Free Murder Season by Robert Ellis

returned to the photograph. “I don’t know. It could be a shadow. It’s nothing.”
    Lena tossed the receipt for the gun on the table.
    “A shadow?” she said.
    Hight’s body stiffened as he realized what was in the evidence bag. Beads of sweat began to percolate on his forehead. His mouth quivered. Lena pulled a chair away from the table and sat down. Nothing about her voice or manner was confrontational.
    “Where’s the gun, Mr. Hight?”
    He took a deep breath and shuddered as he exhaled. He tried to look at her, but couldn’t. He seemed embarrassed. The room went quiet again.
    “Make it easy on yourself,” she said. “You’re so close. Just tell me where it is.”
    Another long moment passed. “I can’t remember,” he whispered finally. “I don’t know what I did with it.”
    “You mean you got rid of it. After you left the club, you tossed it.”
    He shook his head. “No. I mean I can’t remember where I put it. It came in the mail and I put it somewhere. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was confused.”
    Lena sat back in the chair, unable to hide her disappointment. “That’s your story? You bought a gun, but you can’t remember what you did with it. You were at Club 3 AM last night, two men were shot, but all you took with you was your shadow.”
    The cynicism in her voice registered on his face, though only for a brief moment.
    “I think I should call my lawyers now.”
    Lawyers. He didn’t have one attorney. He had more than one.
    “I do, too,” she said. “And here’s what you’ll need to tell them. It won’t work, Mr. Hight. What you’re doing. What you’re trying to get away with. It won’t work.”
    “I’m not trying to get away with anything.”
    “Sure you are. You’re trying to get away with murder. But all that depends on it looking like a crime of passion. And you’ll need public opinion on your side to pull it off.”
    “If I had killed Jacob Gant, it would have been a crime of passion.”
    “But what happened last night wasn’t a crime of passion,” she said. “And that’s your problem. It doesn’t look like it. It doesn’t feel like it. So how do you expect your lawyers to sell it?”
    “If I’d murdered Jake, it would have been,” he repeated with less conviction.
    “I can only speak for myself and the people I work with, Mr. Hight. The whole thing looks planned. Everything you did looks scripted, like you spent a lot of time in that chair in the sunroom thinking it over from every angle. Watching the Gants from your window and letting it eat you up from the inside. You dreamed about murdering Jacob Gant. Like you said, you wished for his death over and over again.”
    A beat went by. Then another, and Hight started weeping like a man overcome by his memories. His ghosts.
    “But Jake murdered Lily,” he whispered into his hands. “My girl. That’s how a crime of passion works.”
    Lena spotted a box of tissues on the counter and brought them over to the table.
    “You planned it, Mr. Hight. You bought the gun six weeks ago. We checked. It’s not registered. You followed Gant to the club last night. You knew the layout and waited on the fire escape.”
    “I haven’t seen him since the trial. I told you that.”
    “You shot an innocent man. You shot Johnny Bosco.”
    “I didn’t. I couldn’t. I liked Johnny. He was nice to me.”
    Lena lowered her voice. “You shot him in the back. You’ll need to tell your lawyers about it because that’s what it really comes down to. The gristle on the bone. You shot an innocent man in the back.”
    His body shivered—a tremor from deep within that came and went.
    “Why do you keep repeating it?” he said.
    “Because you’re playing us. Because you’re trying to take the city down with you. No matter what I might feel for your loss, you’re hurting other people now. You shot Bosco and then you killed Gant just the way you dreamed about it. You took care of business. You wasted him. You disfigured