Murder Season (26 page)

She gave the building a hard look, then hurried up the steps to the main entrance—that grim feeling still as close as a shadow. She tried the front door, wrapped her hand around the handle, and gave it a slow pull hoping that the place was locked up.

But when the door opened, she took the shock and knew.…

She stepped inside the foyer—everything dark and quiet. Digging into her pocket for her phone, she found Escabar’s cell number and pressed
CALL.
Two or three seconds later, she heard his phone begin ringing from somewhere upstairs. She could hear the haunting sound travel through the dark building. She could hear the eerie silence when his voice mail cut in and the ringing finally stopped.

She tried to compose herself.

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see a body on the floor. It wasn’t very far away. She noticed a light switch on the wall and flipped it on. The switch only handled a row of dim floor lights leading to the staircase, but provided enough illumination for Lena to pick up detail.

She moved toward the body slowly and knelt down. A green trash bag had been pulled over the man’s head and tied around his neck. From the shoes and slacks he wore, Lena knew that she was looking at the security guard. She started to check his pulse, her response on automatic, but looked at his face pressing through the plastic bag and stopped.

Few people die pretty.…

She turned away, trying to catch her breath. She heard something behind her—the door opening, the foyer flooding with light. It was Vaughan, and he looked frightened and nervous. As he moved in beside her, he couldn’t seem to stop staring at the dead body.

“I called for backup,” she said quietly.

“There’s a bank robbery on Sunset,” he whispered. “I heard it on the radio.”

Lena spotted the pistol on the guard’s belt. “We can’t wait,” she said. “Do you know how to use a gun?”

Vaughan shook his head and seemed jittery. “I’m a lawyer,” he said.

Lena pursed her lips. They were in a tough spot, yet she couldn’t help acknowledging to herself that there was something about Vaughan that got to her. Something she liked a lot. She shook it off, grabbing the guard’s pistol and lifting it out of the holster. Even in the dim light, the Beretta .40 glistened as if brand new. The hammer was half-cocked with the safety engaged. Readying the weapon, she passed it over and met Vaughan’s eyes.

“Whoever did this is probably long gone,” she whispered. “Can you handle this?”

He nodded at her with determination. “I’m ready.”

Lena drew her weapon, then pulled out her cell and hit the
REDIAL
key on the touch screen.

Vaughan shot her a wild look. “What are you doing?”

“Calling a dead man,” she said.

After several moments, Escabar’s cell phone started ringing again and Vaughan understood. They moved quickly through the darkness, rushing up the stairs and following that ghostly sound down the hall until it stopped. Lena pressed the
REDIAL
key again and they continued pushing toward the sound. When they reached the corner, she realized that Escabar’s phone was ringing from Bosco’s office and broke into a run.

She found him on the floor beside the desk—one round through his forehead, and two more through the center of his chest. His mouth was open, his teeth jutting out. But even more striking, she could see what looked like fear permanently frozen on his face. His gun was on the floor beside his right hand. She turned to check the wall and spotted a bullet hole in the plaster by the door. Escabar had managed to get a shot off, but aimed too high and missed.

“Something’s happening with the computer,” Vaughan said.

Lena stepped around Escabar’s corpse, her eyes dancing between the computer monitor on the desk and the television mounted over the fireplace. The screens were connected, the images identical.

“Files are being deleted, Lena. Look at the size of them.”

She checked the screen, searching for a
CANCEL
option. When she found the button, she clicked it and sat down at the desk.

“Media files,” she said. “The security cameras.”

“Are we too late?”

“Not necessarily,” she said.

“Escabar told you that he made a copy?”

She nodded, her wheels turning, “He was burning it when I called.”

There was a stack of blank DVDs on the desk, but nothing else. The drive in the computer was empty. Lena searched through the desk drawers but found nothing there as well. After giving Escabar’s corpse a quick check, she turned back to the monitor and tried to think it through.

There were a number of programs that Escabar had opened. Each one had been minimized and parked at the bottom of the screen. As she read the icons, she realized that Escabar had burned a copy for her without closing the program. Clicking the icon, the software opened and a graphic box popped up.

Would you like to make another copy?

The program had recorded a mirror image of the project and saved it. She glanced at Vaughan unable to speak, then loaded a blank disk into the computer and clicked
YES.
The next five minutes idled by in the key of slow—the anxiety was overwhelming. But after the drive stopped churning, Lena highlighted the disk and a video image began rolling on both the monitor and the television mounted over the fireplace.

“My God, it’s her,” Vaughan said.

Lena stood up and walked over to the television, mesmerized by the image.

She was sitting at the bar with a glass of white wine. She had on that red lipstick, and was wearing a black dress without a bra. There wasn’t much to the dress, and her breasts were loose and only partially concealed. The bar was lit entirely by candlelight, and Lily seemed to glow more than everyone else in the darkened room. A man dressed in a pinstripe suit was standing beside her, his head lost in the shadows above the frame. But Escabar had called it right. Lily was laughing with the man and rubbing her fingers over his hand.

“Does she look sixteen to you?” Vaughan asked.

Lena shook her head and offered a sad smile that didn’t last very long. Nothing about Lily Hight looked like a teenager on the Friday night one week before she was raped and murdered. The sheen of her blond hair. The glint in her eyes. Her spirit and beauty and magnetic smile. On this night, Lily looked like the kind of woman no man could walk away from.

Lena tried to push through the shock and concentrate on the man Lily was with. There wasn’t much to see, and the camera angle was more than frustrating. She thought he might be wearing a wedding band, but when Lily finally lifted her fingers away, the man cupped his hand and lowered it below the bar. His pinstripe suit appeared expensive. As he turned and pressed his chest into Lily’s bare shoulder, Lena’s eyes zeroed in on the left lapel of his jacket.

“There’s a mark on his lapel,” she said.

Vaughan moved closer to the screen and squinted. “I’ve got it. I see it.”

“Some sort of flaw in the material.”

“You think it’s from a pin?”

It seemed obvious to her now. The more she looked at it—but then the shock returned and that anxious feeling swam back through her chest: Lily was gathering her things. The man was helping her off the stool and taking her away. And with only two short steps they were out of the candlelight’s reach. Lily wasn’t glowing anymore. She was passing through the shadows with the man in the pinstripe suit leading her to the door.

41

Lena lowered the visor and reached
for her sunglasses. She was driving east on the San Bernardino Freeway, and the sun was beginning to rise directly in front of her. It looked like the freeway was burning at the horizon line—like the road was taking her on a straight shot into the flames.

She wondered if it wasn’t a warning of some kind.

Martin Orth had more news. He wanted to see her. Apparently, the news was so “good” that they couldn’t talk about it over the phone.

She hadn’t slept well last night. She’d dreamed about Lily. She’d dreamed about her in that black dress. Lena had been sitting at the bar beside her, trying to get a bead on the guy who was hitting on her. She could see them holding hands. She could see his pinstripe suit. But every time she looked up at his face, his head was gone. Not missing like it had been forgotten by an artist or framed out by a photographer. The man’s head had been cut off. She could see blood rushing down his shirt and cascading all over his hands. She could see Lily cleaning her fingers with a napkin.

It wasn’t the kind of dream Lena really wanted to stick with her. She had woken up three or four times—jolted out of her sleep in a cold sweat. But after fifteen or twenty minutes passed, she couldn’t help drifting back into the stream. And each time she’d find herself sitting at that bar again, watching Lily walk out of the club with her killer.

Lena looked at the pack of Camel Lights on the dash, but fought the urge to light one. Within fifteen minutes she had reached the crime lab, passed through security, and was walking down the hall to Martin Orth’s office. Because of the early hour, there weren’t many people around. About halfway down she noticed a fragrance in the air—a new building smell that seemed to permeate the hall. The scent worked like a time machine and brought back memories of being a girl in the second grade and walking to class on her first day of school. Memories of going to work with her dad, a welder who worked on high-rise buildings and forever changed the skyline in Denver.

Why was she thinking these thoughts? Why was she dreaming these dreams?

She found Orth at his desk. He was staring at his Mr. Coffee coffeemaker and trying to appear patient while it sputtered and brewed. He looked a mile or two past tired and more than ready to drink the entire pot on his own.

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me what I need to know.”

Orth’s eyes moved away from the coffeemaker and found her by the door.

“You can arrest Hight,” he said. “The blood on his shoe came from Gant. No doubt about it. Hight was at Club 3 AM the night Bosco and Gant were shot. Hight was in the room.”

Lena sat in the chair by Orth’s desk. His eyes had moved back to the coffeemaker, and there was something wrong with his voice.

“I’m not arresting Tim Hight for anything,” she said.

“Why not? The DNA proves that he was there.”

And so did the cocaine that they found at his house, the street cam photograph of Hight driving away from the club, maybe even the hundred-dollar bills. But that’s all any of it proved—that Hight was there.

Lena had been chewing it over ever since Orth gave her the results from Lily’s jeans linking her murder to a third man. There had to be another explanation for why Tim Hight was at the club the night Bosco and Gant were shot and killed. After remembering Gant’s brother telling her that Gant and Hight had argued earlier in the day, she’d put it together and thought she knew what the argument was about.

Gant had to have told Hight that he was on the brink of discovering who really murdered his daughter. Gant would have blurted it out in the heat of the moment.

He didn’t kill Lily, and he and Johnny Bosco were going to prove it tonight.

Hight never would have believed him, and so the argument would have progressed. But Hight would have kept an eye on Gant. And Bosco’s involvement would have worked on him over the course of the day. When Gant took off to meet Bosco, Hight might have been stewing on it long enough to follow him.

“Hight’s the one,” Orth said. “But you don’t look like you’re buying it, Lena.”

“I’m not,” she said. “We’re way past that, Marty.”

Orth started laughing. It came from deep inside the man and there was a certain madness to it. Lena had never seen him act this way before. She didn’t know how to take it and even thought that he might be losing his mind.

“You want a cup of coffee?” he asked.

“No thanks.”

Orth started laughing again as he pushed himself out of his chair, poured his brew into a Dodgers mug, and returned to his desk.

“What is it, Marty? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, sipping his coffee. “Better than fine. You don’t want to arrest Hight, and that’s a good thing, Lena. A real good thing. But it’s crazy. Life sure gets crazy sometimes.”

“What’s crazy? What’s happened?”

He looked at her for a long time. “The gun that killed Bosco and Gant,” he said finally. “We didn’t need the one Hight bought to make a match.”

She leaned forward. “Ballistics got a hit.”

He nodded and seemed nervous. “A big one, Lena. The kind that always seem to come at four-thirty in the morning. You ever hear about a woman named Elvira Wheaten? It was a drive-by shooting in Exposition Park. Must have been eight years ago. Her infant grandson got killed, too.”

It felt like all of the air in the room had been sucked through the vents into the basement. Something inside Lena stiffened.

Bennett and Cobb’s last big case together.

She nodded at Orth, but she didn’t say anything. The hairs on the back of her neck were beginning to rise. She could see it—all of it—before her eyes.

“The gun that killed her,” Orth said. “That’s the gun the shooter used to waste Bosco and Gant. And that’s why life’s so crazy, Lena. We checked with Property. It’s a nine-millimeter Smith. It should have been there. It should have been in the box, but it wasn’t. Just like the blood evidence that went missing during the trial. Déjà-fucking-vu.”

Lena tried to concentrate on her breathing.

“Did you check the property request cards?” she asked quietly.

“Uh-huh.”

“Give me the name of the last person to fill out a card.”

42

Cobb lived in a rundown apartment building
beside Fiesta Liquors and the Rancho Coin Laundry on Vineland Avenue between the two runways at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. As Lena studied the motel-styled building from her car, it seemed more than obvious that Cobb’s fall had been a brutal plunge straight to the bottom.

Cobb wasn’t staring into the abyss. He lived there.