The Shadow Hunter (35 page)

Preoccupied with these thoughts, he let Giacomo and Heller usher him into a small office, where they offered him a seat at a battered wooden table. They sat opposite him. Heller took out a notepad and a pen.

Giacomo placed a cassette recorder on the table and said something about a need to record the interview to ensure an accurate transcript.

“Fine,” Howard said indifferently.

Giacomo did most of the talking. He began by speaking into the recorder, giving the location, date, and time of the interview. Howard noticed he used military time—oh-nine-hundred thirty-five hours.

“We’re here with Mr. Howard Barwood,” Giacomo said, asking for Howard’s birth date. Howard rattled it off without thinking, his voice alien to him, coming from far away.

“Now, Mr. Barwood, I’m going to give you your constitutional rights.

It would be good if you would listen carefully—” For the first time Howard roused himself.

“My rights?”

Giacomo said yes, and Heller nodded, both men smiling in a way that seemed too friendly.

Howard blinked.

“Am I a suspect or something?”

The idea seemed bizarre, incomprehensible.

“Actually, Mr. Barwood, we’re mainly interested in eliminating you as a suspect.”

“But… a suspect in what? Hickle attacked Kris.

People saw him. I was in the house—”

“Of course you were. There are witnesses who support everything you just said. And nobody doubts that Raymond Hickle ambushed that car.”

“Then what… ?” He couldn’t finish the question.

Nothing was making sense.

“There are always a lot of angles in a case like this,” Giacomo said.

“We need to tie up some loose ends, that’s all.”

Angles, loose ends… Howard was baffled.

“You never said anything about viewing me as a suspect.”

Heller spoke.

“We don’t view you that way. Truth is, we hate to even waste your time with this. What we’d like is to get it over with so we can all go home.”

“It’s been a long night for everybody,” Giacomo said.

“I’m beat,” Heller added.

Vaguely Howard understood that something was taking place that was not necessarily to his benefit. But the two detectives were right about one thing. It had indeed been a long night. He was reluctant to walk out of the interview now, only to return later and go through all this rigmarole again. And if he did walk out, he’d have to contact Martin Greenfeld, his attorney.

Martin would never let him talk to any detectives or waive any rights.

Martin believed in handling every situation as if it were an adversarial contest played for the highest stakes.

Howard imagined the consequences of refusing to talk. The story would leak to the media. People would suspect him of complicity in the attempted murder of his wife. And if his relationship with Amanda came out… On the other hand, if he simply kept Martin and all other lawyers out of it and did as the detectives asked, he could be done with this interview in thirty minutes.

No suspicions, no rumors, no damaging publicity, no journalists digging up dirt.

“Fine,” he said evenly.

“Let’s proceed.” Giacomo recited Howard’s rights. Howard said he understood them. Yes, he wished to give up his right to remain silent. Yes, he gave up his right to have an attorney present. Yes, yes, yes.

Then there were questions about his activities last night. He told his story about taking the Lexus for a long drive up the coast. The detectives didn’t interrupt or challenge him. He began to think this really was a routine interview. By the time he narrated the climax of the story—the moment when, standing on his beachfront deck, he’d heard gunshots—he was relaxed and confident. He didn’t need Martin to hold his hand.

He could take care of himself.

“So that’s the way it happened,” he finished.

“Great, Mr. Barwood.” Giacomo spoke in the tone of a man adjourning a meeting.

“I guess you drove that Lexus of yours here today, didn’t you?”

“I drive it everywhere. I love that car.”

“Maybe when we’re done here, Kevin and I could take a look at the odometer.”

This froze Howard.

“The odometer?”

“Just to note the number for our records. If you’ve been driving up to Santa Barbara on a regular basis, you must have logged some serious miles.”

“Well… I may have exaggerated the number of trips I took. And it’s a new car, quite new. There aren’t a lot of miles on it yet.” He was starting to babble. He shut up.

Heller wrote something in his pad.

“Okay, well, we’ll talk about that later,” Giacomo said blandly.

“Now I wonder if you could tell us anything about this company of yours. Western Regional Resources.”

Western Regional. How the hell could they know about that? How was it possible? Why would it even come up?

“I don’t think my business holdings are relevant,” he said stiffly, playing for time.

“Oh, you’re probably right, Mr. Barwood.” Giacomo would not stop smiling.

“It’s another of those loose ends we told you about. You do own a company called Western Regional Resources, don’t you? Or are we wrong about that?”

By all logic Howard knew he should stop the interview and get Martin Greenfeld on the phone, but stubbornly he still believed he could talk his way out. He was a good talker. He had developed parcel after parcel of prime Westside real estate on the strength of his facility with words, his charm, his self-possession. He called on those faculties to rescue him now.

“I own it,” he said slowly, punctuating the admission with an insouciant shrug.

“Western Regional Resources is a corporation I established in the Netherlands Antilles. All perfectly legal. There are sound reasons—tax-liability reasons—for setting up such an entity. As I say, it’s all within the bounds of the law.”

Giacomo said he was sure it was.

“And in the course of setting up this offshore, uh, entity, you presumably set up a few other things? Like a bank account?”

“Yes.”

“And you arranged for someone to oversee the account and handle any legal issues for the company, right?”

“A bank officer in the Antilles does that for me, yes.”

“And I suppose you might have acquired, say, a residence in the Antilles for business purposes.”

“No residence. I used a hotel the one time I went there.”

“How about other acquisitions? A car, a phone, a club membership?”

“Nothing like that. Western Regional Resources is-well, it’s a legitimate corporation—I mean, it’s legal in every way, but—but it has no tangible assets, it’s not a going concern, it’s—”

“A dummy corporation?” Giacomo asked.

Heller was writing in his pad again.

“It could be described that way,” Howard said.

“A tax haven?”

“It’s all legal,” he repeated for what felt like the fiftieth time.

The hell of it was, the goddamned arrangement really was legal. But he wouldn’t expect these two ruffians to understand that. They could hardly relate to his problems, his priorities. If he claimed he was hiding money from the IRS, they wouldn’t sympathize.

And if he admitted the truth—that he was executing an end run around California’s community property laws to smooth his way through an upcoming divorce—well, they would think he had a motive for getting rid of Kris… And in fact, he did have such a motive, didn’t he?

Didn’t he?

“Do you have any other business entities offshore, Mr. Barwood?” Giacomo asked. He put a slight, disdainful emphasis on the word entities.

“} don’t think I’m under any obligation to discuss the details of my financial situation with you,” Howard said.

Heller’s pen scratched again.

“Okay, that’s fine.” Giacomo was still smiling. He must smile in his sleep.

“We’re trying to tidy things up here, that’s all. I guess you were over at KPTI the other night.”

The change of subject startled Howard, but he was happy to drop the issue of his business dealings.

“That’s right.”

“What night was that? Tuesday, wasn’t it? March twenty-second?”

“Yes. How’d you know?”

“Some people who work there mentioned that you were around. It’s nice to share an evening with your wife at her place of work, isn’t it?” “Yes,” Howard said warily.

“Though I understand you weren’t with her the whole time. You spent a good part of the night with the producer. Miss. Gilbert—isn’t that her name?”

Howard focused all his willpower on the task of holding his face expressionless.

“Amanda Gilbert,” he said.

“Amanda, yeah. She a friend of yours?”

“Why would you say that? She works there, that’s all. She works there—”

“Hey, hey.” Giacomo held up both hands.

“Take it easy. It’s just that some folks at the TV station seemed to think you and Amanda were pretty friendly with each other. Maybe a little less friendly when your wife was around.”

“What are you implying?” Howard breathed, as if the question needed to be asked.

“Not implying anything, Mr. Barwood. How does Amanda feel about those offshore accounts? She like the idea?”

“I never told—” He caught himself.

“She doesn’t know anything about my private affairs.” Damn, affairs—the wrong word to use.

“She’s Kris’s business associate, that’s all. We have no personal relationship—”

“Funny.” That was Heller, finding his voice for the first time in a long while.

“She told us something different when we talked to her a couple of hours ago.”

There was silence. The detectives stared at him.

Howard stared back, his gaze ticking from one interrogator to the other. He had no way of knowing if they had actually talked to Amanda or were merely hoping to elicit some incriminating response. But if they hadn’t interviewed Amanda yet, they soon would. And she would break. She was weak. Any woman who needed to assert her individuality by having a tattoo stamped onto her butt, for God’s sake, was weak by definition.

And what had he ever found alluring about that ridiculous tattoo anyway?

“Mr. Barwood?” Giacomo ventured.

Howard looked at him, then widened his field of view to take in the table, the fluorescent light panel overhead, the bare walls, the short-nap carpet, the metal wastebasket in the corner. It was real to him finally—where he was, whom he was facing, what was happening here.

This was a sheriff’s station, and these men were cops, and they thought he was mixed up in the attack on Kris. They thought he had a motive. They thought they had the goods on him.

“Mr. Barwood,” Giacomo said again, not making an inquiry.

“I have nothing more to say,” Howard whispered.

“I want to consult with my attorney.”

Heller closed his notepad.

“Okay.” Giacomo shrugged.

“That’s your right, as we informed you.” He placed a hand on the tape recorder.

“We’re terminating this at ten-hundred forty six He shut off the recorder. He and Heller stood up.

Howard noticed they weren’t smiling anymore.

“You’re in trouble, Howard,” Giacomo said, not bothering to call him Mr. Barwood any longer.

“You conspired with that psycho Hickle to ice your wife.

You know it. We know it. And we’re going to prove it.”

They left him alone in the room to think about that.

Although Travis hadn’t had any sleep in more than twenty-four hours, he was curiously alert. An uninterrupted adrenaline rush from midnight onward had supercharged his nervous system, replenishing his energy whenever his strength began to flag. He had not felt this good in years.

Part of it was the excitement of the final round. His strategy, conceived months ago, had reached its climax.

In a day or two, everything would be settled. The game would be over.

And he could sense that it would end in his favor. Despite unanticipated setbacks, despite twists of fate that had required creative improvisation on his part” he had persevered and won.

At 11 a.m. he parked in front of the bungalow in Culver City and got out of his car. The street was deserted.

No doubt most of the residents were at work or engaged in their daily chores. Even if someone was watching from a window, he wasn’t overly concerned.

It was unlikely that any of the neighbors had ever seen Howard Barwood up close, and from a distance one well-dressed, middle-aged white male looked basically like another. He could pass for the owner of the house.

And he had a key. Months earlier, when he had done his research on Howard and learned of the bungalow’s existence, he had anticipated the possibility that he might require access to the house. He had thought of planting the cell phone here—the phone he’d purchased himself and registered in the name of Western Regional Resources—although as things had turned out, he had been able to place the evidence in an even more incriminating location.

In any event, wanting to be prepared, he had come here late one night when the house was empty. Working in the glow of a pencil flashlight, he had used an impressioning file and a key blank to produce a new key for the front door.

That key was in his hand now. He used it to enter the bungalow.

The house was still, the air heavy. He moved quickly down the hall to the master bedroom. Abby had told him that Howard kept a gun in his nightstand.

And yes, there it was in the sock drawer, a neat little Colt .45.

Travis picked it up with his bare hand. He had no worries about fingerprints. The gun would be thoroughly wiped before he left it for the police to find.

He was pleased to see that the serial number had not been filed off.

The gun was traceable. There was every reason to believe that Howard Barwood had bought it legally and that it could be easily linked to him. Presumably Howard had purchased the .45 for the same reason he had installed bars on the bungalow’s windows.

In a high-crime neighborhood he had wanted to feel safe.

Travis pocketed the gun after confirming it was loaded. Soon enough he would have a use for it. He would send Hickle an e-mail arranging a rendezvous in a secluded spot—perhaps one of the trails in Topanga State Park. At dawn, say, when no one was around. When Hickle arrived, Travis would sidle up next to him conspiratorially, and then—bang—one bullet to the head. He would wipe the gun and leave it in Hickle’s dead hand. Easy.