Murder Season

by Robert Ellis

  She lit a cigarette. She was trying to concentrate on the road, but she kept thinking about Vaughan. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought that she might have rubbed her breasts against his chest. If she did, it wasn’t something deliberate and it didn’t last very long. If she did, it just happened and he might not have even noticed.

  She took another drag on the cigarette and tried to put the thought out of her mind. At the moment, her life had enough drama. And the idea of becoming the next Bennett and Watson, in any way or any version or any variation thereof, was something she would never let happen.

  So why did the churning in her stomach suddenly feel so good?

  The Beachwood Drive exit was a hundred yards up. Moving into the right lane, she glided onto the ramp and continued until she reached Gower Street. Then she made a right turn, hit a green light, and started the climb into the hills. To her amazement, the dust cloud had a ceiling, and she pierced it as she reached the crest. Passing through a series of turns, she spotted her driveway on the right, but kept moving when she caught a glimpse of a car that had pulled off the road behind the bluff.

  It was a white car. A white Lincoln.

  As the image of the car hidden in the darkness rendered in her mind, she realized that she had used up all her fear and anxiety over the past six hours. The only thing left was irritation and curiosity.

  She continued up the road to the next house and pulled into the drive. The house was empty due to a bank foreclosure, and like the next house up, had been that way for more than a year. Lena cut through the yard on foot, following the coyote paths through the trees and around the bluff at the edge of the hill. When she stepped out of the brush, she found herself by the pool facing the back of her house and ducked behind a bush.

  Cobb was just making his exit.

  She could see him trying to squeeze through a window onto the roof above the porch. His movements appeared awkward and she could hear him straining. When he finally made it out, he slipped on the shingles and slid down the roof before catching himself just above the edge.

  He took a moment, pulling himself together and looking back at that open window. Lena could tell what was going through his mind and watched as he crawled back up the roof and managed to get the window closed. The process took time and seemed like a painful ordeal. And when he had finally completed the task, he lost his footing again and slid back down to the edge. He took a few minutes to rest, this time staring at the concrete and flagstone below. Once he was ready, he dangled his legs over the edge, searched for the rail with his feet, and climbed down. Then he stepped off the porch and headed up the driveway, huffing and puffing, and wiping his sweaty brow with what looked more like a rag than a handkerchief.

  Lena moved into the yard, watching Cobb vanish in the darkness and waiting to hear him drive away. Once she saw the headlights pass, she jogged back through the brush and returned with her car.

  In spite of the hour, she was wide awake when she unlocked the front door and switched on the ceiling lights. Her eyes moved through the living room, searching for changes. She didn’t think that Cobb had wired the place up because he wasn’t carrying any tools. But as she reached the table by the slider, she saw the file beside Gant’s journal and noticed that the papers inside were askew. She pulled the chair out, feeling the seat with her fingers and noting its warmth. Then she reached underneath the lamp shade and touched the lightbulb. It was still hot.

  Cobb had been sitting at the table. And he’d spent time here.

  She didn’t know what to make of it. His behavior seemed so outrageous. So risky and bold.

  She sat down in the chair and tried to see the table from Cobb’s point of view. Gant’s graphic novel appeared to have been pushed away, while the file and journal were front and center. Inside the file, Lena found her notes and a copy of the chronological record she had started the night after Bosco and Gant were murdered. Both her notes and the journal would have been new to Cobb. Information he could take back to Bennett.

  Her cell phone started vibrating. Checking the touch screen, she saw Sid Kosinski’s name and recognized the number from the coroner’s office.

  “Sorry for calling so late, Lena, but I just walked out of the operating room.”

  The signal was bad. Opening the slider, she stepped outside onto the porch.

  “What is it, Sid?”

  “Maybe it’s nothing, but the detective who worked the Lily Hight murder was down here about three hours ago.”

  “Cobb?”

  “That’s him. He wanted to look at my notes from the autopsies we did on Bosco and Gant. He seemed nervous. And he was asking a lot of questions. What made it feel so odd was that most of his questions were about you.”

  Lena sat down on the wall. “Did you show him anything from the case?”

  “Of course not. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t see what he wanted to see.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He’s got friends around here.”

  “What kind of friends?”

  “From the old days,” Kosinski said. “When he used to work out of Robbery-Homicide.”

  She decided that she didn’t really want to meet any of Cobb’s friends. She felt numb and looked out over the hill. The cloud of dirty air had filled in the basin up to the rim, concealing everything in the city except for the upper floors of the Library Tower downtown. The moon was up, lighting the cloud’s surface and making it appear solid enough to walk on.

  “You still there, Lena?”

  “I’m here, Sid. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “It’s probably nothing, right? Cobb coming down here? It’s probably nothing.”

  She looked back at the dust cloud and shivered in the heat.

  “Right,” she said. “It’s probably nothing.”

  37

  Vaughan lived on Hillside Lane, a short drive up through the canyon from the beach. Lena could see the house half a block ahead, but pulled over when she noticed a woman with blond hair walking out the front door with two young children and their nanny. Vaughan followed them out, opening the doors to his crossover and helping with the car seats. All three adults were laughing about something. Once the kids were finally strapped in, the blonde got behind the wheel and Vaughan waved as she drove off in his car.

  Lena didn’t know what to make of what she was thinking or feeling right now. All she hoped for was that when she looked at Vaughan or Vaughan looked at her, things would be back to normal. She didn’t want to sense something extra going on. She needed assurance that what was happening in her mind was only happening in her mind, and not part of the real world.

  She pulled up to the house. Vaughan walked over and poked his head in the passenger side window.

  “You just missed the kids,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Where’s your car?”

  “My ex-wife took it for the day. Hers is in the shop. When it’s fixed, they said they’d deliver it to my office. We’ll switch back later. You don’t mind driving, do you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Let me grab my briefcase.”

  He smiled at her. She caught the glint in those light brown eyes of his. Switching the radio over to KNX, she hoped that the news station might distract her and make things easier. But her efforts proved unnecessary. Once Vaughan got in the car, he spent most of the drive talking about what they had discovered yesterday. He couldn’t comprehend how two deputy DAs were able to step before a judge and look him in the eye knowing that they were trying the wrong man. The fact that they had the district attorney’s blessing made it all the more difficult to absorb. When Lena glanced over at him, she could see how revitalized Vaughan had become. She could see the transformation in his posture, in his face; the confidence and energy that comes from the thrill of the chase.

  The drive took less than ten minutes. Vaughan checked the address and spotted a parking space a block off.

  “Better take it,” he said.
r />   Lena backed into the space, and they walked up the sidewalk to the corner. The house on Strongs Drive was easy enough to spot. A camera crane sat on the front lawn, and movie lights had been mounted outside the windows on the first floor. As they got closer, Lena realized that the house was backed up against the canals. She could see a large hot tub off the rear terrace. Beside the house was probably the only vacant lot in all of Venice. Two trailers were here, along with a grip truck, a catering truck, and several long tables with chairs set beneath a large tent. Both lots had been secured with yellow tape as if they were crime scenes. On the street, two off-duty cops leaned against their black and white cruisers providing security.

  Lena gave Vaughan a nudge. “What’s the name of this show?”

  “I keep forgetting the title. It’s one of those crappy reality shows. I see them when I’m looking for the cartoon channel for the kids. They put six losers in a house, shoot them talking about nothing, and somehow it sells.”

  Lena noticed a small sign stapled to a telephone pole. The word Lowlife was printed across the top with an arrow pointing toward the house.

  “That’s it,” Vaughan said. “That’s the name of the show. Lowlife.”

  It was one more reason on a list of a hundred other reasons why Lena seldom found anything worth watching on television. But she didn’t say anything. As Vaughan spoke with a young production assistant, Lena identified herself to the off-duty cops, then turned and followed Vaughan underneath the tent. Pete London was sitting at one of the tables, sipping coffee, and editing a script with a blue pen. When he noticed them enter, he stood up and they shook hands.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said. “I appreciate it. Would you like coffee? Something to eat? The catering truck never closes. The food’s pretty good on this one.”

  Both Lena and Vaughan thanked him but declined, and everyone sat down. London pushed the script aside, cradling the paper coffee cup in his hand. Remarkably, he looked like he could have been Tim Hight’s more polished brother. His hair was the same mix of blond and gray, but longer and better styled. Dressed in jeans and a light cotton shirt, he was on the lean side, wore glasses with tortoiseshell frames and seemed too cerebral, too intelligent to be producing a reality TV show called Lowlife for one of the music channels that no longer had any interest or influence in music.

  “I’ve been reading about the murders at Club 3 AM,” he said. “And I’m very concerned about Tim Hight. He’s my friend, and that’s why I called you.”

  Lena glanced at Vaughan, then turned back to London. “Have you spoken with him?” she said. “Did he tell you what happened that night?”

  “No,” London said. “He won’t take my call. We haven’t talked for a long time.”

  “Since you let him go?”

  A beat went by before London finally nodded. Lena tried not to show her disappointment. Vaughan picked up the slack.

  “Why did you fire him?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want to,” London said. “He took a month off after Lily was murdered. When he came back, he was different. I tried to overlook as much as I could. But at a certain point, no matter how much sympathy I may have had for what he was going through … it just wasn’t working and I had to let him go.”

  “What about before that?” Lena said. “What about his relationship with his daughter?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  London obviously thought of Hight as a friend. Lena tried to work through the subject as gently as possible without sounding too vague.

  “Did you ever notice anything odd? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “They were close,” he said. “But not that kind of close.”

  “How do you know?” Vaughan asked.

  “Because I’ve worked with him for most of my life, and I know who Tim Hight is. I produced Prairie Winds, his best motion picture. We spent three months living in tents and working in conditions that would break most men. Believe me. You do time like that with a guy and you run out of secrets. You walk away knowing each other like brothers.”

  “You’re not upset, are you?” Lena said.

  “Not at all. I know that you have to ask questions like this. It’s part of your job. If I can help, I’m happy to do it. But you’ve gotta understand something. Tim might be drinking and smoking and doping it up, but all of that started after Lily’s murder, not before. It isn’t part of who he was. He loved Lily. He was ruined by her death. Ruined by the way she died as much as the death itself. I don’t know what losing a child would be like, what demons are haunting the guy. All I hope for is that he gets help.”

  “I’m guessing you knew Lily and spent time with her as well,” Lena said.

  London looked away for a moment, eyeing the memory. “Tim was a great father. He used to bring her to work as often as he could. She liked cameras. She had real talent and got along with everyone on the set.”

  “What about Jacob Gant?” Vaughan asked. “Did Hight ever talk about him?”

  London nodded. “He was worried that Lily was growing up too fast and that her friendship with Gant was more than a friendship. Gant was in his mid-twenties, right? Lily was only sixteen. I mean, that kind of thing worked for Elvis. But in the real world, what dad wouldn’t be worried?”

  Lena had been watching London. His story presented Tim Hight as a loving father. From what she could tell it was perfect. Everything about it was perfect. Everything except for the way London was cradling that paper coffee cup in his hand. Ever since they had begun the interview, London had been rotating the cup and swirling the brew. And that’s why nothing about the moment was perfect. It was supposed to be a cup of coffee, but London was treating it like a glass of bourbon.

  Lena glanced around the tent and didn’t see anyone, then turned back to London. “Do you know what happens to people who try to mislead or interfere with police officers investigating a homicide?”

  London froze up. Vaughan seemed just as surprised by the question.

  “Do you know?” she repeated.

  London didn’t say anything, still appearing shocked and trying to collect himself.

  “If you want us to pull your phone records, I will,” she said. “But if you make me do it, if you waste more of our time, things aren’t gonna work out so well for you.”

  London didn’t respond, but something was beginning to show on his face. Vaughan appeared to notice it as well.

  Lena checked the tent again. Two people were standing by the catering truck, so she lowered her voice.

  “When was the last time you spoke with Hight? And please don’t say that it was when you fired him, because all three of us know that’s not true.”

  London couldn’t look her in the eye. “Yesterday,” he whispered finally. “We talked yesterday.”

  “And he put you up to this?”

  London nodded. “He said he needed some help. I thought I owed him.”

  “Did you go over the things you told us today?”

  “We talked about it. He had some ideas.”

  “What else did he say?”

  London paused, barely able to get the words out. “He said that you think he did it. That he murdered Lily.”

  38

  It was the kind of case where with every new seam, every half step forward, she hoped for the best but got pushed back. It had been that way from the very beginning, from the moment she walked into Club 3 AM and discovered that one of the two dead bodies was Jacob Gant. And it had been that way with Pete London and the story he’d told, written and directed by his friend Tim Hight.

  On the drive over to the Westside this morning, Lena had been listening to KPCC, an NPR station broadcasting out of Pasadena. The host of the program was interviewing a baseball player at spring training in Clearwater, Florida—a slugger who had been averaging nearly fifty home runs a year and was considered to be an automatic first-ballot pick for the Hall of Fame once he retired. What struck Lena most about the interview was the player talkin
g about how he’d dug his way out of a hitting slump last August. After a long series of strikeouts, he began to realize that the longer the slump went on, the more the percentages began to move in his favor. The longer he went without a hit, the more likely he was to break out of it at any moment and find the zone.

  Lena watched Vaughan search through a stack of DVDs piled up beside his computer, and along side a single pair of headphones. He’d pulled a clip from Gant’s trial that he wanted to show her, but they couldn’t watch it in here with the sound up because of what Vaughan had found in his phone. Lena understood all too well that she wasn’t qualified to sweep a room for electronics. But after watching Bobby Rathbone search her house last year, she knew a few things to look for. The bug Vaughan had found in his phone was the obvious one. Unfortunately, it looked to her like there were at least three more in the room.

  “Let’s go,” he whispered under his breath.

  Vaughan slipped the DVD into his pocket and they walked out, heading around the corner for another office at the end of the hall. As Lena entered, Vaughan followed her in and closed the door.

  “It’s okay,” Vaughan said. “He’s away on vacation.”

  “Your office is wired, Greg.”

  Vaughan rolled a chair over to the computer and switched it on. “I know,” he said. “I’ve been coming in here to use the phone.”

  “I’m not talking about what you found in your phone. I counted three more, and I’m not even a pro.”

  He stopped and looked at her. “Where?” he said

  “The surge protector that your computer is plugged into. That was easy because I found one exactly like it at my place last year.”

  “Where are the other two?”

  “The wall plate covering the outlet above the credenza, and another just like it facing your desk. Both are wired for video and sound. If you look in the middle of the plate you’ll see what I mean. That’s not a screw holding the plate to the wall. It’s a small camera.”