The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(41)

“Almost eight years,” Brazil said. “Good people, good food, and I can walk to work.”

“I know it’s good food. I’ve eaten here several times.”

“Is this where you butter me up and then say the case will never be solved?”

“No, it’s not. This is where I tell you I’m going to solve it.”

“Sure.”

“Look, Nathan, I’m not going to lie to you. A lot of time has gone by. John’s parents are dead, one of the original detectives is dead, and the other is retired in Idaho. There are—”

“They never did give a shit anyway. They didn’t care.”

“Is that based on them not returning your calls?”

“More than that, honey. Not that things are all that different now, but back then they weren’t going to jump through hoops for a drug-addicted poof. That’s just the way it was.”

“You mean a gay man?”

“Poof, fag, queer—whatever you want to call us. LAPD didn’t give a shit. Still doesn’t.”

“To me it’s a victim and that’s all I see, okay? I inherited this case because it was lost and then it got found. I’m on it now and it doesn’t matter to me who John Hilton was or what his lifestyle choices were.”

“See, that’s what I mean. That’s the problem. It isn’t a ‘lifestyle.’ And it’s not a ‘choice.’ You’re hetero, right?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a ‘lifestyle choice’ or are you just hetero?”

“I get it. My mistake and I appreciate what you’re saying. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter to me what John was or did. Gay or drug addict or both, he didn’t deserve what happened and I’m interested, no matter what the people before me were. Okay?”

“Okay. But I have to go check on my table now.”

“I’ll wait here.”

Brazil left the area and went into the restaurant. Ballard watched him take another order for margaritas—it was happy hour—then put in the order at the bar at the back of the restaurant. He came back to Ballard a few moments later. She felt they had gotten the ground rules out of the way and Brazil had had a chance to vent. It was time to get down to business.

“Okay, so how long were you living with John before he was killed?”

“Murdered. I prefer ‘murdered’ because that’s what it was.”

“You’re right. It was a murder. How long did you live with him?”

“Eleven months. I remember because it was sort of awkward. We lived in this dump in North Hollywood and it was time to sign a new lease. Neither of us wanted to but we were too lazy to look for something else and think about moving all our shit. Then he got murdered and I couldn’t do the rent on my own. I had to move.”

“It says in the investigation records that he came to the studio where you were working on the night he was murdered.”

“Yes, Archway. I found out later from the guy at the gate.”

“And that was unusual for him to come there?”

“Sort of. Not really.”

This had stood out to Ballard in the murder book chrono—that it was unusual for Hilton to go to Brazil’s workplace. Now she was hearing something different.

“I read a report from the first investigation that had you saying he’d never done that before,” she prompted.

“First of all, I didn’t know this guy who was interviewing me,” Brazil said. “I called him Detective Vitalis—you remember that stuff in the green bottles? And for a while—until they confirmed my alibi—I thought they were going to try to blame me and make it a fag-on-fag crime. So I told him what I told him.”

“Which was a lie?”

“No, not a lie. But it wasn’t everything, you know? I worked for a company that did craft services. You know, brought all the food and snacks and stuff for whatever production we were on. Sometimes we were at the studio and sometimes we were out filming on location, like on the streets somewhere. And I always told John where we would be and he’d come by and I’d sneak him some food, you know? And that’s why he came to the studio that day. He was hungry. He must’ve had no money and wanted something to eat. But giving my name at the guard shack at Archway wouldn’t have worked. It was our first time on that lot and they didn’t know me from Adam.”

Ballard nodded. It was always good to get the fuller story, but sometimes the more you knew, the more you saw conflicts with other information.

“So, if he had no money for food and tried to come to you, how did he have money to go down to that alley to buy drugs?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Brazil said. “Maybe he had something to trade. Maybe he stole something. He did that sort of thing, you know?”

Ballard nodded. It was possible.

“All I know is that if he came to find me it was because he had no money,” Brazil said. “I need to go to the bar.”

While he was gone, Ballard decided to take the interview in other directions when he got back. This time she had to wait a while as Brazil delivered drinks to his one table, then took their food orders and went back to the kitchen.

“You know, I like you,” he said when he returned. “You are not like Detective Vitalis was at all.”