Murder Season

by Robert Ellis

  His Lincoln was parked around the corner on Highwood Street. Pulling himself to his feet, he concentrated on his balance and started down the hill. He moved slowly, crashing into bushes that seemed to jump out at him from the darkness. Something had happened to his vision. Everything seemed to be glowing. When he reached the street and a car passed, the headlights were so bright that they burned his eyes.

  He pulled himself together. He was close now, just passing Bennett’s house on the right. It occurred to him that he needed to leave some kind of trail behind. Something for Gamble to follow—no matter how small—just in case. Drawing his gun, he put two 9-mm rounds in the garage door, then emptied the Sig’s mag into the living room windows until he’d shattered enough glass to light up the house and kick in the silent alarm. He glanced at his shell casings in the street, kicking them toward the curb so that they wouldn’t get run over and could be found easily.

  He felt a small burst of energy after that. Reaching the corner, he saw his Lincoln in the shadows and almost tripped as he dug his keys out of his pocket. He got the door open and managed to climb in. But that burst of energy was gone now.

  Cobb took a moment to catch his breath.

  He thought about Bennett’s trick with the door between the house and garage, and wondered how he could have been beaten by an idiot like that. He wished that Bennett had still been washing his asshole car when he walked by with his gun. He wished that he could have greased the little prick, kicked every tooth out of his head, and hit a home run.

  He switched on the interior light, eyeing the wounds in his chest and wrestling with his disbelief and terror. He needed to slow down the bleeding. Opening the glove box, he grabbed the extra napkins he’d collected after ordering fast food and twisted the paper into two tight rolls. Then he pushed them into the exit wounds hoping to plug the holes.

  There was no pain. Just weakness.

  And Cobb had no idea how long he’d been out. The entrance wounds he couldn’t see and couldn’t reach behind his back were probably far worse. He knew enough about blood loss and shock to see this as the last problem he would probably ever face.

  He got the car moving, coasted down to Sunset and made a right. He tried to find the lane. Tried to center the car between the lines. There was a horseshoe curve ahead and it felt like a roller coaster tumbling down and around on a shaky track. Somehow he got through it by just holding onto the wheel. But he couldn’t get past the headlights shooting his way. They seemed to stick to the windshield even as the cars passed. The lights got brighter and brighter and he closed his eyes. Seconds ticked by before he forced himself to open up and look at the twisting road ahead of him.

  He was losing it. He wasn’t going to make it.

  And when he finally rolled down the last hill and saw the Pacific Coast Highway on the other side of his windshield, he realized that he’d made a wrong turn on Sunset. The emergency room at UCLA had probably been less than five miles east of Bennett’s house.

  He started to panic. He saw storefronts. A neon sign.

  L.A. DOG AND CAT.

  He pulled over and groaned when he noticed that the lights were on and someone was inside. He jacked open the door and got out. His gun was in his hand—his Sig Sauer—and he didn’t know why. And his balance was off—the air was still—yet it felt like he’d walked into a stiff wind.

  He reached the door. He was surprised about that. Through the glass he could see the vet doing paperwork behind the front desk.

  Cobb knocked on the glass. It was a weak knock—more of a tap, really—but the vet looked up, pointing at the sign in the door and mouthing the words, “We’re closed.”

  Cobb groaned like an animal again.

  We’re closed.

  The vet had said it louder this time. Loud enough for Cobb to hear his voice through the glass.

  We’re closed.

  He thought that he might vomit, but fought it off. He tried to get his head straight, but knew with certainty that he had no chance. He looked at the door—the wood frame and the wood panels below the glass. Then he took two steps back and charged forward, driving his shoulder into the lock.

  The door burst open and the vet jumped to his feet.

  Cobb raised his gun. “If you say ‘We’re closed’ one more time, I’m gonna blow your fuckin’ head off.”

  The vet’s mouth dropped open. Cobb could see him staring at the napkins pushed into his chest. The blood wicking through the paper and dripping onto the floor like a couple of leaky pipes.

  “I’m a police officer,” he said. “And I need your help.”

  The vet tried to speak, but stumbled on his words. He looked young. Thirty-five with light features, wearing jeans and a lab coat. The tag over his pocket read DR. FRANK.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” the vet said.

  Cobb shook his head back and forth, almost losing his balance. “I’ll bleed to death before it gets here. You gotta do it. You gotta help me.”

  “But I’m a veterinarian,” he said. “I take care of animals.”

  “I’ve been an animal most of my life, Doc. And this isn’t exactly a request.”

  Cobb realized that he’d emptied the gun’s mag into Bennett’s bullshit dream house, but flicked the muzzle in the vet’s face just the same. When he saw Frank’s eyes widen slightly, he knew that it had worked. The Sig was a good-looking piece. Cobb had always admired it.

  “Okay, okay,” Dr. Frank said. “Let’s go. Let’s do it.”

  He grabbed Cobb’s arm and helped him into the back room. There was a stainless steel table here and the tiles on the walls were the same color blue as Gamble’s eyes. Cobb took this as a good sign, but had to admit to himself that good signs were selling cheap right now.

  Dr. Frank lifted him onto the table, then slipped his hands into a pair of vinyl gloves. He pulled off Cobb’s shirt and started working on the wounds. He worked quickly, like a medic in the field, and Cobb wondered if the guy had ever served.

  “You’ve gotta tell me what happened,” the vet was saying. “I need to know what I’m dealing with.”

  Cobb looked up at him. He was the right age, and he didn’t look scared anymore.

  “Three shots fired behind my back,” he said. “I count two exit wounds. I’m hoping one of the three missed. I lost my cell phone, Doc. If something happens to me—”

  A wave passed over his body. A big one with a lot of roll to it.

  It felt like he was sinking in a sea of exhaustion. He tried to keep talking. Tried to convey the situation as best he could. Tried to give the vet the real deal in broad strokes and tell him that Gamble was in danger. But he wasn’t sure he was making much sense anymore. He wasn’t even sure if he was really talking.

  53

  Lena was weaving through heavy traffic on the west end of Sunset Boulevard on a Friday night. She didn’t know how fast the car was moving because she hadn’t checked the speedometer. All she knew was that the car couldn’t go fast enough. She glanced over at Vaughan in the passenger seat.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said.

  Over the past hour every time she’d looked at him, Vaughan had said the same thing.

  It’ll be okay.

  She had waited for Vaughan at Debi Watson’s house in West Hollywood and walked him through the crime scene with detectives from the Sheriff’s Department. Vaughan had spent the day rooting through the district attorney’s computer system with Keith Upshaw. They’d found something and he wanted to talk about it. But Lena’s mind was on Cobb. She couldn’t stop worrying about him. He was supposed to meet them at Watson’s house, but he never showed up. When she tried calling him, his message service kept picking up after a single ring as if his phone had been turned off.

  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.”