Vaughan looked her over. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You know the case.”
“I read about it,” she said. “Marty Tankleff was a minor. The motive didn’t make any sense because he wouldn’t have seen the money for eight years.”
“Then you get where I’m going. The detective missed more than he saw. The entire prosecution team built their case on the way they wanted it to be. When they were confronted with the facts, overwhelming evidence that pointed to the real killer, they refused to acknowledge their mistakes. Everyone knows who murdered the Tankleffs, except for the people who should. And that’s why the killer is still free.”
“When I worked homicide in Hollywood, my partner used to call it ‘tunnel vision.’”
Vaughan thought about it, his eyes still on her. “Your partner called it right. But this could be more than that and you know it, Lena. This is Los Angeles. We’re dealing with different people. Different circumstances with a lot more at stake. And I don’t care what they say or how loud they say it. I don’t care how hot the fire gets. If Gant was innocent, I want the world to know that he was innocent. If Hight killed his own daughter, I want to make sure the asshole pays for it.”
Lena moved her head into the shadows so that Vaughan couldn’t see the expression on her face. He’d made the turn. They were on the same page.
22
Lena switched on the lamp and pulled a stool up to the counter. She had just found the nude photos of Lily Hight that had been pulled from Gant’s computer in the back of Cobb’s murder book. There were three-each one more disturbing than the next. Lena had stumbled upon them while searching through the binder for the interviews Cobb conducted with Gant before Buddy Paladino had been hired. The transcripts weren’t in the book, but should have been. And she’d missed the photos on her first pass because they were mixed together with hundreds of shots taken by an SID photographer on the day Gant’s house was searched.
Cobb’s murder book had been slapped together. His work reeked of carelessness.
She took a deep breath and exhaled, then looked at the sixteen-year-old girl lying on her bed. The girl seemed to have left her innocence on the chair with her clothes. Lena caught the seductive smile on her face. The smoky eyes and tangled hair. The dark-red lipstick. The girl laid out in a woman’s body that was fully formed, and undoubtedly, fully functional.
Unlike the crime scene photos, these images were never presented at trial. Somehow over the past year, they had never been leaked. As Lena considered what she was seeing, what they implied ran counter to everything she had ever heard about the victim. And as disturbing as they may have been, she was surprised that Paladino hadn’t seen their value to his defense. Images of the teenager stripped of all innocence would have lent credibility to Gant’s claim that he was having a relationship with the girl and not stalking her.
But there was something more here. Something about the photographs that she couldn’t quite put into words.
Tim Hight murdered Jacob Gant. But his reasons for committing the homicide seemed so much more important than the crime itself. Was it as simple as an act of revenge? Or was it an attempt to mask some horrible truth that Gant had discovered? Was Hight trying to keep something buried that had almost leaked out?
Lena took a last look at the girl lying on the bed. The glint in her eyes. The heat that went with her long legs and curvy body. The seductive smile that now seemed so haunting.
But she was thinking about that piece of paper again. The one she kept that listed the reasons why she wanted to be a cop. Barrera was wrong on this. Digging into the past wasn’t a step back. It was a move forward. It was the only move worth making.
She closed the binder and pushed it away. It was well after midnight and the house was still hot, still hovering at over 80 degrees. She could hear the air conditioner straining outside the window.
Stepping around the counter into the kitchen, she opened the freezer and let the cool mist brush against her face. The cloud of moist air didn’t last very long. Only ten or twenty seconds, when what she really needed was an hour or two. When the frost finally vanished, she reached inside for the bottle of SKYY vodka and poured a drink.
She took a first sip, feeling the ice-cold liquid hit her stomach and glow. Peeling off her shoes, she opened the slider and walked outside to the pool. The moon was just beginning to climb above the horizon. She could see it directly behind the tall buildings downtown. Shafts of warm yellow light were spilling down the streets all the way to the ocean. Rolling up her jeans, she sat down and slipped her feet into the cool water. She took another sip of vodka, hoping that her view of the city raked in moonlight might overtake her memory of the photographs she had just seen. And then another sip, hoping that the drink might freeze up her mind and bring on a few hours of dreamless sleep.
And that’s when she heard a car pulling into her driveway, the sound of tires eating up gravel. She wasn’t too concerned about it until she got up and looked around the house.
The car was rolling forward with its headlights off. A white Lincoln.
She climbed up the steps onto the porch, watching the car coast to a quiet stop in the shadows. A man got out, and after spending several moments staring at her house, walked over to her car. Lena could tell that he was trying to avoid the outdoor lights. But when he leaned toward the driver’s side window to peer inside, light reflecting off the glass struck his face and she got a good look.
It was Cobb.
She pulled herself together, moving into the living room and locking the slider. After switching off the kitchen lights, she killed the lamp by the couch and hurried through the darkness to the bedroom window. She could see Cobb walking toward the back of the house. Even worse, he had a flashlight in his hand and no longer seemed concerned about hiding in the shadows.
There was fear and anger charging through her body, but there was confusion, too. What could he possibly be thinking?
She rushed through the living room into the kitchen and looked outside. Cobb was by the pool with his flashlight and had found her drink. When he noticed the wet footprints she’d left, he panned the light across the concrete and up the steps to the porch.
He knew that she was home. And now he realized that she knew he was here.
Lena filled her lungs with air, her eyes riveted to his hardened face. He was standing perfectly still. He was thinking something over like a guy who still had a full bag of personal issues-like a rabid animal that walks toward you instead of running back into the woods.
Cobb started up the steps. As he shined his flashlight into the living room, Lena spotted her.45 on the counter and removed it from the holster. She pressed her back to the wall and inched her way to the corner. She could see Cobb peering through the slider. He looked extraordinarily pale-like a ghost with a goatee and two black holes for eyes. She could hear him fidgeting with the lock and trying to force open the door.
Lena had seen enough and inched the slide back on her.45. If Cobb got into the house, she had no reason to hesitate.
Minutes passed, her heart pounding in her chest.
But then he backed off.
She saw the kitchen bloom with light, then darken as he finally stepped off the porch. Returning to the window, she watched Cobb begin to circle the house with his flashlight. She followed his course from room to room. He moved slowly and often stopped to examine the windows on the second floor. When he reached the front door, he gave it a long look but eventually got back into his car.
Lena yanked open the slider and ran down the steps. She could hear tires digging up gravel again. Clearing the corner, she saw the white Lincoln back out onto the street. When Cobb finally switched on his headlights, Lena kept her eyes on them and followed the car’s path through the curves until it vanished at the bottom of the hill.
And then her body shuddered. She noticed the sweat covering her face. The electricity in the air. She thought about what Barrera had said to her just a few hours ago. Thought about the words he’d used as she tried to catch her breath.
