“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded and they started down the hall.
“You look like you could use something to eat,” he said. “A meeting was canceled. They brought in food.”
“I’m good,” she said.
“Well, I need something. Maybe you’ll change your mind after you see what’s there.”
She looked him over as they walked. His jacket was off, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and he appeared less weary and more able than he had this morning. As they entered the meeting room, she saw a group of prosecutors standing before a long serving table with plates in their hands. The room was quiet, the tables and chairs set with pads and pens, not place settings. It looked like people were taking advantage of a free lunch, but returning to their offices and eating at their desks.
Vaughan poured a large cup of coffee. In spite of the caterer’s obvious talent, Lena had too much on her mind to eat and too much caffeine already streaming through her body to add another dose to the mix. She turned away. When she looked up, she found Debi Watson staring at her through the crowd. Watson stood by the water glasses with a modest plate of food and tried to smile but was late with it. After an awkward moment, the woman stepped out of the room with her lunch.
Lena found the encounter unsettling. No matter how brief, she had just caught a glimpse of what Watson looked like stripped of her confidence. She had seen it in her eyes-a combination of weariness and pain. A certain recognition that the prosecutor had lost her standing in the office, and things would never return to what they were.
Lena turned back, following Vaughan over to a table by the windows.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You searched Hight’s place and didn’t find the gun.”
“He got rid of it. We found the receipt, but not the gun.”
Vaughan tested his coffee with a short first sip. “And he has no intention of working with us. He’s not gonna make it easy.”
“It sounds like he’s got more than one attorney,” she said.
“He thinks he can win, Lena. And you know what? He’s probably right.”
Lena started to say something, but stopped when she saw Steven Bennett enter the room. He nodded at them, then turned away and picked up a plate. Although his purpose appeared innocent enough, the way he walked into the room carried the same lack of authenticity as Watson’s delayed smile. It didn’t feel true. He didn’t enter the room looking for the serving table. Instead, his emerald green eyes had swept through the space searching out faces. It seemed obvious that Watson had told him that they were here. For some reason, he needed to see it for himself.
Vaughan took another sip of coffee, then spoke in a lower voice. “Why couldn’t you say any of this over the phone? What else did you find?”
“Cash that may have come from Bosco,” she said. “Fifteen to twenty grams of cocaine that may have been taken from that pile at the club.”
“How long will it take SID to process everything?”
“We’re at the top of the list.”
Lena was still eyeing Bennett. The deputy DA was spending too much time staring at the catering trays with his back to them. He was close enough to hear them. Lena had no doubt that he was listening.
Vaughan tapped her wrist. “Is something wrong?”
“We need to go to your office,” she said. “We can’t talk here.”
Her eyes were still on Bennett. Vaughan followed her gaze.
“I see what you mean,” he said.
Bennett didn’t turn or move as they walked out. When they reached Vaughan’s office on the other side of the building one floor below, he closed the door and apologized for his housekeeping. Stacks of file folders two and three feet high lined nearly every square foot of the room. They were piled on his credenza, on the couch and chair, and formed a semicircle to the right of his desk chair. As he cleared off a seat for Lena, she looked out the window and saw an abandoned building just this side of the Hollywood Freeway.
“At least the DA gave you an office with a window,” she said.
“Yeah. Higgins gave me a window.”
She saw a picture on the sill of Vaughan playing with a young boy and girl, about three and four years old.
“I didn’t know you had kids,” she said. “I didn’t even know you were married. You’re not wearing a ring.”
“Divorced,” he said. “Irreconcilable differences, meaning that I work too much. We’ve stayed friends, and she’s met someone who works nine to five and seems like a good guy. The kids love him. I told her I could change, but her attorney came by one day and got a look at my office.”
He grinned at her, then settled into his desk chair and watched her sit down. A moment passed with Vaughan gently probing her face with his eyes.
“You didn’t come here to tell me you couldn’t find Hight’s gun,” he said finally. “I don’t know you very well, Lena. But you don’t strike me as someone who would waste that kind of time.”
She leaned forward, thinking it through as she spoke. “What if Bennett and Watson screwed up?” she said.
Vaughan shrugged. “They lost a slam-dunk case. Of course they screwed up.”
“But what if it wasn’t a slam-dunk case? What if it only looked like one? What if Bennett and Watson
“They’re corporate types,” he said. “All they see is the finish line and what they’re gonna get out of it.”
Lena nodded. “Exactly. So what if it started from the beginning? What if they got lost in the details and the headlines? What if Jacob Gant didn’t murder Lily Hight and they tried the wrong man?”
It hung there. And for several moments, it looked like Vaughan had taken a punch. He pushed aside his coffee and leaned back in his chair, rubbing a finger across his forehead as he considered her question.
“If you’re asking me if Bennett and Watson are capable of running the worst investigation and trial in the city’s long history of blown investigations and even worse trials-if that’s what you’re really asking-it’s possible, I guess. It’s more than possible. But you’d have to get past the DNA, Lena. Lily Hight was raped before she was killed. Gant’s semen was found at the crime scene and by the coroner during the girl’s autopsy. That locks Gant in.”
“You mean the samples that went missing at the crime lab?”
Vaughan nodded.
“SID doesn’t lose things, Greg. It’s not in their nature to lose things.”
Vaughan got out of his chair and moved to the window. “What’s this got to do with Tim Hight, Lena? All that matters is what he believed. He thought Gant killed his daughter and got away with it. He shot the kid. He put two bullets in his head. And he murdered Johnny Bosco along the way.”
Lena glanced at the door, then back at Vaughan. “Bosco was helping Gant investigate Lily Hight’s murder. They thought they knew who did it. Last night they were hoping to prove it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gant’s brother told me that about an hour ago.”
“You don’t believe him, I hope.”
She thought it over. She thought about that feeling in her gut.
“I believe that he believes it, and that his brother wouldn’t lie to him. That’s all I’ll say right now. Bosco and Gant-you’ve got to admit that it’s an odd pairing because of who Bosco was. No one’s been able to explain why they were together last night. Not even Bosco’s partner, Dante Escabar.”
Vaughan sat down on the sill. “Bosco catered to Hollywood. He gave them privacy. A place to go where no one had to worry about controversy or some asshole taking a picture that might embarrass them. Being seen with Jacob Gant after the trial would have been a risk to Bosco. So I guess the question becomes, what was worth the risk?”
Lena joined Vaughan by the window. “Exactly. There’s something wrong. Something missing. What we’re seeing isn’t necessarily what’s really there.”
