Murder Season

by Robert Ellis

  Lena spotted the gray suit and laid it out on the bed. “Our first break.”

  “But I didn’t know you then. I didn’t know what to think. I thought you might even be crazy.”

  “Now you know for sure,” she said.

  “I’m serious, Lena. Gant may have walked out of that courtroom with a NOT GUILTY verdict, but everybody thought he killed Lily. Everybody thought his DNA made it a lock. Do you remember how far out on a limb we were?”

  She gave him a look and nodded without saying anything.

  Vaughan shook his head as he tried to remember the details. “We started out in the conference room,” he said. “The caterer had left food. Watson saw you with me and ran out to tell Bennett. Then Bennett shows up trying to listen to what we were saying.”

  “We see it now for what it was,” she said. “We didn’t then.”

  Vaughan shrugged, still mulling it over as Lena found a tie and pulled a clean white shirt out of the closet. Laying them over the gray suit, she gave them a look and returned to the closet for a pair of black dress shoes.

  “Do you remember what we thought of Cobb, Lena? Do you remember your first impression of the man?”

  She took a deep breath and tried to push the thought away but couldn’t quite make it. She opened Cobb’s dresser drawers and found his underwear and socks. The truth was that it felt a lot like the time so many years ago when she buried her dad. She may have only been a teenager at the time, but that’s the way it seemed right now. She still didn’t understand why she felt this way about Cobb, or how it could come on so fast. His mistakes in life had been horrendous—the size of mountains. Yet it was his mistakes that seemed to make the man. He kept moving forward without looking for someone else to blame. He kept the investigation open, working in secret and helping Paladino out with the gift of all gifts.

  The blood samples that pointed to Jacob Gant could no longer be found.

  She wished that they could have worked together. Just one more case as true partners.

  She glanced back at Vaughan. He’d said something and she’d missed it. Something about Lily’s father. She found a plastic garment bag and packed up Cobb’s clothing.

  “What about him?” Vaughan said. “Lily’s dad.”

  “I owe him an apology,” she said. “And his friend.”

  “The guy who tried to vouch for him?”

  “I owe them something,” she said, taking a last look at the room. “Let’s get out of here, Greg.”

  Vaughan reached for the garment bag and they walked out of the apartment, locking the door behind them. As they started down the steps into the courtyard, Lena noticed that Asian woman again. She was still standing on the sidewalk across the street. But she wasn’t keeping an eye on the woman guarding her laundry. Instead, she was staring at Lena. And it was a long look—the kind of look that wouldn’t let go.

  Vaughan hung the garment bag behind the driver’s seat. Lena climbed in, glancing back at the woman. She wondered if they’d met somewhere before. She looked to be about fifty. She had a gentle face and easy eyes and was dressed in a way that didn’t fit the run-down neighborhood. As Lena turned the key in the ignition, the woman waved at her shyly and something clicked.

  She turned to Vaughan and told him that she’d be right back. Then she got out of the car and crossed the street. She needed to talk to a friend of a friend. She needed to talk to the woman who described herself on the Internet as totally hot. She needed to meet Cobb’s woman; Betty Kim.

  57

  Lena spotted Hight’s house in the middle of the block and pulled over. It was late afternoon and she could see the sun nesting over the ocean below the hill. She turned back to the house, then ducked quickly when she noticed Tim Hight walking out the front door.

  His Mercedes had been returned to him, and she watched as he backed out onto the street and drove by.

  Lena paused a moment, lost in indecision, then made a U-turn and followed him around the bend. Hight made a left on Ocean Park. When he reached Lincoln at the bottom of the hill, he pulled into the parking lot and walked into the grocery store. Lily’s father still appeared thin and frail, his gait a beat short of steady.

  Lena backed into a space a safe distance away and gazed through the windshield.

  She owed this man an apology. She knew that. But she wasn’t sure she could find the words. She didn’t think she could look him in the eye and meet his gaze. In spite of the guilt she felt, she wasn’t sure she was ready.

  A truck turned into the shopping center, pulling to a stop in the middle of the aisle and blocking her view of the grocery store. After several minutes it finally drove off, and Lena checked the lot and found Hight’s car still parked three rows over.

  She was thinking about the burden Hight was carrying. The pain and loss he’d been forced to endure, and now, the new reality he would have to face. But even more, she was thinking about the harsh way she had treated him when she suspected he might have had a hand in his own daughter’s death. Hight had been informed that Bennett was the actual killer by Deputy Chief Ramsey and the mayor of Los Angeles, but apparently it hadn’t gone well. Hight had refused to let them into his house. From what Barrera had told her in confidence, Hight had refused to even open his front door.

  Lena lowered her window. As she checked the store’s entrance again, she saw him walking out with two bags. Even from across the lot she could tell that the bag he held close to his chest contained several half-gallon bottles of booze.

  She watched Hight open his trunk and place his groceries inside. Rooting through one of the bags, he fished out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Then he circled around the car and opened the door. Curiously, he didn’t climb in. Instead, he leaned his elbows on the roof and gazed at the traffic moving up and down Lincoln Boulevard. For the next five minutes, nothing changed. Hight just stood there, smoking his cigarette and staring at the street.

  After a while Lena began to wonder if he wasn’t fixated on something and turned around for a look through the rear window. She saw a young man on Rollerblades, pushing a baby stroller across the street. As they glided up the ramp onto the sidewalk, she turned back and watched Hight following their progress down the block. When they vanished, Hight kept his eyes on the empty sidewalk for several moments, then dropped his cigarette on the pavement and finally got into his car.

  He drove off slowly. He pulled onto Ocean Park and lumbered up the long hill. It took him a while to reach the top, but Lena kept her eyes on the car until it finally disappeared. Then she pulled onto Lincoln, heading for the freeway. She didn’t want to follow Hight home. She wasn’t ready yet. She couldn’t find the words. And Hight hadn’t looked ready, either.

  58

  She could smell it in the pillow as she pulled it closer. On the sheets as she rolled over in the darkness and searched out cool spots that were not there.

  Murder season.

  She was floating. Drifting. Cruising through an open seam between sleep and consciousness.

  She glanced at the clock radio but didn’t really see it, then fell back into the stream and let go. It was somewhere after midnight. Sometime before dawn. Early spring and the air inside the house had been deadened from the oppressive heat.

  Murder season had come early this year. It had rolled in with the heat like they were best friends, like they were lovers.

  Lena reached across the bed, probing gently for a warm body but finding only emptiness. As she rolled onto her back, she noticed something going on in the house. She could hear it in the background, a noise pulsing in the distance. She tried to ignore it and pretend that it wasn’t real. After a while she began to wonder if it wasn’t part of a dream.

  Until she finally realized that it was her cell.

  She opened her eyes. The phone wasn’t on the table. When she noticed the light glowing behind the bed, she reached down to the floor and reeled it in. It was 1:30 a.m., and she hoped that it wasn’t another callout. She needed more time b
efore working another case. She needed more rest.

  She slid the lock open on the touch screen. As she pressed the phone to her ear, she heard a man’s voice—an extremely timid voice that she recognized, but couldn’t place.

  “Who is this?” the man asked.

  “Lena Gamble,” she said. “Who’s this?”

  There was a long pause. A long stretch of nothing. Lena looked around the bedroom and realized that she was at Vaughan’s house. The bathroom light was on, the door closed. Her memory of the night came back to her. It had been a good one.

  Then the caller cleared his throat, his voice even quieter than before.

  “What are you doing with this phone?” he said.

  Lena sighed in frustration. “You called me,” she said. “Now how did you get my number? Who are you?”

  He cleared his throat again. He seemed jumpy.

  “But that’s the problem,” he said finally. “I don’t have your phone number, Detective, and I didn’t call you. I was calling my daughter’s phone. I wanted to hear her voice. I wanted to hear her message, but you picked up.”

  The words hung there. Deep and dark and dead as night.

  Lena bolted up to a sitting position. It was Tim Hight. She was holding Lily Hight’s cell phone. The one nobody could find. She looked at her naked body under the sheets and remembered that her clothes were in the living room. Worse, much worse, she was officially off-duty. She’d left her gun at home.

  Hight broke the silence. “Are you in trouble, Detective Gamble?”

  She didn’t answer. She couldn’t catch her breath. Her eyes rocked back to the bathroom door—everything radioactive now. Everything white-hot and burning down.

  “You must be in trouble,” Hight said. “If you have Lily’s phone, then you’re with the man who killed her. You need to tell me where you are. If you can’t speak, there’s a program on the start page. Just press the icon and the phone will show me where you are.”

  Vaughan. She’d just slept with the man.

  She pulled the phone away from her ear, found the program, and opened it. As she watched the device send out her location, Hight ended the call and she got out of Vaughan’s bed. She tried to keep cool. Tried to keep in mind that she wasn’t dreaming anymore. As she crept past the bathroom door and rushed into the living room for her clothes, she glanced back at the phone. The icon marked PHOTOS just seemed to jump out at her. When she opened it, a number of files containing still photographs popped up, but she chose to look at the last video instead.

  Her hands started quivering. She could feel the fear and terror in her bones.

  She was watching Lily make love with her killer in candlelight. They were passing the camera back and forth. They were giggling and laughing. She was watching Vaughan pull Lily into his arms. Watching Vaughan kiss her. Watching them do it in Vaughan’s bed.

  The light in the bathroom went out and the door opened ever so slowly.

  Vaughan looked directly at her. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, and he was holding a gun. He walked toward her and stopped in the middle of the room. Most of his face was cloaked in darkness, but she could see his eyes, those light brown eyes, glowing from the moonlight that was leaking through the windows at the end of the foyer by the front door.

  Somehow Lena steadied herself. Somehow she found her voice.

  “Why did you keep this?”

  Vaughan reached out for the phone and grabbed it, his voice seething but just above a whisper. “Because I can’t stop looking at it,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about it. The whole thing was an accident. A mistake.”

  Lena found her bra and panties and started to dress as Vaughan watched.

  “You call what happened a mistake?”

  His face moved into the light and hardened. “You saw the video, Lena. You saw what she looked like sitting at that bar. I was in the middle of a divorce. It’s funny, but I went to the club with Bennett and Higgins that night. They went upstairs to talk to Bosco, and I walked into the bar and found Lily. She was beautiful. She was gorgeous. I knew that she was younger than me, but that’s all I knew. I saw her as a blessing. A gift given to me after my divorce. I was feeding on it. I needed it, and we clicked. We came back here. We drank a bottle of wine. We talked and made love. And then she asked me to drive her home.”

  Vaughan paused, but only briefly to wipe his mouth.

  “She said she lived with her parents. She told me that she was still in high school. Jesus fucking Christ. She was still in school.”

  Lena tucked in her blouse and pulled her boots over jeans. She glanced at the gun in Vaughan’s hand. It looked like a small Glock.

  “Your life flashed before your eyes,” she said. “You decided murder was your only way out.”

  “Not at all, Lena. I called her. I bought one of those phones that can’t be traced. You saw the number appear on the bill … the number Bennett removed for the trial because it didn’t point to Gant.”

  “You tried to explain the situation you were in. You told her that she couldn’t talk about it.”

  “She laughed at me. She said she’d had a great time. She said she wanted to do it again. She said that if we didn’t do it again, she’d make sure the whole world knew my name and where I worked.”

  “You agreed to see her?”

  “I did. I agreed to meet her on Friday night. Her parents had gone out to dinner. I picked her up, but I didn’t take her anywhere. We drove around in circles while I tried to make her understand what was at stake. I told her that what had happened between us was beautiful and could have happened to anybody. But if anyone else found out about it, they wouldn’t understand the circumstances. No one would believe our story and I’d be ruined for life.”

  “It sounds like you’re blaming her for being sixteen, Vaughan. What were you doing even trying to reason with her?”

  He laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. “You’re right about that, Lena. She didn’t want to listen. She didn’t give a shit. She said that she didn’t even care anymore. She’d made up with her boyfriend and they’d had sex just before I picked her up. She said she was going to tell her father what happened because she felt guilty now. I’m not really sure what happened after that. I know I lost it. I’m pretty sure I scared the shit out of her. And both of us know the rest. She tried to jump out of the car. I had some tools on the floor behind my seat. I reached around, saw the screwdriver in my hand, and drove it into her fucking back.”

  Both of us know the rest.

  Lena could see it so clearly that it might have been happening before her eyes. Lily had given Vaughan everything he needed to push the murder onto someone else. He knew that she’d had sex with Gant and that the odds were in his favor that traces of their lovemaking had been left behind. He knew that they got back together after a breakup.

  “How did you make it look like a rape?” she said. “What did you use, Vaughan?”

  His face stiffened and he looked at her for a long time with those glowing eyes of his. “You don’t want to know what I did to her. But I’ll tell you this. Everybody has their breaking point. When you reach it, you realize that you can do just about anything.”

  A moment passed. Another stretch of silence. Lena tried to focus. She needed time. She needed to keep the monster talking.

  “How did you keep such close tabs on Jacob Gant?”

  Vaughan shrugged. “I didn’t. I thought I was free and clear. When the evidence went missing in the lab, I knew someone was out there. But it’s like I said over at Cobb’s place. No matter what the verdict, everyone still thought Gant did the murder. After the trial ended, after it became a public relations disaster, everyone involved at your end and mine needed Gant to stay guilty because the alternative would have been so much worse.”

  “You didn’t think anyone would be looking for you.”

  “I didn’t, but that afternoon Johnny Bosco called me. He was worried about his business. Gant had told him that Li
ly had been to his club a week before her murder. That she had come with her friend and probably left with a guy. That’s why Bosco agreed to help Gant. And that’s why Lily’s friend, Julia Hackford, never spoke up. You were right, Lena. It was all about self-preservation and self-interest. Gant had searched Lily’s house and found her cell phone. He’d seen the video you just watched and was bringing it over so that Bosco could help identify the man he thought killed her. Bosco was worried that it might be a VIP and didn’t know how to handle it. He didn’t trust Higgins because he was up for reelection and needed a fresh set of headlines. He didn’t go to Bennett because he and Higgins were tied at the hip and he thought the guy was a loser. He told me that he didn’t even let his partner in on it because he wanted to protect him.”

  Lena shook her head. “Bosco handed it to you,” she said. “He told you everything you needed to know.”

  “He even gave me the time.”

  “And you knew that it needed to end at the club.”

  “Actually, no. I didn’t think it would. Everyone would think Hight shot them in an act of revenge, but I never counted on it ending there. I never counted on it sticking. That’s why I pulled the gun out of Property. The one that went back to the drive-by shootings eight years ago. I knew that Higgins and Bennett were cowards. That in a crisis like the prosecution of Tim Hight, they’d run for cover and make me the new face of the DA’s office. I knew that I’d be working with you. That you wouldn’t buy it unless the case seemed challenging. Because we were working together, I thought I could provide that challenge. That’s why it had to end with Bennett. He had the right background. Everything that you discovered about him happens to be true … except for the murders. He fingered his witness and had Wes Brown killed. He had a bad history with women and openly cheated on his wife. He prosecuted Jacob Gant for Lily’s murder when he knew six weeks out that he had the wrong man. It had to end with Bennett because he fit like a glove. Because he was perfect. Because he was vicious. Because everything he did to corrupt the evidence and build a case against Jacob Gant could be turned upside down until it looked like he was covering his own tracks. Why do you think he killed himself? Don’t you think he knew?”