Murder Season (11 page)
Lena nodded. “Exactly. So what if it started from the beginning? What if they got lost in the details and the headlines? What if Jacob Gant didn’t murder Lily Hight and they tried the wrong man?”
It hung there. And for several moments, it looked like Vaughan had taken a punch. He pushed aside his coffee and leaned back in his chair, rubbing a finger across his forehead as he considered her question.
“If you’re asking me if Bennett and Watson are capable of running the worst investigation and trial in the city’s long history of blown investigations and even worse trials—if that’s what you’re really asking—it’s possible, I guess. It’s more than possible. But you’d have to get past the DNA, Lena. Lily Hight was raped before she was killed. Gant’s semen was found at the crime scene and by the coroner during the girl’s autopsy. That locks Gant in.”
“You mean the samples that went missing at the crime lab?”
Vaughan nodded.
“SID doesn’t lose things, Greg. It’s not in their nature to lose things.”
Vaughan got out of his chair and moved to the window. “What’s this got to do with Tim Hight, Lena? All that matters is what he believed. He thought Gant killed his daughter and got away with it. He shot the kid. He put two bullets in his head. And he murdered Johnny Bosco along the way.”
Lena glanced at the door, then back at Vaughan. “Bosco was helping Gant investigate Lily Hight’s murder. They thought they knew who did it. Last night they were hoping to prove it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gant’s brother told me that about an hour ago.”
“You don’t believe him, I hope.”
She thought it over. She thought about that feeling in her gut.
“I believe that he believes it, and that his brother wouldn’t lie to him. That’s all I’ll say right now. Bosco and Gant—you’ve got to admit that it’s an odd pairing because of who Bosco was. No one’s been able to explain why they were together last night. Not even Bosco’s partner, Dante Escabar.”
Vaughan sat down on the sill. “Bosco catered to Hollywood. He gave them privacy. A place to go where no one had to worry about controversy or some asshole taking a picture that might embarrass them. Being seen with Jacob Gant after the trial would have been a risk to Bosco. So I guess the question becomes, what was worth the risk?”
Lena joined Vaughan by the window. “Exactly. There’s something wrong. Something missing. What we’re seeing isn’t necessarily what’s really there.”
A moment passed—utter silence—while both of them gazed through the glass at an endless ribbon of cars breezing down the Hollywood Freeway.
“I know what you’re saying,” Vaughan whispered. “And now I know why you didn’t want to say it over the phone. You want to take another look at Lily Hight’s murder. You want me to go through the trial and figure out how Bennett and Watson built their case.”
“And there’s no way to keep it a secret from anyone we work with.”
“I’ve got that press conference this afternoon. At least I can keep it from them.”
She nodded, but remained quiet.
“We sure caught a good one, didn’t we?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “We’re fucked.”
It was more than the number of loose ends.
It was their size and scope and potential to ignite.
Lena sensed that she had found a new one the moment Dan Cobb walked out the door and greeted her in the lobby with his hands in his pockets. He settled back on his heels, staring at her with open suspicion.
Cobb had been the lead detective investigating Lily Hight’s murder. Lena had made the drive across town to the Pacific Station and walked in unannounced. He had asked to see her badge, which seemed unnecessary and ridiculous. He already knew who she was.
“What’s this about?” he asked.
The watch commander was on the phone behind the front desk. People were milling about within earshot. Lena glanced at the door leading to the homicide section.
“Any chance we could talk back there?”
He needed a moment to think it over. More time to stir the change in his pocket.
Cobb was a big, barrel-chested man in his mid-fifties. His hair was cropped short, a wild mix of gray on gray. His goatee was even shorter and could have just as easily passed as stubble lost within the creases of his leathery skin. Although he was staring at her, even measuring her at close range, she couldn’t tell what color his eyes were because he wore a pair of glasses that grew darker in sunlight. The lenses were set in clear plastic frames, the shape as outdated as his clothing. He must have been looking out the window about the time she arrived.
“I guess we can talk,” he said finally. “As long as it doesn’t take too long.”
He pulled open the door and walked off, letting her follow in his wake. His attitude was unmistakable. His contempt for her, his rudeness, was over the top.
Lena ignored his behavior because she knew that she had to. Her concerns for the case outweighed everything else and provided some degree of immunity. But even more, she wanted Cobb’s cooperation.
They crossed the section floor. Lena didn’t see a familiar face; the place was nearly empty. When they reached Cobb’s desk, he waved her off.
“Not here,” he said. “We’ll talk in one of the rooms.”
He grabbed a pad and started searching for a pen. There was nothing personal on his desk except for an old snapshot taped to the surface. Curiously, it wasn’t a picture of a person, but of a place. A discolored photo of the sun setting into an ocean behind a grove of palm trees.
“Where was this taken?” she asked.
Cobb didn’t look up, still rummaging through his drawer for a pen. “Hualalai,” he said without interest. “Fifteen years ago. I was working a case. I’ve been trying to get back ever since.” He finally spotted a pen and grabbed it. “Now let’s get this over with.”
He led her over to an interrogation room, flipped on the overhead lights, and pointed to a seat bolted to the floor. But as he started to sit down, he tested the pen on his legal pad and realized that it was out of ink.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
It seemed clear enough that Cobb was dogging it. That his act was intentional. Unless he’d been dead for the past twelve hours, he had to have some idea as to why she was here. She turned and looked through the doorway. The detective wasn’t at his desk. Just as she was about to get up, he reappeared from around the corner, breezed into the room, and kicked the door shut. She watched him take a seat on the other side of the table and test his new pen. Apparently, this one worked.
“Why are you here, Gamble?” he said.
“I’d like to see the murder book you kept on the Lily Hight case.”
“Why? It’s over. The man who killed her was shot last night. Case closed. He’s dead.”
“I met the girl’s father. I want to know how you cleared him.”
It had been a righteous request—one that any detective would have made no matter what questions they might have harbored about the case. Yet Cobb leaned back in his seat, chewing it over and giving her another hard look through those glasses. The lenses were beginning to fade, and she could see his eyeballs floating in the vanishing darkness.
“You’re it, aren’t you?” he said. “The new face of the LAPD’s PR machine. The new deal. I know who you are, Gamble. They’re using you to dig themselves out of the hole they’re in.”
“You’re in it just as deep as anyone else, Cobb. We’re in it together. Now, how did you clear Tim Hight?”
He shrugged, his eyes still pinned on her. “I already had the kid. Why would I have needed to clear Hight?”
Another warning beacon broke the surface. Lena took it in, but remained silent. Lily Hight had been murdered in the bedroom of her home. The investigation should have begun with her family—her parents—and continued until they were cleared one by one.
Cobb had been watching her put it together like a mind reader. When he laughed, it sounded raw and vicious and even crazy.
“I got it,” he said. “I see where you’re going now. You think Daddy diddled his little girl. That ought to go over well since he’s a hero now.”
He slammed his hand against the table in anger, then bounced to his feet and started pacing back and forth along the rear wall like an animal.
“If you’re gonna muddy things up,” he said, “if you’re looking for someone to blame because the jokers who fucked this up don’t want to admit they fucked it up—if that’s where it’s at, Gamble—then my memory’s just hit the skids. I can’t even remember what I ate for dinner last night. Was it steak, or was it lobster? Or maybe it was just a bowl of plain old bullshit.”
Lena shook her head. “Sit down, Cobb. You’re making me nervous.”
“Making you nervous. I love it. I dig it. I’m making you nervous. What do you think you’re doing to me? The kid killed her. There’s no
but
to it. There’s no doubt about it. I’ve been working homicide for twenty-five years and I knew that little shit did her the minute I set eyes on him. When I heard he got wasted, I poured a fucking Cutty Sark.”
“Okay, Cobb. Take it easy and sit down. What happened when you put Gant through a polygraph?”
Cobb finally returned to the table. He seemed to need to inspect his seat. When he was satisfied, he sat down.
“Who said anything about a polygraph?”
“You didn’t put him in the box?” she said.
“I didn’t need to. The blood work came in. The DNA results. We got a hit and I made the arrest. Why risk a polygraph after that? The kid was a natural-born liar. I could see it. I know the type. What if the piece of shit beat it? What would Paladino have done after that? How fast would that asshole lawyer have blanketed the results all over the fucking city and poisoned the jury pool?”
Lena didn’t respond.
Cobb smiled at her in triumph. “Got you, didn’t I?” he said. “You wouldn’t have risked it, either. No one would.”
She was thinking about the year she decided that she wanted to become a police officer. She had written it down on a piece of paper. On one side, she listed what she hoped to accomplish, along with the reasons why. On the other, she wrote down what she didn’t want to become and the reasons for that as well. As she looked at Cobb’s weather-beaten face, his crude, even violent manner, his inability to control himself, she realized that he embodied everything she’d listed on the other side of that sheet of paper. Although there was some truth to what he’d been saying, the gist reeked of bitterness, incompetence, and self-posturing.
Lena gave him another look, hoping that he would succeed at reading her mind again. She wanted him to know what she thought of him but was too much a professional to say. She tried to adjust her seat but remembered that it was bolted to the floor. Glancing about the small room, she noticed a wave of perspiration in the stale air.
“Why are we meeting in here, Cobb? Why did you pick an interrogation room instead of a conference room?”
He shrugged like he didn’t give a shit.
“It’s all about power, isn’t it?” she said. “Power and intimidation. It’s your blowback pitch. You think it gives you the upper hand. Is this how you treated Jacob Gant? Did you hit him? Did you hurt him?”
His eyeballs flicked at her from behind those glasses. She could see them still swimming around behind the tinted lenses. She could see a glint breaking through—a stray spark hitting the water and fizzing out.
But he didn’t say anything. And when a quarter fell out of his pocket and rolled across the floor, he didn’t move.
Lena got up and yanked open the door. “Get me the murder book, Cobb. It’s late and I want to get out of here.”
Several moments passed before he finally pried his stiff body out of the chair and rose to his feet. He was dogging it again, moving toward her at a tortured pace. But he was brimming with anger, too. When he finally reached the door, he grimaced at her and showed her his clenched teeth as he passed by.
Dan Cobb, aka Mad Dog Dan, aka.
“Hey You”—born and raised in Wichita, Kansas—ejected the tape that he had secretly recorded, jammed it into his pocket, and rushed out of the tech room. He would listen to it when he had more time and more privacy. Like tonight, when he went home. He’d listen to the tape he’d made and take notes.
His knees were shot. He sped across the section floor as best he could, tossing those horrible glasses on his desk. By the time he reached the windows, the world came back into focus and he could see Gamble crossing the lot toward a metallic green Crown Vic. She was carrying the murder book under her arm. The one he’d edited, rather than the one he kept at home. The one he’d put together for the day he knew someone would come.
Cobb understood with perfect clarity that everything was in jeopardy now. Everything was on the line. And he could see his life flashing before him.
It worked like a movie in his head—as clear and realistic as any of the new theaters in Hollywood. He tried to shut down the images as he exited the building through the rear doors and climbed into his Lincoln. He tried to switch channels but it was always the same scenes playing over and over again. Scenes that had begun haunting him about a year ago as he sat with Lily’s dead body in her bedroom. Scenes that picked up speed during the trial, then died off over the past six weeks. But the peace was gone now. After last night, the movie wormed its way back into his head so ultra vivid, he would have sworn before a judge and jury that the stupid thing was shot in 3-fucking-D.
He could see the dead bodies piling up. He could see their faces in the muted light. He could see them staring at him and taunting him.
One, two, three.
Cobb tried to get a grip on himself, idling through the lot until he caught a glimpse of the ass end of Gamble’s Crown Vic. The way the windows matched up at the corner of the building, he could look through the glass and see her standing beside the car. She was on her cell phone, jotting something down on a pad.
He hated the stupid bitch. The new fucking deal.
But he needed some sort of plan. A map that would show him the way through. Now more than ever—he’d already lost too much.
