Come Twilight (2 page)

The house looked like a small three-bedroom. Spanish style, with a nicely maintained drought-tolerant yard in front. An Altima parked in the driveway. We planned on giving her until eight, unless she came outside and looked like she was heading out for the day. It’s awful to ambush someone in their driveway first thing in the morning with devastating news, but it’s slightly less awful than having to break it to them at work.

My phone buzzed and I looked at the screen. “Hey, Lieutenant,” I said.

“You’re making the notification?” Ruiz asked.

“Yeah. Did you get my message?”

“You think maybe it’s not suicide?”

“Got a red flag I have to check out with the daughter.”

“Keep me posted,” he said.

I looked at my watch.

Jen said, “Time to knock?”

“Yeah.” I checked my hair in the mirror, got out, adjusted my tie, and buttoned my jacket. We walked up the drive and onto the porch, where we paused to listen for a moment. I heard what might have been a TV or a radio on the other side of the door. Things usually went better if the person being notified was already awake.

I rang the doorbell. A few seconds later a shadow moved behind the peephole. Then a woman opened the door. She was dressed in business clothes—slacks and a cream-colored blouse. Her blonde hair was pulled back, and she had a curious but pleasant expression on her round face.

Holding up my badge and ID, I said, “Lucinda Denkins?”

“Lucy,” she said.

“I’m Detective Danny Beckett of the Long Beach Police Department, and this is my partner, Jennifer Tanaka. Is there someplace we could talk?”

“Yes, of course.” She took a step back and pulled the door open wide for us. “Please come in.”

The door opened into the living room. The furnishings were nice but not too expensive. It looked like mostly secondhand and vintage stuff, the kinds of things someone with good taste but not a lot of money would choose. Jen and I sat on a brown sofa that reminded me of the one in my childhood family room, and she took a seat in a chair that didn’t quite match.

By the time we were all settled, her expression of curiosity had been replaced by one of worry.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“Your father is William Denkins?”

She nodded. “Is he all right? Has something happened?”

“I’m very sorry to tell you this,” I said. “He died last night.”

An almost inaudible sound came from her throat. If she hadn’t been trying so hard to contain it, it might have become a gasp. She brought her hand up to her mouth and held it there for several seconds. Then she said, “How? What happened?”

“At this point, we’re not sure. It may have been a suicide.”

“No, it couldn’t—he wouldn’t do that.” There was hope in her voice. If we were wrong about how the victim died, we might be wrong about his identity, too.

“Had he been depressed?” Jen asked. “Was anything troubling him?”

“No, nothing.” She paused. “Are you sure it was him?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid so.”

She sank back into her chair. “There must be some mistake. He wouldn’t kill himself. He just wouldn’t.” Her tears were beginning to flow.

Jen offered her a tissue. I hadn’t even seen her reach into her jacket for one of the pocket-sized packets we always have with us when making a notification.

I heard some shuffling noises from the back of the house. “Is anyone here with you?”

“Yes, my husband.” As if on cue, a door opened in the hallway and a tall, lanky man in gym shorts and a T-shirt came into the room. He had dark, shaggy hair and a soul patch under his bottom lip.

“What’s going on, babe?” he asked Lucy.

She stood and hurried over to him. “My dad’s dead.”

He pulled her into his arms. “Oh my god,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

We let him comfort her. As she buried her face in the crook of his neck, her back and shoulders rose and fell with her sobs.

After a few moments, he looked at us with accusation in his eyes.

“They say he killed himself,” Lucy said.

“What?” he said. “That can’t be.”

The two of them were still standing behind the chair Lucy had been sitting in. We stayed seated. With only the couch and the chair available, the two of them would have to separate, and I was trying to decide who I’d rather have on the couch next to Jen.

“What happened? How did he . . . ,” Joe said.

As his words trailed off, I said, “A gunshot wound. To the head.”

Lucy buried her face in Joe’s neck again.

“I know this is a very difficult time, but we need to ask you a few questions,” I said.

They chose the seats themselves. Lucy on the couch, her husband in the chair.

I had a much better view of him, so that’s where I started. “I’m Danny Beckett and this is Jennifer Tanaka. We’re with the LBPD.”

“I’m Joe.” He tried to reach across the length of the coffee table to shake my hand. I leaned out and met him halfway. “Joseph Polson.” He started to lean back and realized he hadn’t shaken Jen’s hand, so he awkwardly shifted toward her. She gave him a quick shake and let go.

“As I told Lucy, we’re very sorry for your loss.” I watched him while I spoke.

“Thank you,” he said with a nod.

Jen asked Lucy, “Did your father have any history of depression?”

“Yes,” she said. “But never anything serious.”

I let Jen continue. Sitting next to Lucy, she’d be able to build a stronger connection with her. “Did he receive any treatment for it?”

“A few years ago. He went to a therapist and took an antidepressant for a while.”

“How long ago?”

“I’m not sure,” Lucy said. “Four or five years?” She looked at Joe.

“It was before we met,” he said. “So at least five.”

“Nothing since then?”

“No,” Lucy said.

Jen continued. “Had you noticed any changes in his behavior recently?”

Lucy shook her head.

Jen asked a few more standard questions. It was clear that Lucy had no reason to suspect that her father might have wanted to hurt himself. There was a pause in the questioning, and even though Jen didn’t look at me or give me any other signal, I knew it was an invitation for me to join the interview.

I said, “Was your father left handed?”

“No,” Lucy said.

Joe looked puzzled. “Why would that matter?”

“It probably doesn’t,” I said. “We just need to check everything out.” That seemed to answer the question well enough for him. I looked at Lucy. She was slowly sinking into the new reality of her life. Her father was gone. Nothing for her would be the same again.

We asked several more questions and fingerprinted them so we could eliminate their prints from those we found at the crime scene, and then we wrapped up the interview.

“What happens now?” Lucy asked.

“There’ll be an autopsy this afternoon and we’ll be in touch as soon as we have more information for you,” I said.

“Do we”—she paused, as if she were rehearsing her next words in her head—“have to make arrangements?”

“Yes. The medical examiner’s office will contact you to help with that. You’ll probably hear from me before that happens, though.”

Joe slid next to her on the couch, and we listened to her crying as we walked out and shut the door behind us.

The night before, Jen had done a preliminary canvass of the apartment building’s tenants while I was working the crime scene. No one had answered her knock at either of the two studios above the garage. I was particularly interested in talking to the occupants of those units, because of the way the building was laid out. The garage and the studios, along with a small laundry room, made up a second structure separated by ten feet or so from the main building. The foot of the stairs up to the two small apartments was perhaps two yards away from Denkins’s porch, and the landing looked down on his apartment with a clear view of its side door. From there, it was only a few steps to the gate leading into the back alley. That would be the logical escape route.

“Let’s see if anyone’s home,” I said to Jen, tilting my head toward the stairs.

As we climbed the steps, I saw one of the slats on the miniblind fall back into place behind the window next to the closest door. I’d planned on starting with the farther apartment, but went to the first door instead.

I fought the urge to use my standard cop knock and gave the glass a few light raps with my knuckle. “We’re with the Long Beach Police Department,” I said, my voice only slightly raised. “Can we talk to you?”

We heard nothing from inside.

“I know you’re in there. I saw you peek through the blinds.”

Something shuffled on the other side of the door.

“Please,” I said. “We just need a few minutes of your time.”

There was more muffled noise, and the door, secured by a safety chain, cracked open.

The man who answered showed me only a single bloodshot brown eye under a large forehead topped by a mess of disheveled salt-and-pepper hair. “Yes?” he said.

I held up my badge and introduced myself. “My name’s Danny Beckett. We need to talk to you about what happened last night.”

“Okay, I guess.” He didn’t move, just kept staring through the crack.

“Can we come inside?”

His eye twitched and I could feel his anxiety seeping past the edge of the door. “Um, no?”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Would you mind opening the door or stepping outside for a minute?”

He nodded and the door closed. I expected to hear him undoing the chain, but there was only silence. I looked over my shoulder at Jen.

She made a hand gesture asking me if I wanted her to check the back of the building.

I shook my head. Unless he was going to squeeze through one of the tiny windows in back and jump fifteen feet to the alley below, he wasn’t going anyplace.

He kept us waiting long enough for me to think I might have made a mistake. Then the door opened just wide enough for him to slip through and pull it closed. His hair was neater, and he seemed slightly less agitated. He was short, maybe five-seven, and his thin frame made his gray T-shirt look too big. I couldn’t tell how old he was. Maybe forty, maybe sixty.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m Danny.”

“I’m Harold,” he said. It looked like it took a significant act of will for him to shake my hand. “Harold Craig.”

“Are you all right, Harold?” Jen asked.

He nodded. “I have an anxiety disorder,” he said. He took a deep breath. “I didn’t sleep last night.”

“We apologize for the disturbance,” I said. “Do you know what happened?”

“Bill’s dead.”

“Yes.” I nodded. “He is.”

Harold looked unsteady. “Let’s sit down,” I said, motioning to the top step. He put his hand on the railing and eased himself down. I sat next to him. Jen stepped halfway down the stairs and turned so her face was on the same level as his.

“Tell me about Bill,” I said.

Harold told us how he’d lived there for twelve years, ever since he’d been laid off from his job as a high-school math teacher. While he spoke, he held his hand in front of his chest and shook it up and down in a small arc. He didn’t seem to be aware of it. Bill had been a good friend to him, he said, not like a landlord at all. They’d go to lunch sometimes. Second Street or the Belmont Brewing Company if Harold wasn’t having a bad day. Bill even got him a faster Internet connection when he needed it to work from home. Never once raised his rent or anything.

“Do you think they’ll let me stay?” He noticed his hand then, and held it in his lap to keep it still.

“I don’t know, Harold,” I said.

He looked at his feet.

“What can you tell me about your neighbor?” I tilted my head toward the door of the other studio apartment.

“Kobe?” he asked.

I nodded as if I recognized the name.

“He seems like a nice kid. Asian.”

“Kid?”

“Well, early twenties or so. You get old enough, everybody seems like a kid.”

“Can you tell us any more about him?”

“I don’t think he came home last night.”

“That’s unusual?”

“Yeah. He’s usually home. Playing his Xbox.”

“He bother you with that?”

“No. It’s a thin wall, though.”

“When did you see him last?”

“He went out not too long before everything started happening.”

“Did you hear the gunshot?”

“No. Someone shot Bill? That’s how it happened?” His hand was off his lap and shaking again.

I nodded. “When you say ‘before everything started happening,’ what do you mean?”

“Before you all started showing up.”

Jen and I exchanged a look. Did Kobe leave before or after the shot was fired?

We talked for a few more minutes. I gave him one of my business cards and asked him to call me when Kobe came home.

When Harold was back inside, Jen and I went downstairs and let ourselves into Denkins’s apartment. The crime-scene techs had scoured the place for any potential physical evidence, but we needed to go through it one more time for anything else that might provide useful information before we released the crime scene to the family.

“What do you make of Harold?” I asked once we were in the living room with the front door closed.