The Heights Read online

  The big man runs a hand over his bald head. “Yeah, I guess. Come on in this way. I have some chairs out in the garage.”

  Once in the garage, which smells like old oil and stale smoke, Andersen pops a cigarette into his mouth. A radio blares in the corner, reporting a bad car accident that occurred last week. He quickly shuts it off before lighting the cigarette, inhaling deeply, and blowing the smoke out of the side of his mouth. He gestures at three old metal chairs. “Have a seat.”

  I cross my arms over my chest. “I prefer to stand.” I glance around the garage but don’t see anything that sends up an immediate red flag. There’s no obvious bomb-making gear or bondage equipment.

  “Suit yourself.” He hits his cigarette again, plops into a chair, and looks at Goran without hiding his trepidation especially well. “What’s this about?”

  Goran eases himself into the other chair. “We appreciate your time,” he says in his good-cop voice. “Like I said, we just have a few questions.” He squints at the tattoo on Andersen’s right wrist. “Marines, huh?”

  Andersen nods and glances at me.

  Goran grins. “I was Navy.”

  The other man grunts, but I can see that he’s warming to my partner. He glances at me again but looks away immediately.

  “Where were you on Saturday night?” I ask.

  He clears his throat. “Saturday, like this last Saturday?”

  I nod.

  “I don’t really remember. We could ask Winona, though.”

  “Who is Winona?”

  “My wife. She’s in the house. Want me to get her?”

  “That’s okay,” I reply. “We’ll talk to her on our way out.”

  “I could text her.” He puts out the cigarette and stands, pushing the chair back behind him. “Just let me go get my phone.” He backs toward the door on his left, and I step forward.

  He’s gonna run.

  Goran holds out a hand. “That’s okay. Just—”

  Andersen spins, and I jump forward, but he’s big and strong and shoves me aside. I hit the doorframe hard, and it knocks the wind out of me. Goran goes after him, and as soon as I’m able, I jog out into the driveway, calling Dispatch for backup as I pick up speed, sidestepping the dog, who is barking its head off and straining against its chain.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch movement by the house. A woman runs after me, screaming, “What the fuck? What is going on?” I don’t slow down, because I see that Goran is losing steam as he chases Andersen through a large yard and toward the woods. Question is whether I’ll be able to restrain the guy.

  My legs churn through the fallen leaves, which are slick from this morning’s rain—I’m closing in on him. “Stop!” I yell, but he keeps going. I pass Goran, and my lungs feel as if they’re on fire, but I keep moving as quickly as I can. Once I’m close enough, I jump forward and tackle him. My weight pushes his torso forward, and he tries to shove me off, but I manage to knee him in the left kidney, which brings him to his knees.

  “Slow down, fucker.”

  He continues to struggle. It takes all of the strength I have to wrench one of his arms behind him, and I can’t help considering how effective a choke hold would be. No, I remind myself, straddling him and pinning his arm to the small of his back.

  “I didn’t kill anyone!” he yells.

  I pin his other arm to the ground with my boot. “That’s funny, because we didn’t say anything about you killing anyone, now did we?”

  “Fuck you!”

  Goran jumps into the fray and yanks Andersen’s hands together, allowing me to stand. He cuffs the man, and we wrench him to his feet. He falls forward onto his knees.

  Is he crying? He’s crying.

  The woman comes up on the side, shrieking. “What is going on? What the fuck did you do, Anders?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he mumbles through his tears. He sputters and coughs.

  “If you didn’t do anything, why are you handcuffed in the woods? You’re such a piece of shit loser!” she yells.

  Well, this is interesting. She’s about my height but twenty pounds lighter and is wearing a pair of striped pajama pants, a red Marines hoodie that must be his, based on how big it is on her, and a pair of cheap-looking gray slippers. She’s younger than he is by a few years.

  “Get up,” Goran says, pulling on the man’s arms. “You’re coming with us. You shoved my partner back there, and I call that assaulting a police officer.”

  “What the fuck did you do, you piece of shit?” the woman asks, red-faced. She runs forward and kicks Andersen, who is still on his knees, in the chest. He falls forward onto his face, and she kicks him again.

  “Jesus Christ, Winona, what the hell?” he sputters.

  I move between Andersen and Winona. I hold out a hand, ready to restrain her if necessary. “Ma’am, please.”

  “I won’t please. Is he fucking you too?” She takes a swing, but I duck, so she attempts to shove me backward. I’m ready for her, so I grab her arm, twist it around her, and cuff her. It’s a pretty badass move, if I do say so myself.

  “Assaulting a police officer is a really, really bad idea,” I say. This has turned into a complete disaster. Where the hell is our backup? “Looks like you’re coming with us too.”

  We lead them out of the woods. The whole time, they keep arguing with each other, until Goran tells them to shut up. “Seriously. Just stop it.”

  “You asked me how I got the black eye,” Andersen yelps as we near the car. “It was this crazy bitch! She hit me in the face with a cooler!”

  “Whatever, you shithead. You probably liked it,” she says.

  Holding Winona’s arms behind her—she can’t get far with the cuffs on, but I’m sick of running—I yank open the Charger’s back door and nod at Goran. “In the car, fucko,” I say to Andersen, who tries to put up a fight but has clearly run out of energy.

  Goran helps him in, making sure he doesn’t hit his head, then closes the door.

  Winona tries to kick the car. “What a fucking asshole loser! I can’t believe him! What the hell did he do now?”

  I drag her away from the car and say a tiny, silent thank you when I see the patrol car turn onto the driveway. “Ma’am, please get control of yourself.”

  She flexes her jaw. “Why am I in handcuffs?”

  “Breathe.”

  “I didn’t do anything.” She struggles against the cuffs.

  “You assaulted my partner back there,” Goran says, “and now you’re coming with us. We have questions.”

  The patrol car pulls up, and we’re greeted by Officers Robinson and Miller, neither of whom I know well. “Detectives,” Robinson says, giving Goran a little salute but ignoring me. “What do we have here?”

  “Take her downtown, sixth floor,” Goran says. “We’ve got the other guy.”

  Miller shoves Winona into the back seat of the patrol car, careful not to whack her head. Once he closes the door, she starts kicking the safety cage.

  “She’s either nuts or on something,” I mutter.

  I catch Robinson looking at me out of the corner of his eye, but he turns away when I attempt eye contact.

  “So we’re just transporting her?” Miller asks.

  “Ten-four. We’ll meet you at Justice,” Goran replies.

  In the car, I feel my mood darken. Why was that uniform staring at me like that? I suppose I have one guess: the Grimes bullshit. Whatever. I don’t have time for that right now.

  “What the hell am I under arrest for?” Andersen bellows from the back seat.

  “Did anyone say you were under arrest?” Goran asks. “I thought you were coming willingly to answer a few questions.”

  “It’s better for you that way,” I add. I send a quick text to Fishner, asking her to have someone follow up with Paul Greenwade. Be careful with him. He’s on the spectrum, and he’ll clam up.

  Andersen huffs and goes silent, as he remains the rest of the way to the Justice Center.


  CHAPTER 13

  Goran pops a piece of Doublemint into his mouth, followed by a toothpick. “We can’t really hold them on anything unless one of them confesses to something.”

  “Yeah, I know. Something is really off between the two of them.”

  He narrows his eyes. “Think he’s good for it?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. It’s still early. Let’s go talk to him. What’s your plan?”

  “Softball questions to start, then we get into the good stuff. Come at him and make him think we know he did it. The usual.”

  “You gonna keep trying to bond with him over the service?”

  “I might, yeah, if you want to put the pressure on him.”

  “Yeah, why don’t you start the interview, and then I’ll slam through the door at some point and try to scare him.”

  He nods. “What about his wife?”

  “Let her sit on her hands for a while. Maybe she’ll calm down.”

  Fishner appears at the end of the hallway and walks our way with her arms crossed. “Who’s the woman?” she asks.

  I fill her in as we slip into the observation room to watch Goran begin interviewing Anders Andersen.

  “Wait—they both assaulted you?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I’m fine, though. I figure we can keep them on it if we need to, but maybe we can get them to crack first. Something is definitely up with them.”

  She nods. “Do you want to book them on the assault? It might be good to send a message to the city at large.”

  I avoid rolling my eyes but only just. “What they did was hardly assault. I mean, he shoved me into a doorframe, and she took a couple of swings. Like I said, I’m fine. No visible bruises. It’d be hard to prove, and it’s kind of the last thing I need right now.”

  She makes an unintelligible sound.

  I watch Andersen through the glass. He’s glancing around and fidgeting, but I can’t get a read on what he’s hiding. “I’ve got a magic trick up my sleeve,” I say to Fishner. “He may have threatened our vic. I’m thinking blackmail.”

  “Do you have evidence?”

  “Not yet, but an intern at the law firm said that Martin received an envelope from him and that he’d been calling her a lot in the weeks leading up to the homicide.”

  She narrows her eyes. “Is there another connection between Andersen and our vic?”

  “Well, he was up on manslaughter charges, and—”

  “I know that from the board and your reports. What’s the connection?”

  I blink slowly and take a deep breath to avoid asking her what the hell she’s asking me that for—it feels obvious to me. “O’Connor was his lawyer. Beyond that, I don’t know. We need to find the contents of that envelope. The intern said it felt like photographs, but we didn’t find anything in Martin’s office. Are you going to let us search her house?” Why haven’t we done that already?

  She sighs. “Eric Martin’s alibi checks, Boyle. We’ve been through this.”

  Who are you protecting, and why? “It’s not really about him. Those photographs could be helpful.”

  “I’ll ask Eric to take a look around and report back to me.”

  “Lieutenant, with all due respect, I’m a little concerned that we’re not following procedure here. This is a high-profile case, and my ass—and my partner’s—is on the line at a time when I—we—can’t really afford to be screwing up. If we can just go take a quick look around, with his permission, of course—”

  She chuckles. “Since when do you care about procedure?”

  Her attempt at levity gets a smile from me, but I’m not feeling good about this. “How about you ask him to let us in and take a look at her stuff? She has to have a home office. We could keep it to that, if he’s guarding national secrets or some shit. I’m not interested in anything beyond figuring out who killed our vic. You have to know that. I mean, we can ‘tread carefully,’ but—”

  She starts to make her annoyed-with-Boyle face then relaxes it. “We’re not intruding into his private life. He has an alibi, and he’s been very clear that he does not want us snooping around his home.”

  Andersen starts waving his free arm around in the interview room, and Goran glances toward the glass.

  “That’s my cue,” I say. I push off the wall and take two steps to the door. “I’m assuming that, since you didn’t say no, that means that we can go talk to Eric Martin and take a look around.”

  “Better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.”

  Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my L-T? I take a breath then shove open the door to the interview room, where Goran and Andersen sit on opposite sides of the table. Andersen jumps and glances at me, back at my partner, then at me again.

  “Why’d you try to run?” I ask.

  “Wouldn’t you? Think about it. If you came to talk to me, you obviously know about what happened with that guy’s brakes. I swear it was an accident, but that didn’t seem to matter. And last time I was arrested, the cops weren’t very gentle either. I ended up with a couple of broken fingers.”

  I make a mental note to verify whether that’s the truth. “You’re not under arrest yet. Tell me about your little blackmail attempt.”

  He glowers at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. If I’m not under arrest, what the hell am I doing here?”

  “Yeah? You want us to book you on assaulting me back there, or do you want to cooperate? Tell me why you were sending photographs to Heather Martin. Cooperating with us is the right move.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone, and I sure as shit didn’t kill her.”

  “Prove it, Anders.” I square my posture and cross my arms across my chest. “Photographs. What were they of? And why were you harassing her on the phone?”

  Goran leans back in his chair, and Andersen flexes his jaw.

  “Here’s what I figure”—I walk toward the table then lean forward onto my hands—“you needed money to pay off your little settlement, so you got some dirt on her somehow. Then you sent the photos with a demand for money. When she didn’t pay, you lost your shit and beat her to death. Question is, why use her vehicle to move her? And why leave her vehicle where you did? Why set up a bomb?”

  He shakes his head. “What? I didn’t make a bomb. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t take a car. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think I need a lawyer. I want my phone call.”

  Fishner knocks on the glass three times, which means she wants us out. Fuck.

  “Before we get a lawyer for you, why don’t you tell us where you were on Saturday night? You can make this easy for yourself. As I keep saying, cooperating with us is the best thing to do. We can get you a lawyer, but do you really want lawyers involved in this if they don’t have to be?” I’m on a tightrope, but at least I know it.

  He sighs. “I told you, I don’t remember.” He squints. “I was at home with my fucking crazy wife, warding off blows. Yeah. I remember now.”

  “This went on all night? Can anyone else corroborate that?” Goran asks.

  “Probably the neighbors. That was the worst night last week, and there have been a lot of bad nights. She’s psychotic.”

  I nod. “Psychotic enough to kill someone?”

  He laughs. “Hell yeah. She’s tried to kill me four times this month.”

  “Is she homicidal in general? What does she know about Heather Martin?”

  He squeezes the bridge of his nose. “She’s psychotic, I told you. I don’t know what she knows about Heather Martin. Good luck getting her to make sense.”

  Goran and I exchange glances. “Tell me about the photographs and why you were making so many phone calls.”

  “Not without my lawyer.”

  “Tell me about Paul Greenwade, then.”

  Andersen tries to conceal his surprise but fails. “What about him? We were friends a long time ago. He works at the cemetery where my parents are buried. I haven’t hung out with him in a long tim
e. We sort of went our separate ways.”

  I decide not to bring up the fire that killed Paul Greenwade’s parents until Roberts gets me the information I need. “Did you kill Heather Martin? You know, make good on your threats when she didn’t come through with the money?”

  “Fuck. I’m as stupid as she thinks I am,” he mutters at the table. He looks at Goran then at me, and I could swear he’s going to cry again. “No. I said I was going to kill her, but I didn’t. Some asshole beat me to it.”

  “So you would have, but you didn’t have the opportunity? That sounds weird to me,” Goran says. “Why were you blackmailing her? What’d you have on her?”

  “Lawyer,” he replies.

  “Okay, Anders. We’ll get you your phone call.” I’m hoping Fishner will let us keep him in the room and stewing until he decides to dish on the blackmail attempt—assuming that the intern was correct and telling the truth. He looks and sounds like he’s telling the truth, and I’m pretty sure he’s not smart enough to lie that well to us, but one never knows.

  Goran gets up and opens the door for me. “Sit tight,” he says to Andersen. He pulls the door closed behind us.

  Fishner looks back and forth between us and finally lands on my partner. “What’s your read on this?”

  “We verify his alibi with the neighbors, and we’ve got nothing,” Goran says. He turns to me. “So we need to find those photographs.”

  “Get on the neighbors,” Fishner says.

  I nod. “Roberts is working an angle about a federal explosives charge when he was a juvenile. I’ll check in and see what he’s gotten so far.”

  “Do that. Then talk to the wife,” Fishner says, “and give me a report before doing anything else.”

  “Ten-four, Lieutenant,” he replies.

  Once the door closes behind her, I tell Goran about the weird conversation I had with her earlier about Eric Martin. “She basically told me to defy her orders. It’s strange.”

  “This is a weird one,” he replies. “Let’s see what Winona has to say for herself.”

  “I’ll take her. You watch. Come in on my signal.”

  “Ten-four.”