizers, most of their drawers open, spilling screws and nails and resistors. Hightower, fussing over a worktable, was in his late fifties, solidly built, with short but thick iron-gray hair covering the dome of his skull.

He picked up a tin of soldering flux, pressed the cap onto it, and tossed it toward the back of one of the tables. “So of all the people he screwed, destroyed, ruined, or otherwise fucked over, Ozmian claims I’m the one who hates him the most.”

“That’s correct,” said Longstreet.

Hightower barked a sarcastic, mirthless laugh. “What a distinction.”

“Is it true?” Longstreet asked.

“Consider a man who had everything to live for,” he said, busying himself at the worktable, “nice home, beautiful wife, great career, happiness, success and prosperity — and then the bastard ripped all that away. So do I win first prize in the hatred category? Yeah, I probably do. Guess I’m your man.”

“This algorithm you devised,” Longstreet said. “The audio codec for compressing and streaming files simultaneously. I can’t pretend to understand it, but according to Ozmian it was original and quite valuable.”

“It was my life’s work,” Hightower said. “I didn’t realize just how much of my own self was wrapped up into every line of that code until it was stolen from me.” He paused, surveying the benches. “My dad was a beat cop, just like his dad and his dad. Money was tight. But he had enough to buy the parts for a ham radio set. Just the parts. I built it myself. And that’s how I learned the basics about electrical engineering, telephony, audio synthesis. Got a college scholarship on the strength of that. And then my interests turned from hardware to software. Same melody, different instrument.” Finally, he rose from his fussing and turned toward them, looking from one to the other with eyes that Longstreet could only describe as haunted.

“Ozmian took it away from me. All of it. And here I am.” He swept a hand around the garage, laughing bitterly. “No money. No family. Parents dead. And what am I doing? Living in their house. It’s like the last decade never happened — except that I’m a dozen years older, with nothing to show for it. And I have one cocksucker to thank for all that.”

“It’s our understanding,” Longstreet said, “that during and after the takeover, you harassed Mr. Ozmian. You sent him threatening messages, said you were going to kill him and his family — to the point where he had to get a restraining order.”

“So?” Hightower replied belligerently. “Can you blame me? He lied under oath, cheated, lawyered me to death, stole my company, fired my employees — and you could see he loved every minute of it. If you were half a man, you’d do the same. I could take it, but my wife couldn’t. Drove off a cliff, drunk. They said it was an accident. Bullshit.” He laughed harshly. “He did that, too. Ozmian killed her.”

“I understand,” Pendergast said, speaking for the first time, “that during this difficult period — before your wife’s tragic death — the police were called to your house on several occasions, responding to a domestic disturbance?”

Hightower’s hands, which had been roaming over the top of the workbench, suddenly went still. “You know as well as I do that she never filed a complaint.”

“No.”

“I’ve got nothing to say about it.” His hands began to stir once again. “Funny. I keep coming out here, night after night, puttering about. I guess I’m trying to come up with a second brainstorm. But I know it’s useless. Lightning never strikes twice.”

“Mr. Hightower,” Pendergast asked, “may I ask where you were on the evening of December fourteenth? Ten PM, to be precise.”

“Here, I suppose. I never go anywhere. What’s so special about that evening?”

“That was the night Grace Ozmian was killed.”

Hightower wheeled back toward them. Longstreet was surprised at the expression that had suddenly appeared on his face. The haunted look had been replaced by a ghastly smile; a mask of vengeful triumph.

“Oh, yeah, that December fourteenth!” he said. “How could I forget that red-letter night? Such a crying shame.”

“And your whereabouts the following night?” Longstreet asked. “When her dead body was decapitated?”

As he was asking the question, a shadow appeared in the doorway of the garage. Longstreet glanced over to see a tall man in a leather jacket standing in the snow. His stony expression, the quick and impassive way with which he sized up the situation, told Longstreet the man was in law enforcement.

“Bob,” the man said, nodding at Hightower.

“Bill.” Hightower indicated his guests. “FBI brass. Here asking questions about the night Ozmian’s daughter lost her head.”

The man said nothing, betraying no expression.

“This is William Cinergy,” Hightower explained to Longstreet and Pendergast. “NYPD, Sixty-Third Precinct. My neighbor.”

Longstreet nodded.

“I grew up in a police family,” Hightower said. “And this is a police neighborhood. We members of the blue fraternity tend to nest together.”

There was a brief silence.

“Now that I think of it,” Hightower said — and the unnerving travesty of a smile had not left his face—“Bill and I were out drinking the night Ozmian’s kid was killed. Weren’t we, Bill?”

“That’s right,” Bill said.

“We were at O’Herlihey’s, around the corner on Avenue R. It’s a cop bar. As I recall, a lot of the boys were there — weren’t they?”

Bill nodded.

“And they’d all remember me buying them a round — say, at about ten PM?”

“Damn straight.”

“There you have it.” Hightower slid off the stool, his face becoming an expressionless mask once again. “And now, if that’s all, gentlemen,” he said, “Bill and I have a football game to catch on ESPN.”

They sat in Longstreet’s work sedan, idling at the Gerritsen Avenue curb, looking out at the little row house.

“So,” Longstreet said, “what do you think about the way that guy practically flung that flimsy alibi in our faces?”

“Whether the alibi is valid or not, I don’t think we have much of a chance of breaking it.”

“What about your cop friend — D’Agosta? Maybe he can crack the blue wall.”

“You know I would never ask him to do that. And there’s another consideration.”

Longstreet looked at him.

“While Hightower had the motive, it doesn’t explain the killings that followed.”

“That’s already occurred to me,” Longstreet said. He continued to look at the house, and the curl of smoke that came drifting up from its chimney. “Maybe he developed a taste for it. I’ve seen cops go rogue before, start taking justice into their own hands when the courts won’t do it for them. One thing’s for sure — this merits following up.”

“We’re going to have to be careful in doing so,” Pendergast said. “We must keep this lead quiet for now — with the NYPD and FBI. You never know who might pass information along.”

“You’re right, of course. Let’s work on this individually. Compartmentalize. Minimize our communication. Keep in touch by phone or encrypted email only.” Longstreet went silent for a moment, staring at the house. The blinds had been pulled tight across the picture window of what he assumed was the living room. “That look he gave us,” he said. “When he passed off that alibi. It was almost like a challenge.”

At this, Pendergast gave an almost convulsive shudder. “Challenge,” he repeated. “But of course.”

Longstreet frowned. “What are you talking about?”

But Pendergast said nothing more, and after a moment Longstreet put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.