Murder Season

by Robert Ellis

  She nodded, but remained quiet.

  “We sure caught a good one, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “We’re fucked.”

  16

  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 The lenses were set in clear plastic frames, the shape as outdated as his clothing.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 shru
gged 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.

  17

  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.

  His house, his money, his retirement—everything he owned except for the car went through the greed machine on Wall Street. When it came out the other side, the big shots had moved to Easy City on the money they’d stolen while Cobb was sent back to the world of zeroes. He could see himself in his later years, his body hunched over, his knees locked up with bone chips, the arthritis already in his shoulders taking siege all over him. He could see himself working the door at Walmart with a smiley face pinned to his apron, nodding and waving at every shithead who grabbed a cart.

  The stupid bitch started moving.

  He must have blanked out. He hadn’t seen her get into the car.

  She pulled out of the lot and made a right, heading east on Culver toward the 405 Freeway. Cobb swung his Lincoln around the building, counted to five, then eased onto the street. Traffic was lighter than usual—the Crown Vic visible one block up. He changed lanes, anticipating that she would drive north to catch the Santa Monica Freeway for the return trip downtown. But as he settled into his seat, Gamble hit the entrance ramp heading south toward the 105 and picked up speed.

  He spotted her one lane over as he hit the ramp and slid onto the freeway. Weaving through a long line of trucks and SUVs, she was hard to keep up with. He pushed the accelerator into the floor, launching the Lincoln forward and slipping in behind a F-150 pickup that provided good cover. When she exited onto the 105 heading east, he slowed down some and followed her onto the ramp.

  The ride on the 105 didn’t last long enough for Cobb to think about what he was doing. Within minutes they were back on surface streets, breezing past the airport in Hawthorne. Cobb glanced at the warehouses and small factories, but kept his eyes on Gamble hidden behind the darkened glass in her Crown Vic.

  It seemed obvious that she was in a hurry to get somewhere. And somewhere wasn’t anywhere near Parker Center or downtown.

  She made a right turn at the corner, then another at the end of the block. Cobb began to wonder if she hadn’t spotted him. A series of three right turns was standard operating procedure for anyone who suspected that they were being followed. Cobb could remember his instructor at the Academy grilling him on it as if it were yesterday.

  Three right turns with three mirror checks. If you still see the son of a bitch back there, then it’s decision time. You need to get your ass in gear.

  Instant Karma.

  But Gamble’s third right turn never happened. Instead, she pulled down an alley and stopped in the rear lot of a nondescript building surrounded by razor wire and a twenty-foot security fence.

  Cobb cruised past the alley to the end of the block, turned back, and found a decent place to stop. Through the buildings, he could see her getting out of the car and shaking someone’s hand. The guy seemed happy to see her. And he was an odd-looking guy, way too young to have white hair—probably a dye job from one of those places on Melrose.

  Cobb flipped open his glove box and reached for the Tylenol. After dry-swallowing two caplets, he grabbed his binoculars and adjusted the focus. Behind Gamble he could see a double set of extra-wide bay doors. A small sign on the wall read SAMY, INC., but gave no indication of what kind of business it was.

  At first glance, it looked like some sort of garage or auto repair shop. But as Cobb considered its location, the place was hard to find, didn’t offer a street entrance, and was surrounded by warehouses.

  He took another look through the binoculars, steadying the image with his elbows pressed against the door. Gamble and the man with white hair were walking toward an Acura TSX parked in front of the loading dock. The car looked mint, a metallic version of gun-metal gray, but Cobb knew from the body style that the vehicle was two years old. He didn’t see any plates. When he spotted them on a black 911 Carrera parked by the entryway—the only other car he saw in the lot—he wrote down the number and pulled out his phone.

  He’d seen enough to make a guess. But everything was on the table now and he needed more than a guess. He called central dispatch, identified himself to the woman who answered, and gave her the plate number. While he waited, he looked through the buildings at Lena Gamble and used the time to think things over.

  He hadn’t been prepared for her. He hadn’t thought anyone would show up so soon after Jacob Gant’s death. He’d hoped to have more time to practice what he wanted to say, at least a couple more days to work on his performance. While he may have punched out one or two points, he knew in his gut that he’d blown it. That the way he’d acted meant more than what he’d actually said. That the dominoes were falling and could easily bring down his world and put him in the ground.

  The dispatcher came back on the line. Cobb’s eyes stayed on Gamble.

  “Samuel Trevor Beck,” the dispatcher said. “White male. Thirty-three years old. Lives in Manhattan Beach.”

 
“What’s it look like?”

  “Clean for the last ten years,” the dispatcher said.

  “And before that?”

  “Grand theft auto. Two counts.”

  “That’s what I figured. Thanks.”

  Cobb slipped his phone into his pocket, giving Gamble a last look before driving off. He’d blown the interview with her. He couldn’t change that. Still, he hoped this wasn’t a new scene in the movie that kept playing in his head. A scene toward the end where he felt cornered and would be forced to rip her heart out of her chest.

  18

  Lena entered the Blackbird Café, ordering a large cup of the house blend and a toasted bagel with lox and cream cheese. Stepping around the bookcases, she passed a newly acquired photograph by Minor White and found a table on the far side of the room. It was late afternoon and the café was particularly quiet right now. If it had been an ordinary day, she would have called it soothing and spent a few minutes looking at the art on the walls and absorbing the atmosphere. Only a handful of people were here—two sat alone reading while the others sipped their drinks and gazed out the rear windows at the city. The view was magnificent: the sun passing through bands of carbon monoxide to the west, the tall buildings throbbing in a brilliant red light. If it had been any other day, she would have seen it and probably noticed the music in the background as well—soft and subdued and something she hadn’t listened to in a long time—Keith Jarrett playing part one from The Köln Concert.

  The Blackbird had always been her oasis, the place she came to when she needed safe harbor.

  But nothing about today was ordinary. And nothing of what the café usually provided could prevent her from thinking about Dan Cobb or how he might have blown the Lily Hight murder case. Ever since leaving the Pacific Station, she had been plagued by the possibility that she and Vaughan were caught up in a catastrophe.

  The sense of doom was so pervasive that her memory of buying the TSX from Beck seemed like a blur. She remembered him saying something about picking up another car tonight from someone who worked at NBC. That he would drop off the TSX on his way to the studio in Burbank.