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 through 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.”
“Barrera told me that Cobb used to work out of Robbery-Homicide. Something happened, but he didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I didn’t put it together until last night. When I got in this morning, I went online and started to remember things. Then I made a few calls.”
“Remember what?” she said.
“They worked a lot of cases together. They had a lot of success.”
“Okay, so what went wrong?”
“They worked together and then they stopped. Seven or eight years ago-around the time Higgins got into politics.”
Lena tried to make the leap, pressing her memory for a murder case that stood out, but nothing came to mind. Vaughan gave her a look.
“It was a drive-by shooting in Exposition Park,” he said. “A woman walking her grandson in a stroller by a vacant lot on Western Avenue. I think it was across the street from the library on thirty-ninth. Both were dead before the cops arrived.”
Lena thought it over. Eight years ago there were a lot of drive-by shootings in L.A. But that probably wasn’t the reason for her faulty memory. Her brother had been murdered eight years ago, and she had taken some time off.
Vaughan leaned closer, his voice becoming more gentle. “Elvira Wheaten,” he said. “The infant’s name was Shawn. They didn’t walk into the crossfire between two gangs, Lena. They were gunned down intentionally. Wheaten was trying to clean up the neighborhood and had a target on her back. Higgins was running for DA and needed headlines. By then, Bennett was his boy in the office. I’m surprised you don’t remember.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“There was an eyewitness. A kid in his early teens. Wes Brown. He helped Cobb and Bennett identify the shooters in the car, but refused to testify against them in court.”
Something about hearing Wes Brown’s name seemed familiar. After a moment, she realized what it was. The young teenager had made headlines, too.
“Wes Brown was murdered,” she said.
Vaughan nodded. “Three months after the trial and Higgins took office. Brown didn’t testify in court. His identity was kept secret. The shooters never knew who made the initial ID, but somehow they got to him just the same. Three months later Brown was dead.”
“But Higgins won the trial.”
“It would have been a slam dunk with Brown’s testimony, so he and Bennett had to work harder. I was in the office then. I remember them sweating it out-the trial and the campaign. But Higgins got his guilty verdict, milked it in front of the cameras, and ended up winning the election.”
“And Bennett and Cobb had a falling out because Cobb couldn’t get Brown to testify.”
Vaughan nodded again. “Makes sense when you think about it. Bennett’s not the kind of guy who would have
