Murder Season

Paladino laughed, then got up and opened a cabinet. Inside, Lena could see a small bar that included a wine rack. Paladino selected a bottle of scotch and offered her a glass. When she shook him off, he poured a drink for himself and took a small sip.

“I knew it could break our way,” he said. “But I wasn’t there yet. I still wanted to know why. And I was no longer willing to concede that the semen they found was Jacob’s. I wanted an independent lab to take another look.”

“Which was your right, but impossible because the samples were gone. When you made the request in court, how did Bennett and Watson take it?”

“They said they weren’t aware of the mishap, but I could tell that it was an act. And they were scared. Not where it shows, but underneath where it counts. When I saw that, I became even more suspicious.”

“What do you think of them?” she asked.

Paladino took another sip of scotch, mulling it over. “Not much,” he said. “Would it be too crude to say that Bennett can’t keep his dick in his pants?”

Lena smiled. “It’s only a rumor that they’re having an affair.”

“Only a rumor? Come on, Lena. The district attorney’s office keeps a suite over at the Bonaventure so that they don’t have to drive home during trials. I needed to talk to Bennett about a discovery issue a month before we got started, and was told that he and Watson were at the hotel having lunch. When I called the front desk, my call was redirected from the restaurant to the suite upstairs. Watson answered. You know how you can tell by the tone of someone’s voice that they’re laying down?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Watson was on her back.”

They laughed together, but only briefly.

“I saw it as an asset,” Paladino said. “The two of them being distracted like that was good for our side. I’m just surprised Bennett stayed with her this long. Despite his wife and kids, I’ve always read him as the kind of guy who thrives on variety. The kind of guy who can’t go deep and needs a cheerleader by his side to keep telling him he’s not an asshole.”

Paladino’s words lingered-his irritation for the man and his resentment were obvious. Lena went with the vibe and could see Bennett and Watson thinking that their slam-dunk case was set on automatic and had plenty of fuel. She could see them taking everything for granted while feeding on the media attention, the spotlight, the public’s approval and good wishes. She could even see them fucking each other at the Bonaventure and thinking that this high-profile trial would push them over the top.

But in the end, Paladino was right. Steven Bennett couldn’t go deep.

The defense wanted an independent examination of the semen found on Lily’s body, and the two deputy district attorneys couldn’t produce the evidence. And then everything began to unravel. Paladino saw his opening. But even more, Paladino saw the end. Jacob Gant wasn’t on trial anymore. Bennett and Watson and the LAPD were.

Lena could still see Paladino standing behind his client in the courtroom. Still see his hand on Gant’s shoulder. Still hear his smooth voice laying it out for all to see …

If you want to say somebody did something and get that printed in a newspaper, you need at least two sources to say it’s so. That’s what it takes to get a story printed in a newspaper. Two sources to say it’s so. But we’re not talking about a story in a newspaper. We’re here in this courtroom today talking about matters of life and death. And what we need right now are two sources to say it’s so. What we need right now is verification. If you’re gonna put a young man away for the rest of his life-if you’re gonna stick a needle in his arm, steal his life away and put him to death-you need to know exactly what he’s done. You can’t think you know, you can’t hope you know, and you can’t weigh the odds and make a best guess. You need certainty. Absolute certainty like the world is round and the sun rises in the east. You need verification. If you can’t verify, then you can’t vilify. And that means you can’t convict.

“You okay, Lena?”

Her mind surfaced. Paladino had moved to the other couch and was looking at her with concern.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I was thinking about something.”

“You’re not fine,” he said. “The way I see it, you’ve got a big fucking problem. One that I can’t help you with. Lily Hight was raped and murdered by a monster. He’s still out there. And everybody in the DA’s office knows he’s still out there.”

She wasn’t sure if she heard Paladino right. “What are you saying?”

“Higgins, Bennett, Watson-they know, Lena. They’ve always known. Jacob Gant was innocent. They knew that before the trial.”

A beat went by. Then another, more corrosive than the first. She gave Paladino a hard look. His smile was gone and she could tell that this wasn’t a play or some kind of test. It was the reason that he had agreed to meet with her. The reason he had agreed to talk. As the implications began to surface, she tried to find her voice but it came out broken and scuffed.

“What you’re saying is crazy, Buddy.”

“Actually, I would have used the word insane.”

He got up and walked over to his desk. When he returned, he passed a file to her from across the table.

“We didn’t just ask for a polygraph, Lena. We begged for one. When they kept refusing, I hired someone to perform the test. Someone I thought carried weight with the department. Someone I thought the district attorneys office would listen to. Someone everyone trusts.”

Lena ripped open the file and skimmed through the report. When she saw that the polygraph had been performed by Cesar Rodriguez, that feeling of dread became overwhelming. Until his retirement last year, Rodriguez had been known as the best forensic psycho-physiologist in SID. In the midst and horror of the Romeo murder case a few years back, Rodriguez had been hand-picked for the job of weeding out the innocent from their list of suspects.

Paladino may have been saying something, but Lena wasn’t listening anymore.

She was reading the report, chewing up the results in big, horrific chunks. Rodriguez had asked Jacob Gant fifteen questions. And in each case Gant’s answers showed no signs of deception. The questions were specific and included everything anyone would have needed to know. After examining the data, she paged back to Rodiguez’s conclusions: Jacob Gant was in love with Lily Hight. He was angry and jealous for two weeks, but for only two weeks. He had made up with her on the afternoon of her death. He had made love with her early that evening. And never once had he ever hurt her, hit her, raped her, or stabbed her. When he left her that evening, Lily was alive and standing in the kitchen.

Had Lena been handed the results of this polygraph, she would have cut Gant loose and never thought about him again. Any detective she had ever worked with would have done the same thing.

She looked up from the report at Paladino. He was trying to rein in his anger. Trying to cope with his rage and hold everything in. Still, it was there-underneath, where it counts.

“You showed them this report?” she said.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I sent all three of them copies.”

“When?”

His jaw tightened. “Six weeks before the trial.”

31

They’d known …

Lena walked out of the Rite Aid at Fifth and Broadway, ripped open a pack of Camel Lights, and lit one. As she drew the smoke into her lungs, she could feel her body resisting. But it wouldn’t work. Not tonight. She took another hit, bigger this time, then released the smoke and climbed into her car. After jacking the AC all the way up, she cracked open the window and reached for her cell phone.

They had known that Gant was telling them the truth. They had gone to trial knowing that they were prosecuting the wrong man. An innocent man. Someone who had lost his mother in a homicide at the age of