Murder Season

by Robert Ellis

  Lena’s eyes sprinted across the tiled floor until she hit pay dirt. The two dead bodies in Hollywood. She looked at the blood pooling on the floor—there was a lot of it—her hands instinctively digging into her pocket for a pair of vinyl gloves.

  Two dead men. Two heavyweights. One faced down in a fetal position. The other, all bloodied up and leaning against the far wall.

  Ramsey kept his eyes on her. “Everything remains the way we found it, Detective. As far as we know, nothing has been touched.”

  As far as we know …

  Lena took in a deep breath, pushing the air out of her lungs as if it was smoke. She noted the open windows by the spa. The cocaine piled on a marble slab—at least 10K’s worth—and the razor blade that went with it. The dead man in the silk suit had been shot in the back, a plume of blood oozing through his jacket just below his left shoulder. She checked the floor, stepping over the blood for a look at the man’s face. He was about forty-five, with wide shoulders, short brown hair, and a strong chin. Until a few hours ago, he had been the kind of man people like to look at. But not now. One eye remained open—his capped teeth jutting out—and Lena could see a double load of white powder still lodged in his flared nostrils.

  No doubt about it, Johnny Bosco had been killed before the thrill and never saw the grim reaper coming. The bullet in his back—his last hit of hits—had been a complete surprise.

  Lena glanced at the second corpse, taking in the view quickly just to make sure. The district attorney would have been a barrel-chested man in his mid-fifties with silver, overgroomed hair. The dead man propped against the wall with the bloody face was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and obviously much leaner and younger than that. Late twenties, early thirties at best. District Attorney Jimmy J. Higgins may have lost one of his celebrity friends tonight in Johnny Bosco, but he himself was alive and well, and still loose somewhere in the city.

  She turned back to Barrera and Ramsey, feeling a certain degree of relief. But both men remained by the door, studying her like just maybe there would be no relief. Not tonight. Not with this crime scene.

  “Body number two is who?” she said. “An actor? A dealer? A VIP’s son?”

  Ramsey’s sharp gaze faltered as it shifted to the corpse. When he didn’t respond, her mind started churning. Why had she been the last call? Why the oppressive silence? It felt like they were playing her. Testing her. Bullshitting her when everyone in the room knew that a homicide investigation thrived on a quick start.

  But there was something else going on. Something extra.

  Johnny Bosco had been a player in this city. His murder would easily make the front page of The Times. His friendship with the district attorney, along with that pile of nose candy on the counter, would ensure that the story appeared above the fold and make things complicated for everyone. But Higgins was already damaged goods, particularly with the LAPD. According to The Times, his reelection next year was in trouble. Lena wondered if the politician really had enough clout with the department to insist on a division callout. Enough power to bring Deputy Chief Ramsey to a crime scene in the middle of the night. Even more unsettling, what about anything at this crime scene could create fear in two of the most seasoned police officers she knew?

  She crossed the room and knelt before the second body, her heart pounding in her ears. The dead man was hard to look at. Although he had been shot in the stomach, it was the wounds to his face that made things difficult. His lights had been blown out. Even through all the blood, Lena could see the burned flesh and scorched eyebrows. The shooter had pressed the muzzle into the man’s eyes and pulled the trigger. Both rounds had punched through the back of his skull, drawing brain matter out like a vacuum and splashing it against the wall.

  Worse still, he was a lot younger than she first thought. She could see it now. Low to mid twenties.

  She leaned closer and checked his nostrils, but found no visible sign of white powder. As her eyes drifted off his face, she noticed a large bruise on his neck. Similar bruises tattooed both arms. When she spotted the scabs on his knuckles and his clean fingernails, she took a moment to think it over. The kid had been in a fight sometime within the past week or two, the cuts and bruises in various stages of healing. But nothing she saw indicated that he had a chance to defend himself tonight. The shot he took in the stomach knocked him to the floor. From the amount of blood puddling around him, the round struck an artery. The two shots in the eyes came after that. He would have been alive, maybe even conscious when the killer approached. But he would have been bleeding out. He would have been docile and unable to fight back.

  The shot in the stomach was enough to ensure the kid’s death. The shots to the eyes were about something more than the murder. Something psychotic. A killer overdosing on rage.

  A memory surfaced—a movie she had seen more than ten years ago. A western. The Comanches believed that without eyes a victim couldn’t enter the spirit world. Without eyes, the victim would be forced to wander between the winds forever. She thought the scene might be from John Ford’s The Searchers, but wasn’t sure. It was too far back in her history and too late at night. Still, as she forced herself to take a second look at the kid’s broken face, she couldn’t help but wonder if his soul was lost between the winds.

  After a long moment, the wonder vanished and she finally lowered her gaze. She didn’t recognize him. Not without his eyes and through all the blood masking his face. She doubted anyone could.

  She climbed to her feet, checking the floor for shell casings but not finding any. When she looked up, she saw Sanchez and Rhodes standing beside Barrera. She hadn’t heard them enter, and for reasons she couldn’t explain, Barrera seemed to be holding them back. It didn’t really matter. Both detectives looked spent, their eyes glassy from working two days without sleep and topping the night off at her place.

  Lena turned to the deputy chief. “Tell me what’s going on,” she said.

  Ramsey broke open a roll of Tums, choosing his words carefully. “Escabar found the bodies, but didn’t call it in until after he cleared the place out. Hollywood detectives got here around one-thirty. They identified Bosco and passed the case up to Robbery-Homicide. When two of your colleagues arrived, they made an ID on the kid and called your supervisor. Frank called me, and then I briefed the chief at his hotel in Philadelphia. Once we got here and everything checked out, I called the chief back and we made a decision. Then Frank called you.”

  She wondered if Ramsey had any idea that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. Nothing about who called who or even why was important anymore. Body number two was the main event, not Bosco. She was sure of it now.

  “Who is he?” she asked.

  “A motherfucker,” Ramsey said. “A real asshole. As much trouble to us dead as he was alive. That’s why you got the call on your day off. The department needs you now. The people you work with, Gamble.”

  Lena watched Ramsey dig an evidence bag out of his jacket. He held it up, displaying a pair of wallets, then passed it over.

  “They found them over there in the trash,” he said. “The shooter took the cash, but left their credit cards. Johnny Bosco was known to carry a lot of cash, and there’s a fire escape right outside those open windows. His partner, Dante Escabar, believes that this was a robbery. That the mess we’re looking at was done by a pro. What’s your take?”

  Lena glanced at the corpse, then turned back to the deputy chief. She lowered her voice because it seemed obvious that Ramsey already knew what she was about to say. She didn’t understand the play. Why was he running this out in slow motion?

  “Number two was the target, not Bosco,” she said.

  “You sure about that?”

  She nodded. “The killer knew him. And whatever happened here tonight was payback. You don’t blow somebody’s eyes out if he’s a friend. And you don’t waste time shooting a dead man if he’s a stranger. You run.”

  Ramsey stared at her for a moment.
His eyes felt like needles.

  “How long have you worked homicide, Gamble?”

  “Long enough to know that this wasn’t a robbery, and that the killer wasn’t a pro. This was about something more personal than that. Something between the two.”

  “I’m with you on that,” he said. “But I know the identity of the victim and you don’t. Tell me why you think it’s personal, Detective. I need to hear you say it.”

  “If tonight was about a robbery, the coke wouldn’t be here. And if this was done by a pro, these wallets would have been left in their pockets. No pro would’ve taken the cash. Just a single credit card from Bosco’s wallet because everybody knows he’s loaded. One card with a decent credit line that wouldn’t be noticed for a day or two. That’s all it would take to bleed the account dry.”

  Another moment passed as Ramsey considered what she had said. Lena traded looks with Rhodes, then moved to the counter and unzipped the evidence bag. She was tired of waiting. Tired of being tested at a crime scene that was stuck on hold. She pushed the leather wallet aside and pulled out the one made of nylon and Velcro. Ripping it open, she found the driver’s license and held it up to the light.

  The victim was twenty-five years old. As her eyes slid over the name, those tremors began working through her fingers again. Lena finally understood why the deputy chief appeared so stunned. Why Barrera had been unable to look her in the eye all night. Why it didn’t matter that Escabar had shut down the club before calling 911 and all the Ferraris were gone. And why it didn’t even matter if the victim’s soul was lost forever between the winds.

  The deputy chief had called it right. The kid with his lights punched out was more than an asshole. More than a motherfucker. And, in the end, he would be more trouble dead than alive.

  She felt someone move in behind her and realized that it was Ramsey looking over her shoulder at the license. He was staring at it, but not seeing it—everything turned inward and lost in the black.

  “Jacob Gant,” he whispered in a voice taut with emotion. “Now you know why we need you, Gamble. Now you know why we’re fucked.”

  4

  Payback.

  A killer overdosing on rage.

  Lena didn’t need to do the math as she exited Bosco’s office and headed for the stairs.

  Jacob Gant raped and murdered his sixteen-year-old neighbor Lily Hight. Six weeks ago he’d walked out of an L.A. courtroom a free man. Tonight the big wheel turned—yin finally met yang—and he was dead.

  Gant’s crimes were executed with extreme brutality. After assaulting the girl in her home, he drove a foot-long screwdriver into her back and watched her bleed to death.

  The NOT GUILTY verdict had stunned everyone in the courtroom, producing utter silence for almost ten minutes with only the faint sound of Lily’s father, Tim Hight, weeping in the background. Lena could still remember the moment—still hear the sound of Hight sobbing. Like everyone else, she had watched the trial on television from her desk. The shock of the verdict worked like an infection. In a single instant, the entire city knew what had happened in that courtroom and felt sickened by the result.

  But the tent was bigger than Los Angeles. Jacob Gant’s trial for the murder of Lily Hight had juice and flowed like a river rising over its banks wherever satellites and computer servers and smartphones could take it. Particularly after Gant’s initial arrest when Lily’s father had given the district attorney’s office snapshots and home videos of his beloved daughter, his only child, to be distributed to the media outlets.

  The images fed a fire that could no longer be contained. In the world of senseless murders, Lily Hight was what came next: a gorgeous blonde with striking blue-gray eyes and a gentle but outgoing spirit. An innocent teenager who faced the ultimate violation just as she had begun to flower. A grieving father who tried to protect his grieving wife and maintain their privacy, but seemed to look years older every time he was photographed.

  And then there were the rumors that began soon after Gant’s arrest, salacious stories appearing in the rag sheets that the twenty-five-year-old killer and his teenage victim were lovers.

  The public’s outrage to the crime, their compassion for Lily and her father, seemed to burn without end and evolve into near myth. Lily Hight’s image began showing up on coffee mugs and T-shirts months before the trial. Street artists blanketed the city with her face on posters and wall paintings that read IS JUSTICE REALLY BLIND? Local TV news stations from coast to coast could point to interviews with teens who claimed to have known Lily, or met Lily, or seen Lily and wanted to be just like their friend.

  It was another circus. Another media trial set in L.A. Another slam-dunk murder case in which every piece of evidence collected at the crime scene pointed to one person and only one person.

  Jacob Gant raped and murdered his next-door neighbor Lily Hight. And the LAPD blew it. The district attorney’s office blew it.

  Again.

  Blood samples were mishandled by SID techs at the crime scene and misplaced in the lab.

  Again.

  DNA analysis of semen collected from the victim pointed beyond all doubt to Jacob Gant, but like the blood evidence, it went missing and couldn’t be found in the lab.

  Again.

  Two deputy district attorneys, outmatched by Buddy Paladino, sat back and watched the defense attorney rip their rock solid case apart while making them look like bunglers and fools in a way that only Buddy Paladino could do.

  Again.

  A killer was released, free to enjoy the pleasures of life here in the City of Angels or anywhere else he wanted to go.

  Again and again and again.

  Lena hit the stairs, feeling the words ripple through her body until she reached the club’s foyer on the main floor. She was looking for Dante Escabar, but didn’t see him behind the bar. Someone had turned down the lights, and the place was empty now. Just the spent coffee cups left behind by a division callout, the detectives finally released and sent home. She pulled a stool away from the bar and sat down. When she noticed the pack of cigarettes left beside an open bottle of bourbon, she fought the urge and pushed them away. Her mind was still skipping through the details. Still reeling. But there was anger, too. Anger at the situation and for what she was being asked to do.

  Payback.

  A killer overdosing on rage.

  A father who could claim both reason and cause. In some circles, even the moral high ground.

  Other than Jacob Gant’s family, no one in the city would have a problem with his death tonight. Far from it. Lena imagined that when the news broke, the bars would be packed with people celebrating. But the party wouldn’t last very long. Once Tim Hight was arrested for killing the man who murdered his daughter, once Lena put the case together and slapped the cuffs on the grieving father’s wrists—a father in ruin doing what any father might do …

  “Are you okay?”

  She turned and saw Rhodes walking into the bar. She tried to find her voice, and it came out deep and scratched.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” she said.

  He shrugged without an answer, crossing the darkened room for a peek out the window. Lena could hear the press corps still shouting at the patrol units holding them back. After a while, Rhodes joined her at the bar.

  “The coroner,” he said. “Barrera asked me to show him the way up when he gets here.”

  “Who got the call? Who got lucky?”

  Rhodes gave her a look. “Besides you?”

  She nodded. “Besides me.”

  “Ed Gainer,” he said.

  “Well, he’s not gonna like the stairs.”

  “You’re right. Eddie won’t like the stairs.”

  Rhodes reached for the pack of cigarettes, found a lighter beside a tray of spent candles, and lit up. When he passed it over, Lena shook him off. Neither one of them really smoked. Although tonight more than qualified as a crisis, she was no longer in the mood. Instead, she looked at the s
car on Rhodes’s left earlobe. It was in the shape of an X, and she liked looking at it. His brown hair was cropped short again, his body lean and trim from daily jogs around Hollywood Reservoir. He looked good. The gunshot he’d taken to his left shoulder a few years back—a distant memory that only surfaced when it rained.

  Rhodes stepped behind the bar and found a plate to use as an ashtray. “I guess Hight held it together for as long as he could,” he said. “I’ve never met him, but during the trial he looked okay. Wearing down maybe, but okay.”

  Lena nodded again without answering. No one in the division had met Tim Hight because his daughter’s murder investigation had been handled by local detectives on the Westside. The case didn’t ignite until prosecutors released those family snapshots to the press. By the time the public met Lily Hight, Jacob Gant had already been arrested and moved from his parents’ home in Venice to an isolated cell at Men’s Central Jail.

  Rhodes leaned on the bar directly across from her. “After tonight people will think that Tim Hight’s a hero. They’re gonna say that he did what we couldn’t. That he did what he had to do. That he finally got justice for his daughter.”

  “He’s not a hero,” she whispered.

  “It doesn’t make any difference, Lena. They’ll call him one.”

  The words settled in for a while.

  “He’s not a hero,” she repeated. “He didn’t shoot Gant, lay down the gun, and wait to face the music. He walked into the room and shot Johnny Bosco first. And he shot him in the back, Stan. Then he tried to make it look like a robbery and ran away. He hit the wall and blew.”

  “I agree, but it won’t play that way. It’s still poison for us. Sugarcoated poison. Leave it to the LAPD to set the bad guys free and send the good guys to jail.”

  Lena remained quiet because she knew that what Rhodes had just said was true. Barrera and Deputy Chief Ramsey knew how it would play as well.