and tears and bleeding from her genitals. Gant’s semen collected from her thighs and stomach, her panties and vagina. The bruising on her cheeks and jaw and around her neck. The pinpoint hemorrhages in the whites of her eyes.
There could be no doubt that what Cobb and his partner had walked into was a vision of absolute darkness-a crime brutal enough to stun any detective, even a man like Cobb. As Lena thought it over, it seemed more than plausible that Cobb’s judgment could have been compromised by the horror. That any hope of working a mistake- free investigation could have been in jeopardy the moment he entered Lily’s bedroom and saw her body skewered to the floor.
The thought lingered as Lena noticed that it was dark outside and checked her watch. The autopsies of Bosco and Gant were due to begin in an hour. Paging to the front of the murder book, she found the chronological record and started reading as quickly as she could.
According to the official record as compiled by Cobb, Lily Hight’s body had been found at 10:00 p.m. by her parents after returning home from dinner on a Friday night. By eleven, a pair of first responders had confirmed the death as a homicide, and Cobb and his partner were on their way. Even though more than an hour had passed, both parents remained hysterical when the detectives arrived. Cobb suspected that both had been drinking heavily that night and made the immediate decision to call for help.
Lena turned to the Death Investigation Report and read Cobb’s notes, then paged back to the record. From the egregious nature of the crime and with no signs of forced entry, Cobb became convinced that Lily had known her killer. When he asked Tim Hight if he knew anyone who would want to harm his daughter, Hight named Jacob Gant and told him that the twenty-five-year-old had been stalking her. When asked if he knew where Jacob Gant lived, Hight pointed across their driveway directly at Gant, who happened to be watching them from the chair set before his bedroom window.
Cobb stated in his notes that his primary concern in that first hour was securing the crime scene and helping the Hights deal with their loss until assistance arrived. But during the course of the evening he made initial contact with Gant under the pretense that he might be helpful as a witness. Gant claimed that he had been alone that evening, that he’d gone to a bar by himself and had a couple of beers. By the time he returned home the police were already there. When asked about his relationship with the sixteen-year-old victim, he said only that they were friends and neighbors. But what struck Cobb about the interview was Gant’s demeanor. While Cobb described the Hights as being in extreme emotional distress, he found Gant visibly nervous and afraid, even evasive.
Lena thought back to the conversation she’d had with the detective just a few hours ago in that interrogation room.
After that meeting, that moment, that gaze, the case seemed to gain traction toward a single target.
Lily’s cell phone couldn’t be found and was never recovered. Cobb assumed from the beginning that the killer had had a reason to take the phone and get rid of it. Within twenty-four hours, the service provider came through and the detective thought he knew that reason.
Gant had left more than a hundred and twenty-five voice and text messages with Lily over the last two weeks of her life. And from Cobb’s point of view, Gant had made a huge mistake, the kind of mistake most criminals make when they’re in a hurry. The phone had been discarded without deleting the messages from the phone company’s server.
Lena saw a note indicating that transcripts from a selection of messages, what Cobb called
Lena sensed movement in the cafe and looked up. A man was sitting down at the next table but seemed preoccupied with his food. Glancing at her watch, she realized that she only had another ten minutes before she needed to head over to the coroner’s office, and turned back to the murder book.
With Gant’s voice and text messages in hand, Cobb had no difficulty securing multiple warrants from a judge. And the detective made a decent effort to describe his thoughts as a team of criminalists and detectives took samples from Gant’s body and searched the house. Lena was surprised by the quality of the detective’s writing. Somehow it didn’t match up with the man she had met this afternoon. All the same, it made the reading easier. When she finished, she set the binder down, sipped her coffee, and thought it over.
The search of Gant’s room had convinced Cobb that he was on the right track. He saw the violent artwork Gant had created for his graphic novel, the close-up view into Lily’s bedroom from the chair. He found a camera with a long lens in a desk drawer. Within hours of seizing Gant’s computer, an SID tech called with news that several nude photographs of the sixteen-year-old victim had been found on the hard drive. While Cobb waited on the DNA analysis and SID reports, he focused on Gant’s alibi and history. Gant claimed to have gone to a bar the night of Lily’s murder, but his story fell apart when no one remembered seeing him there. When Cobb learned of Gant’s troubled youth and the murder of his mother, the detective must have thought that he could see the finish line. And on the following day, he crossed it.
The results from the crime lab showed Gant’s fingerprints in Lily’s bedroom. But even more, the DNA analysis revealed a hit. A perfect match. The semen samples taken from the girl’s body locked Gant in beyond all doubt.
Lena wasn’t surprised that Gant hired Paladino after that, or even that his story changed. Most stories change once an attorney becomes involved and knows that his client has just hit the wall. Diffusing the circumstances of a murder-fitting the pieces together so that they make sense in another way-could almost be considered an art. And Lena knew of no one better at it than Buddy Paladino.
Now Gant was more than Lily’s friend. More than just her neighbor. Now Gant was claiming to have had a secret relationship with the sixteen-year-old-a relationship they had kept quiet because of her age. Now he claimed that his semen was found because he had made love with her that night. That although they had been fighting over the last two weeks and he had left those angry messages on her cell phone, they had made up that night and all had been forgiven. That no one saw him at the bar because it was standing-room-only on a Friday during a Lakers game. That even though he owned a camera, he didn’t need to take the nude snapshots of Lily because she had taken them herself and given them to him as a gift.
Gant tried to explain away all the details through his attorney. Every piece of the puzzle fit or almost fit or was forced to fit-except one.
There were still no signs of forced entry. No indication that anyone had been with Lily in the house other than Jacob Gant. All physical evidence collected at the crime scene still pointed to Gant and only Gant.
And then there was the harsh condition of Lily Hight’s body that neither attorney nor client could explain away. The bruising on her neck. Her broken right ankle. The trauma to her genitals. The fact that she was dead. To Cobb, and now to Steven Bennett and Debi Watson who had just been assigned the case, the way Lily had been left didn’t look or feel much like love.
19
Lena gave her protective clothing a final check. She was standing before a locker in the changing room at the coroner’s office, trying to ignore the conclusions she’d reached while reading Cobb’s murder book. Trying to pretend that the flaws in the case weren’t really there.
But she knew she was fooling herself.
There was Cobb’s take on the case-and then there was everything else. The lies and loose ends were beginning to pile up. If Cobb’s investigation hinged on the father’s claim that Gant was stalking his daughter, why did Lily keep a picture of Gant hidden by her bed? If Gant’s brother knew that there was something more to the relationship, why didn’t Tim Hight?
And that was the problem. Hight would have had to have known.
He sat in that chair in the sunroom every night. He sat in the dark smoking and drinking and snorting cocaine.
