Murder Season (32 page)

Everything about it felt grim. Everything about it, wrong.

She found a clear stretch of road and picked up speed.

“Rockingham’s just around the corner,” Vaughan said. “It’s gonna be on the right and come up fast.”

She spotted the street sign as she rolled out of the curve. Once she made the turn, she saw the flashing lights and felt the pull in her gut. The street had been blocked off by a handful of black and white cruisers out of the West L.A. Station. A cop directing traffic was motioning her to make a U-turn and drive away. Lena grit her teeth and shook her head at the guy. When she flashed her badge, she was redirected to a spot on the first side street that hadn’t been blocked off.

Vaughan touched her arm. “Are you gonna be okay?”

She looked at him. She couldn’t tell. Everything seemed so raw.

She ripped open the door, met Vaughan on the other side, and they hurried up the street. As they checked in, she glanced at Bennett’s house and noticed the shattered windows and the bullet holes in the garage door. Vaughan gave her a nudge and pointed across the street to a hill overlooking the house. There were two men up there searching the ground with flashlights. It had to be the spot Cobb had told her about. The one with the view.

“I don’t see an ambulance,” Vaughan whispered.

“And I don’t see the coroner’s van. Maybe we got lucky.”

Someone called out her name.

She turned and saw a detective standing at the curb in front of Bennett’s house. She knew him. His name was Clayton Hu. They had spent a year on patrol together when they both wore uniforms and worked out of Hollywood.

Hu seemed surprised as he approached them and offered his hand. “What are you guys doing here, Lena?”

“Looking for a detective named Dan Cobb. Have you seen him, Clayton?”

The detective shook his head. “We’re still trying to figure out what happened. This house belongs to a deputy district attorney.”

Vaughan nodded. “We know,” he said. “Steven Bennett.”

“No one’s around,” Hu said. “We’ve been trying to locate Bennett for the last hour. We’ve got his phone numbers, but he’s not responding to the messages we’ve left. We’ve got calls into every hospital in the city. Anyone walks in with a gunshot wound and we’ll know about it.”

Vaughan gave Lena a look, then turned back to Hu. “Maybe you should tell us what you’ve got.”

Hu nodded again, switching on his flashlight and walking them over to the curb. He pointed out the shell casings, then turned the light on the trail of spilled blood that led up and down the street. Lena forced herself to look, but found it painful. Personal.

Hu turned to her. “What was Cobb doing here?”

“Keeping an eye on Bennett.”

“And Bennett’s a suspect?”

“Yeah,” she said. “He’s a suspect. It’s murder, Clayton. Multiple counts.”

“I was afraid you were gonna say that. Let’s take a walk up the hill.”

They followed the blood trail up the street, then cut into the brush once they’d passed the crime scene tape. When they reached the top of the hill, the two men already there lowered their flashlights and pointed out three more shell casings. After a few moments, the beams of light panned back toward the edge of the hill and Lena’s eyes came to rest on the blood that had soaked into the dry ground. There was a lot of it.

“I’m sorry,” Hu said in a quiet voice. “I’m guessing this is where your detective was keeping an eye on things when he got shot. Is he a friend?”

Lena nodded without saying anything.

“He lost a lot of blood, Lena. But he’s gotta be pretty tough because he walked out and drove away. The blood trail goes all the way down to the next street and then stops where we think he parked his car. We didn’t know he was a cop.”

Vaughan cleared his throat. “He would have driven into Westwood.”

Hu nodded. “We thought so, too, but no one’s shown up yet. Not with a gunshot wound.”

Lena looked over the hill at Bennett’s house, then turned back to Hu. “You’ve got people looking for him between here and there?”

“Not yet,” he said. “But I’ll make it happen.”

She gave him as much information as she had, a description of Cobb’s car, the name of his supervisor at the Pacific Station, the number to his cell phone. Then they started down the hill, avoiding the yellow tape that charted the path that Cobb had taken through the brush. As Lena and Vaughan left Hu behind, she remained silent until they reached the car, climbed in and were alone. The sadness seemed overwhelming.

“What do you think?” she whispered. “Why didn’t Cobb show up at the hospital?”

“I don’t know,” Vaughan said gently.

“Do you think—”

Her voice broke, and she couldn’t manage to keep her game face on any longer. She didn’t understand her emotions. She could feel the tears beginning to drip down her cheeks. When she tried to turn away, Vaughan pulled her into his arms and held her. Moments passed and she sighed as her body met his and began to relax. She smoothed her hands over his shoulders and buried her face in his neck. She could feel his face—rough as sandpaper—and then his lips, kissing her cheek. She turned and gazed at him. Their eyes met in the darkness. And then their lips. Lena’s body flushed with warmth. She could taste the salt on his skin.

54

She was sitting out by the pool
in the early morning light with a tall glass of ice tea. She felt weary—her muscles, her bones, her mind. In spite of Vaughan and the comfort he had given her, she hadn’t been able to sleep. Clayton Hu had called three times, each update more alarming than the next. West L.A. patrol units had covered every conceivable route between Bennett’s house and the emergency room at UCLA in Westwood. Additional units had been brought in to search every possible route between the house and St. John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica.

Cobb was nowhere to be found.

She heard her cell phone begin ringing from its charging base inside the house. She was assuming that Hu’s next call would be the one where she learned that Cobb’s body had finally been located and her new friend was dead. She wasn’t exactly rushing inside to hear the news.

By the time she reached the phone, the call had been picked up by her service. She read the caller ID. It looked like a wrong number. Someone from a place called
L.A. DOG AND CAT
had dialed her number on a Saturday morning before 7:00 a.m. When the phone started ringing again and she saw the same ID, her instincts kicked in and she realized that it couldn’t be a wrong number.

“Is this Lena Gamble?”

It was a man’s voice and he sounded extremely tentative.

“This is Lena Gamble,” she said carefully. “Whom am I speaking with?”

“You’re a homicide detective? You work for the Los Angeles Police Department?”

She tried to keep cool. “Yes,” she said. “Now whom am I speaking with?”

“It’s a long story,” the man said. “And I’m not sure there’s enough time left to tell it.”

“Does this have anything to do with someone named Dan Cobb?”

He paused a moment. “Yes,” he said. “It has everything to do with someone named Dan Cobb.”

Lena pushed the stool aside and grabbed a pad and pen off the counter. The man called himself Dr. Frank and claimed to be a veterinarian in Santa Monica. He gave her his address and told her to hurry.

*   *   *

The drive west seemed to last a lifetime. She spent most of it wrestling with an internal dialogue that had begun when Cobb handed her Lily Hight’s boot and she realized that he had seen something no one else had. That the murder of a teenage girl and a trial that had captivated a city and worked its way across the digital universe, had been completely staged by a killer no one was even looking for. A killer who had been standing right beside them. A killer who hadn’t stopped killing and was still loose.

She spotted L.A. Dog and Cat on the right, saw Cobb’s Lincoln up on the curb, and struggled to maintain her composure. As she parked she noticed a dent in the Lincoln’s front fender and a mailbox that had been knocked over on the sidewalk. When she climbed the steps and pushed open the front door, a man in a white lab coat looked up at her from behind the desk.

“Lena Gamble?” he said.

She nodded. “Where is he?”

“Back here.”

He led her into an operating room. Cobb was lying on a stainless steel table, wrapped in sheets and blankets and pointing his gun at the ceiling. Rushing over to him, she got a look at his face, his blank stare, and thought that he was dead.

“I’m too late.”

Dr. Frank checked Cobb’s neck for a pulse. “He’s close, but he’s still here.”

“Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”

“He wouldn’t let me. He had the gun. He said he’d blow my head off.”

Lena’s eyes danced over Cobb’s body as she took in the incredulous shock and tried to understand. She smoothed her hand over his scalp. Dr. Frank seemed just as distressed, his voice shaky and worn out from the ordeal.

“He told me he’d lost his phone, but I found it in his pocket this morning. I saw your number and called. He talked about you a lot. He’d drift in and out. Most of the time I couldn’t understand what he was saying. But he trusts you … I got that much. And he’s worried about you. Who’s Steven Bennett?”

“Why?”

“He said that Bennett tricked him.”

“Did he say how?”

“No, but I’m guessing that it has something to do with the fact that he was shot in the back.”

The words hung there. The gristle on the bone. Bennett had shot Cobb in the back.

She watched Dr. Frank move to the other side of the table. He was pulling the sheets away from Cobb’s chest. He was showing her the exit wounds.

“Two slugs passed through and out,” he said. “But there’s one left in his shoulder. I stopped the bleeding, but we really need to get him to a hospital.”

“Help me get him into my car.”

Lena wrapped one hand around Cobb’s pistol and pulled with the other. His fierce resistance to let go of his weapon surprised her. Still, she managed to pry the gun away and slip it into her jacket. Dr. Frank rolled a small steel table on wheels over and gave Lena a look like that’s all he had. Once they made the transfer, they pushed Cobb out the back door and into the parking lot. Lena swung her car around, and with considerable effort they managed to get Cobb strapped into the passenger seat. Cobb groaned several times. And as Lena climbed in behind the wheel, he reached out for her hand and held it as tight as he had held his gun.

St. John’s Medical Center was twenty-two blocks east on Santa Monica Boulevard. It would be a grind, stop-and-go traffic with signal lights on every corner. But Lena would never get past the first mile on the Pacific Coast Highway. That’s when Cobb let go of her hand. That’s when she looked over at her new friend, saw him take his last breath, and knew.

She slowed the car down, tried to get a grip on herself.

She saw Temescal Canyon Road ahead and made a left turn. There was a park on top of the hill. Pulling into the lot, she found the only spot with a view of the ocean that included palm trees. It was a beautiful view—maybe not quite the one Cobb had photographed in Hawaii … but close enough. She opened the windows to let in the smell of the ocean. When she noticed the pack of Camel Lights on the dash, she lit one and drew the nicotine into her lungs. She couldn’t help it. She wasn’t really thinking anymore.

She wished Cobb could have lasted long enough to see the palm trees.

She felt his Sig Sauer in her jacket and pulled it out. Ejecting the mag, she realized that Cobb had held the vet at bay with an empty gun. She smiled—not where it shows, but underneath where it counts. As she smoothed her hand over his forehead, she noticed that the radio was playing softly in the background. The music seemed familiar and she turned up the volume. It was Miles Davis, and she hadn’t heard the cut for a long time.

“My Funny Valentine.”

55

Lena had called Vaughan and given
him the news. She had called Clayton Hu as well. In spite of the fact that Bennett was wanted for the murders of six people—a killing spree that until last night began with Lily Hight and ended with Debi Watson—it was his seventh victim that would burn through the system like rocket fuel.

Bennett was a cop killer now. Even worse, he’d put three rounds into Cobb’s back. No one carrying a badge would show the piece of shit any mercy.

Lena wanted a look at the spot where Cobb had been shot in daylight. Both Vaughan and Hu agreed to meet her there. She was driving from St. John’s where she’d left Cobb behind. And she was carrying his Sig Sauer, the gun locked up in her glove box for safekeeping.

The radio had been switched off ever since she left Temescal Canyon Park. All she wanted to listen to was the sound of the engine under the hood. The sound of the machine grinding forward.

She was heading north on Twenty-sixth Street with the Riviera Country Club on her left. She could see people driving golf carts and hitting little white balls on manicured lawns as if this Saturday was like every other Saturday in sunny L.A. She turned back to the road and lit another cigarette. She wasn’t sure why, but something about seeing those people playing golf fed the rage and only made the day darker than it already was.

She wanted to hit something. Kick something. Kill it.

When she reached Sunset, she made a right, rolled through the horseshoe curve and up the hill, then made the left onto Rockingham. The patrol units were gone, a woman in a Land Rover packed with kids drove by—the events of last night seemingly forgotten, or even more likely, entirely missed by all. Although it didn’t look like Vaughan or Hu had arrived yet, she saw a van parked in front of Bennett’s house and imagined that the workers were busy replacing the living room windows. But as she cleared the van, she glanced back at the house and skidded to a stop.

Bennett was home—his BMW backed into the garage with the trunk open. The door between the house and garage was open as well.

Lena pulled into the driveway, blocking the BMW and jacking back the slide on her .45. She stepped out of her car, took a last hit on her smoke, and ground the butt into the driveway with her toe. And then she started moving forward. One round in the chamber—the rest, ready to go.