Murder Season (17 page)
But Tim Hight wasn’t like most people.
She wondered why he was doing it. She wondered if he didn’t see it as some kind of punishment. Or if he wasn’t lost in some sort of psychotic denial.
Her cell phone started vibrating. When she pulled it out of her pocket and saw Vaughan’s name on the touch screen, she slid the lock open with her thumb.
“I’ve got something,” he said. “Where are you?”
She could hear the excitement in his voice. The punch.
“What happened?” she said. “What is it?”
Vaughan covered the mouthpiece. The sound became muffled and she could hear him telling someone to close the door. When he came back on, his voice was quieter.
“I figured out why Cobb called Bennett first. They’ve got a history, Lena. They go way back.”
Lily Hight and Jacob Gant.
The girl was sexually active, a willing partner—but there was also a certain kink to it. A kink to Lily. To Gant. To them. One that included nude snapshots and phone sex in a chair by the window every night.
And one that may have included Lily’s father watching them from the darkness … and doing what?
The thought, the depravity, sent chills up Lena’s spine. But even worse, how could Cobb have missed it? And what about Bennett and Watson?
The elevator opened and Lena started down the hall toward Vaughan’s office. Within a few short steps, she became aware of someone shouting and realized that it was Steven Bennett’s voice. Lena picked up her pace and turned the corner. Bennett was inside Vaughan’s office with the door closed, and Vaughan’s assistant wasn’t at her desk. Lena noted the steam from a hot cup of tea by her computer—she must have just left. When she caught a glimpse of the newspaper on the desk, she rolled the chair away and moved in for a closer look.
It was today’s edition of
The Los Angeles Times,
and by all appearances, two journalists had written an article on the Jacob Gant trial singling out Bennett, Watson, and Higgins as complete incompetents. According to the banner above the headline, this was part one in a series that would run for the next fifteen weeks.
Worse still, the article had been set above the fold on page one and ran through most of the first section of the newspaper. On page three, photographs of Lily Hight, Jacob Gant, and Johnny Bosco were encircled by cutout photos of Bennett, Watson, and Higgins, but also by the chief administrator and commanding officer of the crime lab, Howard Kendrick, a man Lena had only met in passing. Beside the graphic a large arrow pointed to pictures of both Lena and Vaughan, set above the caption:
District Attorney Jimmy J. Higgins & Company run for cover after serving up a fresh pair of scapegoats, or are they just the latest victims?
Lena dropped the newspaper back on the desk.
If Higgins truly hoped to glue Vaughan’s face to the scandal, it wasn’t going to work. The DA and his protégés had been outed and would be circling the drain for the next fifteen weeks. But far more important to Lena, the series would boost Tim Hight’s reputation as a father who did what he needed to do in killing Gant. Unbeknownst to the journalists, their examination and criticism of the trial would damage her case against Hight and hurt everyone.
Bennett raised his voice and began shouting at Vaughan again. Without hesitating, Lena pushed open the door and walked in on them. Bennett snapped his head at her, his face a deep purple, the veins in his neck jutting out thick as rope.
“Get the fuck out of this room,” he said.
Vaughan banged his fist on the desk. “You need to chill, Bennett. Pull yourself together. No one’s out to get you.”
Bennett rubbed his hand over his scalp and appeared stunned, even crazed. Ignoring Vaughan, he charged across the room and didn’t stop until he was in Lena’s face. It took all her strength of will to hold her ground.
“I knew the two of you would fuck this up,” he said.
Bennett looked like a man who was drowning. He was spitting the words out of his mouth, his lips were quivering, his cheeks dripping with perspiration. She could see the panic in those emerald-green eyes of his—rage mixed with fear.
Snake eyes.
“I knew you’d fuck it up,” he said again. “You’re talking to all the wrong people. You’re asking all the wrong questions. You’re fucking up my life.”
Vaughan looked like he’d had enough and approached from the side. “Nobody’s fucking up your life, Steven. You’re gonna have a heart attack. You’re gonna kill yourself, and it’s not worth it. Get out of my office and calm down.”
Bennett was still ignoring him, still zeroing in on Lena with his tail standing on end. He was easily a foot shorter than her, but meaty and strong. He took a step closer—nose to chin. Lena kept her eyes on him, her voice soft and easy and steady as a train on a new set of tracks.
“What’s next, Bennett? You gonna hit me?”
At first, he acted like he didn’t hear her or didn’t understand what she had just said. But after a few seconds, he mouthed the words “fuck you” at her and took two steps back. Vaughan moved in beside Lena, with Bennett now glaring at both of them.
“Fuck you both,” he said. “Just do your fucking jobs. Just do what you were told to do.”
He stormed out of the office. As he passed the assistant’s desk, he saw the newspaper, crushed it into a ball, and started punching it. Satisfied that the newspaper was dead, or at least mortally wounded, he kicked the desk chair and ripped the phone out of the wall—in a rant and repeating the words “Do your fucking jobs” over and over again through clenched teeth. When he finally caught his breath, he backed away from the desk like a madman and ran down the hall.
Vaughan turned to Lena. “You see today’s paper?”
She nodded, but kept quiet.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
They walked through the park beside City Hall
and found a bench underneath the trees. Across the street on the corner, the safety barrier between the sidewalk and construction area was being removed from the new building that would soon become LAPD headquarters. A handful of landscapers were planting palm trees along the curb while another team of construction workers power-washed the steps.
On the way over, Lena had brought Vaughan up to speed on what she had learned at Hight’s house and the conclusions she was ready to make. She had given him a detailed picture of exactly where they stood, including Cobb’s visit to her house last night. Vaughan didn’t take it very well, but finally agreed that antagonizing Cobb any further wasn’t in their best interest, at least in the short term.
“His case against Jacob Gant was based on a lie,” she said. “Gant was not stalking Lily Hight. Cobb’s first move was in the wrong direction.”
“But I’m going through the trial, Lena. The transcripts, the video. What about Gant’s anger? What about the messages Cobb pulled off the girl’s service? Bennett and Watson read them in court.”
“Gant said that they had a fight. It lasted for two weeks and then they made up. What if it’s that simple? And Hight was never asked to provide an alibi, Greg. He was never a suspect. His story was never checked out. Never verified.”
“You think Cobb knows he screwed up and that’s why he’s acting this way?”
She turned to him. “Do you think Bennett thinks he screwed up the trial?”
“I get it,” he said. “Like that case on Long Island we talked about last night. They don’t make mistakes. Everybody else does.”
“You said they go way back.”
Vaughan removed his jacket and loosened his tie in the heat. “When Bennett first came to the DA’s office, he needed help, a detective with experience. Cobb gave it to him. They liked working together and became friends. I get the feeling Cobb was something of a mentor to him early on.”
“Barrera told me that Cobb used to work out of Robbery-Homicide. Something happened, but he didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I didn’t put it together until last night. When I got in this morning, I went online and started to remember things. Then I made a few calls.”
“Remember what?” she said.
“They worked a lot of cases together. They had a lot of success.”
“Okay, so what went wrong?”
“They worked together and then they stopped. Seven or eight years ago—around the time Higgins got into politics.”
Lena tried to make the leap, pressing her memory for a murder case that stood out, but nothing came to mind. Vaughan gave her a look.
“It was a drive-by shooting in Exposition Park,” he said. “A woman walking her grandson in a stroller by a vacant lot on Western Avenue. I think it was across the street from the library on thirty-ninth. Both were dead before the cops arrived.”
Lena thought it over. Eight years ago there were a lot of drive-by shootings in L.A. But that probably wasn’t the reason for her faulty memory. Her brother had been murdered eight years ago, and she had taken some time off.
Vaughan leaned closer, his voice becoming more gentle. “Elvira Wheaten,” he said. “The infant’s name was Shawn. They didn’t walk into the crossfire between two gangs, Lena. They were gunned down intentionally. Wheaten was trying to clean up the neighborhood and had a target on her back. Higgins was running for DA and needed headlines. By then, Bennett was his boy in the office. I’m surprised you don’t remember.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“There was an eyewitness. A kid in his early teens. Wes Brown. He helped Cobb and Bennett identify the shooters in the car, but refused to testify against them in court.”
Something about hearing Wes Brown’s name seemed familiar. After a moment, she realized what it was. The young teenager had made headlines, too.
“Wes Brown was murdered,” she said.
Vaughan nodded. “Three months after the trial and Higgins took office. Brown didn’t testify in court. His identity was kept secret. The shooters never knew who made the initial ID, but somehow they got to him just the same. Three months later Brown was dead.”
“But Higgins won the trial.”
“It would have been a slam dunk with Brown’s testimony, so he and Bennett had to work harder. I was in the office then. I remember them sweating it out—the trial and the campaign. But Higgins got his guilty verdict, milked it in front of the cameras, and ended up winning the election.”
“And Bennett and Cobb had a falling out because Cobb couldn’t get Brown to testify.”
Vaughan nodded again. “Makes sense when you think about it. Bennett’s not the kind of guy who would have cared about Brown’s fear. He probably blamed Cobb for putting their case at risk and jeopardizing Higgins’s campaign. Things happen when there’s a lot on the line. Higgins took some heat when Brown was murdered as well. That wouldn’t help mend any fences.”
“So, Cobb loses his friend,” she said. “His best connection in the DA’s office.”
“I think there’s a divorce somewhere after that. Money issues. Darkness.”
“Bennett didn’t need him anymore.”
“Until Lily Hight was murdered and Cobb got the case. Then it became the same thing all over again.”
“Higgins wanted a third term, knew he needed headlines and another big trial to win. And Bennett wanted to look like a hero so he could run four years from now. All of sudden, they needed Cobb again.”
Vaughan smiled at her. “When you asked Cobb for the murder book yesterday, who’s he gonna call?”
“Steven Bennett,” she said. “His on-again-off-again new best friend. The guy who can bring him back to the top.”
“It’s almost the same thing, only this time it didn’t work out. The trial blew everything down.”
“That and today’s newspaper,” she said. “Where’s your car?”
“In the garage. Why?”
“Want to take a drive with me out to the crime lab?”
“What is it?” he said. ‘What’s up?”
“I want to take what’s left of Lily Hight’s clothing out to Orth.”
Vaughan gave her a look and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
“Meet me at Parker in fifteen minutes,” she said. “Wait in the VIP lot and stay with your car.”
She could see it now.
The entire case against Jacob Gant hinged on the DNA evidence taken from Lily Hight’s body and underwear. For Cobb, Bennett, and Watson, the match to Gant convinced them that they had their killer. When the samples went missing in the lab, along with the victim’s panties, Paladino was able to convince the jury that the lab results presented at trial couldn’t be trusted because it was no longer possible to back them up.
You need verification, he would repeat over and over again. If you can’t verify, then you can’t vilify. And that means you can’t convict.
Lena had seen the lab reports in Cobb’s murder book. Although Paladino knew how to play a jury, she had no doubt that the semen samples the lab retrieved and analyzed were righteous—no doubt that the semen came from Gant and the results were reliable. But just like everything else, if Gant had been telling the truth, his semen should have been found with the victim. It didn’t necessarily prove innocence or guilt to the beating and murder, and had no meaning other than what it was. Had Lily been raped and murdered after Gant left, everything would have looked exactly the way it did.
But for Lena, the case hinged just as much on the estimated time of death.
It was a small window—less than two hours long—with nothing tangible to back it up. From what she could tell, the calculation was based less on science or physical evidence and more on the statements made by Jacob Gant and Tim Hight. The time line began when Gant claimed to have left her and ended when Hight said he found her. The case hinged on that window because both men had been there.
Lena walked through the basement at Parker Center and gazed through the plate-glass windows into the property room. The storage facility was one of two in the system and had the look and feel of a dilapidated bank. There was a man filling out a form at one of the two tables by the door. Another waited at the counter, watching a female clerk—an old woman—log in his package behind the beige wire mesh. Lena knew that both men were detectives, but didn’t recognize either one as she entered the room.
