Murder Season

by Robert Ellis

  Lena parked in the drive and walked over to the car with her briefcase. Sitting behind the wheel was a uniformed officer she recognized from the day before and knew by name. Carmine Ruiz looked like he only had one or two weeks on the job, but that was okay with her.

  “Is he in there?” she asked.

  Ruiz fought off a yawn as he pointed to the sunroom. “He’s been in there all night. He sits in that window chain-smoking in the dark. He came out once to tell me that he wanted his car back. I think he was drunk.”

  “I’m gonna need your help, Carmine. No big deal. Just come inside with me and wait in the foyer.”

  “You got it,” he said.

  They walked through the gate and up the path onto the porch. Before Lena could knock, the door swung open to reveal Hight and those bloodshot eyes of his. He stared at them for a while—back and forth and long enough to creep Lena out. But then, without a word, he stepped aside to let them enter.

  “Are you sober?” Lena asked.

  Hight nodded. “Close enough.”

  “I want another look at your daughter’s bedroom.”

  The man seemed to need time to process her request, but eventually started up the staircase. Lena followed three steps behind, keenly aware of the distance between them. When they reached the landing, she gave him a good lead through the gloom until they reached the door.

  “Where’s your friend?” he asked.

  “Officer Ruiz will wait downstairs.”

  “How much time is this gonna take? What are you looking for?”

  “Open the door, Mr. Hight.”

  He turned the knob and gave it a soft push, the bright light from the bedroom spilling over them like the crest of a ten-foot wave. As Lena entered, she noticed Hight’s hesitation to follow and watched him lean against the doorjamb.

  “You lied to me yesterday, Mr. Hight. You said that you hadn’t seen Jacob Gant since the trial. But that wasn’t the case at all, was it? You’ve seen him many times over the last six weeks. And you had an argument with him on the day he was murdered.”

  He met her eyes, but couldn’t hold her gaze—shifting his weight and looking down at the floor.

  “Maybe I didn’t understand the question,” he said.

  “Maybe. But it was a simple question, Mr. Hight. Tell me what the argument was about.”

  Hight shrugged. “I saw him hop over the fence. I told him to stay off my property.”

  “That’s it?”

  He nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “I don’t believe you, Mr. Hight.”

  “That’s your problem, not mine, lady.”

  “Is this the way your attorneys told you to act?”

  “I didn’t call them.”

  There was a touch of arrogance in his voice. Defiance.

  “You can’t do this alone,” she said. “You can’t do it because it is your problem. And it’s a big problem. You need legal advice. It’s your right.”

  He wasn’t listening. He needed legal advice, but he needed a shower and a shave and a change of clothes as well.

  Lena finally broke her gaze to take in the room. She could see fingerprint powder on almost every surface and remembered the request she’d made as they waited for Paladino’s press conference to end yesterday in the front yard. No matter how odd, their daughter’s bedroom hadn’t been turned into a tomb. Based on the large number of smudges, the room was obviously still in use.

  “You spend time in here,” she said.

  Hight shook his head. “I haven’t set foot in this room since Lily died. Once in a while I’ll find my wife in here. I don’t know what she does.”

  Lena found a pair of gloves in her briefcase and walked over to the chest of drawers. Yesterday she had been looking for a gun. Today was all about confirmation. When she spotted a camera in the top drawer, she pulled it out and hit the POWER button. Remarkably, the device fired up, but only to indicate that the battery needed to be charged and that the media card was empty. After ten seconds, the screen went blank and the power shut down.

  “Your daughter liked to take pictures?”

  “She wanted to make it her living,” he said. “That photograph by the bed is one of hers.”

  Lena stepped over for a look. It was a landscape, a black-and-white image shot at the beach from atop a cliff. The lens was pointed straight down at the rocks and sand, the shutter snapped just as a wave reached the shoreline. What struck Lena most about the image was the sunlight sweeping across the rocks and sand from a low angle—the way the image was composed.

  “Your daughter had an eye.”

  “Well beyond her years.”

  “What happened to the rest of her work?”

  “Cobb had her computer taken away after Gant was arrested. When we finally got it back, I downloaded the images and erased the drive.”

  “Were they all landscapes, Mr. Hight? Or did she photograph people, too?”

  Lena’s eyes were on him, but Hight showed no emotion—no changes.

  “A little of both,” he said.

  “Anything stand out?”

  “Not really.”

  A moment passed, but she didn’t think he’d bend. “The night she was murdered, where did you find her?”

  “Right where you’re standing.”

  Lena acknowledged the spot, then turned to the window and found the impressions in the carpet left by the chair. Pushing the chair over, she turned it toward the window and felt the feet fall into place. Through the window and across the drive she could see Jacob Gant’s room and the chair still in place before his window.

  “We like it better the way it was,” Hight said.

  “But on the night of the murder, the chair was here. And it had been that way for a long time. Long enough to break down the carpet.”

  “I guess so.”

  “When you had the room cleaned, did they do anything with the chair?”

  “They didn’t need to. Just the bloodstains over there by the bed.”

  “And the fingerprint powder,” she said.

  “Yeah, that, too.”

  Lena knelt down to examine the seat cushion, then flipped it over and studied the other side. When she found what she was looking for, she returned to the chest and opened the second drawer. She thought she remembered seeing it yesterday, but wanted to make sure—not the underwear of a girl, but the lingerie of a woman. It hadn’t registered until now. The sheer bras and panties wouldn’t have had any meaning to her before she’d seen the nude photos of Lily on her bed.

  “What kind of a girl was she, Mr. Hight?”

  He didn’t respond. When Lena turned to check on him, she caught him staring. Not at the contents of the drawer—from his angle he couldn’t see what she held in her hands. Hight was staring at her. At her legs and hips and then up to her chest until he reached her face and realized that she had been watching him measure her. Being caught in the moment didn’t appear to faze him.

  “What kind of a girl was Lily?” she repeated.

  “Lily was everything they said she was and more. She was full of life. A dream come true.”

  “Did she see boys?”

  “Most girls her age see boys.”

  “Was she involved with anyone?”

  He paused to catch himself, but not soon enough. Lena saw through it.

  “No one that I’m aware of,” he said in a quieter voice.

  “I’m curious about her best girlfriend. What was her name?”

  “Julia,” he said. “They were like glue.”

  “Julia Hackford—that’s it. How come she didn’t testify at the trial?”

  “I asked about that.”

  “Who did you ask?”

  “First Cobb, then Bennett and Watson.”

  “And what did they say?”

  Hight shook his head. “Julia didn’t know anything. There was nothing she could do to help.”

  “She lives close by, doesn’t she?”

  “Right around the corner in t
he blue house. Why?”

  Lena didn’t answer the question and moved to the bedside table. The drawer was filled with pads and pens and knickknacks—things that she had seen yesterday when they were searching the house for the gun. But what she was looking for now would probably be hidden in the back—something else that she would have glossed over before seeing the nude photos in the murder book. As she fished through the contents, she spotted the small tube of K-Y jelly behind a deck of playing cards, then returned everything to its place and closed the drawer.

  “What about Lily’s cell phone?” she said.

  Hight paused a moment, and Lena noticed something in his eyes—a spark, a glint—something that she hadn’t seen before.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He shrugged her off. “We looked for that phone everywhere. When Cobb spoke with the service provider and they agreed to help, he told us that he had everything he needed and we could stop.”

  “Did he ask you to keep the account open for a while?”

  “Just in case somebody used it, but no one ever did. I checked the bill every month. No one used it to make or receive a call. Cobb told us Gant took it and threw it away.”

  “But that’s not what came to mind when I asked the question, is it?”

  “What does any of this have to do with what happened at the club? When am I gonna get my car back?”

  “What were you thinking when I asked about Lily’s cell phone?”

  He gave her a long look, his face reddening. “Her account,” he said. “Not the phone, but her account. It’s still open.”

  “You call the number,” Lena said quietly. “You listen to her voice.”

  Hight steadied himself against the doorjamb. As Lena looked him over, she sensed that she was witnessing something important. Hight keeping his daughter’s cell-phone account open was anything but strange. She knew that most people who had lost a loved one did exactly the same thing. Most people wanted to call the number and listen to the outgoing message. They wanted to hear their loved one’s voice. And they didn’t need the phone to do it—just the account and phone number.

  But Tim Hight wasn’t like most people.

  She wondered why he was doing it. She wondered if he didn’t see it as some kind of punishment. Or if he wasn’t lost in some sort of psychotic denial.

  Her cell phone started vibrating. When she pulled it out of her pocket and saw Vaughan’s name on the touch screen, she slid the lock open with her thumb.

  “I’ve got something,” he said. “Where are you?”

  She could hear the excitement in his voice. The punch.

  “What happened?” she said. “What is it?”

  Vaughan covered the mouthpiece. The sound became muffled and she could hear him telling someone to close the door. When he came back on, his voice was quieter.

  “I figured out why Cobb called Bennett first. They’ve got a history, Lena. They go way back.”

  25

  Lily Hight and Jacob Gant.

  The girl was sexually active, a willing partner—but there was also a certain kink to it. A kink to Lily. To Gant. To them. One that included nude snapshots and phone sex in a chair by the window every night.

  And one that may have included Lily’s father watching them from the darkness … and doing what?

  The thought, the depravity, sent chills up Lena’s spine. But even worse, how could Cobb have missed it? And what about Bennett and Watson?

  The elevator opened and Lena started down the hall toward Vaughan’s office. Within a few short steps, she became aware of someone shouting and realized that it was Steven Bennett’s voice. Lena picked up her pace and turned the corner. Bennett was inside Vaughan’s office with the door closed, and Vaughan’s assistant wasn’t at her desk. Lena noted the steam from a hot cup of tea by her computer—she must have just left. When she caught a glimpse of the newspaper on the desk, she rolled the chair away and moved in for a closer look.

  It was today’s edition of The Los Angeles Times, and by all appearances, two journalists had written an article on the Jacob Gant trial singling out Bennett, Watson, and Higgins as complete incompetents. According to the banner above the headline, this was part one in a series that would run for the next fifteen weeks.

  Worse still, the article had been set above the fold on page one and ran through most of the first section of the newspaper. On page three, photographs of Lily Hight, Jacob Gant, and Johnny Bosco were encircled by cutout photos of Bennett, Watson, and Higgins, but also by the chief administrator and commanding officer of the crime lab, Howard Kendrick, a man Lena had only met in passing. Beside the graphic a large arrow pointed to pictures of both Lena and Vaughan, set above the caption: District Attorney Jimmy J. Higgins & Company run for cover after serving up a fresh pair of scapegoats, or are they just the latest victims?

  Lena dropped the newspaper back on the desk.

  If Higgins truly hoped to glue Vaughan’s face to the scandal, it wasn’t going to work. The DA and his protégés had been outed and would be circling the drain for the next fifteen weeks. But far more important to Lena, the series would boost Tim Hight’s reputation as a father who did what he needed to do in killing Gant. Unbeknownst to the journalists, their examination and criticism of the trial would damage her case against Hight and hurt everyone.

  Bennett raised his voice and began shouting at Vaughan again. Without hesitating, Lena pushed open the door and walked in on them. Bennett snapped his head at her, his face a deep purple, the veins in his neck jutting out thick as rope.

  “Get the fuck out of this room,” he said.

  Vaughan banged his fist on the desk. “You need to chill, Bennett. Pull yourself together. No one’s out to get you.”

  Bennett rubbed his hand over his scalp and appeared stunned, even crazed. Ignoring Vaughan, he charged across the room and didn’t stop until he was in Lena’s face. It took all her strength of will to hold her ground.

  “I knew the two of you would fuck this up,” he said.

  Bennett looked like a man who was drowning. He was spitting the words out of his mouth, his lips were quivering, his cheeks dripping with perspiration. She could see the panic in those emerald-green eyes of his—rage mixed with fear.

  Snake eyes.

  “I knew you’d fuck it up,” he said again. “You’re talking to all the wrong people. You’re asking all the wrong questions. You’re fucking up my life.”

  Vaughan looked like he’d had enough and approached from the side. “Nobody’s fucking up your life, Steven. You’re gonna have a heart attack. You’re gonna kill yourself, and it’s not worth it. Get out of my office and calm down.”

  Bennett was still ignoring him, still zeroing in on Lena with his tail standing on end. He was easily a foot shorter than her, but meaty and strong. He took a step closer—nose to chin. Lena kept her eyes on him, her voice soft and easy and steady as a train on a new set of tracks.

  “What’s next, Bennett? You gonna hit me?”

  At first, he acted like he didn’t hear her or didn’t understand what she had just said. But after a few seconds, he mouthed the words “fuck you” at her and took two steps back. Vaughan moved in beside Lena, with Bennett now glaring at both of them.

  “Fuck you both,” he said. “Just do your fucking jobs. Just do what you were told to do.”

  He stormed out of the office. As he passed the assistant’s desk, he saw the newspaper, crushed it into a ball, and started punching it. Satisfied that the newspaper was dead, or at least mortally wounded, he kicked the desk chair and ripped the phone out of the wall—in a rant and repeating the words “Do your fucking jobs” over and over again through clenched teeth. When he finally caught his breath, he backed away from the desk like a madman and ran down the hall.

  Vaughan turned to Lena. “You see today’s paper?”

  She nodded, but kept quiet.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  26

  They walked throu
gh the park beside City Hall and found a bench underneath the trees. Across the street on the corner, the safety barrier between the sidewalk and construction area was being removed from the new building that would soon become LAPD headquarters. A handful of landscapers were planting palm trees along the curb while another team of construction workers power-washed the steps.

  On the way over, Lena had brought Vaughan up to speed on what she had learned at Hight’s house and the conclusions she was ready to make. She had given him a detailed picture of exactly where they stood, including Cobb’s visit to her house last night. Vaughan didn’t take it very well, but finally agreed that antagonizing Cobb any further wasn’t in their best interest, at least in the short term.

  “His case against Jacob Gant was based on a lie,” she said. “Gant was not stalking Lily Hight. Cobb’s first move was in the wrong direction.”

  “But I’m going through the trial, Lena. The transcripts, the video. What about Gant’s anger? What about the messages Cobb pulled off the girl’s service? Bennett and Watson read them in court.”

  “Gant said that they had a fight. It lasted for two weeks and then they made up. What if it’s that simple? And Hight was never asked to provide an alibi, Greg. He was never a suspect. His story was never checked out. Never verified.”

  “You think Cobb knows he screwed up and that’s why he’s acting this way?”

  She turned to him. “Do you think Bennett thinks he screwed up the trial?”

  “I get it,” he said. “Like that case on Long Island we talked about last night. They don’t make mistakes. Everybody else does.”

  “You said they go way back.”

  Vaughan removed his jacket and loosened his tie in the heat. “When Bennett first came to the DA’s office, he needed help, a detective with experience. Cobb gave it to him. They liked working together and became friends. I get the feeling Cobb was something of a mentor to him early on.”